He are a few pic’s of my early spyder chassis, modified to accept a Zetec engine, MT75 gearbox and Cossie rear diff
This also has Wilwood 4 pot rear calipers with built in handbrake and willwood front 4 pot calipers with vented front discs
Rob
Rob,
Beautiful,but why go for the cossie diff? whats the advantages/dissadvantages.
Paul
Hi Paul,
Not sure the lotus diff could handle 200 Bhp and the Cossie diff is LSD, so better traction
If your Zetec is going to be standard approx 130 Bhp, then you could use your standard diff. If that is the case, you might aswell use your standard gearbox and bolt it onto the Zetec engine using spyder engine mounts.
regards
Rob
Rob,
That looks very nice work.
Will you be drilling a hole through the ol filter cannister for the steering column? a very shallow filter is the normal solution. (sorry couldn’t resist that!)
Willwoods front and rear will be interesting, are you looking at having adjustable bias?
I hope you keep the pictures coming as you progress, it will be nice to see someone else’s project slowly taking shape as the months go by.
Regards
Hi Alan,
10 out of 10 for spotting the deliberate mistake with the oil filter. I did realise the filter was to big and will probably use either a compact filter or a 90* adaptor.
I also plan to install a brake bias adjuster.
Will post some more pic’s as the project progresses.
Regards
Rob
Hi Rob
Great job.
Interesting rear damper set up. How much damper travel do you have at the rear?
Thanks
Gavin
Hi Rob
Can you post some more detail pics of the diff mounting please?
Cheers
dave
Wow, that set-up looks great. You mention that you have an old Spyder chassis. Does it have the early caster angle in the front suspension or the later angle? Does anyone on the boards have a comparison of the performance of cars with each angle. I have a '71 Sprint with the later (3 degree) caster and plenty of understeer at low speeds. I’ve used higher caster angle on US cars to reduce it and wonder if the earlier Elans have less understeer. Also, wonder why Lotus changed the angle.
thanks in advance for any insights,
Edd
I thought the long travel, soft springs, stiff dampers, especially at the rear was crucial to the Lotus ride/handling compromise. It looks in the photos as if when the rear is loaded there will be very little vertical movement. Clearly youve gone to enormous trouble so you must have calculated that it will work but as a non-engineer Im intrigued as to how.
Jim
Netec, I used the Ford Racing 90 degree adaptor for the filter. I believe Summit sell them.
Regards
Gerry
Hi Gavin
I think it will give me as much suspension travel as a standard set up. The dampers are set further in so they don’t need as much travel as the standard vertical set up. This was the way Spyder built this chassis, I have just replaced the dampers with GAZ replacement adjustable dampers.
Regards
Rob
Thanks Gerry,
It’s probably the way i’ll go. I’ll check out Summit
regards
Rob
Edd,
My chassis is a +2 chassis, so I don’t know about different caster angles, Sorry
Rob
Just found this thread. Any progress on build?
I have a slight concern re the rear dampers. The top mount is in single shear and takes quite a lot of punishment. Have you thought about fitting a supporting bracket in order to make it double shear?
A standard Elan crown wheel and pinion will handle at least 220bhp. However, I did fit a quaife LSD in order to even out the power to both wheels.
Hi Steve,
This rear suspension set up was done by spyder.
The top mount is not a single bolt, but a stud which runs through from front to the rear of the chassis giving it good support.
The project to moving on now. The rolling chassis is complete and the body shell has come back from the paint shop.
I will post some more pic’s in the next week or so 
Rob
Hi Rob
Look forward to the update photos.
The length of the bolt/stud doesn’t change the fact that the bolt is in single shear where it is attached to the chassis. In my book (and Carroll Smith’s many books) this is bad practice as no bolt under shear stress should be in single shear. It will probably be fine but, if it was mine, I would be converting it to double shear just to be on the safe side 
Regards
Steve
Rob
Just a few questions if I may, You say this is an early chassis, My Spyder chassis is also early and I was told will need modifying to fit a zetec and 5 speed box. Have you had these mods done or did you do them yourself, How easy were they and what troubles have you come across.
Ill also ask the question on the rear setup,it looks to me, and this is without calclations, that you may loose travel. So in that case do you run harder springs?
lastly its the brakes, What are you running.
It looks fantastic and to be truely honest its exactly the way I wanted to go untill I was told things wouldnt fit,except the rear diff but thats because it cost a lot for the 3.54 I now have and Sue’s drive shafts.thats life though.Cantwait to see the progress
Paul
Hi Paul,
You are correct in saying the early chassis need modifying to accept the Zetec, MT75 gearbox, Cossie rear diff set up. I used the standard Spyder Zetec engine mounts, gearbox mounts, gearbox rear flange, prop shaft and gear linkage. This gives you the basic layout of everything. The front cross member needs to be modified to clear the crank shaft pulley.
The chassis around the rear of the gearbox needs to be modified to clear the prop mounting flange and the rear upper deck needed to be modified to accept the cosie diff. New mounting plates and flanges were made to mount the rear diff using rubberised bushes and locom mounts. The drive shafts ae modified cossie units.
The mods have been done by a guy called Hywel of Spot on control cables (ex NASCAR race engineer), THis guy is a magician, If he can’t make it work nobody can.
As I have said in earlier posts, the rear damper set up is exactly as Sypder made it in the first place. All I have done is replace the old shocks with new GAZ adjustable shocks with i think 200 lb springs. So i’m hopeing Spyder did there homework before producing this set up in the first place. If it doesn’t work I’ll revert back to the Lotus struts.
The Rear brake set up uses Wilwood powerlite 4 pot calipers with a built in handbrake + there cables. I had to make alloy mounting brackets to fit them to the hub carriers. The front hub/Brake set up uses alloy GT6 hubs, Capri 245mm x 20mm vented discs and wilwood Dynalite 4 pot calipers with modifid brackets. The GT6 hubs needed to be machined to compensate for the 20mm discs.
Other problem bits are modifying the front anti roll bar and drop links to clear the rear sump and exhaust manifold. The bolt on cross member under the rear of the engine is also a pain to modify, but needs to be done for the same reason
Regards
Rob
Do you have any detail shots of the hand-brake lever set-up? I don’t think this has been covered on here before with detail photos.
Have Spyder done the rear damper/spring set-up like this to many cars? I have their normal RSC twinny kit and, when fitting it, wondered if it was possible to do something like wot you’ve got.
I think the brake balance adjustment will be a good idea, it looks a bit over-braked at the rear to me (although I don’t know squiddly about those large +2 cars 
).