LOOK WHAT THEY DID...

[Mickey Richaud]

...to a perfectly good Spider!

Pity...

 

[terriphill]

ouch!

 

[4aKen]

I'm not that up on tr7s but it looks like a good project to me. Isn't John Cars conversions about as good as it gets.
Does every Spider come stock with that rare 16 valve 4cyl. engine?

 

[Mickey Richaud]

No special engine. But it was the rarest of the special editions - only around 1200 or so built. Highly collectible - but not this one!

 

[Number_6]

That is a shame...the sad part is I'm sure the person selling the car fully believes that he's 'improved' it.

 

[Deleted member 8987]

Actually, if you read the description, he BOUGHT it as a "lump" with a GM V-6 in it.
At that point, what should he have done?
The damage was already done by the PO.

At least he made the drivetrain able to handle the "lump"

 

[Silverghost]

Back in 1980, it was "just another new car". Probably sat on a dealer's lot longer than it should have, put in the sale lot, etc.... Many cars have increased collectability today because they were overlooked when new.

 

[ObiRichKanobi]

Ok...I'm probably asking for trouble, but if the motor in my Spider ever dies, there's probably a better than 50/50 chance that there would be a V8 or V6 transplant in it's future. My car is rather high mileage (123,000) and has a decent body, but it would never be a concours quality car (at least not that I can afford to do). So the question would be...have a "collectable" (and that's a big question with ANY wedges) car with relatively poor performance, or return it to life as a flame snorting runner. It would be nice to finally have a car that when I do the cruise with the local hot rod club, I don't get asked where the other half of the motor is!

 

[Mickey Richaud]

Ok...I'm probably asking for trouble, but if the motor in my Spider ever dies, there's probably a better than 50/50 chance that there would be a V8 or V6 transplant in it's future. My car is rather high mileage (123,000) and has a decent body, but it would never be a concours quality car (at least not that I can afford to do). So the question would be...have a "collectable" (and that's a big question with ANY wedges) car with relatively poor performance, or return it to life as a flame snorting runner. It would be nice to finally have a car that when I do the cruise with the local hot rod club, I don't get asked where the other half of the motor is!

No trouble in your case. Pretty sure you'd retain the original bits in the event you or someone else wanted to bring it back to original status. No question that TR7's were not exactly muscle cars!

When I redid the TR8, I did the usual changes to the engine, but I still have the intake and carbs, and the original exhaust manifold; even all the pollution stuff.

The one on ebay wouldn't be so bad, but having an automatic stuck in there makes for a difficult journey back to originality.

Also, there are plenty of plain TR7's out there to massage....

 

[MCNX_BFF]

Aaaaaaw...poor lil' Spidey! :frown: That's just sad--although for every one that gets this kind of "speshul" treatment I suppose our remaining Spiders become more rare! :wink: Hopefully it will go to a good home that will spend time, energy, and $ to correct the indignity done to it...or at the very least give it a proper conversion to a TR7V8. Now we're talkin'!
--Monica

 

[TRED]

Have you ridden in a Grand National, awesome cars. If the Spider has the 4 speed auto from the GN it will flat out fly and likely get better mileage then the 4cyl did. I think that car is cool.