Spider questions

["Scott Johnson" <scott@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

To Ed Gibbs, who had a question about the SPICA air box:

My own personal opinion, from reading extensively and looking at my own car
and others, is that the SPICA intake box is a carefully thought out piece
of work. It has a cold air intake that *may* have some ram effect, has four
tuned-length air horns inside, and overall is almost as large as the head
itself. Even though the intake opening may look smallish, it should be
remembered that while the engine is running only one horn is drawing air at
any one time (in a 4 anyway), and the main opening is much larger than any
single horn.

One of the more memorable pictures in my Brookings book (a collection of
car mag reprints) is a head-on view of a SPICA airbox with one end open
while it is attached to the engine. The length of the air horns is quite
striking, and they seem to be very, very close to the same size as the
intakes on the manifold. If these horns weren't covered in a box and
instead were chromed and attached individually, the effect would be quite
striking.

It would be interesting if anyone has ever tested alternative intake filter
systems on a dyno. My own guess is that, like the stock exhaust, as long as
the engine is kept below the stock redline it would be hard to beat.

And a general note on the old-style gas gauge senders:

As Dan Walker noted the wire that forms the windings of the rheostat are
very thin and fragile, totally unsuited to soldering. However, it is quite
possible to take the whole thing apart, unwind above the break one turn,
and below the break one turn, and then wrap the two wires together on the
*back* side of the mounting plate. I was able to use my fingers to
re-distribute the wire loops on my own broken sender so they were even
again, but even still the loss of accuracy is probably less than the margin
for error built into the thing.

YMMV, of course, but since the senders seem to be made of Unobtanium
nowadays, a repair may be the only recourse.

Scott Johnson
Alfa Spider FAQ Author

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