Well, THAT'S better

[Scott Fisher <sefisher@domain.elided>]

As I mentioned last week, the folks who found the short in my '74
Spider's brake light system pointed out the 1" aluminum spacers under
the driver's seat frame.  So this weekend I set about removing them.

Whoever put these in certainly didn't ever intend to have them removed. 
He'd used standard hex-head bolts, but had put them into the seat-rail
channels -- which were too narrow to get a socket on them.  The bolt
heads were chewed up already, presumably just from the installation.  It
was a monstrous task just to get them out -- fitting a wrench on two
flats, the wrench up at an angle so that it would clear the seat
channels when I leaned on it.  The rear inner bolt in particular was
awful, as in addition to being badly oriented in the channel it was hard
to reach it.  It was frustrating, sweaty work, and I was g

Having put the seats in and out of my '67 GT Junior a couple of times, I
knew what the factory used: Allen bolts.  So as I finally got the seat
out of the car, I slipped a bolt into my pocket so I could match the
size and pitch of the threads and headed down to Orchard Supply Hardware
with my 2-1/2 year old son Charlie.

Charlie was a big help, holding the bolt for me while I matched it
against the new hardware in the plastic bags: 8mm x 30mm, 1.25 pitch for
those playing along at home.  We bought four new hardened Allen bolts
and headed home, where I found one additional reason the inner rear bolt
was so tough: the threads were chewed up at the bottom.  

I looked through my two sets of taps and dies and could find no metric
cutters.  I lubricated the old bolt with the least chewed-up head and
drove it into the chewed-up captuve nut, back and forth several times. 
It was still impossible to get the 30mm Allen bolt far enough in -- and
of course, with only the seat rails and no 1" spacer, I didn't need a
30mm bolt.  So back to Orchard (without Charlie this time) for some
shorter bolts of the same pitch.

By this time my wife had finished her indoor chores and came out to help
me.  This was good, as orienting the bolts took two of us, one to lean
on the seat frame and another to start the bolts in the threads. 
Antiseize on the threads helped them go into the nuts nicely (and will
help me pull the seat when I decide to have it reupholstered next year
some time).  We eventually got all four bolts very snug against the star
washers and I went to try out the seat.

Hooray!  My eyes were below the top of the windshield frame; my left
elbow was below the top of the doorframe.  The only problem was that I
was about three or four positions too close to the wheel.  So I lifted
the adjustment lever and... the seat wouldn't move.

I got out of the car.  I could see under the seat just enough to see
that the adjuster wasn't even engaged with the dog-teeth on the frame
rail, so that wasn't it.  It was just... stuck.  I thought it was hung
up on the oversize seatbelt bolt (big eye-bolt) on the trans tunnel, but
it wouldn't move forward either.  So I reached behind the seat and the
seatback whacked me in the head, knocking my head into the wheel and
blowing the horn all in one frustrating gesture.

At that moment, someone could have picked up a very shiny green Spider
for about a dollar.  I said some hard things about the car, about Alfas
in general, and stood up.

"Well," I said, "I'm going to try one more thing before I set fire to
it, push it off a cliff, and make an insurance claim," I told my wife. 
I sat in the seat, made sure the lever was pulled up... and shoved my
legs against the firewall really really hard.

After a second or two of resistance, there was a CLUNK and then the seat
slid back, all the way to the rear of its travel.

"When you give up caring whether or not you break it, things work much
better," I told my wife.  Or maybe this car simply responds well to
threats, I'm not sure.  We were on our way to some friends' house for a
barbecue then (in fact, we were late because getting the stupid bolts
out of the seat frames was so much more difficult than it needed to be
if the idiot had simply used the right hardware), so I put off the test
drive till this morning.

The ride to work was quite different.  I no longer have to look OVER the
windscreen to see stoplights.  I no longer feel like I'm riding the car,
I'm sitting *in* the interior.  The windblown look of my hair is very
different, too.   The car *should* handle better, too, as moving such a
(ahem) large chunk of dead weight an inch down can't have anything but
good side effects.  And finally, whether it's because I tightened the
Allen bolts more firmly than the bolts I removed, or whether it's
because there's no flexing of the longer bolts on the aluminum spacers,
the seat feels more solidly in place than before -- there's no wobble,
flex or movement between the seat cushion and the floorpan now.

I found that at the rearmost position, I was sitting a little too far
back on the way in to work-- after I got under way, my arms were
stretched out a bit more than I like (even when held in my lap in the
Official Italian Test Driver Position), though leg room was wonderful. 
Once safely situated in the parking lot at work, I moved the seat one
notch forward; my arms felt more comfortable and my legs were still
happy.  We'll fiddle with the position till it seems as good as it's
going to get.  

I suppose I ought to make a point of trying out the car with the top up,
just to see what an improvement the seat-lowering has made.  That was
the main purpose of this exercise, to get back some clearance between
the top of my head and the brace for the convertible top.  With that and
the now-working windscreen wipers, the Spider can be an all-season car
(at least in California).

Next: replace the oil and at least some of the six filters that a Spica
car takes (two each of air, oil, and fuel), then harder brake pads, and
the car will be more attuned to the way I want to drive it.

- --Scott Fisher
  Sunnyvale, California

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