Making A Non-67 Spider Into A '67 Spider

In response to a query about converting late 850 Spider to a '67 nose, here's what little information I can offer. Here is one of my '67 Spiders prior to being parted out. If you want to do the conversion th first thing you'll need is a '67 Spider. Which of course begs the question why the hell would you want to do the conversion if you already HAVE a '67 Spider???

Good question. In my case, this chassis was rusty beyond repair, so I decided to cut off the nose to convert my friend Ed's '72 Spider. Below I'll show where you want to cut it off for ease of installation.

Here's the car well on it's way to being stripped. Notice the sawzall getting ready for service...

This is the car after it was stripped and the nose was cut off. This shows where you need to cut the nose off for the conversion. The best way to cut sheetmetal is with a sawzall (reciprocating saw). Cutting the nose off the car took all of about 15 minutes. But of course this is the easy part, grafting it on the new car is where the skill is involved. Note the location of the cut. The place to cut is just behind the front wall of the battery box.

I finally found the pic of the nose that came off my car. Obviously it's the orange nose. Here are pics of two others that were cut off for future use.

Once you have the nose, you'll need the donor car. My buddy Ed supplied the donor car. After a couple of years of talking about it he finally got up the nerve to take his 1972 850 Spider under the knife, uh, sawzall. Here's a quick pictoral summary of the project so far. For an even more detailed story about all the plans Ed has for this car, including Fuel Injection, click HERE. Others have done the conversion by cutting the donor chassis clean across the battery box, much like the noses were cut, which cuts through the structural members of the frame. I was not that excited about cutting through the frame, so I recommended to Ed that we only change the outer fender and nose skin, thus leaving the general structure intact.

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