Will's Spitfire Blog

What Lurks Beneath...

2011-11-20T16:30:00.007Z

Okay, I've got a bit distracted recently with the lathe, the tool trolley and my trip to the NEC. It's time to get back to the Spitfire! It's just amazing how decent a car can look and yet still hide all manner of bodgery! I keep telling myself that I'm one step ahead of most restorers in that I've got fully working, tried and tested mechanicals and that I've really only got bodywork and paint to do but it's not easy keeping the momentum up!

I'm still slowly getting through the bodywork on the front half of the car. The bonnet top panel only needs to be separated from the drivers side bonnet cone panel and a minor repair made to the flange before it's good to go. The passenger side headlight support panel (a Steelcraft panel) is clamped in place and looks to be quite a good fit around the headlight area but looks like it might need a bit of a trim where it meets the wing. The bonnet strengthener is clamped in place too and I'm now working on fitting up the drivers side support panel. Next step for me is getting a new bonnet strengthening bar and start trial fitting the wheelarch panels. I did buy one off eBay but it turned out to be a bit bent so I had to scrap it!

This weekend I turned my attention to the drivers side rear wing. It seemed solid enough but when I passed over it with a 'Dronco' clean and strip disc I was in for a nasty surprise!

Yeah, that's a seam weld running across the bottom half of the panel! The welding isn't bad but there is some horrible distortion in the panel and there was a lot of filler used to cover it! Next on my list of unpleasant was discoveries was this...

It's a fairly minor wheelarch dent. It's not too bad but it's an annoyance none the less! Finally, and I've saved the best for last, I found this...

I did cut into that a bit with some tinsnips to neaten it up so I didn't cut myself on it, but most of the metal was removed with my bare hands! A large chunk of boot floor, inner and outer wing literally came off in my hands!

Finding the wing in such poor condition has really made my mind up to replace it. There doesn't seem much point in repairing the back of it when the front's already been done and there's a dent in the middle. You may as well do the whole thing while you can! It needs to come off anyway because I need to do the B pillar too as it's rusted through on the drivers side. I've already got a repair section for the back half of the inner wing so hopefully with that in and a new inner wheelarch (it has multiple patches) I should be back in business!

I made another annoying discovery this weekend too. When pulling off the weatherseal around the door aperture I realised that the flange where the outer sill meets the strengthener and the floorpan looked a bit odd. My worst fears were confirmed when I managed to slip a knife blade between the outer sill and the strengthener and move it about a foot without hitting a weld. I really need to look into this closer - the sills are supposed to have been replaced before I bought the car and I was hoping not to have to do too much work on them. I'm just glad I didn't have an accident in it - a large part of the cars strength is in those sills.

Finally, here's a few pictures of my boot. The boot floor looks like it may just be repairable but the rear valance needs full on replacement. Lot's of welding fun to be had in the future!

NEC Classic Motor Show 2011

2011-11-14T18:22:00.009Z

On Saturday I made my annual pillgrimage to the NEC for the Classic Car Show. I got there early on the saturday to try and take in as much as possible before it got too busy! I was glad I did! When I left the Top Gear Live show was in full swing and the whole NEC seemed to be absolutely rammed! I'm definately going to take a day off work and go on the Friday next year.

The lights in the exhibition halls do very strange things to cameras so it's not easy to get good shots, especially with my little point and shoot Pentax, but I think I came away with some quite good pictures this year. Enjoy!

Renault Spider - I remember reading about these in Car and Car Conversions when they first came out!

This was sporting a modern Zetec powerplant!

This was a nice TR8!

One of my all time favourites - Mercedes 450SEL 6.9!

Pimp My Drill!

2011-10-24T16:57:00.011Z

My first project on the lathe is complete! I've created three knobs for the end of the feed handles on my pillar drill. They're not very complex, which is why I thought they would be a good first project to get used to the lathe!

I started off by cutting a length of 2cm diameter aluminium bar into three 5cm sections. I then faced both ends of each piece and worked them until they were all within 1/10th of a mm and then I centre drilled and tapped each piece. After a quick tool change, I turned each piece just to clean then up a bit, before putting a slight bevel on the tops to loose the sharp edge.

I then set the thing up to do some tapering. The Unimat has a really neat headstock that can be twisted. That puts the work at an angle and allows tapered pieces to be created really easily. After making a couple of passes to neaten it up I was done!

This is the drill as purchased - with nasty black plastic knobs.

The freshly turned aluminium replacements!

I think they look pretty good! They aren't perfect but I am very impressed with the finish on them. I still have a few things to learn before I make a few bits up for the car though! If anyone knows a good tip for stopping the chuck marking a previously worked surface I want to hear it - it'll save me a fair bit of polishing next time!

Lathe

2011-10-17T20:00:00.001Z

Things have been going very slowly around here for the last few months! Work, other projects and a back injury followed by a foot injury have conspired against me!

Despite being busy, I have managed to do a small amount of work on the Spitfire. The windscreen is now out and didn't reveal too many horrors - just a little rust in the rain channels! The bonnet is now stripped down completely apart from the rear bonnet cone panels. I want to keep these on for as long as possible to get the right shape but I really need to sort out the bit where they meet the bonnet wing flange. There are three panels spot welded together here and rot has, rather unsurprisingly, taken hold. I think the easiest solution is going to be to chop it out and let some new metal into the flange before tackling the cone panel and then the wing.

Once I have repaired all the panels, I need to start getting them cleaned up and I've made a bit of an investment in a 3hp compressor from Jawel Paints so that I can get some grit blasting done. Grit blasting has a bit of a bad reputation with classic car restorers and a quick read of the Internet might have you believe you were practically guaranteed rippled panels. The reality of it is, though, that damage to panels like that can only be caused by industrial equipment and is not something that can easily be achieved at home!

To complete the kit, I bought a cheap sandblasting gun from Machine Mart which may or may not be any good (I haven't tried it yet!) and some J-Blast Supafine grit which came highly recommended on the MIG welding forum.

One of the other projects I have just finished is this mini lathe. I bought it off eBay as a complete wreck. It's an Emco Unimat design made by Elliott Machine in the UK. There is a huge following for these little lathes and parts crop up fairly regularly on eBay. According to http://www.lathes.co.uk/unimat/ my lathe is a Mk4 Unimat and probably originated from around 1959 - 1960.

I started the restoration off by stripping the paint. I couldn't decide if this was original or not but I guessed not because it looked like green Hammerite and it was literally slapped all over everything (including the plastic motor brush caps) but I have since seen a few finished like this! Either way, it got a few coats of the same grey POR15 I used to repaint my gearbox.

The rusty metalwork got a thorough dunking in derusting solution, whilst the seized chuck got a thorough soaking in penetrating oil followed by a bashing against the soft wood of my workbench!

The trickiest bit by far was the motor. Unimats are powered by a U-90 motor made in Holland by Motoren Eindhoven. Its a nicely made motor and has big 'Oilite' bearings but suffers from a low duty cycle. For every 8 minutes it's in use you have to let it rest for 2! It did work when I got it, but I took it apart anyway to repaint and instantly realised that all was not well with it. For a start, there was some very dodgy soldered connections inside that had been left bare and, secondly, there was supposed to be a suppressor inside. The only trace it had ever been there was a couple of soldered tags!

This was a bit of a problem. The motor would run without the suppressor but the brushes would wear rapidly. Unfortunately, the original type of suppressor hasn't been available for years and the only one available is too large to go inside the motor. I decided that the only real option was to use a suppressor from Maplins and mount it outside the motor.

Fitting the suppressor and putting on a new flex involved a lot of fiddly soldering in a very dingy, confined space but I eventually got it done! I find a soldering gun rather than a soldering iron makes these unpleasant jobs much more straightforward, not least because mine has a light on the front that comes on when the trigger is pulled!

The last job was to fit a new switch and plug. The originals were Bakelite and had seen much better days!

That's it! After a few false starts (due to a brush not making contact) the motor ran up nicely and sounded much healthier than it did before. All that's left to do on it is to heatshrink the suppressor to the cable to tidy it up and think of some things to make on it. My drill press has some nasty plastic bits on the feed handle that could be replaced by something nicer so I think that might be my first project.

Tool Trolley

2011-05-24T19:28:00.007Z

I've not had much time to work on the car in the last month or so but I did manage to find enough time to do a few small jobs on the bonnet. First of all, I spent a good few hours grinding off all the remaining spot welds on the bonnet flanges. I also discovered a bit of rust on one side where the bonnet support tube bolts up to the flange. It looks like water has been trapped between the support tube and flange and has rotted both. Fortunately, the bonnet flange was easily repaired whilst the support tube is probably best replaced.

I'm getting better at these small welding jobs! I've discovered that the secret to really neat welds is accurate 'fit up'. Time spent making the repair sections fit definitely pays off when it comes to the welding!

I still need to sort out the bonnet cone mounting panels at the back edge of the bonnet. For the time being I'm leaving these on to help with aligning the wings but they'll eventually be replaced. Thanks to eBay, Canleys and a couple of panels I got donated from a failed restoration, I've almost got all the panels I need and I should be able to start the rebuilding process soon.

Another project I've been working on recently is a tool trolley. I'm still waiting on a few panels so I thought I'd fill the time by making a tool trolley. Basically these are wheeled carts used to store parts and tools while working. You can buy them, but they either seem to be cheap and a bit rickety looking or solidly built but expensive. I wasn't after anything fancy but I did want a well built, stable cart and I wanted it to be a bit higher than normal because I'm tall! I also thought about building in a power strip so I can plug all the power tools onto the trolley and then just plug the trolley in. Sounds like a good idea, huh?

I started by cutting up some 25mm box section with my new Evolution 'Fury' saw (a recent purchase on a 'VAT free' day at Machine Mart). I'm using 1.5mm wall thickness to keep it light.

The trickiest bit so far has been the handle! I used a holesaw in a drill press to make the tube fit against the box section sides of the handle. This worked a treat and all I had to do was cut the angles on the chop saw and weld it up.

It's coming on nicely! Thanks to eBay, I have some decent size lockable castors and thanks to Banbury Plastic Fittings (www.bpfittings.co.uk) I have the inserts that the castors bolt up to and various plastic plugs to seal the ends of the tubes. I was quite pleased to find this company, as everywhere else seemed to have a minimum order quantity or was only open to the trade.

That's it so far! I'll let you know how it turns out in a future blog post!

More Bonnet Metalwork!

2011-03-05T17:26:00.003Z

There's not been much to write about going on with my car recently. I've been slowly working on the bonnet to get it back into tip top condition before I weld any new panels to it.

One of the jobs that needed doing was the removal of the remaining scraps of the headlight support panels. These came off easily enough elsewhere but I couldn't remove the last bit of them where they met the corner of the bonnet. It looked like they'd been brazed in and it wasn't the easiest work in the world to separate the two without damaging the bonnet. In the end it wouldn't fully separate without me cutting a bit out of the bonnet flange off! This was annoying but easy to fix so I set about making a 'corner piece' from a bit of scrap panel. This was easy enough but made slightly more complicated by the fact there was a spot weld drill hole in the middle of the intended join between the two panels!

I was really concerned about the heat distorting the tiny repair section so I clamped a couple of scrap bits of 3mm alloy behind to take some of the heat out.

I did the welding really slowly - just a spot at a time. I did have a small issue where the the welder 'ate' the edge of the metal but I soon built it up with weld again!

I ground the weld back with a flap disc on an angle grinder. While I was doing this I noticed a definite 'ridge' along the front of the panel. I initially thought this might be a lap weld - maybe part of some dodgy repair!? I decided to investigate! I swapped the disc on the angle grinder to a cleaning fleece and ran it along the ridge. To my relief, all I could smell was hot filler! The relief was short lived though because I decided to follow the filler up the panel and as I was getting closer to the nose it was getting thicker - much thicker! To be fair, it could have been so much worse - I think I was pretty lucky to uncover a fairly minor dent.

Dents are really difficult to get a handle on so, in order to see the full extent of the damage, I sprayed the panel with some blue paint and sanded it with wet and dry on a cork block. The remaining blue paint shows up the dent!

There's nothing really wrong with using filler for something like this but, with easy access to the back of the panel, it'd be a shame not to have a go at knocking it out! Obviously, with no panel beating experience whatsoever, this was not going to be easy. But if you can't learn something from watching a few Youtube videos, buying a 7 piece panel beating set from Machine Mart and practicing on a few old panels is not worth learning - right!? It took about an hour of hammering and dollying but I think the result is worth it!

Bonnet Welding

2011-01-30T17:15:00.002Z

I've spent the last month or so practicing my welding whilst continuing to strip down the bonnet. I'm quite enjoying learning to weld. I'm getting good results and it seems to be quite straightforward. If I'm honest, I think I'm being flattered by my equipment!

I stripped off the mangled remains of the panels behind the headlights and ground the remains off the bonnet strengthener panel. I was planning to reuse the strengthener panel but it was too far gone to reuse so I ended up drilling it out as well.

Like a lot of Spitfire bonnets, mine had the 'classic' cracks around the bonnet corners. These are caused by the bonnet flexing when the bonnet is opened from one side. On mine, the lack of metal around the headlights had actually caused the alloy headlamp cowls to crack as well!

Replacing the alloy headlamp cowls is straightforward enough. I actually bought a drivers side cowl on eBay for 99p. The listing ended on Christmas day and nobody else bid!

The bonnet welding was a bit trickier. I started by practicing my butt welding technique on one of the old wheelarch panels.

That went ok, so I started on the bonnet cracks. The metal is thin here so I took it slow and set the welder on the lowest power setting. It's important not to distort the panel when welding stuff like this so I used short bursts of welding and a thicker piece of metal behind to stop the panel getting too hot. I'm pleased to say it worked a treat and, after grinding it back, you can't even see the welds.

I also bought myself a new toy this month! Machine Mart sent me an invite to a VAT free day and I used the opportunity to snap up a pillar drill. It's not the most top quality tool in the world but, for £50, I can't complain!

Safety First!

2010-12-30T17:44:00.007Z

I've been thinking a bit about workshop safety recently. It all started about the time I bought my new welder. As I hinted in a previous post, I thought it was about time I started learning to MIG weld, so I treated myself to a Clarke 160TM from the Weldequip shop at www.mig-welding.co.uk.

Obviously, being new to MIG welding, I had to invest in the appropriate safety gear. There's a really good forum attached to the Mig welding website and virtually everyone on it recommended the auto dimming type of mask. I picked up a 'SIF Lite' mask off eBay for a very reasonable £45. This dims automatically when you look at bright light and should be just the job! In terms of clothing, I picked up a 'Silverline' apron (£6.89) on eBay and a pair of ESAB MIG gauntlets (£7.85) from the Weldequip shop.

My shopping list would have stopped there - but one of the guys on the Sideways Forum mentioned the importance of having a fire extinguisher. This got me thinking! Obviously, I've always had a workshop fire extinguisher but had I ever really looked at it properly? tested it? did I even know how to use it!? I took a good look at it and a few things began to worry me. Firstly, I couldn't even begin to guess at how old it was! It actually had the MOD 'arrow' mark on it which means it was most likely obtained by my dad when he still lived in London. That would've been in the '70's! Secondly, it didn't have a pressure gauge so I couldn't tell how full it was. Obviously this was no good, so with the knowledge that I'd be replacing it anyway, I decided to see if it worked. Worryingly, but not unsuprisingly, it didn't work at all.

So, with a decent CO2 fire extinguisher on the shopping list, my thoughts turned to my other workshop safety gear. I've actually been pretty good with safety gear in so much as I've got it and I use it, but was the stuff I had any good?

In terms of eye protection, I've always used a pair of safety glasses for general work and a pair of goggles for grinding. The glasses came free with a garden strimmer about 15 years ago and the goggles were part of a £5 'safety kit' that I got when I hired a floor sander from HSS! Both would probably have worked but neither had any kind of safety markings (CE mark etc) and the goggles were horrifically uncomfortable so both went on my shopping list. Amazingly, protective eyewear is really cheap, so there was no excuse for me not to get some! I picked up a pair of Bolle 'Spider' glasses (good for impacts up to 45m/s and CE marked) for £5.45 (eBay) and a pair of Bolle 'Blast' goggles (120m/s impact protection and CE marked) for £5.99 (also from eBay).

For ear protection, I've always just used cheap disposable foam earplugs. Now I'm doing grinding on an almost industrial scale, I thought it was about time I got something a bit better, so I invested in a pair of Peltor 'Optime 1' ear defenders. These are good for general workshop use and cost just £8 from eBay. I have actually used the military spec versions of these whilst shooting in the past so I can vouch for their effectiveness!

While I was in the mood I also picked up some more gloves. OMP do a good pair of general rubberised workshop gloves for £2 (eBay) so I had a couple of pairs of those to go with the fibreglass pair I already had.

So there we go, safety equipment might not be the most exciting or fun thing in the world, but it's good to know that for less than £25, you can get good quality, stylish and up to date eye, ear and hand protection. Done!

Bonnet Rot!

2010-11-28T17:57:00.006Z

I've decided I'm going to start by sorting the bonnet out before I go on to do the rest of the car. The main reason for this is because I want to do things in manageable chunks so I don't get bogged down and I think the bonnet is a good place to start!

Having stripped off the lights last week, the next stage was to remove the bonnet catches. This was trickier than I'd imagined because of corrosion and in the end I had to get the Dremel out and grind the screws off. I made a mental note to use stainless fasteners here when I'm refitting them! I then set about removing the bonnet at the hinge boxes. I used thick cardboard between the quarter valances and the bonnet to stop it dropping down and hitting the radiator cap and carefully undid the bolts. With the help of an assistant (my mum!) I lifted the bonnet clear and stood it up on its back edge.

With the bonnet like this I could get a good look at it. To be honest, it was a pretty sorry sight! I had a good poke around and managed to make some pretty big holes with a screwdriver. There was also filler, glassfibre and copious quantities of extra steel sheet welded in! It was time to start sorting all this out!

I thought I'd start with the ropey wheelarches so I cleaned up the edge of the drivers side wheelarch using a 'Dronco' cleaning fleece, with the intention of finding the spotwelds and drilling them out to release the wing. Imagine my surprise then to find - no spotwelds! It seems at some stage, someone had badly seam welded them in! I really needed the arch out of the way so I could get at the wing spotwelds so there wasn't really an alternative other than to just cut through the outer arches. I used a Clarke 1mm 'plasma cut' cutting disc on an angle grinder to slice through it and aviation snips to cut back the edge.

While I had the snips out I removed a previous owners modification - a piece of plain sheet steel welded under each of the headlight strengthener panels. Guess what I found underneath? If you guessed rust - you're right!

With those cut out, my next job was to remove the passenger side wheelarch. I had hoped to reuse the inner arch panel on this side but when I pulled it away from the bonnet support tube bracket, I realised the metal I was looking at was on the bracket and the panel had a hole in it! The outer on this side was particularly bad - there were three layers in some places and very crusty! The cutting disc made hard work of this and I was forced to split the various layers with a chisel and then cut them out!

I had hoped to reuse a wing and one of the inner arch panels but on closer inspection it looks like I'll be fitting two new wings, inner and outer wheel arch panels on both sides and two new headlight stiffener panels. Basically, that's all the panels other than the main bonnet panel and the strengthener panel in the nose!

Big Decisions!

2010-11-15T22:30:00.006Z

Over the last few months I've come to the inescapable conclusion that the time has come to properly restore my car! The last 7 years have taught me a lot about Triumph Spitfires - how they work, why they don't and, above all, the importance of top quality workmanship! Whenever I've had a job to do I've always tried to do it to the best of my abilities regardless of the time taken or, at times, the financial cost! The results of my labour is a car that is pretty much mechanically sorted. The bodywork however, is another kettle of fish. I've had a few patches welded on the floorpan in the past and needed a few more before the RBRR. This got me thinking - if I don't restore it soon it might deteriorate to the point where it's not worth doing.

I think that you basically seem to need a combination of four things to restore a car. Those four things are time, money, skills and space! When it comes to money and time, like everyone, I could do with more of both but I hope to keep the costs down by doing a lot of work myself. I also have the advantage that all the mechanical stuff is done already so I won't have the costs of that to factor in. In terms of skills, I'm going to need to learn how to MIG weld and I'm also going to have to get better at bodywork. There is really no getting away from that, those are essential! I've made a fairly serious investment along those lines but I'll discuss that another time!

In terms of space, I've really lucked out! My grandparents house is only a mile from my house and has a sizable double garage with a workshop at the back. It's full of junk but should be just fine once I've cleared it out. It has a special significance for me as well as I have many happy memories of the projects my grandad and I built in there before his death last year. Back in the 60's it was also used to build an Austin 7 special so I'm hoping it will bode well for my car! Here are a few pictures of my car settling in...

I've just started stripping it down. The front bumper, lights, spoiler, overiders and number plates are all removed and boxed up in my workshop. It begins...

The Round Britain Reliability Run!

2010-10-17T11:40:00.014Z

Better late than never! Here are some of my photos from the RBRR...

And that's it really! The car was flawless all the way around and we didn't have anything to do other than just drive. It was great fun and if you're thinking of doing it then go for it! It really is the ultimate test of man and machine!

Headlight Relays

2010-09-18T19:22:00.012Z

I wrote this blog entry a month or so ago but I was so busy preparing for the Round Britain Reliability Run I never got a chance to post it. So, finally, here it is...

I've had a couple of problems in the past few days with the dip / flash stalk on the steering column. My uprated Halogen headlamps seem to have been putting much more strain on the switchgear than the old sealed beam units. Last year I had to take the stalk off and repair it because the full beam terminal seemed to have heated up and melted into the nylon body of the stalk causing it to smoke and spark quite dramatically! After it failed again on the same dark country road as before I decided it was probably time to fit some headlight relays!

I'm not the greatest electrical engineer in the world so I decided to do my research first. After a bit of searching I found an excellent thread on the Club Triumph forum. Once I understood what I was doing I made up a circuit diagram.

Basically, instead of going direct to the lights the wires from the switchgear go to a relay instead. When the light switch is pressed the relay circuit activates the secondary circuit which connects the lights directly to the battery. So that's the theory! You also need to do a bit of maths to make sure the cable can support the current it needs to be carrying. All you really need to know is Power = Current x Voltage. Most headlamp bulbs are 55/60 Watt so the current will be around 5 amps. Because there are 2 headlamps we need cable and relays that can take at least 10 amps. I decided to go a bit bigger on the battery supply cable to give me more capacity for upgrades in the future. The relays required are the common as muck 30A type.

I first thought about where I was going to mount the relays themselves. It's easiest if they're up front with the rest of the wiring for the lights. On the CT forum, James mentioned that he'd seen the relays P clipped to the bonnet tubes. Initially I thought this would be a great idea but when I looked into it a bit more I discounted it on the grounds that the cables would eventually get weakened by the movement of repeatedly opening the bonnet. I decided on a custon bracket bolted behind the quater valance. I made this up out of 3mm alloy and test fitted it. Perfect! Now to start the wiring...

I started by fitting the brown relay supply cable. This attaches to the battery positive terminal with a ring terminal and goes straight to an inline fuse holder before joining the rest of the loom running to the front of the car.

At the front of the car I crimped it into a butt connector along with another two short lenghts to supply both of the relays. The brown wire attaches to the '30' terminal on the relay. On the picture below you can see a left over length of the brown wire is being used to temporarily hold the relays in place!

You can then start attaching the other wires. The low and high beam cables can be found by tracing the cabling from the headlamps to the connectors in the centre of the bonnet. There should be a number of 4-way connectors, each with 3 wires connected to it. The low beam is the blue wire with a pink trace. Remove the supply wire from the connector (the others go to the headlamps), shorten it, crimp a terminal and attach it to the relay. Now you just need to repeat that with the high beam wire (blue with white trace) and connect it to the other relay.

All you then need to do is connect up both the '87' terminals on each relay to the connectors by the headlamps. There we go - all done!

Electronic Ignition

2010-09-01T20:14:00.004Z

I've been meaning to change to electronic ignition for ages. I was hoping to go straight to Megajolt but with the RBRR coming up fast I decided it was time to get something sorted! I've heard good things about the kits sold by 'SimonBBC' so I got one of eBay. BBC stands for 'Best British Classics' in case you're wondering and they have a website (http://www.simonbbc.com) as well as selling on eBay.

The kit contains a red module to put in the distributor, special rotor arm, a magnetic 'collar', grease, cable tie and various other bits. The fitting goes a little like this...

Firstly, you need to whip off the distributor cap to expose its innards. You no longer need the condenser or the points so they can both be removed by removing the two screws. You need to reuse the screws so keep them safe! There is also a braid connecting the baseplate to the distributor body. It doesn't say anything in the instructions about it but I removed it and it worked so I guess it either needs to be removed or makes no difference!

Once you've stripped the guts out you can install the ignition module. This needs to have the base coated in silicon grease before fitting. I think the reasoning behind this is to dissipate heat into the baseplate and prevent overheating. The module has a circle cut out of the bottom that matches up with a lump on the baseplate so the module 'locates' very easily. The instructions tell you to put the screws in loosely so you can adjust the proximity of the module to the collar on the distributor shaft. I actually found that with the locating bump and the two screws there wasn't really any potential for moving it and just did up the screws.

Now you need to fit the rotor arm and collar. The kit gives you a couple of different ways of doing this. Firstly, you can use the supplied rotor arm which comes with a collar built into the bottom to activate the ignition module or, secondly, you can fit a separate collar and use your own rotor arm. I'd just bought a new top quality 'red' rotor arm so I went with the latter option.

Then all you need to do it pass the wires out through the distributor body and connect the red one to the plus side of the coil and the black one to the negative. It's really important to leave enough free cable inside the distributor to allow the plate to advance and retard. I checked mine by sucking on the vacuum pipe! The cables in the kit were a little strange. One was too long and the other too short! I sorted this with a little spare cable and a few crimp connectors.

I then threw it all back together and reconnected the battery. It was time for a test drive! I turned the key and the engine span over but nothing happened. Something was wrong and it wouldn't fire. I suspected my connections at first but everything seemed to be in order when I tested them with my multimeter. There isn't much in this kit that can actually go wrong so my suspicions turned towards the stuff in the diff! I fitted the rotor arm with the built in collar just to see if that made any difference and it did! The engine fired up straight away. Comparing the position of the collar on the rotor arm with it built in and where I had it with my normal rotor arm revealed the problem. Basically, I'd just pushed the collar too far down the shaft for its motion to be picked up by the ignition module. All I did was refit the normal rotor arm and pull the collar up to the bottom of it. Job done!

I haven't driven the car since doing it but just at idle it sounds much smoother and I'm sure it's going to make a huge difference to how the engine feels. I'm really glad I did it and I can't believe I didn't do it sooner!

Wiper Issues and Power Socket

2010-08-15T19:43:00.007Z

As anyone who rebuilds cars will tell you - sometimes things go well and sometimes they don't! I've had a number of things that haven't worked out recently. Firstly, the baffled sump I nearly finished had to be abandoned because it had issues with the screen touching the crank. Then there were issues with the trim I bought for the bottom of the hardtop which I managed to cock up fitting. It looked like a horrific water trap too so I ended up ripping most of it off! To top it all off, I found a puddle of water in the passenger footwell!

It was pretty easy to find the source of the water leak. The passenger side windscreen wiper mount was loose and the rubber seal was missing, allowing the recent 'summer weather' to pour in! The wiper and nut came off pretty easily but the chromed pedestal needed a bit of leverage from a screwdriver. I made a new seal from a sheet of silicone.

The old seal on the drivers side was literally dust and no use as a pattern so I drew around one of the spindles to make a pattern.

The only hitch was refitting the passenger side nut. The reason the whole thing was loose in the first place was because someone had overtightened the nut and ruined the thread. Unfortunately the thread looked pretty unusual and, as I'd got no idea what it was, there was no option other than to buy a new wheelbox. Hopefully that'll arrive soon!

Over the weekend I also installed a power socket. It's fitted to a metal bracket on the passenger side of the dash. I originally built the bracket for an extinguisher pull handle but never got around to fitting a plumbed in fire extinguisher! With the help of a conical drill bit set from Machine Mart I enlarged the hole enough to take a VW power socket I bought from eBay. I originally finished the bracket by polishing it but this time I sprayed it using wrinkle finish paint. Wiring was simply a case of hooking it up to a purple wire in the 'always on' circuit that I picked up from the hazards relay and earthing the other terminal. Done!

Progress Update!

2010-07-17T21:49:00.004Z

Things have really started coming together over the last few weeks. I've got the back of the engine sorted and the gearbox back in. I chucked in a lightened flywheel I bought of Martin Holmes on the Sideways forum, ARP bolts and a new clutch from Canleys. Everything went quite smoothly apart from a few minor niggles. The first problem was that the holes in the clutch cover for the flywheel dowels were ever so slightly too small and needed drilling out by half a mm. The second problem I had was that the hole in the alloy bellhousing for the engine dowel was clogged up with POR15 and also needed drilling out.

I also took the time to replace the clumsy old exhaust clamps with Mikalor band clamps.

I decided to make a better effort at sealing the gear tunnel and renewed all the fixings, replaced the sealing foam and also made an aluminium cover for the slave cylinder inspection panel.

I shampooed and rinsed the carpets. They're in dreadful condition really and they seem to have been made by someone that has never even seen a Spitfire before but they'll do for now!

I also repainted the gear pattern on the gearknob before I refitted it. It looks good! I'm just waiting on the leather seat covers now!

Sat Nav

2010-07-05T22:17:00.003Z

In October I'm taking part in Club Triumph's Round Britain Reliability Run. Obviously, this involves having a fully working car and I'm working on it! It also involves doing a lot of driving and navigating! On the Historic Counties Run, one of the most annoying aspects was the Sat Nav. We used a Garmin model with out of date maps and we couldn't plug it in because the car doesn't even have a lighter socket!

This got me thinking about possible navigation solutions. I work in IT and figured that there must be a PC based solution I could use. I've got a tiny Dell 'netbook' and I figured that I could use that with a GPS 'dongle'. I thought it might also allow me to track the car and overlay the track over Google Earth and also maybe allow me to attach a webcam and make a time lapse video. The netbook solution also has the advantage of being very cheap - I already have a netbook, GPS dongles are around £30 and you can download a fully featured time limited demo version of Microsoft Autoroute for free.

So far I've tried navigating using the netbook in my VW and it's been great. Not quite as easy out of the box as the Garmin but the tracking works well and the spoken instructions are better because Autoroute actually says the road names. It also seems to have better lane guidance. It is a bit quirky in some ways, though! It took me ages to convince it not to navigate me back to a missed waypoint. I must find some more time to get used to it!

Sump Baffling

2010-06-13T22:03:00.003Z

It's always surprised me that you can't buy a baffled sump off the peg. It's also surprisingly difficult to find info about the best way to baffle a Spitfire sump. A lot of the 'tuning know how' books tell you that you need one but all of them seem to fall down when it comes to providing specific details...

Luckily the Internet provided a few answers with threads on the Club Triumph and Sideways Technologies forums providing some good nuggets of information from those that have done this before.

For me, the first thing to do was to get a spare sump from EBay. When this arrived I was surprised to see it came with a mesh screen over the deep part of the sump. After asking around I discovered that the early models were fitted with mesh like this to stop bits of metal being ingested by the oil pump. Later models have an oil strainer attached directly to the pump.

I decided to keep this mesh screen - a lot of aftermarket windage trays use a similar arrangement. This meant modifying it to fit my fatter (later) oil pump. I drilled a series of holes and used a small chisel knock out the metal I didn't need. This worked surprisingly well and the finished result, after filing, is very neat.

Next it was time to make a cardboard template. I decided to go for a flat plate to control front / rear movement, with a vertical piece running from front to back to control sideways movement. When I was happy with the templates I transferred the design to aluminium.

With the flat plate made up in alloy I realised I was going to have a problem getting it past the windage tray! I solved this by cutting it in two and drilling both halves for rivets. I then made the vertical baffle from a piece of L shaped alloy and drilled it so I could attach it to the horizontal plate - using it to neatly combine the two halves!

I then started thinking about how I should attach it to the sump. I didn't like the idea of bolts through the side of the sump so I decided to make some C shaped brackets and attach it to the windage tray. I decided to use rivets at the bottom and cap head bolts at the top. With the baffle now able to be attached, I riveted it up so I could test the baffle with a sump full of water.

It seemed to be pretty effective so I'm pretty happy with the design. All I need to do now is add the holes in the baffle for the oil pump and the dipstick and I'm done!

Helicoils How To... (And How Not To!)

2010-05-12T19:30:00.006Z

I got home today to find my Helicoil kit waiting on the doorstep. I threaded the alloy rear oil seal housing at the weekend and decided it'd be a better idea to repair it rather than buy a new one and risk threading that too! It's cost efficient too, a new housing would've been £20 whereas the Helicoil kit was £15! I got my kit from Chronos Engineering because they sell kits that contain everything you need so you don't have to spend ages searching for obscure size drill bits.

The kits are specific to a certain bolt size and contain around 25 Helicoils, a drill bit, a tap, an allen key, an insertion tool and a small drift all in a nice blue case!

So here's the problem. Basically a classic case of Triumph using the wrong fastener in the wrong place. The alloy is really very soft and it would have been better if Triumph had used a UNC thread like they did on some other alloy parts such as the intake manifold. Instead they used a UNF thread on both this and on the engine front sealing block.

First thing to do was to drill the threads out. I checked the depth of the holes and wrapped a bit of tape round the drill bit from the kit so I didn't go too deep! The alloy was very soft and drilled nice and easily.

The next stage of the process is to thread the hole for the Helicoil insert. The kit comes with the tap but you'll need a tap wrench if you haven't already got one. I borrowed a tap holder from my Clarke Imperial tap and die kit and that worked a treat. With tapping it's always best to take it slow and keep the tap well oiled but when the metal is as soft as this, you can go pretty rapidly!

Once the hole is tapped to the bottom you can remove the tap and run it through a few times. I cleaned the swarf out with light oil from an aerosol to clear it.

Inserting the Helicoil is very straightforward. It's basically a spiral of metal that has a small 'tang' sticking into the middle at the bottom. To fit it you use an insertion tool that is basically a drift with a slot in the end which engages with the tang on the Helicoil. The one in my kit has a depth stop so you can sink the coil down to a set depth. This is secured using a grub screw and the allen key from the kit.

With the Helicoil in place, all you need to do is knock the tang off. The tang is weakened and should knock off pretty easily using the drift from the kit.

This worked well for me on one of the holes but not on the other! On the one hole the drift didn't seem to knock the tang of very cleanly. The last thread ended up sticking out slightly and when I screwed in a bolt it seemed to push the thread down underneath the bolt. This meant that the bolt wouldn't screw fully home and left the Helicoil in a right mess! I had to get it out!

I thought this would be near impossible but it was actually fairly straightforward. You've just got to bend out the top thread until you can get a pair of pliers on it and then the whole thing will unscrew just as easily as it went in. Once the mangled Helicoil was out, I cleaned up the threads again and fitted a new Helicoil. This time I snapped the tang off by gently wiggling the insertion tool forwards and backwards. This worked a treat and after running the Helicoil through with a tap I was happy that the job was done!

Clutch Stuff

2010-05-09T17:16:00.011Z

I might as well rename my blog 'Will's POR15 blog'! I've been using huge amounts of the stuff over the last month! Firstly there was my alloy bellhousing which I painted inside and out, then there was the clutch release lever and then finally the gearbox casing which I painted up to match. The grey doesn't seem to go on quite as well as the black but the finish is very good all the same.

Once the bellhousing was painted I refitted the steel insert that the release bearing carrier slides on. After doing this I realised that something wasn't quite right. Canley Classics website describes the insert as 'Part 122566 - Bellhousing Centre Her/Spit (Scroll Type)' but when I took it off there wasn't any kind of oil seal on there! Fortunately the situation was easy to solve with a later type bellhousing centre that takes an oil seal.

While I was there I thought I'd renew the slave cylinder pushrod and the pin that holds it in the release arm. Incredibly, there was more than 2mm of wear in these two parts! The new pushrod was a bit fat and needed the attention of a bench grinder but was otherwise easy to fit. Once I'd done that I tried to fit the release lever into the bellhousing and ran into another problem!

Basically, the clutch release lever just wouldn't move smoothly over the bellhousing centre. This seemed to be due to the inside of the bellhousing being slightly cast wrongly. I have to say that the general quality of the alloy bellhousing is pretty poor and I suspected when I first saw it that it might need some 'altering'. In the end though, I decided to just grind a bit off the bottom of the release arm instead. This gave the necessary clearance and the throwout sleeve on the arm now slides smoothly like it should!

While I was in a painting frame of mind I painted the engine back plate and the drivers side floor in POR15. The drivers side floor is a mess and has a couple of plates welded on and a few tiny holes. I'm aiming to replace this in the near future but for the time being I just want to stop it getting worse so painting is the answer!

I did actually buy an alloy engine backplate but I don't think I'm going to use it. I've heard tales of the alloy ones cracking around the bottom bolt holes and I sure as hell can't be bothered to sort that out in the future so I'll be sticking with steel!

I've had one slight hitch with the engine this week. I was just fitting the renewed rear oil seal to the back of the sump when I stripped the threads in the alloy housing. This was a right pain because my brother came to visit this weekend and I had hoped to have the gearbox and engine ready to go back together. It'll have to wait now until I've helicoiled the threads. I've not done this before but it looks straightforward enough. I've ordered a kit from the eBay shop of Chronos Engineering. Hopefully that'll arrive in the week and I'll be back on track next weekend!

Gearbox out!

2010-03-26T22:05:00.005Z

This week has been a busy one! I started the week by fitting one of those 'Stant' lever radiator caps. This is straightforward enough but, if you're thinking of fitting one, you need to get a few things right. Firstly, the pressure rating has to be right (13lbs) and, secondly, it has to fit under the bonnet! I checked this very carefully before dropping the bonnet down for the first time!

The next job was a big one! The gearbox needed to come out so I could replace the engine's rear oil seal. I won't bore you to death with the details of how I got the gearbox out but it did involve a hell of a lot of brute force, wood and jacks. Believe it or not, I did it all on my own too!

The oil leak had made one hell of a mess. The inside of the bellhousing, bottom of the gearbox and the underside of the car were absolutely caked in oil and dirt!

The standard cast iron bellhousing weighs nearly as much as a chest freezer! I bought an alloy replacement from Moss last year and started preparing it to fit. It's not the best casting I've ever seen but I think it'll do. I've painted it inside and out and I've gone for grey POR15 this time to show up any oil leaks! It's a very similar colour to my workshop floor!

The seats are looking good. I've bought another seat foam set from Owen at Park Lane Classics. I haven't had time to do any more work on them though. I'm waiting till the gearbox is out of the way and my workshop is less dirty before I start work on them again!

Progress In The Last 6 Days...

2010-03-11T19:32:00.009Z

I've been working far too hard at work this year! I can't carry more that 5 days over to the next financial year so I've had to take four days off this week! It's been nice spending some time on the car and I've got a good number of the little jobs done.

On Saturday I had 'fun' with the water pump. I fitted this last week but I thought I'd better tighten up the nuts properly. You can't get a socket on these because of the pulley so I used one of my ratchet spanners. This was going well right up until I did up the last nut. I felt the nut tighten and then suddenly slip. I was gutted! My first thought was that I'd stripped the thread in the alloy water pump housing. Fortunately, I was lucky and it was just the stud! I couldn't get the stud off in situ so I had to remove the water pump.

I got a new stud in and made myself a new gasket. If you've never made a gasket you should try it! It's really easy and it saves loads of time. You can use card from a cornflake packet if you're desperate but the pukka stuff, which I use, is 'Flexoid' paper. It's really cheap on eBay and it can really get you out of a jam! All you need to do is trace around an existing gasket or place the paper over the flange and rub it over with a dirty finger to highlight the edges and then cut it out. You can make the holes by hammering a bolt into the paper. Easy!

Anyway, once I'd smeared a bit of Loctite 5926 gasket sealant on the faces I started bolting the water pump back in. This was all going well right up to the point where something threaded again! I couldn't believe it! This time it was the nut! I got a replacement and gave that a go. This time the stud threaded!

Something was definitely going on here! Once I looked into it, it was obvious what the problem was - the studs were too short! There weren't enough threads of the stud in the nut to take the torque of tightening. Once I'd realised that (and made another new gasket and found some longer studs) I was back in business. Sorted!

On Sunday I went to Stoneleigh. It was a brief visit again for me this year but I saw a few familiar faces and met a few new ones. There was loads of stuff for sale and I saw quite a few bargains. I really, really, wanted the mint bonnet that was for sale at £180 but I just couldn't have got it home in the back of my Golf! Instead I settled for picking up a few useful nuts and bolts!

On Monday I got my Nippon Denso alternator fitted. I'm still figuring out how the hell I'm going to wire this up but at least it's physically fitted in the car. I used a Canleys fitting kit. It was good but I'm going to replace the adjusting plate with a couple of rod ends in the near future.

On Tuesday I spent the day fixing the brakes on my Golf. The pads had seriously worn down with all the miles I'd been doing for work. In one case the friction material was down to 1.38mm! I decided to replace both the discs and pads as the discs had a massive groove around the edge because they seemed to be slightly oversize. I ordered replacement parts from Euro Car Parts and set about doing the job. It was all going swimmingly until I realised that the drivers side caliper wasn't sliding properly. Unfortunately the metal sleeve that the caliper slides on was seized solid on the caliper bolt and I had to destroy it to separate the two. Amazingly, my local VW dealers had the part in stock and I managed to get it back together on Wednesday morning!

On Wednesday afternoon I decided to finish off my anti roll bar links. I made my own out of rod ends from McGills Motorsport. There was a bit of work needed to get them fitted. I needed to drill out a sleeve to make a spacer and source some longer bolts for the wishbone end. Drilling out the sleeves was easy thanks to an 11mm cobalt drill bit from Namrick! Sourcing the longer bolts was tricky though. I couldn't find any online and eventually I had to get out the Yellow Pages. This worked out nicely and I turned some up at Nutters Fastenings in Nechells, Birmingham, which is just a few miles from where I work.

This morning I got another nice new part in the post. This time it was an alloy pulley from Rimmers. I'd heard bad things about alloy pulleys in the past. Apparently they used to be all alloy, which resulted in the keyway wearing out because of the softer material. The Rimmers one has a steel sleeve in the middle bolted to an alloy outer. Another bonus is that the bolts look like they might be handy for mounting a timing wheel if I ever want to move to a Megajolt set up in the future!

Engine Valances - Finished!

2010-02-14T23:02:00.003Z

Fun with POR15!

2010-02-09T23:15:00.005Z

POR15 is a really tough finish paint that is a great way to finish off loads of underbonnet parts. It leaves a very glossy and durable finish but requires a bit of care to apply. This is my quick guide to using POR15 and getting the best results!

Firstly, if you're painting something really smooth (like these aluminium radiator valances), you're going to have to rough the surface up a bit. I used a fairly fine sanding block which just took the shine off the metal without leaving any deep scratches. Once that's done you need to degrease using POR15's own degreaser. This is called 'Marine Clean' and is a vaguely greenish liquid that you dilute with water and coat the part with. This normally comes in a screw top bottle but I have prediluted mine and decanted it into an old spray bottle. After leaving to soak for a while, wash off the part with plain water.

The next stage of the process requires the use of 'Metal Ready'. This is another POR15 product and is basically a blue liquid that seems to etch the metal slightly. I guess that this contains phosphoric acid but I don't know for sure! You need to keep the surface of the part wet for a minimum of 15 minutes. Again, I have decanted mine into a spray bottle to make this easier. After 15 minutes or so you need to wash the piece again to clean off any residue.

The etched surface is slightly grey and sometimes a bit 'powdery'. This is OK! You are now ready to move on to the next stage...

You now need to be quite organised to avoid making a mess. I'd advise you to use plenty of newspaper over your workbench as it's going to be near impossible to clean up if it all goes wrong when you're pouring it! Get your brushes ready and also have some cling film and a jam jar ready. It's also wise to wear gloves because this stuff is pretty difficult to get off!

So, what you need to do is to open the tin of POR15 very carefully and either pour it or use a coffee scoop to transfer it into the jam jar. It is VERY important that you cover the tin with the cling film before you put the lid back on. If you don't you'll have to use water pump pliers to rip the lid off - trust me on this! Now you're ready to paint.

I strongly recommend using a foam brush. The POR15 starter kit comes with one or you can buy a pack of 20 for £5 off eBay. This will help minimise brushstrokes and will look neater. It goes on pretty easily. Don't stress too much if it looks a bit 'brushstrokey' as it seems to level really nicely after about 15-20 minutes. If you have paint left over in the jam jar you can seal it with cling film and use it later. Stored like this it seems be usable for a few days before it drys out.

And there we go! It should be touch dry in around an hour. Unfortunately one of the disadvantages of POR15 is that it's not UV resistant. Apparently it discolours and turns brown with prolonged exposure to sunlight but won't actually fail. In order to prevent discolouration you can use another POR15 product which is resistant to UV, such as 'Blackcote', which is what I have used here.

And that's it! You're done! One of the common misconceptions about POR15 is that you can't get it off anything. They actually do sell a thinner that you can use to clean brushes etc but it's quite pricey at around £20. That seems pretty expensive when you consider that the starter packs cost around £15 and contain 'Marine Clean'. 'Metal Ready', paint and two brushes! When I get it on my hands I find it comes off easily enough if I wash them straight away. If it dries then it takes a few days to wear off!

Going back together...

2010-02-03T19:06:00.004Z

I'm slowly getting the engine back together! Just before christmas I recieved an alloy water pump housing from Canley Classics. I was a little bit suprised to see it as I ordered it ages ago and it had been on back order for about a year! Initially I was annoyed that Canleys had just sent it (and billed me) without asking me if I still wanted it, but when I checked my email I found they'd emailed me about a week before and I'd totally missed it so I can't really complain!

As luck would have it I was just about to repaint the waterpump, housing, engine front plate and pulley with POR15. I was tempted to leave the new housing in bare alloy but in the end I thought it'd look better painted. Two coats of POR15 with a top coat of Blackcote and it looks the business! It gives a really deep gloss black. Just compare it to the 'normal' engine enamel on the black in the pics! I'm going to be using a lot more of this stuff in the future! The only thing that is annoying is that it sometimes leaves annoying brushstrokes so you're better off using foam brushes. Look on eBay if you need some - they're £5 for 20!

I had a great idea with the timing cover bolts and screws - I numbered them. This will come in handy the next time I need to take them off!

This is my 'refinished' thermostat cover. Normally there is a number cast into the top. I thought this spoilt the smooth lines so I sanded it off and polished it up. Looks much better!

Seat Straps

2009-11-26T22:47:00.003Z

I carried on working on the seats this week. One of the first jobs has been to tackle the sagging rubbery seat straps that run across the seat back. These are basically a length of rubbery webbing that is folded over onto itself at each end to trap the seat clip and then stapled into itself with a couple of small plates to dissipate the load. I thought these would be pretty cheap so imagine my surprise when I found out a strap kit was nearly £40! That's for one side too, so £80 to do both seats!

Clearly that was ridiculous, so I set about trying to find a cheaper way. After a bit of research, it turns out that the rubber strapping stuff is called 'Pirelli webbing'. This is available by the metre from upholstery suppliers and is very cheap. I bought mine from a company called 'Skiddaw Upholstery' and it arrived pretty much next day. The stuff they sent was a bit thicker and looked better quality than the original Triumph issue. It was a different colour but then who really cares when it's inside a seat!

The staples and plates can easily be bent out and removed from the old straps and fitted to the new ones. It's really easy and quick and the results are very good. Just remember that the old straps will have stretched a bit, so make the replacements a bit shorter. And that's it - dead easy! About 5m should do both seats and will cost a much more reasonable £11.25 + postage!

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

2009-11-22T20:01:00.010Z

That's the question I was asking myself. The answer was a resounding 'no'! One of the things I learnt from the Historic Counties Run was that the passenger seat is infinitely more comfortable than the drivers seat! Hardly surprising really - Collapsed foam and ripped vinyl crudely 'retrimmed' in gaffer tape are not the last word in comfort!

I have entered the Club Triumph Round Britain Reliability Run next year and I really wanted to get the seats sorted before then so I got started! My initial thought was to get another set of seats in better condition and swap the drivers side seat base with my knackered one. Taking a closer look at my seats quickly changed my mind. Even the passenger side was completely knackered. Just moving them produced copious amounts of foam breadcrumbs! Even the metal parts of the base were thin and seriously rusted.

I decided the best thing to do would be to get some more seats from eBay and use their guts! Fortunately eBay came up trumps with a set of seats (already partly dismantled!) in Derby. I set off after work on Thursday to pick them up. They guy selling them was building a Rover V8 powered Spitfire which looked like quite a piece of engineering. I had a look at the seats in it too. They were leather and very nice. I had a look at the seats he was selling and, whilst they weren't as nice as the ones he wasn't selling, they were much better condition than mine!

So now I had something to work with I set about stripping down the drivers side seat. The backrest had already been stripped down so all I had to do was strip down the seat base. I found it quite interesting how the seat is constructed. Basically there is a very basic steel seat frame. On top of this goes a steel 'basket' which is constructed in a similar way to a shopping trolley. At the bottom of the basket is a piece of 'millboard' to stop the foam sticking through the bottom of the basket. Attached to the millboard is the sensor for the seat belt warning light. This is then covered with two big lumps of foam. The vinyl then goes over the whole lot and attaches using 'hog rings' to the wire basket. To the uninitiated ' hog rings' are basically a C shaped bit of metal that pierces the vinyl and is then closed with a pair of pliers.

I stripped the seats down and started cleaning up the metal parts. I've recently invested in a new Black and Decker angle grinder (to replace my ancient Clarke model) so I set about the frame and 'basket' with the knotted wire cup brush. Once I'd cleaned them up I set about painting them with POR15. Before painting you need to go over all the parts with 'Marine Clean' to degrease them. I did this in the garden to save getting the workshop too wet! The metal then needs to be coated in 'Metal Ready'. This seems to etch the metal and leaves it covered in zinc and makes it ready for paint. I then painted it with the POR15. This is nasty stuff and I always use gloves and very cheap B&Q brushes because you can't clean this stuff off!

The seat frame just needs another painting session and it's good to go. Unfortunately the 'basket' from the donor seat has come unwelded at one of the joins so this needs to be corrected before I can paint it. My plans for the future involve new straps, new foam and LEATHER! Watch this space!

Oil Seals and Engine Valances

2009-09-20T14:10:00.004Z

I've been pretty busy at work recently and haven't actually had much time to do anything with the Spitfire. It's spent most of the year stuck in the garage waiting for me to sort out the oil seal problem that became apparent during the HCR!

I finally got around to draining the coolant and getting the timing cover off to see what the problem was last weekend. There wasn't anything too obviously wrong which was a bit annoying but the spring on the seal was a bit mangled and the timing cover was slightly bent. I flattened the cover and sanded it flat. I also stripped the paint of it and gave it a coat of VHT wrinkle paint. I fitted a new seal but I haven't got around to filling it back onto the car yet. With a bit of luck I should have a car that doesn't leak at much oil as a sinking supertanker.

I've also finally got around to finalising my engine valances. I put a lot of effort into making sure these fit perfectly and all that remains is to finish the edges, drill them for brackets and get them powdercoated. I'll try and get that done later in the week!

HCR '09

2009-04-28T18:24:00.006Z

We did it! My brother and I actually completed the Historic Counties Run! As might have been obvious from my last post's lack of words, things got a bit hectic heading towards the weekend. There was a seemingly endless list of small jobs to be done. This list included replacing a leaky caliper seal, replacing the brake light switch, an oil change, replacing the entire clutch hydraulic system, replacing the throttle cable, adjusting the timing, removing the old starter solenoid, fitting the Nippon Denso starter, fitting 12v sports coil, replacing ballast wire, balancing carbs and refitting the parcel shelf!

I set out from Walsall on the Saturday, planning to meet my brother in Cambridge on the way. I put the hood down and got to Cambridge station about an hour and a half later! With my brother, Henry, on board we headed down to Southwold. It was at this point that that Henry pointed out that he'd never actually driven my car before, so we swapped seats and he got his first experience of classic motoring! We got to Southwold a couple of hours before the 'off' and had a fish and chips on the pier.

The first half of the run was relatively straightforward for us. The only minor hitches were our failure to brim the tanks and pump up the tyres so we had to stop off and do that. We also had a bit of scare when the temperature gauge went off the scale. The engine didn't look or feel hot and the 'tell tales' on the cylinder head and radiator were normal. When I noticed the fuel gauge was also a bit dodgy and the speedo illumination had failed I stopped worrying about it which was just as well because it fixed itself a few hours later!

The second half was more intense. Henry did the graveyard shift while I navigated. Thanks to a sat nav cock up we ended up wasting about half an hour in Hampshire and thanks to a cock up on my part we nearly ended up missing out Shropshire! For me, the Welsh roads were the best part of the whole event. We had a great time keeping up with Phil in the magenta GT6. Annoyingly though we'd developed an leak from the front oil seal which was dripping Duckhams finest all over the front pulley. Unfortunately the pulley was flicking it all over the drivers side brakes. I can now categorically confirm that oiled brakes don't work very well! Fortunately the were still just about good enough to finish the event on and we made it to Newport only a couple of hours late!

The trip back would've been a bit much with the dodgy brakes, so I had to call the AA in the end and we made the journey back on a flatbed. In all honesty I wasn't even sure it'd make the start line so I was absolutely chuffed that we finished the event. We had a great time, drove on some great roads, met some cool people and ended up completely knackered. Next time I'm going to book some time of work afterwards!

More pics on my facebook album here!

Last Weeks Progress...

2009-03-29T22:22:00.006Z

Stoneleigh etc!

2009-03-15T22:27:00.004Z

I had a busy weekend last week! I still managed to fit in the spares day at Stoneleigh though. It was literally a drive there, quick look around, go home event for me this year. My grandma was taken into hospital on the Friday so I had to be back to visit her along with various other things. It was still quite a successful trip though. I picked up a new set of carburettors from Andrew Turner and bought various nuts and bolts. The carbs are awesome and a huge improvement over my last set - Andy had a look at those and pronounced them knackered! The new ones are not only better (fitted with seals around the throttle spindles) but shinier too! I'll post some pics of them at a later date.

I also got on with the heater box this week. Painting it was my first experience with POR15 and I've got to say I'm pretty impressed. It's not the easiest to use because you have to clean the part in various solutions first and then you've got to transfer some of the paint to another container and seal the can with cling film. You also need to wear gloves or everyone at work will be asking you why your hands are black! The results were pretty variable. The first parts I painted ended up covered in brushstrokes whilst some of the later parts look similar to powdercoat. It's certainly interesting stuff!

I also got around to sorting out the hose that runs from the inlet manifold to the heater valve. This is usually a shaped piece of rubber hose but I wanted to replace it with silicone to match my other hoses. Having a custom hose made would've cost a fortune so I decided to use two 90 degree bends and a piece of alloy tube that I bent to shape. This looks good and gets the job done on time and under budget!

I'm sure there are people reading this that are going to be thinking that I should have used a flexible hose because of the movement of the engine. I have checked this out and it all seems fine. My engine is fitted with new mounts and doesn't vibrate around all over the place! There is also a load of flexibility in the silicone parts so I don't think it's going to be a problem!

Heater Box Issues

2009-03-01T23:01:00.004Z

A while back I mentioned that I was looking for a heater box to replace the rusty one with a broken linkage that came off my car. I did eventually manage to track one down on Ebay nut when it arrived I realised it wasn't going to be as simple as just chucking it in the car!

It was advertised as a 'Mk4 and 1500' heater box so, naturally, I thought it'd be the same as the one I had. It was, however, slightly different internally, with a different resistor and motor wiring! After carefully studying the two designs I decided the best course of action would be to drill out the rivets holding the internals in the original box and remount them in the new one. In order to do this I had to cut out the different brackets in the Ebay box. This then left a couple of small holes close to each other.

Obviously it's not great having holes in a heater box, so I decided the best thing to do would be to drill them out into one big hole and fit a grommet. This seems to be working out okay so far and I'm just waiting for some POR15 to arrive so I can paint it.

I've finally got around to cutting out the passenger side engine valance. These are coming on slowly and just need a bit more fettling to fit. Then I can make some brackets for them and maybe finally get them powdercoated!

I really want some parts to arrive this week. The HCR is getting nearer and I'm still waiting on a list of parts as long as my arm. Moss said my alloy bellhousing would take two weeks and that was just over two weeks ago so hopefully that'll be arriving soon. I'm also still waiting on my alloy water pump housing. I was told at the end of Jan that it'd take a week and it's still not here!

Heater Valve Fun!

2009-02-22T23:00:00.005Z

I haven't actually managed to achieve much this week because I've been off on a holiday with my other half in the lake district, but I have made some steady progress on a number of fronts!

One of my biggest achievements this week has been removing part of the heater valve. I bought a new heater valve a few weeks back and when it arrived I found out that they don't come with the brass part where the heater hose attaches. Fortunately this was still attached to my old one. Unfortunately it was solidly attached by a bolt with a snapped off head and mangled threads and, even worse, a scan of the parts catalogues revealed it was NLA!

I attempted the usual methods of removing it. Firstly I tried mole grips but they didn't work. Then I tried hacksawing a groove in the top and using an offset screwdriver. That didn't work either so more drastic measures were called for! I set about drilling the valve out around the thread and eventually I managed to get it turning with the mole grips. With that done I dropped the part in some white vinegar and wire brushed it a few hours later. Good as new!

When I was drilling the old heater valve out to free the threads something very strange happened. The top hose pulled away from the top of the valve body taking the top part of the valve with it. This revealed a strange powdery but also jelly like substance that was completely blocking the pipe. It was a bit green and coppery but also a little like the jelly in pork pies in places! I tried to get some pictures but it didn't show up too well. Weird stuff!

I had a package waiting for me when I got back from my holiday - a nice Nippon Denso starter motor that I bought off ebay. I is supposed to be for a Toyota Supra but I'm planning to use it on my triumph with the kit from Canleys. Watch this space!

I've also finally got some small parts storage. This is going to speed things up in the garage a lot! No more fumbling through numerous boxes for me!

Degrease and Deoil!

2009-02-15T22:51:00.007Z

I've got a few little jobs done this weekend. Firstly I cleaned up the bulkhead. Parts of this were covered in decades of grease, dirt and dist. I used a mountain bike degreaser called 'Muc Off'. They do a whole range specifically for cars now but I've always used the mountain bike stuff on my car and it works really well. With the crud removed there was plenty of light surface rust revealed and even a little paint in places. The battery box is basically sound though, which is very good news!

The other job I got through this weekend was draining the oil from the diff. This was the first time I'd ever done this job on the triumph and I'm pleased to say it went okay! The main problem is that triumph were too penny pinching to fit a drain plug so you have to use a small tube through the filler plug to empty the old oil out. I used a small siphon style hand pump. I just stuck the pipe in the diff, pumped the oil through to get it going and then waited for it to slowly siphon out. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that nearly as much oil came out as should have been in there!

Now I just need to pump some new oil back in. Can anyone out there recommend a good oil for a hard working diff?

In other news this week - The Spitfire Graveyard got back to me saying they'd got a decent heater. Haven't had time to call them back yet, though! Also, I got onto Moss Europe about my alloy bellhousing and found out its going to be with me in a few weeks. That's something to look forward to! Then I can get on with getting the engine out and replacing the clutch.

Slow Progress

2009-02-08T14:26:00.005Z

I can't understand what's going on with people selling car parts these days! We're heading towards the mother of all recessions and it seems like some people can't even be bothered to return an email to make a sale! My search for a heater box has been fruitless so far because of this kind of apathy. I've emailed 3 ebay sellers and one second hand parts company to make enquiries and only got one reply (from an ebayer) and that wasn't good news! I've just sent an email off to the Spitfire Graveyard so hopefully they'll be able to help me out.

I'm also still waiting on orders from Canley's and Moss. I suspect that the snow hasn't helped things this week but I'd really like some parts to arrive soon. There's a lot to do before the HCR and I'd like to get the big jobs out of the way as soon as possible!

In the meantime, I've been messing about with various other things. Inspired by Chris Marsh (http://ukcjmspitfire.blogspot.com/) I have drilled out my heater controls. It's always good to lighten things up where you can and this is a really thick piece of metal which is perfect for this type of 'swiss cheesing'! Saved 20 grams on the stock weight.

I've also taken the heater valve bracket off. I was going to bid for a stainless one on ebay to replace it but I missed the end of the auction so I figured I'd bend the old one back into shape and lighten it. I didn't touch it around the top, where it's pretty flimsy but the base, side and front got a drilling. It's lighter by 15 grams and it looks pretty good! It just needs deburring and powdercoating to be perfect!

Tune in again next time for some much bigger and much more expensive weight savings!

Heaters and Carbs!

2009-02-01T20:49:00.010Z

I've had quite a busy weekend. I removed a whole stack of stuff from my car. The carbs came off first. I took them off complete with the manifold so that they can be posted off to Andrew Turner later on in the week. I spoke to him on the phone earlier on in the week and we had a good chat. He's going to take a look at them for me and get back to me to let me know what needs doing!

I also got going on fixing the heater. The controls for the temperature were completely seized so I started tracking down the problem. The heater lever assembly and the cable were okay (but a bit stiff and grubby) so the problem had to be the water valve. It was beyond repair so I ordered another. Then I started looking at the 'heat distribution' lever. This is supposed to direct the heat either to the footwell or onto the windscreen. This was seized solid as well but I couldn't see exactly what the problem was without getting the heater box out of the car.

Getting the heater box out wasn't as hard as I was expecting. All you need to do it to get the passenger glove box out, disconnect the heater, undo the bolts and then slip it out. I immediately noticed why the lever wasn't working. The linkage at the bottom of the heater had snapped off where the cable attaches. It could do with a new heater box as it's gone a bit rusty around where the pipes enter but at least the heater matrix looks to be in pretty decent condition. The heater motor is in tip top condition too which is a relief!

While I was mulling over what to do with the heater I removed the fuel pressure regulator. Hopefully this won't be needed when I get a new fuel pump that delivers the right pressure! I also spent some time ordering parts this week. A new heater valve showed up from Rimmer Bros on Thursday along with a thermostat, rear oil seal, gaskets and a kit that reduces gear lever 'rattle'. I also ordered an alloy water pump housing from Canley Classics that should be with me by the end of next week. I've decided not to go with an electric water pump on the grounds that I want to keep things simple so alloy will be the way forward for me!

Looks Like I'm Going To Be Busy...

2009-01-25T20:18:00.003Z

I've decided to enter the Club Triumph 'Historic Counties Run'. This year it's a coast to coast event that starts by the sea in Surrey and finishes, 14 hours later, on the Welsh coast. Apparently this will be a minimum of 400 miles. Combined with the journey down from the Midlands and the journey back it's probably going to be a minimum of 700 miles.

In order to cope with that kind of distance my car's going to need to be a bit more reliable! I've got no doubt that my car's in good enough condition to make it but I would like to fix the niggling little problems that've been really bugging me over the last few months. Unfortunatly the list of problems is not a small one!

Firstly there's the fueling. The carbs are worn which is leading to a very high idle. This is not exactly good for fuel consumption and neither is the repro fuel pump which is overpowering the valves in the carbs, letting fuel spray out under the bonnet. Obviously economy and safety are pretty important to me so it's vital to get this sorted before the run. The carbs need to see an expert and they will be going to Andrew Turner to be rebushed. The fuel pump is likely to be replaced with a pump from a TR7. Apparently these fit and don't produce too much pressure like the standard repro Spitfire pumps - the only difference is the position of the inlet and outlet. If replacing the pump dosen't work, I'll go electric and get an SU fuel pump mounted in the boot.

Secondly there's the heating. Not having a working heater or temperature gauge has been pretty annoying over winter! I started on this today. The heater valve was seized solid and no amount of penetrating oil was going to free it off! That was taken off and a replacement ordered from Rimmer Bros. A pressure washer was taken to the cooling system and I soon had the silt cleared out of the heater matrix. There was plently of it! The other problem was the temperature guage not showing the right temperature. I tested the guage by earthing the wire to the temperature sender against the block. This caused the guage to move upwards, revealing the sender to be at fault, so ordered a new one.

The third problem is the clutch. This is one I've been putting off for ages. The engine needs to come out so I can replace a weeping rear oil seal so I might as well replace the clutch while I'm there. The hydraulics are also leaking so I'll do that whilst I'm at it. I'm a bit annoyed with the hydraulics, in all honesty. The hose, slave and master cylinder are all new and it looks like the leaking has been caused by swarf from one of them damaging the master cylinder seals.

Then there's all the little problems. I need to drain and replace the diff oil, give the car a service and I need to Rain-X the windows and fit better wipers. Another thing I need to do is to adjust the headlamps properly and make sure they're able to stay on full beam for a prolonged period of time. Last time I used full beam in anger it overheated a contact and left me with no headlights on a dark country lane. Not something I want to do again!

If I've still got time I'm going to fit some AVO's and a lowering block to the rear.

One things for sure. I've got my work cut out for the next few months...

Engine Valances - Part Three

2009-01-18T22:49:00.005Z

This is turning into one of those projects that I wish I'd never started! Today I made my final design templates and started translating them into aluminium. There is finally light at the end of the tunnel!

Engine Valances - Part Two

2009-01-13T23:03:00.007Z

Much fettling of the drivers side valance has been going on this evening in order to improve the fit. I'm still a long way from happy with it and I haven't even got around to designing the heatshield for the carbs which I want to include, but things are coming along nicely at long last!

I took a pretty methodical approach and bolted the cardboard template in place. I was then able to use the fixing bracket as a datum point - this allowed me to combine the template of the valance with a profile template of the bulkhead that I made earlier. The result is that the template follows the profile of the bulkhead really nicely with only a 2-3mm gap between. The same is true with the cut outs for the air filters. Now I've got that sorted I'd really like to tighten up the gaps at the front and around the suspension and sort out what's going to happen at the lower edge.

And finally a picture of the brackets where these valance mount up. These take two bolts and are located 1 3/4 inches above and 1/8 of an inch inboard of the body mounting bracket.

Engine Valances - Blue Peter Style!

2009-01-11T20:47:00.012Z

One of my winter projects is to make a set of engine valances. I want them because I think they might keep the engine a bit cleaner and also because I want to have something to attach an oil catch tank to!

First of all I started by ordering some material. I've got a few other projects in mind that are going to need some aluminium so I ordered a metre squared of 2mm aluminium from a supplier on Ebay.

Then I started thinking about the valances themselves. When I made my radiator valances I used the old cardboard ones as a template. This time I wasn't going to be so lucky! I've never had a set of engine valances on my car so I was going to have to start from scratch. I started off by looking at Paul Tegler's excellent website (http://www.teglerizer.com/triumphstuff/spitenginepanels.htm) and decided to make some panels up in cardboard to see if they'd fit!

Fortunately the recent purchase of a couple of heaters meant we had a few cardboard boxes lying around that were perfect for this sort of thing! I started off by marking out the cardboard as per the instructions. I noticed a slight problem straight away. There is no length given for the distance between points A and B. It was only a minor part of the overall design so I left it - the beauty of cardboard is that things can always be adjusted to fit later!

Once I'd marked it all up I set about cutting it out using an X - Acto style knife. This is much easier than using scissors and leaves a much nicer edge. I took the template out to the car and offered it up.

Straight away it didn't look quite right. There was a 2 inch gap between the bulkhead and the valance and I couldn't work out what the hell the circular cut out in the bottom was for! I'm ashamed to say it was quite some time before I realised the (now) blindingly obvious and turned it the right way around! Thanks to Neil (neilnaz) on the CT forum for the picture he posted to show me how the valance mounts up - it helped me realise where I'd gone wrong.

I had presumed the longer bit would be at the back but that is not the case! With the panel the right way round it was obvious that the circular cut out was for the steering rack. The only thing that wasn't quite right was the front part where the template meets the radiator frame. The angle of the frame on mine seems to be a bit 'non standard'. Other than that though it fits great! I do need to sort out the top edge though. It's going to need some material removing to allow the air filters to fit!

Feeling flushed with success I set about building another template for the other side.

This was a much less brilliant fit! I don't know quite what the hell went wrong but basically it just looks ridiculous! I couldn't find any errors in my template so I guess it's just the plans. At least I tried it out on the cardboard first! It's quite possible that I've made a huge and very comical error so if anyone out there knows where I went wrong, please let me know!

Luckily the good template from the other side seems to fit perfectly on this side too so I think I'm probably going to just make two identical ones.

More Tool Cabinet Stuff!

2009-01-10T10:19:00.003Z

I bought the top box for my roll cab yesterday. I couldn't help myself! I was amazingly lucky because I got there just as they were changing all their prices and the price of it dropped £30 while I was in the shop! Because of the current financial crisis it seems like you can't pay full price anywhere - even if you want to!

New Kit!

2009-01-04T20:07:00.009Z

I suprised myself today! I'd been mulling over the idea of getting some more storage for my tools for a while but I hadn't really been actively searching for something!

A bit of christmas cash and a the timely arrival of the Machine Mart catalogue changed all that though! I had a look on the website and noticed an Clarke roll cabinet for just over £100. Thinking that this was too good to be true, I popped into my local shop to take a look at it. It looked good from the outside but after pulling a drawer out I realised that the quality was not all that good - especially when compared to the more expensive 'HD Plus' range.

I thought about it and weighed up the options. Eventually my mum persuaded me that I wouldn't be able to put up with the rubbishy drawers and the thin metal of the basic cabinets and that I should look at the more upmarket ranges! While browsing I spotted a 'Blue Line HD Plus' 3 draw cabinet that seemed to tick all the boxes. Solid build quality and roller bearing drawers had me convinced. What finally pursuaded me was the £50 that that they had taken off the price due to a slight dent on one side. It's a very shallow dent that is just under where the side handle attaches. It hasn't even gone through the powdercoat and I reckon it'll fix up just fine!

There was just one small cock up! The keys were in the top drawer and during the car journey home they managed to find their way into the bottom locker which just happened to be locked! Luckily, the drawers are removable and I when I eventually realised that, I was able to retrieve them fairly easily!

Garage News!

2009-01-03T23:20:00.007Z

If you're a regular reader of my blog you might be wondering what I've been up to lately! Sadly, as the Spitfire is concerned, the answer is not much! It has been left out on the drive in all weathers recently. I've got a new job working for the NHS and have spent most of the last month either working hard or visiting friends and family.

It has also been a victim of my garage renovation project! This started off as a quick project to paint the floor with some nice garage floor paint but soon started becoming much more involved! Cleaning the floor took ages because scrubbing off 50 years of soaked in oil and brake fluid isn't an easy task! I ended up painting the floor in sections and moving stuff around to clear the next area to clean and paint. It worked rather well and after that was completed I thought it looked pretty good. The only trouble was that it showed up exactly how bad the paint on the walls was, so I had to get the brushes and paint out again!

Moving stuff round while doing the painting made me realise that I didn't have any storage for anything whatsoever! There were loads of oversize tools lying around that were too big for my tool cabinet. To sort that out I made a tool hanging rack from a sheet of MDF that was lying about. This is fastened to the wall with screws and the MDF is just about soft enough to screw hooks into by hand.

That's about as far as I've got so far. There's still lots more to do. There's loads of wood that could do with being stored elsewhere and I'm still waiting on the rack mount storage bins that I'm going to mount on the wall for small parts storage. I've actually cleared enough space to get the car back in so I'm feeling very pleased with myself at the moment!

I was soon feeling less pleased with myself when I realised the brake pedal went completely to the floor! I suppose at least now I've got something to do in my garage!

I'd also like to hand out some thanks to the various people from Club Triumph who suggested ideas for my garage and workshop on the 'Show us yours' and 'Garage/Workshop' threads. There were loads of useful suggestions and plenty of good ideas that have or are in the process of becoming a reality!

More NEC Classic Car Show Pictures

2008-11-25T19:28:00.005Z

Richard Hammonds Ford Mustang

KTM Crossbow

Little Jobs

2008-11-22T12:00:00.005Z

The car's been working pretty decently for the last few weeks and it's given me enough time to concentrate on some of the little jobs that have needed doing for a while!

The first job was to sort out the plastic rear windows. These had suffered from careless hood folding in the past and the effects of being left out in all weathers! I heard a rumour that 'Renovo' was the best thing to use so I bought some of ebay and gave it a go. It got a lot of dirt off and removed a lot of scratches. It also easily removed the sticky remnants of a sticker that had been in the back window. There is a patch that is cloudy and slightly crazed that it couldn't sort out, but other than that the improvement has been remarkable and it makes it much easier to see the car behind in the centre mirror.

The next job was to sort out the boot stay which was getting a bit stiff. This came out and after a clean up and regrease it was working smoothly. I also couldn't resist lightening it up a bit. According to the kitchen scales I've saved around 20g, which is better than nothing I suppose!

My next job is to sort out the boot! The piece of trim that goes over the petrol tank has been remade by a previous owner in some type of hardboard which was ill fitting and has curled up, presumably after getting damp. This really needs to be replaced and then I can mount my CD changer on it with the brackets I made ages ago. Then maybe my CD's wont skip annoyingly all the time!

That's about it really! The car's been faultless for weeks now and I honestly can't remember the last time I opened the bonnet!

NEC Classic Car Show

2008-11-15T20:46:00.018Z

I’ve just got back from the Classic Car Show at the NEC. This is one of the biggest shows in the calendar and this was the first time I’d ever been. Initially I was pretty apprehensive about going. For a start it was going to be expensive for two of us (£17 each plus £8 parking) and, with Top Gear on as well, the traffic was going to be terrible. After spending a little bit too long queuing on the M42, parking and walking to the exhibition halls we started looking around.

First thing that hit me was the sheer size of this show! This is a huge show. There were four halls worth of cars, traders, tools and general stuff! I thought the best place to start would be the first hall so I headed down there and took a look around. There were plenty of nice cars and plenty of Triumphs! All the Triumph clubs were in the first hall and there were plenty of fine examples on their stands. Club Triumph, the TSSC, the TR Register, Stag Owners Club and the Dolomite Club were all in attendance. The CT stand had a particularly polished example of a Spitfire 1500 on show along with a Spit 6 with Emerald EFI, a saloon and a Herald estate. There was a very interesting exhibit on the TR Register stand. They had a shell in ‘pre restored’ condition. It was held together by mole grips!

This (above) was a particularly interesting Peugeot special. The name of it loosely translated as 'hold on'! It was built along the lines of British specials with a sports body dropped on top of saloon running gear. It was very cool!

There were plenty of interesting cars from other marques too. The Meguiars stand was particularly good. There were also plenty of nice Mercedes. One I noticed had an original Becker Mexico radio which is probably worth a good proportion of what my entire car’s worth! I’m a big fan of American muscle cars and drag racing cars and there were plenty in the form of Chevy Camaros and Ford Mustangs along with various other hot rods, gassers and other drag racing stuff. I'm also a huge fan of vintage cars and Austin 7's in particular. My grandad built a special in the 60's and there were an interesting couple of specials on the Midland Austin 7 Club stand.

The ticket also got us into the MPH show hall next door. This had loads of modern cars and the Autoglym concours. There was a Napier Railton (picture below), a Ford Mustang belonging to Richard Hammond and a stunning AC Cobra entered in the concours along with a Fiat 500! The rest of the hall had the usual Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Porches. There was even a Gemballa tuned Porsche Cayenne that was finished in satin black.

There were also various cars that had been in the Gumball 3000 this year. Each were stickered up with a numerically challenged decal announcing ‘1999 to 2008 - Ten Years of the Gumball Rally’! Another car that caught my eye was the KTM Crossbow. This is a very different looking in reality compared to the pictures I’ve seen in magazines. It’s absolutely wild!

These are the pictures my mum took. I took my brothers camera and unfortunately don't have the data cable until he comes home next week so stay tuned for more pictures at a later date...

Fly Off Handbrake Conversion

2008-11-13T14:01:00.013Z

One of the things I've been wanting to do for a while now is to fit a 'fly off' type handbrake. Obviously, there's nothing wrong with the standard arrangement, it's just that I prefer the way the 'fly off' type works.

So I started off by looking at the options. Early Spitfires came with this type of handbrake as standard, so I could get one of those or I could modify the one I had. I took a look at http://asciimation.co.nz/pics/flyaway/ which illustrates how to convert an MG handbrake. In theory it's relatively straightforward to convert from one system to the other. The only difference is that on a normal handbrake the rod with the button attached connects above the pivot point on the pawl whilst on a 'fly off' it attaches below the pivot point.

With this in mind I took off the old handbrake to see if it would be possible to convert it. Unfortunately the Spitfire 1500 uses a linkage where the rod arrangement hooks around the pawl at the top and there isn't any way to change it.

With that in mind I set about looking for an early Spitfire handbrake. These seem to be impossible to get from my normal parts suppliers but Ebay turned up a nice but chronically overpriced example. With time of the essence I just spent the cash! A couple of days later I my neighbour came round with a package and I could finally see if it would fit!

At first glance it looked almost exactly the same as the Spitfire 1500 arrangement, the only difference being that the grip part on the 1500 goes up at a slight angle whilst the early one is straight. I thought I might be lucky enough to be able to do a straight swap but it was not to be! With the cable fitted nicely and everything else looking okay I realised that I couldn't seem to refit the pivot pin. I realised the problem was the ratchet part of the mechanism not being in quite the right position so I tried moving it about with a screwdriver and various other things with no luck. It then dawned on me that something was obviously wrong and it might not be possible to get the hole in the ratchet and the holes in the handbrake to align.

With this in mind I tried fitting just the ratchet on the pivot pin. It wasn't possible and I realised that something wasn't quite right! Comparing the two ratchet mechanisms showed up the problem.

Bizarrely, despite the fact that the two set ups are otherwise completely compatible, the hook part at the bottom on the older mechanism (on the left) is about 2mm longer than the same part of the newer mechanism (on the right). This ever so slight difference meant that the hole wouldn't line up right. After a few minutes with the Dremel I ground back the hook part to the same profile as the Spitfire 1500 one.

With that done, the rest of the assembly was straightforward with the only other slight problem being the pivot pin. On the Spitfire 1500 the pivot pin has a recess around it but, oddly, is retained by a clip that passes through a hole drilled close to the end. Sadly, the hole was drilled so close to the end that it had started to 'pull out', rendering it pretty much useless. Interestingly the older pivot pin was not drilled for a clip but still had the recess. An 'E clip' from my collection fitted securely and, apart from refitting the interior, the job was done.

I gave it a try and discovered something was not quite right. The pawl didn't seem to want to pull away from the ratchet. I greased up the mechanism but it made very little difference. It was then of course that I worked out that the handbrake didn't have a spring in it! Luckily for me the 1500 spring is a perfect fit!

There we go. With the interior back in it looks pretty good. I just need to make my mind up about what type of grip I want to fit and it'll be perfect! At the moment I'm torn between going for the early style grip, which looks more comfy, or the later style, which would keep my car looking standard. Maybe there's another car that has a grip that's even better? I'll keep my eyes out for something suitable!

MOT Passed at long last!

2008-10-12T19:21:00.013Z

Finally I've got an MOT! There were a few hitches of course. Like I said in my last blog entry, the wipers weren't working so it failed on those. Sadly, it also had a very small hole in one of the chassis outriggers which needed welding up.

I took the car back and sorted out the wipers. It turned out to be an earth strap that I hadn't reattached after I repainted the bulkhead and was easily sorted. It's missing on the photo below but it should run from where the loom passes through the bulkhead and attaches to one of the wiper strap bolts. With that sorted I took the car back to the garage and demonstrated the wipers. They were happy and I finally got my MOT.

I sorted out insurance and tax as well. I managed to get fully comprehensive cover with Peter James for just £90! This has been quite a revalation for me. Previously I've been too young to qualify for classic car insurance and I had been paying around £500. Now I'm over 25 it looks like I'm in for cheaper times!

Taxing was straightforward as well. I did it online and, after a couple of days, I had the disc through the post. It was on my windscreen in minutes, the hood was down and I was terrorising the local A roads! So far everything seems to be running pretty nicely but, as expected, a few little gremlins have reared their ugly heads!

The first problem is leaks from both master cylinders. I'm not sure exactly what's up with the clutch master. I rebuilt it days ago and the bore and seal looked fine. Now it's leaking fluid from behind the seal and the fluid that's dripping out is silvery and metallic. I'm not exactly sure what that means but I'm going to look into it. The brake master was surrounded by a whole lot of fluid but the lid was loose and I think the fluid sloshed out. It seems to be alright now but I'll be keeping an eye on it until I'm certain it's okay.

The other problem has been a ludicrously high idle. This is a problem it's had for a while and while investigating it's causes I noticed there is a bit of play in the throttle spindles. Looks like it's time to shell out and have the carb bodies rebushed. Sounds like it's going to be expensive!

I thought to finish I'd publish a few pictures of my newly sorted footwell light. It was loose and tucked up under the dash when I bought the car and I'd been meaning to fix it for ages but I didn't know exactly where it fitted. A friendly guy on the triumphspitfire.com board helped me out with a few photos and I finally got it fitted. Interestingly someone asked the exact same question on the Club Triumph noticeboard and I was able to pass on the knowledge. I love the friendly nature of the triumph scene!

MOT Time!

2008-10-03T11:03:00.006Z

As I sit writing this my car is in for the dreaded MOT at Silver Knight garage in Walsall! Everything was going well earlier in the week. I noticed what I thought was a few drops of fluid from the clutch master cylinder but, after wiping it up, I just couldn't make it leak again so I put it down to careless filling. I'd tested the lights and started the car every day and it seemed to be running beautifully so I wasn't too worried about the MOT.

Unfortunately yesterday I noticed the leak had returned! So, despite the showery weather, I took off the master cylinder, rebuilt it, repainted the bit of the bulkhead underneath it, took the gearbox tunnel out and bled the system. Of course this was a pretty major undertaking but I managed to get it all done and back together before it got dark!

I've never really been happy with the feel of my clutch. It'd always felt a bit spongey no matter how often it was bled. This time I bled it by taking off the slave cylinder and pressing the clutch down repeatedly until it was at the end of it's travel. I've got an almost new slave by the way - I wouldn't recommend trying this with an old one as the bore is likely to be corroded and to damage the seal.

With the slave effectively locked in position I could feel exactly how compressible the pedal felt. It was pretty much solid so I decided that was properly bled. I pushed the slave piston back into its bore and pressed the clutch again and everything looked good! A few tweaks at the master cylinder and I had both brake and clutch pedals at the same height and I was ready to go and get that MOT.

Of course on the way to the test station I tried to clear the windscreen and realised the wipers weren't working...

Good luck to all those drivers taking part in the Club Triumph Round Britain Reliability Run!

Classics In The Park

2008-09-27T16:32:00.009Z

I only remembered these the other day. They've been hidden on my mums memory card for a few months. Just some shots taken at 'Classics in the Park' in Litchfield earlier on in the year.

I was chatting to the guy that owned this very nicely restored TR for quite a while about the merits of upgraded started motors. That's something to look into in the future!

Everyone loves an Austin Healey and this was an especially nice one.

I'm not usually a huge fan of minis but my brother (standing to the right of me on the photo) loves them. The colour, rollcage and engine mods made this one look very cool.

This very original looking late Spitfire 1500 caught my eye.

Unfortunately after taking these few shots the skies opened and we had to sprint back to my mums car, which was parked on the other side of the park! We would have gone back for another look but unfortunately we didn't have time because we had to be elsewhere. Ah well, there's always next year!

Electrical Madness!

2008-09-25T20:04:00.003Z

I've spent an interesting day chasing down a variety of electrical maladies. The fun started with hooking up the wiring to my new headlights. I'd taken all the old stuff off without labelling anything so it was always going to be fun!

I started by checking the continuity and identifying the cables with the multimeter. Everything was pretty straightforward and I soon had the dipped and full beam working. Wiring in the sidelights was interesting because they have to hook up to part of the loom that isn't attached to the bonnet. I connected it up to make sure it worked but there was a bit of a birds nest so I'll have to come up with something better in the next few days.

The indicators were a good laugh. The left hand side one worked perfectly but I spent hours 'having fun' with the right hand side! Firstly, it failed the continuity test on the multimeter. I opened it up and found out why. I'd fitted the indicator unit without putting a bulb in it!

I had a rustle about in the garage and found another bulb and fitted it. It fitted in the socket perfectly but for some reason still wouldn't light up. That reason turned out to be because the American indicator unit was designed for a twin fillament bulb and I'd fitted a single. With that sorted the damn thing still wouldn't light up! It turned out to be a dodgy joint and I eventually got it sorted with a bit of sandpaper and copper grease.

That wasn't the end of my electrical issues though. With the hazards on, I noticed one of the rear indicators wasn't flashing. Fortunatly this was another dodgy connection - it turned out to be a spade terminal that'd come adrift and was a three second job to fix.

With the hazard lights flashing beautifully on demand I set about finding out why my indicators wouldn't work in twos. Another adrift spade terminal was the cause, this time on the flasher relay. I finally had working indicators!

I finished up my electrical marathon by 'spira wrapping' the loom to keep it tidy and by sorting out a minor problem with the horn. I couldn't find anything wrong with it but after removing and refitting the horn push I was back in business. Sorted!

Bleeding Brakes!

2008-09-19T14:04:00.003Z

I've been having a bit of a lull in activity on the Spitfire recently. Over the last month or so I haven't felt like looking at it or doing any of the niggling little jobs that would get it back on the road. Recently I haven't even had much time even for talking about triumphs on the Internet. I just basically didn't even want to think about it.

I think everyone with a Triumph goes through phases like this. Eventually, and often for no good reason, you seem to just get some renewed enthusiasm and you get back into it!

With yesterday being a nice sunny day my mood improved and I finally got the bug again. I started off by bleeding the brakes. The car is out on the drive and that's got a slight slope on it so I had to chock the wheels before I jacked up the back end and popped under some axle stands. With the wheels off and a bit of help from my mum to press the pedal it was all done pretty quickly. I did have a 'one way' valve type bleeding kit but I never found it very good. When I dug it out for this job the piping had misted up from corrosiveness of the brake fluid. That's a bit of a design flaw! So instead I did it the old school way, with a piece of hose and an assistant. Seems to have worked okay and the pedal seems pretty firm.

I was slightly annoyed to find some paint peeling around the nearly new master cylinder for the clutch. I'm still looking into it but it does seem like it's coming from the main seal around the piston. Watch this space!

Another problem I've been having is with fuel overflowing out of the float chambers. I've got a repro fuel pump and it's a well known problem that they produce too much fuel pressure. In an attempt to sort it I've fitted a regulator, filters and new needle jets. It doesn't seem to work too badly at the moment but I'd rather not have to have the regulator. I'm currently looking into using a TR7 fuel pump, something a member of the CT forum suggested. Hopefully then I can get this thing back on the road!

Running Again!

2008-06-22T22:30:00.007Z

I've been working on the car pretty much non stop now for the last couple of days! I've got lots of minor things done and finally got around to starting it up for the first time in about 15 months.

The first major job I completed was the installation of the headlights. These are not yet wired up but they are fitted. It was a fairly simple procedure that just involved mounting up the plastic nests, fitting the lamp units and refitting the headlamp cowls.

These are the cowls as they came from SVC. The little metal tags you can see around the rims hold the light units in place - a completely different system from the standard fitting where the lamps are held in place with a spring.

Weirdly they mount up asymmetrically with the adjusters on both headlights on the same side. I'm not sure if the standard ones were like that but it sure had me confused trying to fit them!

Another job I finally got round to is sorting out some of the paintwork on the bonnet. I've never been happy with the heavily oxidised paint and have tried using all manner of polishes and compounds to sort it out. None of them have worked so I resorted to more extreme methods! I decided that what was needed was to refinish the paint by flatting it back. Actually 'refinish' might not be the right word to use at all. The spots and runs on various parts of the car lead me to believe it might not have been properly 'finished' from the start. Either way after a session on the bonnet with 1500 grade wet and dry and plenty of soapy water I now have a lot less oxidisation. Of course now I have to remove the scratches that the wet and dry left and I've ordered some Poorboys SSR3 which should do the trick nicely!

I've also finally got around to starting it up! I unscrewed the dampers in the dashpots and put a little oil down the bores before cranking it over to get oil pressure. Then she rumbled into life! All I had to do was turn the fuel pressure down a tad to stop a float chamber overflowing and I was back in business. Result!

Quarter Valance Done!

2008-06-19T11:28:00.008Z

Yes, I've finally finished it! When I last mentioned it I was putting colour coats on it but since then I've given it a coat of 'leveller', cut the paint back and lacquered it. The 'leveller' is good stuff. It basically 're-activates' the paint and leaves the surface smoother so you don't get the 'orange peel' effect that spraying with a can often gives. After the lacquer I gave it a good cutting back with Poorboys SSR2 followed by Meguires 'Paint Cleaner', Autoglym 'Super Resin Polish' and finally Poorboys 'Nattys Blue' wax. After all that I had a finished panel and a knackered arm!

So then all I had to do was fit the indicator unit and mount it all up in the car. Nothing special about fitting the indicators, they just go straight in. I use a little bit of electrical tape around the edges of the panel where the squire clips fit just to prevent them scratching and becoming a rust trap.

So then all that I needed to do was to fit it to the car! If you want to fit one of these without removing the spoiler or bumper then the best way to do it is to open the bonnet and drop it in from behind. Then do up the bolts and you're done. I think it looks pretty cool now!

I've just had a delivery from the royal mail and it looks like my afternoon is sorted! I ordered some brake unions from Merlin Motorsport yesterday and they've arrived today along with the light 'nests' and wiring from SVC. I've just had a quick look at the wiring and they look perfect. Just got to fit them now!

Let There Be Lights!

2008-06-17T14:57:00.004Z

Okay so I haven't actually fitted them and got working lights but at least I have some now! They came this morning and I've had a look at them and they look pretty good. Interestingly the sidelights are below and offset to the right of the main bulbs. I guess this is so that they are pointing through the correct part of the reflector. Annoyingly, the sidelight bulb holders come with about 4 inches of wire attached to them. The instructions say that you need to solder the connectors (supplied) onto them and then plug it into the car. Why is that annoying? Well I'm guessing 99.9% of people who buy these are going to need to solder those on. Why couldn't they do it at the factory? Why should I have to finish them off!?

Anyway, while I was looking at http://www.s-v-c.co.uk/ I noticed they do a pre-assembled wiring harness for these lights. So I gave them a call and got both the 'nest' and the wiring loom ordered! The guy I spoke too was very friendly, helpful and seemed to be very knowledgeable so I'm fairly confident the right parts will be winging their way to me soon! If you're thinking about doing this conversion them I recommend you factor in the prices for all these little extras. You can't actually fit the Halogen conversion light units with the old back parts so you need to get new ones. The price of these extras has nearly doubled the cost of the conversion!

I also pushed the car outside for the first time in over a year! Believe it or not the only thing stopping me pushing it before was a flat tyre! It seems these Yokohama tyres are so soft that a flat really can make the whole car nearly impossible to push! Anyway, the first thing I did with it outside was to jet wash off the dust and dirt that it had acquired over the year. I then went over it with Poorboys SSR2, Autoglym Super Resin Polish and finally finished off with Poorboys 'Nattys Blue'. Its finally starting to look a bit more respectable - just the quarter valance, brakes and headlights to finish off now!

Headlight Stripdown!

2008-06-13T13:39:00.007Z

With the weather taking a turn for the worst I put the painting of the quarter valance on hold and started the daunting task of removing the old sealed beam units. I expected to uncover lots of rust and I wasn't disappointed!

First of all I needed to remove the headlamp surrounds. These are aluminium and are meant to be held on using a couple of bolts and a stud, but on mine there were only two! Unusually for my car they came off pretty easily. In fact two of them came off by hand!

With those out of the way, and with the help of a lake of penetrating oil, I finally unscrewed the chrome rings from around the light units and exposed some disintigrating inner bowls.

With those chucked in the scrap pile I only had the outer bowls left to remove. Each of these is attached to the bodywork by four rivets. I tried drilling these out but they had an annoying tendancy to spin with the drill so I changed tactics and resorted to grinding the heads off with my trusty Dremel followed by punching the remains out. This worked quite nicely and they did eventually come out, exposing more rust and some incredibly sorry looking rubber seals. This is pretty much where I've left it so far...

I've ordered a halogen conversion set from Mini Academy to replace the dismal sealed beam units. Unfortunately fitting these kind of headlights with the original back bowls would mean that I'd have to go through this entire strip down again just to replace a bulb! I hadn't realised this previously but thanks to a well timed thread on the Club Triumph noticeboard I discovered a solution. Thanks to 'phil866' who suggested the 7" open back nest set from Stafford Vehicle Components!

That's as far as I've got with the lights so far, but I have spent a little time fitting the alloy alternator mount that I bought from Canley Classics about 6 months ago. There was very little drama to report fitting it other than the fact that I cut my hand on a stray piece of glass that was hanging around in the garage! Just out of interest I weighed the old iron mount (575g) and compared it to the new one (225g). That's a saving of 350g! Very nice!

Painting!

2008-06-11T13:03:00.007Z

I've spent the day so far working continuing with the passenger side quarter valance. The etch primer coat from yesterday had dried nicely so I sprayed on the next layer which was a Halfords Zinc primer. I use Halfords paint for touching up and small jobs like this because it's a fairly decent acrylic paint and it's easy to get more of it in a hurry! There is also the advantage that they sell 'Rover Tahiti Blue' ready made in a can, so it saves a lot of hassles ordering in paint. The zinc primer leaves a fairly rough coat which is pretty good for taking the colour coat over the top.

It's definitely getting there! At this point I thought I'd better take a quick picture of the modifications needed to fit the American style indicators. As I mentioned before the body of the light is larger than the standard ones so you have to clearance the opening in the panel to get it to fit. I just used a burr in a drill for this and a Dremel to finish it off. By the time I'd finished it looked like this...

So after the primer coats I thought I'd better get some colour on there and sprayed over the panel in 'Tahiti blue'. You generally want to use paint on a warm day. I'm pretty lucky because it's a warm day today in the midlands and it's perfect for spraying outside! When spraying colour coats I tend to spray a bit closer to the panel than most and spray in lines working my way down the panel in short bursts. I make sure the paint is really 'wet' on the panel and I try to make sure my next pass meets up with the wet edge of the previous pass. This technique has worked pretty well for me in the past and it really is surprising how good a result you can get. At the moment I'm just letting it harden a bit before I continue with colour coating the other side. I will post another update soon but for the time being it's looking like this...

I'm Back!

2008-06-10T14:10:00.008Z

Yes, I'm finally back in the UK! I'm back sooner than expected having parted ways with the company I was doing my pilot training with. I won't go into details other than to say it had been a pretty frustrating year for me as they basically struggled to get me flying and messed me about from day one. Over the year I had flown an average of less than once a week. Pretty bad considering that it's a full time residential course that doesn't have any holidays built into the schedule and you're supposed to fly 3 times a week!

Anyway, it's given me lots of energy to work on the Spitfire! I've had a good look at the parts I bought while I was abroad and I'm going to be fitting them and getting the car ready for the dreaded MOT over the next few weeks.

First thing I noticed when I stuck my head around the garage door was that the suspension has settled a fair bit since I fitted the wheels. The second thing I noticed was an oil slick! Looks to me like the sump plug is leaking a bit. I'm not quite sure what's happened there but I'll be having a look over the next few days. Another problem lies with the brake master cylinder. It's empty! I'm going to investigate and also replace the hose lines with some swivel fittings as I've never been happy with how the flexi hoses attach to the master cylinders.

I tried to push the car out of the garage and onto the drive the other day too but ran into some problems there as well. It didn't want to budge! I checked the handbrake and it wasn't on. I'd left it off deliberately to stop this sort of thing happening! Having rocked it back and forth a bit I've decided that it isn't a brake problem but it might be due to having a couple of flat tyres. I'll hopefully be sorting that soon!

I have done a few jobs already though. Firstly, I fitted my new number plate. This was a relatively easy one. I was careful to mount it at the right height and to get the holes in the right place. It worked out rather well and all I had to do was spray the plastic mounting screws black and fit it up. Looks good I think!

Then I began working on getting the lights sorted out. I'm fitting 'US spec' indicators and although it seemed like they would be a straightforward fit so far it has proven not to be the case! The back part is slightly larger than the UK part and I had to remove the quarter valances and open the holes out slightly with a Dremel to get them to fit. Of course regular readers may remember that I resprayed one of my quarter valances a while back. Unfortunately when taking the passenger side off I realised that it was just as bad (if not worse) as the drivers side had been so I reluctantly set to work on it.

I quite enjoy bodywork and I've been asked a few times how to do things like this so I might as well go through it in detail! First of all I stripped the mix of paint and Dinitrol off it using a knotted wire brush in an angle grinder and a wire brush on a drill for the tricky bits. Once the paint was off I had a good look at it and saw a few dents and dings here and there that would need a bit of filler and a few pitted areas that would need some rust killer. After cleaning off the remaining rust killer with thinners I gave it a good thin coat of Upol Acid #8 which highlighted all the bumps!

When that had dried I used a few thin smears of Isopon P38 to fill all the low points. After letting that dry I sanded it flat with a sanding pad on an electric 'delta' sander. The trick here is not to use a sanding pad which is too course or too fine. You don't want to 'polish' the filler but neither do you want to leave marks in it which might show through the paint! Also when you're sanding back don't worry about taking the paint around it off. You just need to respray it again like so.

If you think there are some more dents on the left hand side then you're wrong! Those are just the spot welds where the inner skin of this panel is attached. So now we've got a lovely dent free panel waiting for some more paint...

I think I'll carry on with this tomorrow!

Number Plate

2008-04-20T06:33:00.005Z

I've been at it again - thinking about my cars aesthetics! My latest purchase is a new number plate for the front of my Spitfire.

I've been messing around with the front of the car since I bought it! When I first got it it came with an absolutely massive plate that blocked off virtually the whole of the radiator grill. Unsurprisingly there were some cooling issues! I'm sure they were largely due to the radiator, which was standard size and looked like it had seen better days, but the huge plate didn't help!

To sort it I fitted a wide radiator and cut the edges of the plates off, leaving the minimum legal distance between letters and the edge of the plates. The cooling problems were sorted but I still wasn't happy with how it looked. There was only so much chopping down I could do with the letters as big as they were (way bigger than the legal minimum size!) and I was left with square edges on each side which looked a bit odd! Something had to be done...

I looked at various options. Stick on plates didn't do it for me. I don't like the way they look mounted almost horizontally on the bonnet. I don't like the look of plates mounted on the spoiler either so that only left me with the option of using a smaller plate in the standard location.

This is where things got a little bit err....complex. In order to get what I wanted I was going to have to bend and break a few laws. Basically, I wanted a 3/4 size plates and these aren't strictly road legal. After doing my homework and looking on a few forums I couldn't find anyone that had been pulled over for having a smaller front plate so I decided to go for it.

This led me to the next problem. Getting number plates made is supposed to involve lots of hassle with ID and proof of ownership and stuff. The way the number plate sellers get around this is by selling plates that are for 'show' only. So without all that hassle I got http://www.fancyplates.com/ to make one up for me. It looks great and arrived the next day. So for good service they get recommended by me!

Roller Rockers

2008-02-09T06:59:00.000Z

I've been busy this week looking out for parts going cheap! I'm going to have a few jobs to do on the Spitfire in the future and I really want to get all the parts aquired so I can just do it next time I've got some time off. One of these little jobs has been brought about by a steady drip of oil under the car. It can only be coming from the rear oil seal so basically either the engine or the gearbox will have to come out to fit a new one. I'm not in the business of doing anything by halves either so there will be a mass upgrading in that area while the engine is out. I'm going to go for one of those light flywheels (either a Canleys steel or a Firdanza alloy one) and an alloy bellhousing. Of course I'll chuck in the AP clutch and the alloy backplate I've already got, bolt it all back together (I've heard Chevy flywheel bolts are a good upgrade) and I should be good to go!

My other little job is to finish off my cylinder head. I still need to finish the exhaust ports off and get a pro to fit bigger valves for me. Basically the lot need doing. It need new guides, valves and springs. It's sounding more expensive by the second!

Despite saying only recenly that I would be smoothing and polishing some rockers up I had a change of plan. Ebay turned up some Harland Sharp roller rockers that were going suprisingly cheaply. A bargain for just £84! I love Ebay!

Wheels!

2008-01-24T04:37:00.001Z

I've finally got around to something I've been meaning to do for ages! After all this time I've finally joined Club Triumph! Now if I can only stay in the country long enough I can enter the RBRR or maybe even the 10CR!

I also finally got around to finishing off my slotmags. I was in a mad rush to get them done and on the car before I had to return to New Zealand. I had a morning to apply the last coats of paint, get them balanced and then finally fit them to the car! It seemed like mission impossible but I got it done just in time to take a few photos, pack my stuff and get on the plane! Of course there were a few hitches along the way. I couldn't get my hydraulic trolley jack under the front crossmember because the car's too low so I had to use a screw jack to raise it a couple of inches before I could slide the trolley jack under. I still need to polish the rims some more and I really need to get hold of some centre finishers to finish the job off but I think it looks pretty cool!

For some reason it now looks a bit higher off the ground than it did before. I rolled it backwards and forwards to let the suspension settle but it still seems to sit higher than before. I'll have to take it for a run and see how it looks after that before I decide what to do about it. I can just wind the AVO's down at the front but it looks like I may have to fit a lowering block at the rear. Thats another project for another time!

I've also recently joined Davesideways' new forum (http://www.sideways-technologies.co.uk/) and it looks to be shaping up quite nicely as good read for people who love their modified classics. I've already had a few more ideas that I will get around to another time. With me being on the other side of the world I don't think this is going to get updated too often over the next few months but I may have some news about parts I'm trying to aquire. Watch this space!

Finally! An Update!

2008-01-10T18:33:00.001Z

Okay so its been a long time coming but here's the first update in quite some time! I've been busy over christmas but not on the car sadly...

I got back from NZ on the 28th of November and since then seeing the girlfriend, christmas and pilot exams have all taken their toll on my spare time but that dosent mean I havent been busy getting a few bits sorted out for the car!

I've always said that that time and money are the two biggest factors in how I work on my car. Sometimes I've got time and no money so I lighten up some stuff or do a few little jobs and sometimes I've got more money than time and I buy some nice shiny bits! I've not had the time recently so the shiny bits have been rolling in!

Here's a few bits and bobs I've recently aquired. First off is something I've been after for a while - an alloy engine backplate. I bought one of these from Dave 'Sideways' Powell a while back but postal incompetance meant that it never arrived so I bought one from Canley Classics the other week.

Wierdly it looks smaller when it's not on the car! Looks nicely made with all the holes in the right place so it gets the thumbs up from me! Not planning to fit it at the moment so I'll probably just chuck it in the parts box untill I can fit it. I'll probably leave it till I replace the clutch and chuck in a lightweight flywheel, race clutch, alloy bellhousing etc etc.

I also thought I'd treat myself to an alloy alternator bracket (again from Canley Classics). I know its not going to save a tonne of weight but it sure does look cool!

I've also had a chance to check out the rocker spacers. I might well take the rocker shaft out and rebuild it while I'm out in NZ to give me something to do on the boring days I'm not flying! I may even take the Dremel out there and smooth and polish the rockers up!

I've also been working on the wheels I bought. It's been an epic mission to strip all the old paint off. There were about four layers and each seemed to be better applied than the last. It took a whole bottle of nitromoors to get it sorted and even then it took an epic amount of time with wire wool and wire brushes to get the final bits of paint off! I'm still finishing them off but one is painted up nicely and the result is pretty good. What do you think?

Of course I had to get some nuts to bolt them up. I will eventually upgrade the studs, but for now I bought nuts to fit the standard size studs. I got them from Speedshack and I can thoroughly recommend them. They knew exactly what they were talking about and got them delivered in double quick time so they get a recommendation from me!

I'm also trying to fit the 'all orange' indicators that 'GT6Steve' sent me from Las Vegas but I've run into a bit of a stumbling block. It seems that the fitment of them to a UK spec spit is not as straightforward as it would seem. The bulb holding back part of the light is bigger than the UK ones so it needs the hole opening up with the trusty Dremel!

And finally a request for help! Anyone know how to remove the standard type of mirrors that come come on a Spitfire? I've only got one on the drivers side and theres a screw sunk into a recess on the back of it but it dosent seem to want to move! Do I have to get at it from the inside of the door?

Magnificent!

2007-11-07T22:02:00.000Z

Finally some luck came my way! I was having a look on ebay when I came across this set of 6x13 Wolfrace slotmags going for just £80. Should be absolutely perfect fit on the Spitfire and they're already fitted with 4 Yokohama Advan A032R tyres. Perfect for the type of driving I've got in mind!

I should be returning to the UK at the end of this month and I plan to get the spitfire drivable again in the short time I'm at home. Bleeding the brakes and refurbing and fitting the wheels are my number one jobs.

Here's the picture from the ebay listing. As you can see these are the original Wolfrace wheels with the squarer slots. I was planning to go for the Alleycat slots with the more rounded holes but I eventually decided the squarer holes would suit the car better. I plan to spray the centres black (or possibly anthracite) and polish the rims to a high shine. Can't wait to see how it looks!

Plans

2007-09-12T02:45:00.000Z

Not being in the UK has been a major disadvantage this month! There was a set of Alleycat slot mags (5.5J size) for sale on ebay and they looked to be in decent condition with Pirelli tyres. The guy wanted them collecting though and thats a little difficult with me out of the country! It's a real shame as they would have been ideal for refurbishing and fitting to my car. Oh well, I'm sure something else will come along!

I've also got my eye on a pair of Halogen headlights with built in sidelights so that I can finally get around to fitting up the US style indicators that 'GT6Steve' sent me over from the US. It seems to be the same light unit as a Mini so I'm just shopping around for the cheapest supplier at the moment but will place an order soon!

Also about to be purchased is another essential for my 'killer' top end rebuild. I'm ordering a set of steel spacers for the rocker shaft from Moss Europe. Should give me a more positive location of the rockers than the springs that are fitted as standard. The spacer set is a bargain at around £12 but plus the postage and VAT is more like £22. Obviously VAT isn't their fault but that makes the postage the best part of £8. Seriously, how do these companies get away with it?

Valve Caps

2007-08-06T00:37:00.000Z

I'm still really busy flying planes at the minute but I've still managed to fit in some shopping for Triumph parts!

I have been meaning to do some more work on the top end of my engine for some time now and my new 'killer' cylinder head is just the excuse I need to do it! Theres no point in putting so much effort into modding a cylinder head only to build it up with the standard Spitfire 1500 rocker gear!

I'm going to keep the standard rocker shaft (although obviously I'll replace it if it's knackered!) and either use polished standard rockers or roller rockers from TSI Imported Auto along with a TriumphTune (Moss Europe) rocker spacer kit to more positively locate the rockers over the valves. I've just bought these alloy valve caps from ANG Triumph. I'm not sure how much difference they'll make and if they aren't sufficiently strong they could cause an expensive mess! Apparently they are half the weight of the standard steel caps though so I'm going to reserve judgement on them till I'm back in the UK and can check them out myself. I'll probably lighten my cam followers and fit tubular pushrods and call the job a good 'un!

More future mods!

2007-07-15T00:25:00.000Z

Okay, so here I am posting after saying that I wouldn't be adding anything to this blog for at least 6 months! I have a fair bit of spare time and I thought I'd use it to introduce some of my future plans for the car by outlining just a couple of future mods per month! Here are this months 2 mods then!

I need to get my bonnet sorted because the inner wheelarch panels are rusted to bits and I'll probably loose the seam that seperates the bonnet and front wing panel. I'd want to get it seam welded properly of course rather than just bunging it up with filler so I can get it looking like this photo I copied off US Ebay of a rather nice racing GT6!

I've also been thinking about what wheels to go for. On the Spitfire the choice basically comes down to mililite style wheels, Revolutions, wider Dunlop steels or 'slot mag' type wheels. Minilite style wheels very in quality and in my opinion the only decent looking brands are Minilite, Superlite and the Compomotive ML's. Trouble is though the minilite style wheel has been done to death on just about every classic car ever made and I want a different look for mine!

So that leaves a choice between 5.5J Dunlops steels, Revolutions and Wolfrace slot mags. I like the 4 spoke Revolutions on GT6's and I think they look good on early Spitfires but I dont think they suit the later Spitfires very well. They look a bit too open for my tastes whilst the 5 spoke versions are super rare and almost certainly out of my price bracket even if I could find some!

Dunlop 5.5J's are nice and wide but they look pretty much the same and I really fancy a change. So that leaves just 'slot mags' which I always thought looked cheesy on Triumphs, but that was until I saw this photo on the Club Triumph messageboard!

With the centres painted black and the rims cut and polished I think these look absolutely great. Different and with more than a hint of drag racer style, I've almost certainly made my mind up to get some of these, paint them up and try them out on my car to see how they look! I think these are made by Alleycat because the Wolfrace ones seem to have slightly squarer holes so I'll be on the lookout on ebay as soon as I get back to the UK!

Gone till November!

2007-06-26T06:19:00.001Z

Yes thats right there will be no more updates on this blog for a while I'm afraid! The primary reason being that I'm on the other side of the world training to be an Airline Pilot! I'm based in Hamilton, New Zealand and currently doing my PPL flying having passed all the written exams!

I've just started work on my ATPL (Airline Transport Pilot Licence) exams and should be back in the UK in November to take the exams at Gatwick. In the mean time here are a few pics of one of the aircraft I'm flying. Its an Alpha 160A and it makes 160HP from an unbelievably unstressed 8 litre engine at 2700RPM! It cruises at 127KTS which is just shy of 150MPH!

Brake Lines

2007-04-16T09:43:00.001Z

I've been cracking on with the Spitfire a lot recently and I'm not doing too badly! The new master cylinders (both from Wilwood) are in and new braided brake and clutch hoses are made up and fitted.

Fitting braided hoses between the clutch slave and master is a good idea because there is a lot of vibration between their mounting points. Its no better than normal brake pipe between the brake master and the union but it looks cool and can be removed more easily! It certainly isn't any worse!

Anyway, in order to do this to your own car all you need to do is follow these easy steps!

Get hold of about 3 metres of Euroquip brake hose (Rally Design part number EURO600) and four 3/8 x 24 UNF convex brake hose ends (Rally Design part number RD1500). If you've got Wilwood masters then you need to get two of those and two of part number RD1504 and use them with the supplied adaptors.

What you then do is measure the hose out and cut it at the correct length. I used a junior hacksaw with a fine blade for cutting and it was pretty straightforward. A good tip is to wrap the hose in tape and cut through it to keep the braid from fraying everywhere.

Now take apart the end connectors. You will have three peices - the bit that screws into the union, a brass olive and female threaded finisher that attaches it all together.

Push the finisher onto the hose (you'll kick yourself if you forget this stage when it's the second connector you're attaching!)

Now you're aiming to gently ease back the braiding around the end of the hose just enough to persuade the olive to go on the hose. I found this was relatively easy if you grab the end of the hose with the olive on and push it hard into the workbench. Make sure the olive is on the end of the hose as far as it can go!

Now insert the hose onto the back of the threaded peice and make sure its pushed on firmly.

Now pull the finisher down the hose and use it to lock it all together. Shouldn't need to be mega stupidly tight but it does need to crush the olive and keep it all locked together.

Repeat as many times as needed.

Check for leaks!

So there we have it - quite an easy and satisfying job. Just watch for the sharp ends of the braid cutting your fingers up as they can be really sharp.

Other jobs I've done include refitting the front quater valance I removed and resprayed earlier along with it's light unit and stripping out most of the interior to get at the clutch slave cylinder which I now need to bleed. The brakes are now done apart from the master cylinder reservoir. I have bought a used girling cylinder from Ebay and will use the reservoir from that - an idea I got from Club Triumph forum user '2 litre e'!

Late Braking News!

2007-03-26T10:48:00.000Z

I've not been doing much on the car recently due to work, illness and the fact that I've been busy preparing to go to New Zealand to learn to fly planes in May! I'm frantically trying to get the car sorted so that I can at least have a few drives in it before I go off.

I have finally finished prepping the area and painting it and have now fitted the clutch pedal. I will do the brake pedal when I have suceeded in finding the pivot pin! I also need to cut down the piston pin on the Wilwood clutch master cylinder and fit the clevis pin through the pedal. I am currently waiting for payday so that I can buy a matching brake master cylinder and set them up together so the pedals are in the normal positions.

This is how it's looking so far. The paint looks much nicer in this picture than it does in real life! All that remains to do now is to strap the wiper motor back down, reconnect the choke cable and the accelerator cable and to sort out some stainless braided lines for the brake and clutch!

Bushes

2007-02-27T15:31:00.000Z

I finally got hold of some pedal bushes from 'jimslittleshop' on ebay. These arrived this morning and I fitted them with a carefull series of blows from a large hammer. I protected the bushes with a block of wood so as not to damage them. The pedals were now looking pretty good!

So then I cleaned up a rusty pivot pin and made sure it was good to go. All that remained to do then was to fit it up in the bracket and bang it through with plenty of oil. Once it was through I locked it with some new E rings I bought last time I went to Canleys. I'm still trying to get hold of the brake pivot pin but the clutch assembly is done now!

I also invested some time ripping out some rear speakers that a previous owner had put in the rear cockpit board. These were fixed in with a ridiculous amount of plastic spacers which (together with speakers) weighed the best part of 2kg. I'm not looking to rid my car of speakers forever but I am planning to fit smaller and more discreete ones under the dash somehow. The ones I removed are actually reference quality Infinity speakers so somebody has obviously spent a fair bit of cash on them. I'm hoping to sell them and replace the rear panel with a carefully cut sheet of aluminium. I might even go as far as sealing it like the firewall of a race car!

Speaking of firewalls...I'm still getting on with spraying the bulkhead round the master cylinders but I'm not so tempted to go out in the garage while the weather's still this cold!

New Master Cylinder

2007-02-22T10:29:00.000Z

I've been pretty busy since my last post! Firstly I took all my drilled out brackets and a whole lot of other stuff to Lap-Tab in Birmingam and told them to sandblast and powdercoat them. They said it'd take a week but gave me a call a few days later and it was all done!

The credit card also took a beating this week at the online shop of Rally Design. I need new master cylinders for both the brakes and the clutch systems as the old ones were worn out. Thinking they'd be available relatively cheaply I checked at all the major suppliers and couldn't find one cheaper than about £60. I then heard of a company that can resleeve the inside of the cylinder (Past Parts) so I emailed them for a quote thinking this might be the cheapest way to sort it out. How wrong I was! The quote was exactly the same as a new cylinder!

So that left only one option really and that was to buy a Wilwood master cylinder from Rally Design. As this is only £30 it's both a cost and spec improvement over the standard stuff - which is a nice change from normal! I wasn't impressed by the postage charges on their website though - I don't think a flat rate of £8.50 is very good to be honest but they did get it sent out quickly.

I went for the Wilwood integrated reservoir cylinder and I will use it for my clutch as the capacity is pretty small and I would like a bit more 'in reserve' for my brakes. Club Triumph forum user '2litre-e' has a nice looking Wilwood cylinder with an external reservoir so I have posted on the forum inquiring about that!

Finally finished drilling!

2007-02-16T17:51:00.001Z

I've finally finished all the boring drilling. I've now lost weight from the front grille, grille bracket, battery clamp and both the small and large valance brackets. The last three of these I finished today. I rushed off to the podercoaters to get them sorted this afternoon but when I got there I found they'd all gone home at 12.30! At least there's no more drilling to do!

Lightening Fast!

2007-02-15T23:05:00.000Z

I had a bit of a rush job on today. I went to Canley Classics this morning to pick up some stuff I needed for the master cylinders. I bought a complete set of mounting bolts, washers and shakeproof washers along with master cylinder gaiters, pivot pins, clips and the pedal pivot E rings. After that I went on to KD Triumph to drop off some wheel embelishers for a mate of Karls that got in touch via the Club Triumph forums. I am clearing my garage out at the moment and have more stuff to give away including a Spitfire 1500 radiator which is available free to anyone who can collect it. It's not the uprated wide type but it works 100%! Get in touch if you want it!

I was also intending to take the master cylinder brackets (and a whole lot of other stuff) into Lap Tab in Birmingham to get them powdercoated. I decided to do it tomorrow instead and spent the evening lightening up a few more bits and peices so they can go off and get coated. Shown below is the brackets that hold the front quater valences on. They are now 20g lighter!

I'm now just left with the smaller quater valance brackets and the battery retaining clamp to drill and then I can relax!

Update

2007-02-13T21:39:00.001Z

Today I got back to work on the area around the master cylinders. I used a wire cup brush on an angle grinder and also on a drill to clean up the area around the wiper motor and the brake cylinder. This area appears to have been suffering for quite some time and is now quite badly pitted. Fortunatly the steel is still strong and I have no worries about the structural strength of the panel.

Having done my best with the wire brushes, I used Hammerite Rust Remover to sort the remaining rust. I'm not particularly impressed with this slimy green mixture but it seems to work alright and is inexpensive. When its gone I will replace it with the equivalent product from Bilt Hamber Laboratories, which I have heard great things about!

I still have the area around the clutch cylinder to wire brush but I sprayed the rest with primer just to minimise exposure to the air while I finish the rest off. This is how it's looking so far...

Another thing I've been getting on with is the drivers side quater valance. This now just needs flatting down and respraying before abrasive polish and then laquer can be applied. It's looking good so far but I'm not sure how close a match the colour is to the rest of the car!

Continuing the theme of modding the front of the car, I also cut the number plate horizontally so that it is the minimum size allowable by law. This means that there is only 11mm between the top of the letters and the edge of the plate. This gives a slight airflow advantage into the radiator because the area of the plate is reduced by 40 square cm. I think it looks better as well and saves 15g!

Finally, it also occured to me that I havent yet shown a picture of the T handle that I have fitted to the interior. This will eventually be used to activate a plumbed in fire extinguisher system but for the time being the cable remains curled up in the glovebox. I had initially planned to mount this in the dash but I made up a braket and mounted it just under the dash on the passenger side where the driver can reach it as well!

More Weight Saving!

2007-02-11T14:22:00.001Z

Finally got around to loosing some weight out of the boot! At some time in it's life my car had been fitted with carpet covered hardboard on either side of the boot. Over the years this had gone soggy and nasty along with the black vinyl covering the wheel arches. 2 minutes work to rip it all out and a weight saving of 1.5kg for absolutely nothing!

Amusingly there was also a boot light fitted on the right hand side panel that had been fitted in the past and had never worked. On removing the panel I discovered no bulb and loose wires just hanging down the back!

Quater Valances

2007-02-08T16:21:00.000Z

I just couldn't bring myself to fit the nice new indicators into the shonky old valances that appeared to have been badly painted with the wrong colour paint! So off came the drivers side to start with and out came the 4 bolts that were holding it on along with the bumper attachment. I then detached the old indicator electrical connections and pulled the whole thing free of the car!

So, after dealing with a seized screw retaining the indicators I was left with just the metalwork. I fired up the angle grinder and stripped the paint off using a wire cup brush. For the edges and finer stuff I used a smaller wire brush in a drill. The reason for the awful cracked paint became pretty clear. It seems that the valance had been crudely painted black before getting a waxy stonechip style coat and then finally a colour coat on top. Naturally a waxy coat like that isn't the perfect base for a colour coat!

When it was in bare metal I noticed a few little knocks that needed fillering so I protected the bare metal with U-Pol Acid primer before giving a few spots a skim of filler. I then gave those areas a good wet and drying afterwards until the areas were super smooth (no perceivable ridge between filler and bare metal). I then recoated with etch primer to give 2 nice and thin coats over the area and when that had dried I smoothed it with fine wet and dry paper and gave it all 2 coats of zinc primer followed by, you guessed it, more wet and dry rubdowns! At that stage it was looking like much better! Check out the spot welds - I could have filled and smoothed them but I like them original!

So I left that to dry overnight and started on it again the next morning. First thing I did was give it a couple of thin coats of regular primer. The zinc stuff isn't very smooth and this helps to give the colour coats a smoother finish. More flatting back followed that and then I could finally get on to the colour! One coat of Tahiti Blue (from a Halfords spray can) and it was now looking like this!

More news next time!

More Brackets!

2007-02-01T15:45:00.001Z

Not much to report recently. Still looking after my grandma and making best use of my grandads workshop before he comes out of hospital! Spent the past few days lightening a few things. I know it's not going to make a noticable difference but I do want to have a bit of underbonnet wow factor! My favourite mod so far has to be the two small holes in the radiator cap 'ears'!

Brackets

2007-01-29T14:41:00.001Z

So I've been pretty bored over the last few weeks and have devoted a fair bit of spare time to making up a pair of brackets to hold my CD Changer in the boot. I know that it's heavy and that I really should do without for the benefit of performance but it's still a car I use on the road and I like having a wide range of CD's to choose from!

So I made them from 1mm steel and drilled them to fit the CD changer before bending them in a vice and spraying them with zinc primer, silver wheel paint and then lacquer. I will mount this on the panel inside the boot on the left hand side (to offset the drivers weight and as low as possible to keep the centre of gravity low!)

While I was there I also gave the wiper bracket a lick of the same paints. I know it's getting more publicity than it really deserves but here we go with a picture!

Also while I had the drill out I reduced the weight of the overengineered bracket that attaches to the chassis to the front and holds the plastic grill on. I may well drill out the horizontal parts of the grill in the future. Believe me I have a lot of time on my hands!

And finally a picture of the indicators. This was just a test fitting to see how they would look on the front of the car. Readers opinions are most welcome but I personally think they look great. The US light units are lighter than the standard ones, give me bigger indicators and will raise the sidelights up into the headlights. Hopefully this will mean more people will see me and should make driving it a bit safer!

Viva Las Vegas!

2007-01-23T11:08:00.001Z

I always try and do different things with my Spitfire and to do modifications that most people maybe wouldn't think of! One of the ideas I had whilst looking through Custom Car Magazine is to change the look of the front of the car by removing the 'white and amber' lights that are under the headlights and replacing them with the 'US spec' all amber models. Of course that would leave me without pilot (side) lights, so in order to get those back I'm going to change the headlights to the type that include sidelights!

Halogen conversions with the sidelights built in are very common from all sorts of places in the UK because they are the same fitting as minis but the 'US spec' indicator is all but impossible to come by in the UK. Thats where I had a bit of help from GT6 Steve in the US, who very generously gave me a set for free and all I had to pay was the postage from Las Vegas. The postage was pretty hefty but worth it for a part that you just can't find in this country. Believe it or not I had been looking for 9 months! Quite some time for a part that I thought would be shipped over with all those 'rust free' US bodyshells and available for peanuts!

Wiper Motor Bracket

2007-01-11T09:24:00.001Z

I've recently been spending a lot of time looking after my Grandma while my Grandad's been in hospital so I've spent the time making the best use of Grandads workshop. Inkeeping with my lightweight theme (and whilst I had it off to strip the bulkhead) I whizzed up this lightweight wiper motor strap (15g). Okay so it only saves a few grammes but it looks pretty neat!

There is also good news on the clutch pedal. I dropped it into a small garage in Caldmore where the chap it going to weld up the hole so I can redrill it. Should save me fractions of a second with every gearshift!

Clutch Pedal

2007-01-05T19:35:00.001Z

Trouble always seems to come in threes and my Spitfire is no exception! I pulled back the rubber gaiter on the clutch master cylinder and was greeted by the unmistakable slimy feel of brake fluid. It seems the clutch cylinder had been leaking as badly (if not worse) than the brake cylinder. All this leaking fluid had stripped the paint off the bulkhead and the clutch pedal, which now needs repainting.

As I was cleaning up the clutch pedal I spotted that the hole near the top was worn oval by the pin that links it to the master cylinder! You can see in the photo how years of use have worn the hole out of shape. This is a setback as I now need to find someone who can weld the hole up so that I can redrill it and refit the link pin. At least it explains why the clutch pedal was so crap though!

I've also been thinking of upgrading both master cylinders rather than getting straight replacements for them as Wilwood do decent ones that are a straightforward fit and are a bit cheaper than most of the Girling ones I've seen about. This is getting expensive though and the budget is tight so we will have to see. While the cylinders are off I want to repaint the bulkhead, get the brackets powdercoated and upgrade the lines to braided hose.

This is as well as pulling the engine out and replacing the rear oil seal and the clutch and upgrading the rear engine plate to the alloy one I purchased from Davesideways. Sadly though the engine plate is lost in the post at the moment and I haven't had much luck finding an engine crane to borrow! At least the clutch I bought of ebay has shown up. Another bargain - a genuine AP clutch plate for just £6!

Christmas Brake!

2006-12-30T17:54:00.001Z

So I rolled the Spitfire out onto the drive, opened the bonnet and got a christmas suprise! And not a good one!

I was lacking a huge amount of clutch and brake fluid. So I topped up and had another look today and the area around the brake master cylinder is damp. The paint was flakey before and it's not going to get much better with fresh fluid pouring all over it! My plan is to rebuild (and possibly replace) both cylinders. I had previously replaced all brake and clutch parts except the clutch pipe and the master cylinders so I guess its about time! I thought I'd also take the time to repaint the bulkhead and sort out the pedals. I've finally managed to separate the 'Cross Shaft' and wasn't suprised it was so difficult to drift out - it had been put in dry and had just rusted in solid.

Of course I thought I'd improve things while I'm tinkering. I plan to replace the clutch pipe with a braided flexable version and to paint the finished cylinders black to aid heat dissipation. I have also chucked out the worn out pedal rubbers (60g) and replaced them with griptape. This is the stuff I used on my wakeskates and it's super hardwearing, waterproof and weighs so little I couldn't measure it on the scales! Not the biggest weight saving in the world but it all adds up!

Attention to Detail(ing)!

2006-11-30T11:38:00.001Z

Having a car that actually works and dosen't require constant rebuilding of parts is quite a wierd feeling! Possibly that is the reason that I have become a bit more obsessive about how my car looks over the past few weeks.

Detailing is the very thorough cleaning of a car and the basic stages can be broken down into steps. Firstly you need to was the car using a proper car shampoo and a sponge to get all the dirt off the paintwork. Then you need to use soapy water to wet the paintwork while you slide a clay bar over the surface to pull contaminants out of the paint surface. Then you polish and then you wax!

So I started off by giving it a clean with some proper car shampoo and a sponge. Without the encrusted mud up the sides it looked a whole lot better! I then used a Sonus (medium) clay bar lubricated with soapy water to clean the paint until it was perfectly smooth. I then used Autoglym Super Resin Polish and overcoated it with Poorboys World Natty's Blue Paste Wax. The heavily oxidised boot and bonnet were polished using Poorboys World SSR2 which is a compound polish.

I was very impressed with the difference the clay bar and the Poorboys World products made. The bonnet and boot really do have paintwork in poor condition but the improvement was immense. The only downside to the whole process is that the thorough cleaning has highlighted a fair few bits of bodywork that need doing!

Update! (Carbs and Bodywork)

2006-11-13T15:36:00.001Z

I thought I'd better just update my blog. I've had a busy few weeks working on the car. Firstly, I took the carbs off and rebuit them with new throttle shafts. I took time with the Dremel to thin them out to about half the normal thickness (as recommebed by Kas Kastner and others) but I didn't bother thinning the butterflies for the tiny difference they'd make.

With it all refitted to the car I set about setting the carbs up. One of the most important things to get right is the same amount of air must be sucked in by each carb. In order to check that you need a carb balancer. So after trying out a Gunson Carbtuner and finding out it was absolute crap I got on eBay and bought a decent flowmeter from Eurocarb (who I can highly recommend for their excellent customer service).

So with balance set using the flow meter and mixture set using a Gunson Colourtune it was all good and sounding better than ever. Unfortunatly whilst it revs beautifully and cleanly on the drive it's a bit stuttery on the road. I haven't got around to sorting yet but I will!

I've also been sorting out an unsightly rust scab that had been lurking around on the drivers side of the windscreen frame. I was pleasantly suprised to find no deep structural rust and can happily report that the area has been rust killered and primered and the top coat is drying as I write this. It's looking better already!

Breakdown!

2006-10-24T20:15:00.000Z

I had a particularly unlucky day today! Seeing as the weather was decent I pulled on a jumper and scarf and got the top down and hit the road. Filled up with another tenner of Shell V Power and took a tour around the local fast A roads. Lovely!

I got home and agreed to have a coffee with a mate in Birmingham so I hopped back in the Spit and headed over there! Stopped to let a particularly nice Mk1 Escort pull out in front (and gasped in awe as I heard his dump valve and realised he was running the Cosworth lump) before getting caught up at the lights. Then I noticed I was idling quite high so I blipped the throttle to try and close the butterflies more firmly but to no avail and subsequent stops showed the problem was getting worse! Eventually I gave up and called the AA.

When the guy showed up he had a good look over it but was just as stumped as me. So I got him to tow me home and, after my first ever towing experience, I whipped the carbs off.

So far I'm still pretty stumped but I'm going to replace the really quite badly worn throttle shafts (see photo) and then put everything back together and hope I come across the problem when refitting!

Core Plugs

2006-10-17T13:38:00.001Z

I thought I'd replace the core plugs while I had the head off and I'm beginning to regret that now! I first tried drilling a hole and putting a self tapper in there before using the claw hammer to try and lever it out. All it did was pull out the self tapper and make the hole bigger! So after trying a bit more with larger screws and the same results I realised I was in for a long slog. After copious amounts of levering, grinding, bashing and swearing it came out looking like this and the hole it came out of is completely undamaged which is great because if you damage the seat they never seal up properly again!

More Cylinder Head Porting Stuff!

2006-10-06T13:41:00.001Z

Just a quick update on the cylinder head! Basically on the Triumph 1500 head the valves are recessed into pockets in the port to give a flat surface for the original makers to drill the valve guide holes into (according to David Vizard's book) and this has the effect of really messing up the airflow through the port. His book mentions using 'chemical metal' style filler to fill up the pocket but I wasn't keen on a chunk of that falling into my newly rebuilt engine to say the least! So, I ground out the pocket as much as I can and smoothed the ports as much as possible without enlarging them. At the moment the inlets are all nearly done, the chambers are half way to being polished and I've made a start on the exhaust ports, which were simply dreadfull. Huge chunks of metal were lurking about where the casting was just appauling and there were more small pockets for the valve guides to grind out. The water jackets run closer to the exhaust ports so I have been more convervative that the inlets but it still looks a lot better!

Check out the nasty casting marks in the exhaust port! This is one of the better ones and some were far worse than this!

The nearly finished inlet ports looks a whole lot better than they did to start with!

And I'm also about halfway through polishing the chambers!

Oil Change

2006-10-03T11:28:00.000Z

Completed an oil change today. It's been 1300 happy miles of motoring since the new engine went in. Not much but then it has been laid up for a few years! Anyway, All went smoothly apart from the sump plug which managed to pop out of my hand and into the rapidly increasing puddle of oil in the metal tray. For once though it wasnt a big deal as all I had to do was have a rummage through my spares box to find a magnetic sump plug I got on Ebay a while back and had been waiting for an oppertunity to fit! I also replaced the filter while I was there with a FRAM filter I bought from Canley Classics a few months ago. After the nerveracking bit where the oil pressure light comes on because the filters filling with oil there were no oil leaks (no new ones anyway!) and it was time to take a test drive! All was well, although there is a bit of a leak from the rear oil seal which smokes off on the exhaust, so that'll be something to do on another day!

Cylinder Head Start

2006-09-26T12:50:00.001Z

I have been far too busy working on the Spitfire recently! Firstly the fuel that was leaking out of the carbs has been stopped! Despite replacing the needles and spacing the fuel pump away from the block with a few gaskets there was still an abundance of leaking petrol. For the time being I have installed a Malapassi Filter King that I bought from my local tuning goodies shop (Midland Performance Centre) where they are always friendly and the prices are keen!

I have also got hold of a cylinder head to port! I missed an ebay auction for one and, when it didn't meet its reserve, I nipped in there with a cheeky offer and got it. I've been getting at it with the grinder ever since it arrived and now I know why getting cylinder heads modified is so expensive! It is very labour intensive work. My intentions are to port match the head to the manifold and to smooth the ports out and finish them with 60 grit paper to promote fuel atomisation. I will polish the exhaust ports and chambers to prevent carbon build up and then I will get 3 angle valve seats done on the valves and seats. At the moment I am dealing with the port around the valve guide which is heavily enclosed by the port (see the pictures). It is still work in progress and it is still far from finished!

Port Matching

2006-09-11T07:59:00.001Z

I've not had much to do recently on the car and I've just been enjoying using it but recently a problem has reared its ugly head!

I'd been noticing quite a petrol smell when using the car over the last few days but hadn't managed to pin it down until the other day. I suspected the float chambers were leaking petrol but hadn't seen them actually do it until the other day when the right hand carb managed to overflow while I was watching. Having recently had a new fuel pump, I think the increased pressure is overcoming the valves and causing petrol to spill from the overflow. New needle valves have been ordered and I will also try putting a few gaskets between the fuel pump and block to turn the pressure down a bit.

I've also recently started reading a lot about port matching and other cylinder head work. It looks like it'd cost big bucks to get done professionally so I thought why not give it a go at home on an old inlet manifold, then I can get a second hand head and have a go with that! So I started yesterday with the port matching. This boils down to getting the size of the ports on the manifold the same as those on the head. I decided the easiest way to do it would be to enlarge both to the size of the gasket holes. The inlet manifold is already dowled on the Spitfire 1500 so that made life easier to start with. Then I used blue marker around the holes in the manifold where it attaches to the head and fitted the gasket with some bolts through the dowel holes. I could then scribe around the edge of the gasket and see how much material needed removing to bring the manifold holes to just under the size of the gasket holes.

Gradually I have been working the inlet manifold out to the size of the gasket and now I just need to smooth and polish the inside of it as much as possible. Anyway after a few hours with some cutting stones they all looked like this!

Now all I need is a cheap cylinder head of ebay so I can get started on that without worrying too much if it all goes wrong!

Horn Push Sorted!

2006-08-29T19:09:00.001Z

I fixed the horn push today. After posting on the Club Triumph forum it seemed that virtually nobody has made a Mountney horn push work! I have and here's how I did it! Basically I didn't bother soldering a wire between the 'pencil connector' and the horn push, instead I drilled out the rivet holding the crimp connector on the back of the push and instead rivited a strip on metal along the back along with another rivet to keep it from spinning round. This makes contact with the 'pencil connector' and completes the circuit when the horn is pressed. Job done!

All done!

2006-08-28T14:12:00.000Z

So after all the years of messing about with engines, exhausts, suspension, dashboards, brakes, overdrives and carbs its finally drivable! I went to pick up the car from Karl on Saturday and drove it back home, stopping only to tax it at the post office!

It drives beautifully and the modifications have made it very different to drive to how it was before in both a good and a bad way! On smooth roads the 380lb springs and AVO dampers mean it handles amazingly and goes exactly where it's pointed without leaning at all, but on bumpy roads it really is spine jarring and it really crashes into potholes. The red Polybushes also transmit much more feedback through the steering and chassis. I can literally feel white lines in the road when I run over them!

The 12" Mountney steering wheel means I can finally get my legs in properly and the steering dosen't seem to have got noticably heavier. It looks great but I'm having a bit of a job getting the horn push to work! Karl gave it his best go, soldering a wire from the push to the 'pencil connector' (the way recommended by most of the people I asked on the Club Triumph forum) but the pressure of the spring keeps popping the horn push out of the steering wheel so watch this space for a better solution!

The exhaust is looking pretty good too! It's not too loud when coasting but has a lovely throaty roar when accelerating hard! When I get round to redoing the mounts I will also move the tailpipe out a bit as my back bumper gets covered in soot around the part where the exhaust exits!

With all the mechanicals now done it must be time to start considering what to do about the bodywork! The current paint looks awful and the floors need replacing so it looks like it might be time to learn how to weld and spray!

MOT Passed!

2006-08-25T19:19:00.001Z

I was delighted to get an email from Karl this morning to tell me that I've now got an MOT'd Spitfire! He added that is goes really well and handles nicely too (now the tracking's been done!). He's was still trying to find the origins of an oil leak when I called him but told me he'd managed to fit the 12" steering wheel which I couldn't get it to seat properly on the splines. Apparently I didn't have enough column poking through or a big enough washer to get it to fit properly! He's also fitted the longer bolts I ordered from John Wolfe and sorted the brakes which needed adjusting at the back and bleeding.

In other Spitfire news, I have had a rethink about how the exhaust back box attaches to the car and now I intend to mount it differently thanks to advice given on the Club Triumph message forum. I will now be using an exhaust 'bobbin' bolted to the floor and a small bracket bolted to that to mount the silencer up to. Should pull the thing closer to the bottom of the car and stop me worrying about speedbumps!

Caught on Camera

2006-08-21T21:32:00.000Z

Noticed this picture on Karls blog today! Like he says, he's got the best job in the world!

Spitfire at the Showcase

2006-08-14T14:55:00.000Z

I went to the Showcase cinema in Walsall last night to see 'Miami Vice', a film which seemed to have none of the charisma of the 80's TV series but lots of fast cars and boats instead. The result looked like a two hour long music video and I wasn't impressed. My mood was improved no end however, when I saw a Spitfire 1500 in the car park next to my everyday Golf. It was is seemingly excellent condition and advertised that it was for sale for £3000. Wierdly, it was exactly the same colour (Tahiti blue) and had exactly the same beige interior! The only real difference was that this other car had been fitted with wire wheels, something which I really hate!

I can't understand why a small part of the Triumph world loves to do this to a poor old Spit. I mean wire wheels look great on the early Triumphs but in '76, when the 1500's came out they were old fashioned. Its like ripping the alloys of a BMW and whacking steels on there - it just dosen't make sense! Stuff like luggage racks on the boot, chrome dashpot covers and wheel embelishers are also horrific and should never be seen!

Nearly done!

2006-08-12T16:45:00.000Z

I got an email last week from Karl asking if he could have the car another week. It worked out quite conveniently as I needed to spend the weekend flat hunting! Apparently though the longer 'Wolfitt spec' wishbone bolts are in place and there's just a few more jobs left to do before it's MOT!

In 'other news' I have spent a few days trying out a few things with Carbon-fibre. I saw an article in Practical Perfprmance Car (http://www.ppcmag.co.uk) about it where they talked about a few techniques for working with it. I had been hoping to make a few bits and bobs from the black stuff and bought about 0.5 sq metres on Ebay at a bargain price to experiment with!

All I can say is that it's a lot harder than it looks and whilst I have only made a few small test pieces I have realised that it takes a lot of skill to avoid 'pinholes' (air bubbles in the resin surface). I have also had the frustrating experience of having a piece jam solid in the mold (despite a massive polishing effort). It was the height of frustrating that I destroyed the mold and subsequently the piece in my effort to seperate the two! I will be investing in higher quality resin and repeating the process when I feel mentally strong enough and when the effects of the resin smell have worn off!

Future Plans

2006-08-09T16:31:00.000Z

I suppose that with the car away from me for so long I've had a chance to think about what I want to get round to doing. For starters, I'd like to get the CD changer mounted up properly in the boot and I will make some aluminium or carbon-fibre brackets to do just that. I'd also like to move the Infinity speakers that were fitted by the previous owner to somewhere out of sight under the dashboard. That'd leave me with two big holes in the rear cockpit board, giving me with no choice but to ditch it and replace it with an identically shaped peice of aluminium (with plastic edging to keep it looking 'factory').

I'd also like to get the rear suspension sorted out with a new rear spring and lowering block and some new AVO's along with a few polybushes!

Then there's which wheels to choose. I think the 5.5J GT6 steels look good, as do Compomotive ML's, but then everyone's got Minilite style wheels. I also like Revolutons too but I dont think the 4 spoke design looks right on square tail Spitfires somehow, I think it looks a bit wierd although they look awesome on GT6's.

Of course I eventually want to get round to a total respray in the original Tahiti Blue but thats looking a long way off at the moment!

If only I had the time and the money!

MOT Time!

2006-08-03T16:21:00.000Z

I went over see to Karl this morning with the V5 for the Spitfire so that he can put it through the MOT next week. As you'd expect there was some nice machinery around, including a nice looking Moss kit car that had apparently just been bought off ebay and a green Mk3 Spitfire. Of course I checked out Karls GT6 too which was looking very tasty indeed on black Revolutions!

The Spitfire should be back on the road soon! I can't wait!

Throttle pedal

2006-07-28T20:02:00.001Z

With the car at Karl Dandridge Triumph I don't have anything to play with, so I decided to clean up and repaint an accelerator pedal I bought of Ebay a few days ago. It struck as I was sanding it that it was suprisingly heavy and could be easily lightened with a few holes here and there. I was aiming to keep it looking 'factory' so I didn't make the holes too large! A few hours later and it was looking good in matt black with the face of the pedal sanded smooth and laquered (although it remains to be seen how long that'll last!).

Off to Karl Dandridge's!

2006-06-22T20:24:00.000Z

Well Andy Smith came and picked the car up yesterday evening to take it off to Karl Dandridge Triumph (www.kdtriumph.com) where Karl's going to weld up the chassis and the passenger floorpan and get it ready for an MOT. Should be hitting the road again soon!

Outside!

2006-06-19T21:10:00.000Z

Finally rolled my car back out onto the drive today! I spent the last few days derusting and respraying the rear panel. I also replaced all of the cracked light lenses with some from the 4 light units I bought of Ebay! I've now got enough rear light spares to last the rest of my life! I also took the time to cut the ends off my front number plate. Because I only have a six digit plate theres a few spare centimetres on either side so I removed them to get more cool air through the radiator. It looked pretty cool so I did the back too which improved the look no end. The rear number plate was comically large before and made the back of the car look a bit unbalanced. Now it looks better and I saved a few grams too!