Cylinder Head Start

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

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!

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!

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!

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

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

Spitfire at the Showcase

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!

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

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!

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

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!

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!

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!

Steering Wheel

My latest Ebay purchase is a 12" Mountney steering wheel with solid black spokes. I went to pick it up locally and spent ages looking for the right house. Might have known it'd be the one with the bright pink race spec Toyota outside it!

I'm sure there are people who'll be thinking 12" is too small but then they're not 6 foot 5 and struggling to drive the thing without hands meeting knees!

Unfortunatly I haven't been able to fit it because the boss supplied by the TSSC dosen't seem to fit!? Its too loose on the splines and when the nut's tightened up it wobbles, not really good enough on a steering wheel!

Wolfitt Racing parts

I came across John Wolfe's Triumph pages a while back http://www.btinternet.com/~jon.wolfe/) and instantly decided to add a few of his parts to the 'parts needed' list. The original lower wishbone bolts have a threaded part that can easily get worn by the mounting bracket. Wolfitt racing bolts are longer, to stop that happening, and a total bargain at only £3.50! I was also going to get a pair of John's excellent looking anti roll bar drop links but they were out of stock till April. I found a standard pair that I bought a while back from Canley Classics so they'll have to do for the time being!