Spitfire Makeover (1)

There's nothing much to report on the Saloon just yet, but work has started again in earnest and there'll be lots of stuff happening soon...

I mentioned in an earlier post that 2013 is the tenth anniversary of the getting the Spitfire back on the road, and that the anniversary had got me thinking about making some changes to the (very few) things that I'm not entirely happy with. I also decided that it was high time to catch up with some things that I never got round to doing.

First on the list of things that I never got round to doing was sorting out the catch tank for the rocker cover breather. I bought the catch tank four or five years ago only to find that it was somewhat bigger than I had envisaged and that it wouldn't fit where I had planned to put it. At the time I was completely stumped so the catch tank got dumped at the back of a garage shelf and forgotten about.

It was when I got round to thinking about the first thing on my list of the very few things I'm not entirely happy with that I had a Eureka moment. I just happened to notice that there appeared to be space to fit the catch tank on the front of the O/S engine valence. What I was actually contemplating at the time was replacing the polished aluminium engine valances and radiator cowl that I'd had on the car since it was rebuilt with a set of Tony Dunn's louvred valances - just why a solution for the catch tank popped into my head at that time is a complete mystery.

With the help of a couple of strips of gaffer tape, a quick mock up confirmed that the tank would indeed fit very neatly on the front of the valance. There was, however, a problem:

But having recently seen some very fine examples of fabrication and TIG welding on a Club Triumph forum thread I reckoned I knew someone who could get it sorted for me and I wasn't wrong. It took less than a week for Tim Ward to sort it to my specification and get it back to me. Top job!

I fitted it at the same time as I fitted the new engine valences and radiator cowl from Tony Dunn:

These really are top notch bits of kit. I reckon the radiator cowl is a big improvement over the previous one. It's a much snugger fit and I reckon it does actually do a better job of getting air through the radiator.

And I much prefer the subtler look of the black powder coat compared to the polished aluminium.

When I was swapping the valances and cowl I discovered a hard-packed mass of crud, mostly leaves and, oddly enough, newspaper and paper tissues jammed into the space between the oil cooler and the radiator. Also, the front of the oil cooler, which sits in front of the bottom of the radiator, was caked in gunge.

Believe it or not, with that lot cleaned up and the louvred valances and new cowl fitted the Spitfire is actually running a tad cooler than it had been. It's early days yet, and I'm not sure what the biggest contributor is likely to be, but there does appear to have been a small but worthwhile change for the better!

Next up for the Spitfire is to get the progressive front springs that I've had sitting in the garage for two years fitted and to get the MX-5 seats out and the proper Spitfire seats in. Unfortunately, the latter requires that I finish refurbishing the seats and I haven't started yet...

Land Rover, Weather and Spitfire Fuel Pump Woes

It hasn't been the best of starts to 2013. Not long after the first road trip of the year in the Spitfire back in February (see previous blog post) I started work on our Land Rover Defender's suspension. The Defender has done a lot of off-loading in the last eight years and its suspension has been needing a bit of TLC for while. All four shock absorbers had reached the point where they weren't doing very much damping at all and the rears, in particular, were in very poor condition and not that far from starting to rust through. I had decided to strip and rebuild the entire suspension replacing all four shocks and all the bushes. As usual with this sort of thing, it ended up being a much bigger job than originally planned. The rear upper shock mounts, the front turrets and a lot of other miscellaneous bits and pieces were in such poor condition than I ended up binning them. I decided to use the "opportunity" to fit a Gywn Lewis 4x4 Challenge Kit (with Rough Country shocks from Llama 4x4). Thanks to this, and the Baltic weather that set in not long after I started, what I expected to get finished in two or three weekends has taken all of two and half months to complete.

The end result was quite an impressive collection of scrap metal:

In the middle of all of this - at the end of March - we were looking forward to the Spring Fell Run organised by the Cumbrian TSSC. Unfortunately, the day that we were supposed to be travelling down to Cumbria was the day that ended with 15-feet deep snowdrifts on the A595! It wasn't particularly bad in central Scotland but much of the route we would have had to take ended up suffering severe problems. Needless to say we decided to stay at home and as it turned out the event had to be cancelled (for the first time ever I believe). There are tentative plans to run the event later in the year, in Autumn, and if it happens we'll be there!

A month later we were looking forward to CCHMSC's Argyll Classic event, if for no other reason than it was to be the first classic car event to visit the newly resurfaced Rest and Be Thankful hillclimb. I spent a couple of evenings the week before the event fettling the Spitfire. It was all was going so well. The final shakedown was to be a run into work on the Friday. I got into the Spit, turned the ignition on - and silence! When you have an electric fuel pump complete and utter silence isn't a good thing! I had to leave it and jump in the modern to get to work. Frantic tinkering later in the day confirmed that the fuel pump was dead and that there was no way I was going to get it sorted out in time for Sunday. So, we had to miss our second event of 2013...

The fuel pump is a Facet Red Top and we were already on our second one. The first was replaced when it started to become unreliable in 2007 after five years use, having covered 11k miles. The second one has lasted six years and 11.5k miles. Unlike the first one, which was replaced when it became intermittent, there were no warning signs that the second one was about to go. The failure rate seems unusually high and this got me thinking about the installation. It's somewhat unusual, with the pump mounted below the fuel tank, horizontally, but upside down, tucked up beside the chassis at the front of the N/S rear wheel arch. I started to wonder if there might be an issue with the installation.

I asked the question in the Club Triumph forum which elicited some useful information and suggestions. Info on Facet's own web site and numerous other sources confirmed that horizontal mounting was perfectly OK but I couldn't find any reference to what effect (if any) the upside down orientation might have. So I asked the question directly of Facet:

This is an installation question. I am trying to establish if upside down horizontal mounting as per the attached photograph is likely to cause any operational or long term reliability problems with Facet Red Top electric fuel pumps. It has been suggested that horizontal mounting with connections pointing downwards may result in the pump not being able to clear all its air which in turn may result in the pump running hotter than it should. Would it be advisable to re-engineer the installation so that the pump is mounted the right way up?

Within 24 hours I got the following reply:

Thank you for your email and interest in Facet fuel pumps. I have never seen anyone mount the fuel pump in this way buy I don’t believe it will harm the pump or cause it to function improperly.

Having got the new Red Top installed I've decided to leave it as is for the time being and get on with using the car.

It would be a fairly simple exercise, however, to re-engineer the installation to flip the pump the right way up by fabricating two brackets and mounting the pump to the brackets rather than the underside of the floor. I might just do this later in the year when I have a spare weekend.

So, hopefully, it'll be third time lucky and we'll actually get to the start of the next event in our calendar - the CCHMSC/Club Triumph International Auto Ecosse at the beginning of June!

It goes without saying that not much has been done on the Saloon during the last two months! I've not been completely idle however. We travelled down to Coventry at the beginning of March for the Triumph International Spares Day at Stoneleigh and also to visit Canley Classics on the Saturday morning to collect an original OE N/S middle sill for the Saloon from Dave Pearson. At Dave's suggestion we visited the Coventry Transport Museum on the Saturday afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed it. We spent about four hours there then enjoyed a pleasant walk through the city centre visiting the Cathedral and Spon Street. Didn't find anything of interest at Stoneleigh on the Sunday but the trip was worth it just to get the OE N/S middle sill.

OE O/S sills seem to be much rarer beasts so I've decided to go with repro items and got O/S full inner and full outer repro sills courtesy of Rimmer's New Year sale. I believe that the repro full outer sill is an Earlpart item and it's very good indeed. Not sure of the provenance of the full inner sill but it's also very good.

This year's purchases for the Saloon so far, from top to bottom: Repro O/S inner sill; OE N/S middle sill, Repro full O/S outer sill.

I now have a full set of OE sills for the N/S, whereas the O/S sills will all be repro parts. It'll be interesting to see how they go on and whether or not there are any significant differences between fitting the OE sills and the repro sills.

I've decided that the sills that are currently in primer, and also the OE middle sill, will be going for blasting to get them back to bare metal so that I can paint them with modern weld through etch primer before fitting them. I've found a place fairly local to me that can do this and - would you believe it - the chap I'm speaking to is also restoring a 2000 Saloon. I wasn't expecting that!

Out and about

No further progress to report on the Saloon. The last two weekends have been mostly taken up with changing the alternator on our Volvo V40. A fairly straightforward job but a complete PITA compared to working on the Triumphs - primarily because of all the stuff that has to be either removed or shifted out of the way just to get access to the alternator. It didn't help that it was the first time I've had to do anything on the Volvo and I didn't know my way around. I reckon I could do it in a couple of hours now...

Unfortunately the Saloon's going to have to wait a while yet because the next two weekends will have to have be spent stripping and rebuilding the suspension on the Land Rover.

Got the Volvo finished yesterday morning and found myself pondering over the Spitfire. I wasn't intending to tax it until the start of March but it was such a glorious day I just couldn't resist it. A quick trip to the Post Office and a couple of hours later the cobwebs were well and truly blown away.

And when we woke up to another glorious day this morning, well, it was just too good an opportunity to miss. The first road trip of the 2013 was on and we set off after an early lunch. Decided to do one of my favourite short runs down to Moffat. A71 from Livingston to Edinburgh City Bypass, then A702 to West Linton, cut across to the A701, turn off at Tweedsmuir and go over the hills past Talla and Meggat reservoirs to join the A708 at St Mary's Loch, then to Moffat via the Grey Mare's Tail.

Decided to travel light with just an iPhone 5 and I wasn't expecting to get any decent pics - but it looks like the iPhone 5 has a better camera in it than I thought!

The climb up from Talla reservoir.

Parked up at Meggat reservoir.

Meggat reservoir.

When we got to Moffat we parked up at the boating pond, swapped the driving shoes for walking boots and decided to partake of some of these:

Finally, we left Moffat going north on A701, past the Devil's Beef Tub, Tweedsmuir and Broughton, then cut across onto the A721 to pick up the A70 at Carnwath, then the B7008 to West Calder and the A71 again back to Livingston.

The Spitfire is running as sweet as a nut at the moment!

A brilliant day out!

The Fall and Rise of a Spitfire (Part 2)

A lot of good stuff seemed to happen after I dumped left the Spitfire with its caring new owner in 1992. I got married, moved into a bigger house that had - luxury of luxuries - its own driveway and garage. For a few years I was happy enough driving around in extremely competent modern cars.

Then one day I realised that I'd stopped driving for fun. On a nice evening or during the weekend I'd often jump in the Spitfire and drive somewhere just for the sake of it. But I had no interest whatsoever in doing that in our modern cars. Ever since I've known my wife she's had a company car, which means that we've always had the fallback of one sensible car that we can rely on without it needing any outlay from us. Also, I knew from my visits to Orkney that my old Spitfire was still there. Robert had only got as far as separating the tub and chassis, and had made some repairs to the chassis. Can you see where this is heading...?

Then, in 1999 my parents decided to move from Moffat to Orkney. I found myself hiring a Luton van to move their possessions. I'm really not sure what was going on in my head, but at some point I found myself wondering if the Spitfire - which I knew to be in bits - would fit in the back of the empty van for the return trip! I reckoned it would, and a phone call confirmed that it was mine again if I wanted it.

Packed up and ready to come home, September 1999.

Next thing I knew I was unloading it into our garage. I'd have laughed out loud if anyone had predicted this back in 1992. And it would have made far more sense just to buy a decent roadworthy Spitfire that I could have driven straightaway, but I've never been one for always taking the easy road. As stupid as it may seem, after a seven-year break, it felt like unfinished business.

The original plan to restore it myself as a fairly standard 1500 went out of the window in next to no time. I'd always had a hankering for a GT6 but didn't want to forego the soft top - so why not drop a six-pot in it? I'd always wanted one in dark blue or BRG - so why not change the colour? Maybe I'd use it a lot for track days and hill-climbs - so why not make it a 2.5 and tune it up a bit? This is going to be an awful lot of work - so why not get someone to do it for me? A few chats with Chic Doig later he was rebuilding a very non-standard Spitfire for me! Other than building up the rolling chassis, which I did in our garage (after Chic Doig had painted it), Chic Doig did all of the work.

Rolling chassis finished, April 2001.

Engine build / bench test, May 2001.

Replacement tub, Californian import, May 2001.

The original tub turned out to be a total basket case!

Engine mounted in chassis, June 2001.

Bodywork, June 2002.

In March 2003, it was all done and back home:

It ended up with a 2.5 straight-six bored out to 2.7 with TriumphTune Sprint 90 camshaft and Stage III head, triple Weber 40s; GT6 turrets and front suspension with 330lb springs, 1-inch anti-roll bar, 4-pot vented front disks, GT6 drums on the rear; close ratio gear set in a 3-rail box, J-Type overdrive and 3.63 diff with Quaiffe LSD. Tyres were 185/60-13s on 5.5 inch AlleyCat slog mags. The seats are Mazda MX-5 and the paint is a metallic BRG.

So, on the whole a fairly standard 6-pot conversion -- but, in my opinion, very well put together.

I ended up spending a lot more on it than I originally planned, but I don't regret it one bit! It goes like stink and handles well. It's comfortable and great fun to drive.

The only significant change to the car since 2003 was the replacement of the 6-2-1 manifold and wheelbarrow twin exhaust with a bespoke Gareth Thomas 6-3-1 manifold and exhaust system in 2008. It improved performance and reduced the noise levels considerably - the noise reduction was something I'd specifically asked for and it was achieved by fitting a centre silencer and a bespoke rear box.

The intention I had of using the Spitfire for track days and hill-climbs has never really come to anything. Nowadays, it's used purely as a road car - for touring mostly. With this in mind and now that it's been back on the road for nearly ten years I've been taking stock and plan to experiment with a few things this year to see if I can make it a better road car.

Firstly - tyres. The 185/60-13s have always given a very harsh ride and while they've worked extremely well on the few occasions I've had the car out on local sprint circuits I've come to the conclusion that I don't like them for normal road use. When the last set of 185/60-13s all decided to wear out at the same time in September last year I replaced them with 165/70-13s. I've not done a lot of miles since the 165/70-13s were fitted, but the ride quality is definitely much improved and the rear suspension works much better. I also plan to try out 175/70-13s on a set of Weller Sport 13 x 6 inch wheels I acquired last year and will make a decision regarding which I want to keep later in the year.

Secondly - if I have a criticism of the handling then it is that the Spitfire has a tendency to yump excessively on B-roads. I've got a pair of higher-rated progressive front springs which I'm going to fit to see if they improve matters.

Lastly - seats. The MX-5 seats are exceptionally comfortable and they also served a purpose in 2003-2005 when I was having some lower-back problems. However, the driving position is wrong - just slightly too high and slightly too far forward - and I've never quite been able to get used to it. So I'm currently renovating a pair of late Spitfire 1500 recliner headrest seats and I'll be fitting them in the next month or so to see how I get on with them. I managed to acquire a good pair of seat frames on eBay and with Dave Kent's help managed to get them up to Scotland eventually. I'm just waiting for new foams and leather covers to arrive from Park Lane Classics.

Other than the above the plan is to use the Spitfire as often as we can and get as much enjoyment out of it as we can. We're keeping our fingers crossed for better weather than we got last year!

The Fall and Rise of a Spitfire (Part 1)

The combination of two week's intense hibernation over Christmas and New Year and the very cold weather we're having at the moment has completely stalled progress on the Saloon. I'm quite a bit behind where I wanted to be by now and I really must make an effort to catch up.

However, I have managed to procure a few more panels for the Saloon. Thanks are due to Dave Pearson who has come up with an OE N/S sill strengthener (middle sill) and I'll be collecting it when we're down at Stoneleigh. That means I will have managed to acquire a full set of N/S OE sills. O/S inner and full outer sills arrived today from Rimmers (their January "VAT-free" pricing sale helping considerably with these).

Anyway, with not having much to say about the Saloon I thought I'd witter on about our Spitfire for a bit...

For as long as I can remember I've been a "Triumph man"! Growing up in the '60s and '70s for me Triumph cars, especially their styling, always stood out from the crowd. Eventually I settled on hankering after a Spitfire or GT6 - the GT6, especially, was a stunning little car back in the day (and it still is).

But owning a car of my own was always out of reach until I (eventually) graduated from University and started working full-time in 1985. The first thing I did when the monthly wage packet started coming in was to go looking for a Triumph. I'd decided that I wanted a convertible so I went looking for a Spitfire. After a few false starts, including a huge disappointment over a beautiful 1980 Delft Blue 1500 that I missed by a matter of minutes, I found a nice-looking 1978 Inca Yellow 1500 in seemingly good condition nearby in Leith, and the deal was done.

I still have that car to this day - although, it has to be said, there have been a few ups and downs along the way!

Somewhere in Fife, July 1986.

Back then the Spitfire was my daily driver, and at the weekends and during holidays it was going all over Scotland - from Orkney to the Borders on a regular basis. I loved it!

It wasn't long before mechanical niggles started to appear. Back then I know absolutely nothing about working on or maintaining cars. But I had a run in with the local BL main dealer after they completely botched the first job I asked them to do on the Spitfire and at that point I decided it would be easier (and cheaper) if I maintained it myself! So, I bought myself a workshop manual and just got on with it! Rear wheel bearings, differential, gearbox, overdrive and - yes - a trunnion collapse all needed sorting in the first three years.

I wouldn't get away with doing this in the living room nowadays!

What was more worrying, although I didn't really appreciate it at the time, was that after a few months I noticed that some of the paint was starting to peel off revealing what appeared to be another layer of paint underneath. I wasn't savvy enough at the time to figure out what was going on, but being older and wiser nowadays I like to think that I would I spot a blow-over immediately! The reality was that the underlying condition of the car was really very poor. Just how bad it was wouldn't really become apparent for another couple of years when I decided to strip the paint off the sills to see what was there and found substantial amounts of filler, chicken wire and newspaper. I patched it up as best I could.

I also started to experiment with "improvements". All the usual stuff, most of it straight out of the TriumphTune catalogue - engine tweaks, “performance” manifold and exhaust, lowered and stiffened suspension, alloys wheels and low profile wide tyres. It was a mixed bag - some of it worked, some of it didn't. The handling definitely improved but the performance didn't to any great extent.

On the old road to the Broch of Gurness, Orkney, 1987.

1988 was a watershed year. Driving from Dunfermline to Kirkcaldy on a wet Saturday morning in July I lost the car on a bend on the coast road close to where the Seafield Colliery used to be. The car spun through 360 degrees and ended up wrapping itself around a lamp post on the other side of the road. The O/S rear wing was very badly damaged. The car was taken to Chic Doig’s place. But for the TSSC agreed value insurance it would have been written-off. It was problematic because other non-accident damaged parts of the car were in such poor condition that it didn’t make sense just to repair the accident damage. So a deal was done with the insurance company – they would pay for the repair of the accident damage and I would pay for the other work that was needed. Repairs to the O/S rear wing, O/S sills, boot lid, boot floor, rear bumper and rear suspension were covered by the insurance company while I paid for repairs to the N/S sills and a fibre-glass GT6 bonnet and fibre-glass front outriggers.

Getting fixed at Chic Doigs, 1988.

Chic Doic did a great job and there’s no doubt that without their help the Spitfire would have been a  goner. But for reasons which I’ve never really been able to articulate properly I was never really happy with the car after that. It just didn't feel right somehow.

I had bought my first house in 1988 and it was in need of some renovation and I was generally very busy with work throughout the late 80s. As a result I had very little time or money to spend on the Spitfire. It was still my daily driver and by 1990/1991 it was starting to suffer quite badly. The engine, in particular, was needing constant repairs to keep it going. Cylinder head gasket, piston rings and big end bearings (twice) were all done with the engine in situ. The second big end bearing change was done in late 1991, outside, in freezing conditions, lying on the ground on snow and ice! The floors, A- and B-posts and parts of the chassis and outriggers which hadn't been touched when the Spitfire was repaired after the crash in 1988 were also starting to deteriorate. At this point I really needed to stop using it as my daily driver, take it off the road and sort it properly - but I didn't have the time, the money or the inclination.

By 1992 I was thoroughly fed up with the constant tinkering that was needed to keep the Spitfire going. It was still going downhill. The last straw came when I took the car for an early MOT pre-inspection to see where things stood and was told that it would fail quite badly with a number of structural problems being identified. I had had enough - it had to go. I happened to mention this to my sister's partner in Orkney who had always had a hankering for a Spitfire and out of the blue we agreed a deal - he'd take the Spitfire off my hands with a view to restoring it, and for the payment of a small nominal sum he'd let me have a very solid VW Scirocco he happened to have lying about at the time.

So, in July 1992 I set off for Orkney on what I thought would be the last journey I'd ever make in the Spitfire. It went well, it made it all the way to Rousay without missing a beat. I handed it over to Robert and at that point in time I didn't want or expect to see it ever again.

The "last journey" - my late father took this picture of me driving

the Spitfire off the Orkney ferry, St Ola, in Stromness in July 1992.

And that, or so I thought, was that...

Angle grinder meltdown

There I was, Saturday morning last weekend, working away with a cup brush in the angle grinder, removing the remainder of the paint and rust from the front valance of the Saloon, when all of all sudden the angle grinder starts to feel very light, the cup brush stops spinning and I hear a noise very similar to a differential stripping! I end up with an angle grinder that still spins its armature up to full speed but has a completely static spindle. The spindle, in fact, had gone completely loose with seemingly no connection to the armature.

It became clear what had happened when I dissembled the angle grinder. The four machine screws that secure the spindle assembly to the gearcase had worked loose. This had allowed the spindle to partly disengage from the pinion stripping the pinion teeth in the process.

It wasn't a particularly cheap angle grinder so I reckoned it was worth saving if at all possible. And after a quick internet search, and £3.50 later (the cost of a replacement pinion), it's working again as of this morning!

I'm wondering if the vibration you often get when working with cup brushes fitted to angle grinders is what caused the screws to loosen? So that I don't get held up again when an angle grinder goes down I've bought a second, cheap (£17) angle grinder as backup. What I'll maybe do is use the cup brushes with the cheap angle grinder and keep the better angle grinder for working with flap discs, grinding or cutting.

Anyway - work resumes on the Saloon as of this afternoon!

Cleaning up well...

It all went rather baltic up here a couple of weeks ago making the garage a very unpleasant place to be! It warmed up considerably over the weekend though and I managed to get a full day on the Saloon today.

The front lamp panel has cleaned up very well and the valance isn't looking too bad so far.

What used to look like this...

...now looks like this:

Some minor pitting but no holes and I'll be able to remove all of the rust. This is much better than I was expecting. So much so that the Hydrate 80 I was planning to use isn't going to be needed here. Instead, once the clean-up's finished it'll be primed with Electrox then roughly finished as described in the previous blog with couple of coats of Triumph White.

As noted before the front valance will need repaired where it joins the inner wheel arch and front wing but that's all that's wrong with it. I'll deal with that when I'm sorting the floor, sills and wings next year.

Keeping my fingers crossed that it stays mild so that I can get a decent run at this and get it done!