The slightly delayed Christmas update

A very brief update today. I meant to post this before Christmas but never got around to it. I spent some time painting bits and pieces and fitting them. Its amazing how much time can be taken up with fiddly little tasks but the car now has a windscreen wiper rack and a complete set of rear lights.

Much more to do soon!

There's a car in my garage!

It's been a long time coming but there's finally a car in my garage again. I collected the race car from Yorkshire Triumphs a couple of weeks ago and got it back in the garage. The car now has several new fibreglass panels, a new roll cage, all new suspension (which doesn't fit properly, more on that in future), new wheels and a whole host of other minor fixes and modifications to the bodywork. Oh, and a new coat of paint too.

Since then I've been assessing what needs doing and in what order. So far I've worked out that the light bezels all need painting, I need a new fog light and new headlights and the driver's seat doesn't fit. At least the seat doesn't fit where I want it to. More thought is necessary on that one. I did manage to fit the rubber seal to the boot lid though so I guess that counts as progress!

I'll post some pictures of the car when I have chance to get it outside between bouts of rain, snow, hail and other such unpleasantness we seem to be experiencing recently. I did take one quick picture of the car just as it was loaded in the trailer ready to bring it home. It's looking rather resplendent in its brand new just-out-of-the-paint-shop finish.



In the meantime, I've been busy designing a complete new wiring loom with a lot of modifications and a modern fuse box. Here are some pictures of the custom dashboard I've been working on for a while now. I'm quite pleased with the way it's turned out although that gauge pod won't fit on top of the dashboard where I was hoping to put it. I'll have to redesign that.

Multitasking

Well summer is here and my Spitfire restoration project isn't. So what to do whilst waiting for my dismantled car to come back for reassembly?

Strip down another car of course!

I decided I should make use of the good weather to get the race car out of its trailer and start pulling it apart ready for a complete rebuild before it goes back on the track. I was trying to only tackle one project at once but since the road car seems to be taking rather longer than I'd hoped, this seemed like a good use of the time.

I took a few photographs towards the end of two days taking off almost everything I could remove on my own. Since then, with the assistance of Barry "the acclaim guru" McGrath another days work saw the engine, roll cage, seat and everything else removed. That included the diff. which had an interesting effect on the rear suspension when we put the rolling shell back in the trailer!

I have some more parts on order, including some new glass fibre panels to replace some of my well worn and just plain damaged ones. The next stage will be to get the chassis and shell checked over and repaired as necessary to give a good strong base on which to rebuild the car.

Here's the interior looking even more stripped out than usual

A surprisingly small pile of parts

The end of a long couple of days

Still looks quite complete from this angle!

Proof if proof were needed...

I had a couple of days off work last week and went to view progress on my car and to collect the parts that were missing from last time.

For those out there who were beginning to doubt that I still owned a Spitfire, here's a photo of the chassis back in the workshop and ready for rebuilding. Not a very good photo I'm afraid but I only had my mobile phone available at the time.



I also managed to find all the parts that we couldn't find last time I was there so I have brought some more back here for reconditioning.

Further progress is likely to be delayed by other work ahead of mine in the workshop (specifically a TR6 that is in just as many pieces as my Spitfire) but hopefully the chassis will be built up ready for work to commence on the body within the next few weeks/months.

In the meantime I've finished rebuilding the seats and retrimmed a number of other items so I have almost a complete interior now. Just a few bits and pieces left to do, particularly the instruments need a clean and the dash top panel too. Currently I'm having trouble getting this vinyl top panel to come clean but I'll have a visit to my local motoring supplies emporium during the week and see whether they have any suitable products for the task.

No news is good news...

...at least I hope it is because apparently the last time I posted anything here was February 14th 2010!

The reason for the lack of updates is that there's really nothing much to update. I've been concentrating on other things for the last year (is it really that long?) mostly relating to decorating the house, sorting the garden and other similar projects.

The rebuilding of the road car is still not progressing. Apparently I have a chassis reconditioned, rustproofed and powder coated but I've not seen it. The car is now entirely stripped down and I did manage to collect a whole lot of parts belonging to the car and bring them back home to sort out but there are a worrying number of bits missing. I'll have to have another trip and see if the remainder can be found.

The plan for this car now is for Karl to continue to build up the rolling shell whilst I deal with the interior and the drivetrain. To that end I've purchased a complete set of interior trim panels and carpets along with new seat foam. I'll be re-using the seat covers if all goes to plan as they were relatively new anyway. I've stripped one seat and repaired (and painted) the frame so the next job will be to rebuild that seat and see if I can make a decent job of it.

The van saw some use last summer getting me to various shows and events but it is eating batteries and I've so far been unable to track down what's wrong. Something in the electrical system is causing the engine battery to drain but the cause isn't as obvious as it should be. More work will be needed there once the weather improves enough for me to be able to work outside.

The race car hasn't moved for well over a year now and is unlikely to emerge from the trailer any time soon. I have lots of plans for this car but no money to fund them at the moment. At least it's under cover and out of the weather in the meantime.

Triumph stuff (yes, really)

Happy new year I guess! It seems to be February already. This blog was originally set up to report progress on my Triumph car related projects. It seems that I've reported on anything but that so far. Time for a change then!

Last year I was concentrating on making some progress with my American van project. There is still a lot of work to do on that but this year I'm hoping to mainly concentrate on the two Triumph Spitfires.

The first bit of good news is that there is finally a plan of action for restoring my road-going Spitfire. I visited Karl at KDTriumph last week to look at a bodyshell and some panels he's got for it. Some work is needed to bring the shell up to scratch but nothing excessive. We've decided that the best way to start on this restoration is to obtain a chassis and build up the body tub on that. Then all the other parts can be transferred over from the current car. So I just need to find a good chassis and a pair of rear wings before the real work begins.

In the meantime, I've started working on a rebuild of the race car. It's currently still built to the old TSSC class A regulations which means that even allowing for my lack of driving ability the car is noticeably slower than pretty much everything else I'm likely to be racing against.

The obvious answer to that is more power and less weight. To that end I've bought a second hand engine and a spare cylinder head and delivered them to Chris my friendly local engine builder. Chris will strip the engine to see what condition it's in. Later in the year I'll take the current engine out of the race car as well and talk to Chris about how to make a more powerful, but still reliable engine. The spare cylinder head is for a cunning plan to do some machining and experiment with what modifications might be possible. We fully expect to completely ruin this first head but should be able to learn what the limits are and what can be done with the "real" one.

I have some plans for reducing and redistributing weight in the car too but that will have to wait until the weather improves later in the year (assuming it ever does!) so I can get the car out on the driveway and work on it.

There has been some progress so far however in the form of a number of packages of shiny (and not-so-shiny) new parts arriving over the last couple of months.

The first arrivals were a couple of Rover 100 Metro driveshafts, one Volvo 340 driveshaft and various other parts needed to make up a pair of CV jointed driveshafts for the Spitfire.

Here's one of the Rover shafts minus its inner CV joint which isn't needed for the conversion and I've stripped off.



The biggest issue with converting to CV driveshafts in this way (apart from tracking down the Volvo 340 CV joints which are becoming very rare these days) is that the whole of the rear suspension of the Spitfire has to be converted to the Triumph "Rotoflex" design. This was never fitted to the Spitfire as standard but can be fitted relatively easily. Of course that means buying all the necessary replacement parts.

Rotoflex wishbones and uprights have a reputation for being heavy old lumps of cast iron. I've gone with the lighter (and much more expensive!) option of some aluminium alloy replacements. These arrived on Friday and are very nice indeed. I haven't actually weighed the parts but they are extremely light.

Here's a gratuitous photograph of a whole collection of shiny parts.



The more observant amongst you may notice that collection includes a front upright and hub as well as the rear parts. They are part of a kit that uses parts from a Caterham car to strengthen the front axle of the Spitfire. In particular the brass trunnion at the bottom of the upright is replaced with a ball joint. Bigger wheel bearings are also used and that hub is alloy and much lighter than standard.

Whilst I was on a spending spree, I bought some new brakes as well.




The disks are the same size as the standard ones but are vented for additional cooling. The callipers however are huge. The crusty looking thing in that photograph is a Girling type 14 calliper as fitted to the Spitfire as standard (In case you were wondering, that particular one is usually the doorstop in my garage which is why it's in such poor condition). The new callipers are about twice the size of the originals and have a proportionately larger pad area. They should provide some serious stopping ability. The only question being whether they will fit inside my current thirteen inch wheels!

Well that lot should keep me busy for a while! I'm just waiting for one CV joint boot and a couple of boot clamps to give me a complete kit of parts for the rear driveshaft and suspension conversion. I'll try and post more pictures here as I go along.

The end of an era

Big news this month. Those of you who know me will know that my everyday car for almost fifteen years has been a Citroen AX I bought new in 1995. Well after just over 226700 miles it's finally gone, replaced with something rather more modern and much more suited to the many miles of motorway driving I do every month.

Anyway, back to the project news...

The van got its new batteries fitted and everything works well. I also decided that the LED sidelights I'd fitted were never going to pass an MOT so I fitted some different ones that do the job a lot better. I've also made up some temporary front panels for the interior so I can mount the speakers and the control panel for the inverter. That meant I could finally test the stereo properly. It sounds rather good! There's a slight whistle in the audio circuit that is being introduced by the source select switch that I built. It's not a big problem but my knowledge of electronics doesn't extend to understanding what's causing it so it will have to stay as it is for now. The whistle is inaudible when there's any useful level of sound from the stereo anyway.

The van has also been down to the local garage again for a few last odds and ends finishing off and an MOT test. Hopefully that is the end of the original list of mechanical jobs I had. Next thing is to fit the new CB radio I have here and to try and get out and drive it more! (Oh yes, and it's still leaking copious amounts of rain in at the back :-( )

No news on anything else I'm afraid. I have plans to start a big project on the race car next year. More details on that once I've decided what I actually need to do.

Worryingly, I now have a car-shaped space in my garage again... maybe it's time I did something about the Spitfire road car too.