Now seems like a good time to do a write-up of the work i've been doing on my spitfire over the last 18 months, as it's due to go in for majour repair and restoration in the coming weeks, meaning progress should be reasonably quick by build thread standards.
I turned 18 last year, and as an early present i was given the oppoutuninty to have a spitfire of my choosing (within reason) So here is the 'tidy' little gem i picked up last spring.
We travelled from sussex up to Norfolk to see the car and as is always the curse with these things i seemed to fall in love with it the moment i set eyes on the shiny red paint. now, momentarily glazed over i looked over the car checking the usual places for filler/rust/cardboard and possibly some solid metal! after owning the car for over a year now i would advise caution at this stage, i was a little afraid to remove interior parts while viewing as it seemed a bit rude, but it's cost me dearly further down the line, that's not saying they are all going to be rotten but this car was solid, but still a mess.
After a bit of negotiation the car was ours and we had scheduled to pick it up a week later.
the car was sold to me with:
-tubular rollbar
-a lovely (if a bit chipped) white hardtop
-a duel scorpion full stainless exhaust
-single dcoe 45 weber carb (poop)
-Triumphtune intake manifold
-minitour 13" wheels
-brembo front vented rotors
-oil cooler
-kenlowe fan
-mild upgrade cam (seems maybe a bit hotter than the car needs but pulls healthily)
-lightened flywheel
-spax adjustable dampers all the way round
-weird 90's stereo with some of the most questionable speaker wiring i have ever seen and probably will ever see.
- and in 1977 the car came with the optional 4 speed with overdrive, as well as the Luxury pack: stainless steel driver's door mirror, inertia-reel seat belts, head rests, map light, center arm rest, dipping rear view mirror. puts Bentley to shame, it really does.
So the journey home started, the spit piloted by my mother was driven many hundreds of miles as it's first real drive in over a year, and apart from a few things it apparently drove ok.
-the engine was POWERFUL but very lumpy at idle. shaking the car noticeably in comical british leyland fanfare the trim was falling off the interior.
-the car liked to stay at high revs and was sometimes a bit of a handful to bring down.
-the hardtop leaked like a sieve
-the doors had dropped slightly, leading to us thinking the hinges were shot.
the car safely arrived back in sussex and was promptly gone over and a few items remedied. one of which was the digusting engine bay, truly grimy and nasty. put the engine builders work to shame. so on with the gunk cleaner some spanners and brush.
After a few months of happy pottering about had passed the engine started to develop a misfire above 3000rpm, it was a very specific miss, very spluttery. and it killed all the power. so i checked the ignition system over to see if the culprit could be visually found, and it seemed the distributor has an unreasonable amount of play. so i bought an accuspark setup to replace everything, new dizzy/coil/leads/plugs and wired it all up. fired right up and seemed to transform the car. but after maybe 20 miles more driving the car became very lumpy and bad to drive. it suddenly died while rolling into the driveway (lucky escape there) and i knew it wasn't going to be good.
Pulled the plugs to find they were sooted right up, and one of them had the soot bridging the gap. not good, fueling's out.
Decided to give the weber a good inspection and tune up so i took the car to the local garage, he told me the plugs i had were junk (accuspark tri prong) and he'd have a go at balancing the sides and tuning the carb. after a few days i got the call telling me the weber needed a full rebuild and it was going to cost me £250 to get done. balls.
so i decided to take things into my own hands, learned how to service and rebuild one on my own, and gave it a go. after i pulled the little interior filter this is what i found.
Ahh, makes you wonder why the mechanic didn't check there first. but no worries i was going to do this and get it right.
cue 2 days of anorak levels of cleanliness and precision, and i had the whole thing rebuilt. but after reading up some stuff about the reverse flow spit head i decided the best idea would be to sell the weber and manifold and refurbish a proper set of 1500 su's, so thats what i did, bought, stripped, cleaned rebuilt and tuned. flawless, well happy.
From this :
To this!
I turned 18 last year, and as an early present i was given the oppoutuninty to have a spitfire of my choosing (within reason) So here is the 'tidy' little gem i picked up last spring.
We travelled from sussex up to Norfolk to see the car and as is always the curse with these things i seemed to fall in love with it the moment i set eyes on the shiny red paint. now, momentarily glazed over i looked over the car checking the usual places for filler/rust/cardboard and possibly some solid metal! after owning the car for over a year now i would advise caution at this stage, i was a little afraid to remove interior parts while viewing as it seemed a bit rude, but it's cost me dearly further down the line, that's not saying they are all going to be rotten but this car was solid, but still a mess.
After a bit of negotiation the car was ours and we had scheduled to pick it up a week later.
the car was sold to me with:
-tubular rollbar
-a lovely (if a bit chipped) white hardtop
-a duel scorpion full stainless exhaust
-single dcoe 45 weber carb (poop)
-Triumphtune intake manifold
-minitour 13" wheels
-brembo front vented rotors
-oil cooler
-kenlowe fan
-mild upgrade cam (seems maybe a bit hotter than the car needs but pulls healthily)
-lightened flywheel
-spax adjustable dampers all the way round
-weird 90's stereo with some of the most questionable speaker wiring i have ever seen and probably will ever see.
- and in 1977 the car came with the optional 4 speed with overdrive, as well as the Luxury pack: stainless steel driver's door mirror, inertia-reel seat belts, head rests, map light, center arm rest, dipping rear view mirror. puts Bentley to shame, it really does.
So the journey home started, the spit piloted by my mother was driven many hundreds of miles as it's first real drive in over a year, and apart from a few things it apparently drove ok.
-the engine was POWERFUL but very lumpy at idle. shaking the car noticeably in comical british leyland fanfare the trim was falling off the interior.
-the car liked to stay at high revs and was sometimes a bit of a handful to bring down.
-the hardtop leaked like a sieve
-the doors had dropped slightly, leading to us thinking the hinges were shot.
the car safely arrived back in sussex and was promptly gone over and a few items remedied. one of which was the digusting engine bay, truly grimy and nasty. put the engine builders work to shame. so on with the gunk cleaner some spanners and brush.
After a few months of happy pottering about had passed the engine started to develop a misfire above 3000rpm, it was a very specific miss, very spluttery. and it killed all the power. so i checked the ignition system over to see if the culprit could be visually found, and it seemed the distributor has an unreasonable amount of play. so i bought an accuspark setup to replace everything, new dizzy/coil/leads/plugs and wired it all up. fired right up and seemed to transform the car. but after maybe 20 miles more driving the car became very lumpy and bad to drive. it suddenly died while rolling into the driveway (lucky escape there) and i knew it wasn't going to be good.
Pulled the plugs to find they were sooted right up, and one of them had the soot bridging the gap. not good, fueling's out.
Decided to give the weber a good inspection and tune up so i took the car to the local garage, he told me the plugs i had were junk (accuspark tri prong) and he'd have a go at balancing the sides and tuning the carb. after a few days i got the call telling me the weber needed a full rebuild and it was going to cost me £250 to get done. balls.
so i decided to take things into my own hands, learned how to service and rebuild one on my own, and gave it a go. after i pulled the little interior filter this is what i found.
Ahh, makes you wonder why the mechanic didn't check there first. but no worries i was going to do this and get it right.
cue 2 days of anorak levels of cleanliness and precision, and i had the whole thing rebuilt. but after reading up some stuff about the reverse flow spit head i decided the best idea would be to sell the weber and manifold and refurbish a proper set of 1500 su's, so thats what i did, bought, stripped, cleaned rebuilt and tuned. flawless, well happy.
From this :
To this!
