1975 Triumph Spitfire 1500 Restoration

Small update, The big day finally arrived on Wednesday (4/11/20)



That's right its back at home for the 1st time in over 2 years! After pushing it off the trailer I wasted no time at all and started putting a couple of bits back on to make it look a bit more like a car again starting with the rear lights, the chrome on the originals were quite badly pitted thankfully I managed to pick up these NOS units off of Ebay a couple of years ago fitted with new gaskets,



Nice, next up washer jets and wiper linkage so nice to be working with new/refurbished parts,



little things make the biggest difference in my eyes, after this I fitted the heater valve and coil on to a new stainless bracket, also fitted the little rubber drain flap that cost £5.50!



As mentioned previously the Cosmic Mk2s I brought didn't fit (still for sale if anyone is interested) and looking at it the original wheels were really letting the car down quick order later and we have my 2nd wheel choice



nice set of JBW Dunlop D1 reps wrapped in Yokohama Blue Earth tyres and they have completely changed the look of the car Well Chuffed.

only a small update but things are moving forward and hopefully more progress will be made this weekend.

Bit of an update on the progress I have made over the past week or so. Pretty much finished fitting up the bulkhead now just need to fit the starter solenoid, make some battery cables along with making another brake pipe for the brake master cylinder as I manage to kink it (numpty) Here's how things are looking







The eagle eyed among us may have noticed that a new wiring loom has also been fitted, although there was nothing obviously wrong with the old loom some of the connections looked a bit crispy so for my own piece of mind thought it was best to fit a new 1. For anybody thinking about buying a new loom I can highly recommend seems to be made to original spec and quality is great. I have trial fitted my dash to make routing the loom easier. very thankful that I took reference pictures now.





running the rear loom through the hole in the sill was a bit of a fiddle but managed it in the end and wired up the rear lights



1 thing I am a bit unsure of are these 2 wires here, thinking maybe cig socket or map reading light?



Next up exhaust. 1 evening after work I jacked the rear of the car up and set about trying to fit the exhaust starting at the manifold working my way back I manged to get the system loosely fitted in place



Having a bit of difficulty getting the rear box lined up properly it's sitting too high on the nearside and i can't get the offside any higher as the tailpipes hit the bodywork pretty sure the pipe welded on the box that goes onto the mid section isnt bent correctly I'll figure it out eventually.





Then come the moment i have been dreading so far... installing the windscreen. Rewind to last Friday (13/11/20) me and a former work colleague made an attempt to fit the screen, however things didnt go quite as we planned to cut a long story short the screen put up a fight and the seal tore... F*ck. fast forward to this morning armed with a new Coh Baines seal me and my mate gave it a go and after an hour of bashing, pulling string and swearing



Success! after this i promptly fitted the wipers



I then dug out the dash top cleaned with some Autoglym vinyl and rubber care before fitting it to the car



Thankfully the vinyl is in good condition so that's 1 less thing i have to worry about. Still need to fit the speedo + Rev counter but the dash is starting to look more like a finished item.



Arty shot because why not



Thanks for reading

Been a lurker on this forum for a while now but reading this post has encouraged me to register.

I bought a 1972 mkIV when I was 16 and spent a year rebuilding it ready for the drivers licence. Used it as my daily for years then went on honeymoon in it getting as far as Florence. Came back via Monaco, Nurburgring and Spa. Ended up keeping it for 10 years and reluctantly sold it to make way for an integrale.

Now, 30 years later I still remember my Spit fondly and would have another in a heartbeat. Still have the integrale though!

More progress has been made this week. Managed to find some suitable bolts for the starter solenoid which enabled me to get it all wired up, bulkhead is now pretty much finished just need to make up a brake pipe to replace the 1 I kinked.



tried to keep the wiring as neat as possible but there's only so much you can do. Next up glovebox. I wanted to get this fitted as I always intended on fitting an isolator switch and I thought this would be the best place for it. Purchased from a well known supplier that rhymes with Dimmers I cant say i'm impressed with the quality had to trim the corner a bit and redrill some of the holes as they weren't quite in the right places. Never mind all sorted now and isolator installed.



Nice to know that the car has some form of security now. With this out of the way I finished off the dash by fitting the speedo, rev counter and speedo cable (my poor fingers) also wired up the wiper switch.



Hazard switch not installed just yet for testing purposes. then the time came to stick the battery on and see what happens, wipers, heater blower and rear lights all working with no fires, even the engine was turning over... result. With my confidence levels high I decided to splash some fuel into the float pots, rig up a temporary fuel supply as I'm still trying to source a pick up pipe for the fuel tank and see if she'll fire into life.





Started 1st time... Get in. Still needs tuning up and properly setting the ignition timing but not sounding too bad. Few niggles to sort exhaust still needs messing around with to get it sitting right, temperature gauge isn't showing a reading, I put the feed wire straight to earth and the gauge works thinking the sender isn't working so even more to think about there. That pretty much brings us up to date. Thanks for reading

Thanks bud, yeah very happy its starting to all come together it has come a long way but still plenty to do

Before tackling the seats I thought I best get some practise by retrimming the armrest and the piece that slots in front (can't remember the name). So here's what we started with,




Not really in too bad condition apart from the missing handbrake gaiter. Anyway I set about removing all of the old vinyl, foam and glue.



And after a quick coat of black paint



Much improved eventhough they're covered in foam and leather. Next step was to glue on the foam and then trim it down where needed so it's flush with the frames my glue of choice was EvoStick Impact Adhesive as recommended by Owen at Park Lane Classics.




I forgot to mention that before I started gluing the foams I put the new leather covers on the radiator to help them stretch a little. Starting with the armrest I made sure the cover was central before pulling the cover taught and glueing the flaps (oooo urrr) to finish the new handbrake gaiter was fitted. Same sort of procedure was used on the other piece making sure the leather cover was taught before glueing to minimise wrinkles. And here's the finished result,





Overall I'm pretty happy with the results considering I've never done anything like this before patients is key and take your time but I'm now pretty confident to retrim the seats.

Thanks bud much appreciated hard work is finally paying off. I brought the wiring loom from Autosparks they make looms for all different makes & models at a reasonable price too lovely quality.

Hmmm in need of a 2nd option here folks unfortunately the engine rattle has returned. I removed the engine from the car in 2018 just before it went away for all of the bodywork. It was fully stripped down to a bare block where it was discovered that it had already had a rebore and crank grind, old shells were in good condition as was the crank so I put new shells in that matched the old 1s. I honed the cylinders to take the glaze off and fitted new pistons/rings, unleaded conversion, new chain + tensioner, oil pump, gaskets and seals. We had the engine running in the chassis on a few occasions with no issues all sounding OK and it was still OK when I wired it all up and had it running on the key until a few days later when this rattle appeared, hold the revs up and you can hear it rev the engine and you can hear it as they are coming back down. Interestingly this went away but now it has come back and I'm completely puzzled as it sounds like a chain rattle but it seems more central in the engine maybe a little end? Thoughts and opinions welcomed.

The 2nd video isn't the best but can hear the noise around the 5 second mark. Interestingly my mate thought it could be cam related but he wasn't so sure himself. I have driven the car around my close as we have an island type thing in the middle wasn't so noticeable underload that I could hear. Should also mention no difference with the clutch down.