1975 Triumph Spitfire 1500 Restoration

I've been chipping away at this over the past few weeks mainly just finishing off the interior and some other odds and ends. 1 thing that needed doing before the seats were fully bolted down was to fully secure the rear cockpit panels as I had only placed them in just to see what the finished product would look like. However in order to do this I wanted to refit the speakers that came with car, a nice pair of Sharp speakers dating back to the late 70's, I assume they were fitted when the cassette player was installed and although they are not strictly original I feel they are part of the cars history and would like to retain them for that reason alone. Anyway here's 1 of them,



Looking through some old pictures I guessed the rough position and drilled 5 holes, 4 for the speaker and 1 for the wiring,



The wires were then inserted into the hole (oo dirty boy)



Screws were given a fresh lick of paint, speakers fitted and the panel was refitted using some velcro tape




Looks rather nice I think and at least another original feature has been reused even though the roof will obscure them when down and the exhaust will also over rule a bit haha. Then the seats were fully bolted up and I took the opportunity to take some pictures & walkaround video,






I'm aware the seats aren't perfect but I'm still chuffed with the result considering I've never done upholstery before (headrests not fully finished). 1 thing that has continued to puzzle me is the strange engine noise as mentioned a few posts ago. After lubricating the cam followers, replacing the stripped rocker stud, resetting the valve clearances and replacing the cover gasket the noise still persists. Holding the revs between 1200 & 1800 rpm its there any higher it clears as well as lower also makes the noise when it comes down into that particular rev range. I've been speaking with the chaps on the tssc forum and have done a number of checks like running without the rocker cover, checking with clutch up and down, readjusting the exhaust, and listening around with the trusty long screwdriver all seems normal but the noise is still there. Someone did mention check the back of the cam sprocket and seeing as the water pump was leaking i whipped the timing cover off, 1 thing to note before this is I had about 5 degrees of free movement when rocking the crank back and forth. With the cover removed I checked the slack in the new chain which measured at 9mm (max is 9.5mm) sprocket was tight and in good condition. As the chain is close to the limit if this is to blame then would it be worth upgrading to the duplex set up? I'm a bit sceptical this is the issue but I'm running out of options. I'll leave some pics below of the new chain and tensioner fitted.

A new standard chain kit is around £16 whereas the duplex kit (double chain set up) is around £85 but they are supposed to be far superior in quality over the new standard chains, can't quite remember exactly how much slack there was when I built it but wasn't as much as 9mm. I haven't done a compression test but tuning the engine over by the crank you can feel very good amount and it spins right around after compression has built. The engine had been rebuilt at some point in its life (between late 70s and early 80s at a guess as the car came off the road in 84) it was bored out to +20 and the crank had been ground to +40 on the big ends and +10 on the mains, to be fair the old shells were hardly worn and the bores had no ridge at the top so I honed the cylinders to take the glaze off and fitted new high compression pistons, rings, new bearing, thrust washers, little ends were good too, new cam + followers, cylinder head was converted to unleaded, new valve guides and skimmed. It has a tubular manifold fitted all fixings are tight. It's a strange 1 as it only happens in a certain rev range hold it up at 3k and its fine engine pulls well too. Someone I know has said to just run it but I'm a bit of an overthinker and it bugs me knowing there's a noise haha.

It almost sounds like bitt of pinking have you tried changing the ignition timing to see if that makes any difference? also does the noise change between the engine being cold and hot?

Hi,
May be my eyesight but are those teeth worn on the sprockets?

I'd love to be saying that after 3 months of silence the car is finished and I've been enjoying blasting it around... unfortunately things have ground to a halt and not much progress has been made since my last update. However little progress has been made which is better than none at all right? With the shell pretty much back together and lockdown restrictions slightly lifted again I thought I best make my way over to have a look at the remaining panels ie doors, boot lid and bonnet. Annoyingly they remained untouched and extremely dusty so I've taken it upon myself to try and get the ball rolling again by stripping the doors & boot lid back to bare metal then all the painter has to do is prep/paint them. So I loaded the doors into the back of my trusty daily and brought them home.



Got to work with the grinder and a poly abrasive disc to strip all the paint off and see how bad/good they were, I'm pleased to report that it's looks like these door have been reskinned in the past and are in excellent shape which is a relief.



Before I could take them back there was 1 more job that needed doing, repositioning the door mirrors. Now when I purchased these doors in 2017 they were fitted with the bullet type mirrors which look really nice however whoever fitted them placed them on the very front edge of the door which in my opinion doesn't look very good and as I'm fitting the original Tex style mirrors they'd look a bit out of place so after a bit of measuring, masking tape and drilling we had some new holes in roughly the right place as there's no exact measurement for them.(measurements were provided by another Spitfire owner)





I have since exchanged the doors for the boot lid and have stripped about ½ the paint off however I need a new abrasive disc so I'll cover that in my next update. In other news my original plan for the bonnet was to have it blasted as we figured it would be easier and more time effective due to being quite tight towards the front edges for a grinder, after contacting all of the blasting places in my town all of them refused as they think it'll just warp the metal. 1 company however put me on to a place in Oldbury that will acid dip it which is great as that'll definitely get in everywhere and will leave us with a nice clean finish to paint but it comes at a cost of nearly £400! I'm now thinking a fibreglass bonnet would have been a better route but I know the steel 1 will give a better finish so there's some pondering to be done there. Finally I have a deadline set to get this thing finished! I have booked it to be shown at the Triumph Weekend at the 3 counties showground in Malvern on the 14th of August 21 so ideally I'd like to have it on the road a couple of weeks before to iron out any teething problems and make sure she's ready, should be possible as I'm working all hours at the moment for it but only time will tell. Thanks for reading.

Thank you for the kind comments glad you've enjoyed reading through! I've been through it all and edited most of it this afternoon so it makes a bit more sense haha. It's nice that it's brought back good memoires. Way back when this was just a dream (around 7 years ago) I wanted to use it as a daily driver, changed my mind now though but I still wonder what it'll be like. Like the cold weather hood down attitude too 🤣 Should have another update within the next few weeks & some more improvements will be happening, all will be documented.

I wonder if the crank is cause or effect, it looks a bit like there is something wrong with the oil supply which has caused the bearings to pick up and fail to me.

I would check very carefully there is nowhere air can be drawn into the suction side of the circuit.

Can you fit an oil pressure gauge as a permanent fixture so you can keep an eye on the pressure?

You're doing a great job bringing it back to life. Always felt a slight affinity with them, although I've never had one. My father and brother worked at the little factory called the Forward Radiator in Bordesley Green in Birmingham during the 60s and 70s where the Spit bodies were made. My brother did his sheet metal apprenticeship there, hand rolling bonnets and stuff, and my dad was senior maintenance tech before operations were all moved to a big new shed at Solihull ready for the SD1. Him and his pals may have had a hand in building yours.

FWIW, I'd fit the dual gauge to keep any eye on pressure without spoiling the lovely clean dash.

Just in case you're interested, here's a pic of my dad, stood up in the doorway, and his crew and foreman in their workshop at the factory Xmas 1973.

Duggy