Chalk it up to experience and move on

As the car is not in a garage the cold weather has stopped me doing too much to it.

However I have purchased another Hard top. after the feedback that the first one was just useful for scrap I found a Black one on ebay. This time I asked all the questions I should have asked the first time. Got the guy to do a full inspection for rust under the rubbers and all was good.

I plan to get it refurbished in the summer when it is not needed. In the mean time its bolted on and is doing a great job in the cold weather.

Been busy the last couple of weeks.....

When I got the car the previous owner had had it restored and the bodywork is in great shape. The main mechanicals were good when I bought it and on the drive home but since then I have had a few problems.

The clutch. Suddenly there was no clutch, checked the master cylinder and it was empty, refilled but was still a problem.

Went to the trusty forum on Club Triumph and general consensus was to replace both Masterand slave cylinder rubbers. I jacked the car up on to axle stands and rolled underneath. Managed to extract the slave cylinder, refub and refit. Did the same to the master cylinder and then topped up. Tried to use a pressure bleed system that connects to the spare and pushes the fluid round the system but did not work very well. Managed to bleed from under the car but very difficult.

Got the manuals out and they recommended taking the transmission tunnel out to access slave cylinder. Once I had done this it was simple to bleed in traditional way and result was good pedal on the clutch and no more crunching.

However as I had the transmission tunnel out I started a load more jobs on my to do list........

Iron Oxide playing hide and seek

Now that I have the Spitfire I thought that a Hardtop would be a good idea. Make it practical for all year round fun.

So off to the web and found one that was Inca Yellow and looked reasonable. Won the auction and went off to pick it up.

When I picked it up it looked as if it has a bit of surface rust around the front but overall it seemed OK.

When I got it home the Iron Oxide stopped playing hide and seek and jumped out from all its hiding places. 

I decided to strip all the rubbers,glass, headlining  and seals off to rub it down for a respray and minor remedial work.

However as you can see from the pictures below its a bit worse than I first thought.

 

 

 




I saw on one of the forums some advice about spitfire parts, hit it with a hammer to check for rust. I will bear that in mind in future......

Sent pictures to one restorer and he said likley to cost over £1000 to patch and respray as they had to fabricate from sheet steel.

Off to local Spitfire place tomorrow to see what they say. I have a feeling I need to find a Hardtop in better condition. :>))

The Smell of old cars...

Next job on the list was to investigate the mixed aroma of old rubber and petrol.

I quite liked it but as anybody who sat in the car left with the sent of Spitfire I decided it needed addressing.

After a search of the forum's the likely candidate was the fuel tank pipe that was supposed to be capped off.

Out with the tank and a close inspection showed that the cap was indeed cracked. On-line to check for a replacement and found the NLA tag on the part. So with a little think and a trip to the local motor factors and I had a new cap. Major over engineering but does the job lovely. One bolt , rubber tube and 2 jubilee clips.......

Snow stopped play

After getting the Spitfire home snow stopped play.

We had bought an outdoor cover for the car to protect it from the direct elements but had not expected its first task to be to protect it from 12 inches of snow.

So for a week and a bit I was stuck with looking at catalogues and scanning the various spitfire bases websites for ideas and information.

When I bought the car it was sitting low at the back. Was not sure if this was by design or just age. After looking at lots of cars on-line I decided it was age.

Too much Negative camber

 So out came the credit card for a new rear leaf spring.




Its been a while since I worked on older cars. I had forgotten the rule that if you are replacing bits that have the chance to have seized then plan time to get hold of the bits that you have had to cut off to finish the job.

So the bolt that goes through the spring mount had managed to seize. I turned it and it would spring back. After trying blow torch and brute force I gave in an cut the bolt off.

Waited 3 days , started on Saturday, for the replacement bolt to arrive in post.

Finally finished the job and put the car back on ground.

What I did not know was that until you have run car forward the spring does not settle into normal operating position  I had gone from negative camber to massive positive camber.

So quick search of the forum and the explanation was there. Quick spin around the block and then a recheck of the ride height and camber.

As you can see, much better ride height and camber looking as I would have expected  Proof of the pudding was the test drive over the speed bumps. No more grounding the exhaust and a smoother ride.

The Obsession begins

What happens when your 10 year old people carrier starts to get flaky and you have to look for a new car.

In my case it was a trip to the Ford dealer to look at the sensible cars for a family of 5.

We settled on the ford  B Max, 1.4 Zetec....very practical , sensible choice, reliable, economical, comfortable...but not much fun.

A conversation with the wife reminiscing about the fun days of my MGB GT, Mazda MX5 and Beetle convertible ended with her uttering a sentence that reaffirmed the reasons that I married her.....

"Why don't you get yourself an old sports car"

The Obsession was born! 

When I was 15 I loved the spitfire, it looked cool to my teenage eyes but when I turned 17 it was too much to buy and I opted for a Mini. A few years later and my sister in Law, at that time my brothers girlfriend, was getting rid of a MGB GT I bought it and the Spitfire faded into the background.

But now a lot older, cheap insurance the only benefit of getting older, the dream was relit. We fired up the Ipad and headed for Ebay, after looking at number of ad's we came to the conclusion that most were either a "Project car" or fully restored and and so expensive. However one ad stood out. Lots of bodywork done so it was not a rust bucket , but at a reasonable price.

Got in contact with the seller and arranged to go down to Dorset to have a look. Was feeling very positive so got a one way train ticket. Had already discussed with him that if I liked it we would do deal that day and agreed to do a bank transfer for the funds.

Saw the car and it had great body work, Had a drive and decided to buy. agreed the price, managed to get £500 off advertised price and did the transfer..........1 hr later no funds in his bank, 2 hrs later no funds, rang bank.

First time payments can take up to 24hrs to go through. Got the bank to talk to seller and confirm all details of the transfer and he let me drive away with the car.

Drive home was great, 70 mph on motorway no problem, 3 hrs later back on my drive.

Welcome to your new Home 76 Spitfire