Mjit
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Posts posted by Mjit
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Which car?
Simple on at least later Spitfire's and I'd guess GT6s as the 'upper' mounting should be there on the rear wheel arch, even if the hole hasn't been cut through the piece of vinyl that covers it. If again a Spitfire/GT6 but missing the hole/re-enforcement plate/captive nut on the outside of the wheel arch they aren't expensive and easy to get hold of.
Or are you looking to replace lap belts with new lap belts? In that case they normally use the same mountings, just the 2 in the floor of the car - no shoulder belt to no need for the rear wheel arch attachment.
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I'd say taking it out is just as easy.
- Disconnect from 1 carb/2 throttle bodies on a PI.
- Twist knob and pull.
- Keep pulling.
- Re-insert by pushing, running the inner cable(s) through a blob of grease on a rag.
From memory it can take a bit of wiggling/end tidying-up to get them to start going back in but easy once they have started. Biggest thing to watch is if it's a PI you have 2 cables off the one switch and they are different lengths, so you need to get the correct cable back into the correct outer.
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Anyone do one with the choke warning light switch?
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I've used my-tyres.co.uk a couple of times in the past and not had any issues with them/found them cheaper than blackcircles.
If you're looking at top brands then I found my Spitfire just ate Pirellis on the front wheels, was fine on Michelins and I'm more than happy with it on it's current Uniroyal Rainexperts.
If you're looking at budget brands then Google is your friend as you can usually find out who they are owned by or actually make the tyres. On our cars an old Bridgestone design/compound branded Firestone is still going to be a couple of decades more advanced than the car they are being fitted to!
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4 hours ago, Pete Lewis said:
i remember helping a prat towing a sprite musketeer up Lynton hill with a CA Bedford van and managed the corner but stalled on the straight bit ,
rolled back to a jack knife nearly into the cliff edge with wife trying to push .
we got her out the way and de coupled only to find the caravan handbrake didnt work but managed to spin it round on a rock chock , rehitched he left downhill with the bedford brakes not holding and he crashed into the wall on the corner
In approx. 1980? Sounds almost identical to the incident I was thinking of, although I remember it as going up Countisbury. I do remember lots of muttering, mumbling, and amusement from my dad and uncle who were both keen caravanners and would probably have stopped to help if we weren't walking up the hill as families, with myself and 2 others having the easy crushability of childhood.
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You need to try towing a caravan up Porlock/Lynton/Lynmouth. Won't go well for you but will provide great entertainment for everyone else.
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1 hour ago, Chris A said:
No not there. Modern technology and there is still a glove box, who wears gloves anyway these days. Don't answer that!
I find my string-backs come in very handy on those crisp, clear, top-down winters days
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On 24/12/2020 at 21:59, Graham C said:
Sorry gas struts for boot lids. Have our owners grown weak in limb?
What is wrong with with the original set up?
As for the bonnet, you brought the car with the original bonnet set up, did you not lift the bonnet when you brought it?
If you want an easier boot and bonnet to lift, buy a Reliant Robin.
Sorry for the rant but really this was how the car were designed.
Graham
Boot:
- Because, in a world full of gas struts on other boot lids, there a finite number of times you can bump the standard boot lid with a bag/elbow/shoulder while loading the boot and have the boot lid crack you on the back of the head.
Bonnet:
- Because I've broken down on the motorway and, to put it mildly, the standard support gives zero confidence of keeping the bonnet attached to the car, let alone upright when an HGV passes you at 56MPH.
- Because you can open it single handed without worrying about the twisting you get when just supported at the hinges.
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On 02/01/2021 at 14:22, Pete Lewis said:
seem to remember ???? join the reds together as pairs then ditch the earth
Pete
Never understood why people mess around with the red wires - just reach in and pull the black one off, job done. The earth is just there to complete the relay's trigger circuit so no earth means the trigger circuit can't complete when you switch the lights on, so the dimming side of the relay never activates. Simples.
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23 hours ago, Anglefire said:
I do think two struts would be the best solution- if going for struts. Probably 100-120nm each based on Rogers science.
From the engineering PoV two are better as you're evenly loading and supporting the bootlid - but there are no mountings on either the D/S of the boot lid or car body so the welder and rattle cans are probably going to have to come out.
Next best would be a single, centrally mounted strut - but that clearly has some downsides WRT loading and unloading the boot.
Last on the list comes a single, side strut - but you can add one as a bolt-on upgrade. -
Unless you're on a tight budget I'd say you want to be replacing both the shaft and all the rockers, though you might be able to get away with inspecting and just replacing some of the rockers.
There's some clear wear damage on the inner surface of the broken rocker, which will almost certainly mean matching wear/damage to the shaft where that rocker sits so it's probably scrap -> ~£18.
The sort of damage looks, as other have said like a lack of lubrication. Now it COULD have just been a blocked supply to that 1 rocker, but if there's been crud building up int he oilways that got to that rocker to block it... Crud is rarely that targetted. Plus there's 40 years of general wear and tear in there too. The springs and spacers should be fine, so it's just rockers you should need -> £6/each, £72 for a set.
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Got one of the TSSC boot kits on my MkIV from back when they first came out. Never given me any issues and still working today. Only 'issue' I did have was that it put a slight side loading on the boot, so the lid didn't align after just swapping standard->hydraulic. Simple to sort with a bit of hinge fertling, just remember to fix and then carefully close checking the gaps first time rather than just slamming it closed!
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On 11/12/2020 at 11:09, Colin Lindsay said:
You're sure - definitely, positively sure - that the oil is all drained and the sump is empty, then you remove something and gallons pour out.
It's likewise amazing how much water remains in the engine block...when you've drained the radiator but forgotten to remove the block drain plug before removing the head...😞
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On 21/07/2020 at 16:49, Waynebaby said:
From my own messy experience, I'd recommend that you take the filter cover off AFTER draining the gearbox oil!
Wayne
Yep, got that (oil soaked) t-shirt too.
Always turn your head away when removing sump plugs or other 'oil retaining' items too - I've yet to taste a motor oil that's splashed on to my face and into my mouth that I liked the taste of.🤢
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I've re-done the wood in both my 2000 and Spitfire and would say:
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I've yet to cleanly remove the lacquer from ANY piece of Triumph wood. Either one bit of vaneer will be stuck better to the lacquer than the base wood, so come off, or I had to spend so long in an area with the heat gun to get one bit of lacquer to soften than a neighbouring bit of vaneer burns slights, or trying to sand through one spot of lacquer you realise you've also sanded through a neighbouring piece of vaneer too
- But re-vaneering isn't actually too hard - especially for flat pieces (the 2000 curved drivers dash panel is a real PITA and I found worse than the door cappings).
- If you need to keep the car on the road buy a second hand set of wood off eBay and either revaneer that or fit that while you revaneer yours.
- Follow https://www.frost.co.uk/how-do-i-re-veneer-my-cars-wood-trim/
- After a couple of light coats to seal the surface really pile on the Rustins Plastic Coating - you're not trying to bush on the smooth finish, but get a good thick layer on and then sand back to a flat smooth one.
- While wood's a natural material, so different pieces are different colours don't worry too much if it comes out too light - the wood in my 2000 has really mellowed after 12 months of UV. The Spitfire's still lighter than I'd like but that's spent more time than usual in the garage vs out in the sun since I reveneered it over the last winter, due to Covid.
- If you're going to do the door cappings as well but enough wood for the lot, with spare in one go, as consecutive sheets of the same cut of wood. The new wood may not end up the same colour as the original (+ its 50 years of 'maturing') but at least all the wood will be the same colour (unlike my 2000 where I DIDN'T do this - but still better than it was, so happy).
- Oh, and only go for a burr finish if you REALLY want one. 'Non-burr' vaneers are both much easier to work with (no flattening required) and you get a lot more choice in which area of the vaneer to use for each panel (with burr vaneers things like the glovebox lid MUST be done using the piece of vaneer cut out from the glovebox hole in the surrounding panel or the miss-match in the complex pattern really stands out - with non-burr you can maybe have an ugly but of the vaneer in the hole, then cover the lid with a different part of the same sheet and you can't tell when it's all done and fitted).
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I've yet to cleanly remove the lacquer from ANY piece of Triumph wood. Either one bit of vaneer will be stuck better to the lacquer than the base wood, so come off, or I had to spend so long in an area with the heat gun to get one bit of lacquer to soften than a neighbouring bit of vaneer burns slights, or trying to sand through one spot of lacquer you realise you've also sanded through a neighbouring piece of vaneer too
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23 hours ago, Pete Lewis said:
i would say remember you dont get a bigger spark but a larger gap also takes it longer to jump
pete
Humm, does it?
Does a spark not travel (near enough) at the speed of light, like lightening? I'd accept it might take longer to initiate the spark, as you need to build up enough potential to actually jump the insulating air gap and a bigger gap means more potential required to reach the tipping point, but once you've hit that tipping point I thought the spark itself would travel as the speed of light. And the reason moden cars/uprated classic can run a bigger spark is because they have more powerful coild/coil packs that can generate the necessary potential in the available time.
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Sitting high is just down to the spring being
a) Needing to settle.
b) Being new but compared to some tired, sagging 40+ year old one that's technically been sitting too low.Lowering blocks are normally a personal choice and down to people wanting their cars to sit lower/have more static negative rear camber than standard, rather than being to counter new springs being too high.
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18 hours ago, Pete Lewis said:
alloy nuts ....NUTS and add in dissimilar metal corrosion ....sounds a nightmare waiting to happen
The galvanic/electrolytic corrosion is the least of your worries. That will generally attach them more firmly...and just mean they get buggered when you need to take them off, giving you the opportunity to replace them with steel.
The worry is the fact that, unlike steel aluminium doesn't have a fatigue limit, so every time the wheel goes around and the loading changes it gets a little bit weaker until at some point it either fails in spectacular fashion or (more likely) becomes loose and starts to vibrate undone.
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Deff. go for the steel nuts...or live your life in paranoia, checking the (quite low because they are alloy) torque on the OE ones.
Had an alloy one fire off with a bang once - thankfully about a mile from my destination...and not on one of the previous 100-odd motorway miles!
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Or just wait a couple of weeks. Something will come up...
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Yep, not sure where I got matt from...
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Looking around I'd say both Mk IV and 1500 rear wing trips should be matt black, while the one on the boot rear lip/around the light panel should be stainless on a Mk IV but matt black on a 1500.
I think you'll find the 1500/black ones are exactly the same as the Mk IV/stainless ones, just painted black.
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If you still want to go LED try classiccarleds.co.uk - they do both positive and negative versions of a lot of their LED bulbs.
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Do you have any vertical adjustment left where the hood frame bolts to the C post? You might be able to losen the bolts/pop the popper on, then bush up/tighten the bolts to get a better fit.
Spitfire, snow and frost...
in Out and About in my car
Posted
The heated garage might save you from this but, having driven a Spitfire as a daily driver you might want to take the hard top OFF if daytime temps. are sub-zero. I well remember a winter spent with twice daily (no garage) drives that went:
It IS fun to find a nice side, empty piece of snow covered road and provoke the rear end into breaking away (at low speeds) though