Mjit

So rocker shaft removed, stipped down (other than one pedistal that refused to come off either end of the shaft), cleaned, degreased, washed and left to try overnight. No blockages or signs of much gumming in the oilways, but oil rather 'gloopy' so not sure last time it was changed (a task that was on the list anyway). With the rocker assembly off I wiped up the oil and 'poked around' in the rear pedistal oil feed, then cranked the engine till the oil pressure was up and stable and...the feed hole still as dry as a bone. Unless there's a flaw with that test looks like I need to refit that external feed pipe.

It's possible the vertical passage in the block was drilled/tapped and blocked with a grub screw. That or fitting a restriction in the banjo were the two 'proper' ways of fitting an external feed (though doing neither and just bolting it on was what hppened 99% of the time). Think I'll go for removing the rocker shaft - and trying to work out where the hell you buy pipe cleaners theae days to give things a quick clean-up.

You mean the oil gallery where the external feed was connected? Standard bolt + washer that would have been there before the external feed was fitted.

Well wiped down, run for a few minutes and...still as dry as it started. Guessing next step is to remove the rocker shaft and turn it over on the starter to see if I get anything coming up the feed (under the rear rocker pedistal from memory?)? That and try to find a crush washer to refit the external feed if that fails.

Thanks - I'll give it another go this evening...

OK, so finally ran out of ways to procrastinate and tried running the car with the rocker cover off today. First off the engine bay looks a lot better with the feed removed - previously there was a T piece for an oil pressure gauge...plumbed in to the T piece for the external oil feed, plumbed in to the block. Second oil pressure looks good (needle about 3/4 of the way around with cold oil). Third, I really have no idea what I'm looking for with the rocker cover off. I couldn't see any oil dripping off the rocker shaft or anything - but then is that what you'd expect to see?

No. But there have been many, many mornings where I wished I'd only been ordering 500ml (the extra 68ml/drink clearly the bit that pushed me from "That was a good night" to "I want to die").

My engineering degree was far to long-ago to try and remember the hard stuff, like shear strength, etc. How about a retest, but double the bonding area (glue at 180 degrees rather than 90 so you can overlap by 2" - don't think that would make any substantive difference and you can just G clamp it to the bench? Or, as you said it was almost tipping the bench when it failed do the above but just overlap by 1/2"?

OK, fag packet out again... So end float is 0.002" to 0.008" (0.05mm to 0.2mm) at the bearing. The bearing is ~2" diameter/1" radius (50.8mm/25.4mm), so that would give an angle of between 0.113 and 0.451 degrees. A standard 13" wheel has a radius of 6.5" (165.1mm) and standard 155R80 tyrs have a sidewall height of 4.9" (124.5mm), giving a total radius of 289.6mm. So an acceptable end float would give between 0.57mm and 2.23mm at the edge of the tyre. I'm not sure you'd see 0.57mm, but would certainly be able to feel it. 2.23mm you'd be able to see as well as feel. It sounds like you might be at the top end of, or just over tollerance so as has been said try taking the wheel off, adding another few dents to the grease cap getting it off, removing the split pin and tightening a fraction. It probably WON'T require a full flat or tightening - there are 2 split pin holes through the tip of the stub axle and I'd guess just tightening till you can use the other one will be enough. Reassemble and rock the wheel again, making sure you can still at least feel some rocking*. * Early in my Spitfire ownership days I had the friendly local MOT station tell me my car had passed but "the front wheel bearings were a little loose, but rather than fail you we just nipped them up". Thankfully a Triumph brake disk and calipar are strong-enought to keep the drivers side wheel on the car while you turn left off the (thankfully congested) motorway after the outer bearing has welded itself to the stub axle, snapping it in the middle and leaving JUST enough to support the inner bearing. The AA man arrived, jacked the car up to take a look...and the wheel promptly fell off.

Hopefully just looking at the back of the fuse box will make everything clear. Unless someone's gone really OTT with a custom rewrire of the whole car the wires that would have made up each side of the fuse box will now be connected to something else...or just to each other. Hopefully not the latter!

And of course while you'd use a series of spot welds along a joint you wouldn't use a series of adhesive blobs, rather a continual line, meaning a greater joining area and a stronger joint. Lotus have been using structural bonding on their cars since the Elise was released in '96...

A lot depends how much you like to tinker. If the suspension's just tired and needs a refresh then yes to poly bushes (I've used both Polybush and Superflex and both seem like new after many miles) but probably just standard dampers. If you like to tinker then 1" lower springs at the front and a 1/2" or 3/4" spring spacer at the back work well, along with adjustable shocks. Koni's are fine but boy are they a PITA to adjust - you basically have to strip the suspension down every time you want to adjust them. I've got Spax on the rear of my Spitfire and they've given the bast part of 20 years trouble free service. Adjustment can be done on-car but is a bit of a pain as it's via a slotted screw type adjuster and you can never seem to be able to quite get the screwdriver in and to turn enough to adjust without removing the wheel, which means jacking the car up. Personally I'd recomment Avo's, which I have on the front of my Spit. and rear of my 2000. Both have given trouble-free service, probably 15 years on the Spit., and both can be adjusted easilly on the car too (knurled knob for firmness and a 'C' spanner for the adjustable seats on the Spitfire fronts. When I was looking at different shocks I found roughly equal number of people who swore by, and swore at each brand.

A spot of back-of-the-fag-packet maths says: 31lb = 14kg / 18" = 0.46m (trying to do engineering calculations in imperial units is a form of Sadomasochism) 14kg under gravity exerts a force of 137N 137N on a 0.46m moment arm is a torque of 63Nm, or 46ft lb. To give that some context - 10 nuts torqued to 46lb ft is enough to keep an air tight seal between the engine block and head under the force of 200 little bombs going off every second (I THINK my maths is right there - 6,000RPM = 100RPS, and 2 cylinders fire every rvolution?)

They are just held in by a plastic 'tang' and yes, if you wanted to re-use the fuse box they WOULD be a bugger to release. If you're scrapping the old one you can just jam a small screwdriver down there from the fuse side and break the tang. While the existing connectors can be part of the problem that's just due to surface corrosion which is easy to clean when they are 'between fuseboxes'...and it's a much lazier option.

If doing a straight like-for-like swap then you don't need to cut/recrimp, just release the connectors from the old fuse box (with more or less predudice considering it's scrap) and after a quick clean slot those in to the new box (binning the new connectors that came with the new fuse box). Experience has told me you'll end up swearing while trying to get the foam gasket to compress enough for the plastic fuse box clips to clip, usually resulting in one catching/another not quite catching, overloading the caught one and snapping it...

Unless you're: Looking to make the car as original as possible. Just drive it a few miles to the local country pub on a Sunday. Tall. keep the MX5 seats! Even freshly rebuilt with new foams the standard seats start to show that the Spitfire was built to a price on a longer drive, and nowhere near as comfortable as the MX5 ones.

So external feed removed and blanking plug fitted. Not tried a start-up yet, due to assorted other jobs going on at the same time - but should try it some time this week and will update... Currently been distracted by finding that the random brown wire that starts on the battery positive terminal goes...direct to the gear stick O/D switch, then on, direct to the solonoid. Having player the game of replacing a failed inhibitor swich with the garbox in situe before I can't ay it's a job I'm looking forward to tackling, but one that needs doing before anything else (like me forgetting).

OK, so here (for people to either agree sounds sensible or scream NNNNNOOOOOO!!!!! at) is my current plan. Assume the feed was just bolted on with no restrictor/blanking grub screw in the head/block. Remove the feed/fit the blanking plug. Remove the rocker cover and give everything a solid wipe down with blue towel, to remove all visible oil. Start the car and run for a few minutes, so the oil has had a chance to build pressure and get pumping around everywhere it can get to. Switch off and remove the rocker cover again. If it's still bone dry, assume there IS a restrictor in the block, mumble a bit, then refit the external feed (with new crush washers). If it's once more slick with oil 'up top' assume there ISN'T a restrictor and go for it. Worst case I can swap the engine for the one in the parts car.

Removing based on experience with the one on my Spitfire. Great for oil consumption and spraying the bonnet of the car behind at start-up but not much else. Even more so on the 6 cylinder as, unless it's the Kastner spider version, you take oil from the marginal crank feed to over oil the rocker shaft. And I mean, when was the last time you saw people complaining about excess rocker shaft wear on our engines...?

OK, so working through the to-do list on my new 2000 and got to removing the external oil feed... Now these can be fitted properly, with a restriction in the internal oil gallery, but usually aren't. Obviously taking the head off and looking is the sure fire way to check but...well that's just a ball ache. I'm tempted to just remove it but does anyone know how much oil you should see under the rocker box?

Some other options: Just use 1 speaker/1 of the speaker wire pairs - not much makes major use of stereo, and wit the general din in a Spitfire you probably won't notice. Make up some boxes and put separate left/right speakers down in the footwells, sat on top the sill 'shelf'. Fit Mk 1 MX-5 seats (with in-seat stereo speakers. Fit a pair of bigger speakers in the panel in front of the fuel tank.

Perhaps if you have an original Triumph pump but I'm going to swap to electric over the coming months as I'm getting through repro pumps at the rate of about 1 per-year (they just start leaking everywhere) - and the repro pump designs seems to change subtly every year so you order a rebuild kit and it isn't quite right for the repro pump you bought from the same supplier last year...

Guess it depends if you car has drain taps in both the radiator and block or not. My Spitfire doesn't so "drain coolant" means "cover every available surface in coolant, catching mybe 10% in a tray". Drain taps with a bit of pipe in to a bucket should work to recycle though?

You're now at the point I'd never use a waterless coolant - while I accept the science and they they are technically better than water+glycol they are a hell of a lot more expensive...and you now need to drain yours to replace the water pump. Doh!

Do poly spring eye bushes make much difference? I've polybushed most things on my car but took one look at the spring eye bushes and how tightly they were in and decided to leave them, as even the (probably original) ones on the nackered spring I was replacing looked to be in good condition and I wasn't getting any clonking (from there).