Mjit

Not my experience. Once you've got silicone expect the drive shafts/cylinder seals/some other job that involves having to 'open' part of the break curcit to go wrong. For similar reasons's I'll never go for waterless coolent. I know if I did some radiator-out job would crop up two weeks later!

I carry most of my non-specialist tools in the boot, including twin sets of AF spanners and sockets upto 3/4" (minus the obligatory ones that have gone in to hiding over the years), pliers, cutters, basic crimp tool, screw drivers, hacksaw, hammer, punches, allen keys, and a few random others that just live in the tool bag. Might sound like a lot but all fit in to a small bag just a bit bigger than the size of a six-pack of Coke cans, so doesn't take up much space and easy to swap from car-to-car. Certainly takes up less space than the 5L can of oil. Those plus the random lengths of wire/crimp connectors/worrying nuts that always seem to be left over after reassembling something that all rattle around the Spitfire boot have saved me numerous times. To name just a few: Years ago after someone reversed in to me while stationary with the hand break on at a set of traffic lights (yes, you did read that correctly) the hacksaw gave me clearance between the front 1/4 box and wheel to drive home. A quick crimp connector replacement sorted things when the car started overheating, due corroded connector to electric fan so fan not running. On the way back from the Le Mans 24hr this year a quick adjustment to the d/s bonnet cone when we hit the worn-enough-for-the-catch-to-start-pining-open stage. At Le Mans, stripping down the fuel pump which had randomly decided to start weaping fuel past the top seal (modern replacement screw-together type). On the way to Le Mans, stripping down the rocker shaft after the engine started sounding 'wrong' on the Autoroute through the Pais du Calais. Still don't understand it but the locking nut on #1 inlet had gone missing so the adjuster slowly adjusted itself till it was hardly opening the valve. Neither myself or my passenger saw anything fall out when I took the rocker cover off, nor find anything on the top of the engine or on the ground - and removing the rocker shaft and having a good play around with each of the push rods proved it wasn't down there. One quick hunt for a suitable nut and reassembly later and we were back on the road. I can only think I must have taken the nut off while adjusting the rockers pre-trip...but you only losten, not remove the nut to do adjust the rockers!?!?

I think I must have tried every form one one-man bleeder out there, including Eezibleed and those suction ones and the only one I can get to work well each and every time is the Vizibleed type...

Pound shops are a good source of chalk and fill most of the high streets around here. Another option for popper alignment might be Blue Tak. Squidge some on to the back of the carpet, then press carpet over floor. You should get a nice press stud imprint in the Blue Tak.

Not that my focus isn't really on work today or anything T-18.5hrs...

I've been to Le Mans for the proper race every year since 2003, either in my lowered Spitfire or my friends much lower (and quicker!) TVR Tuscan S on a mix of Eurotunnel, the old Dover catermarans and Portsmouth/Le Havre ferries and never had any problems with either car on any crossing. Eurotunnel - low cars will get sent to the lower deck on the train so you just have to get over a ~10cm hump. Ferries - the loaders have always been more than happy to jump in front of anything low and stop them while they arrange blocks to get them on safely - for them your car is much more interesting to look at than another fecking Qashqai! If you do go Eurotunnel I can recommend the following route, which is much more about enjoying the journey on good driving roads than sitting on boring motorways and getting there ASAP. It's the one we always use - and will be using the day after tomorrow! From the Eurotunnel point your satnav at Airaines, on the D901 south of Abbieville. You'll be on the A16 to start but the Pais du Calais is a shiz-hole so you just want to get the hell out of Dodge. Switch your satnav to avoid motorways and toll roads at this point (or it will keep trying to drag you back on to the dull roads), then point it at Marseille-en-Beauvaisis, again on the D901. When you've passed through Grandvilliers re-point your satnav at Les Andelys, which should get you heading out of M-en-B on the D930 towards Gournay-en-Bray. In Les Andelys point your satnav at Bouafles, just a couple of miles out of town on the D313 (but gets you on the more interesting road to the next waypoint). Next point the satnav at Evreux. Evreux seems to go on forever, so you have plenty of time to update your satnav to L'Aigle on the D830. From here it's Bonnetable via the D830, D912, D938, and D301. From here you're only 20 miles from Le Mans so can point the satnav at (I think for Tetre Rouge campsite) the main entrance to the circuit, picking a route that brings you in to Le Mans on the D20BIS (left turn 10 miles after Bonnetable). Ignore the signs and just follow the satnav and you'll miss most of the traffic. We usually take a 6:50AM Eurotunnel which means we get to Les Andelys between 11:30 and 12:00 and stop for lunch (keep going past the cathedral and you come to a large car park square on the RHS with a reasonable brasserie and a few boulangeries that do sandwiches, which you can take down and eat sat on the bankes of the Saine). Depending how long we take over lunch we then get to Le Mans about 16:00, which is perfect to set up the tents and head out to the supermarket for supplies, get back and cook dinner, then head out for the Wednesday night qualifing session.

Did you actually get yours to work? I've just tried one too and couldn't get anywhere with it. Get #8 on the rock and loosen lock nut on #1. Put 0.010 feeler in and turn big knob till a loud click. Turn big knob other way say 10 clicks and find you now have a (for example) 0.025 gap, so X clicks = 0.015 (0.025 - 0.010). 0.010 feeler back in and turn big knob back the first way till loud click. Turn the second way again the same 10 clicks and find you now have a (for example) 0.030 gap... The main thing that I think was wrong for me was that when tightening down to the big click you could see the gap initially close down on the 0.010 feeler...but then rather than a big click you could see the valve spring start to compress - and only after an amount of valve spring compression you would get the big click. Clearly if the spring is compressing at all you're getting more turns than just 'taking up the slack' and are likely to get slightly different amounts of spring compression each time you try. Is that what you found?

I think you should add some fuel hose to your shopping list. I could be wrong but I don't think I've ever seen proper fuel-rated hose that's red. Looks more like a length of garden hose pipe...

Yep, I know about the multiple holes through the nose of the stub axle. This is the difference I'm getting between one hole/castellation and the next possible hole/castellation pair. Maybe 10-15 degrees tighter. How do you actually DO "hand light nip" tightness? Is that just with fingers (very loose for me as the castellations tend to cut in to your fingers long before tightness) or is that with a socket on the nut, but only tightened with a hand around the socket (i.e. no wrench attached to the socket)? Off to Le Mans in 2 weeks for the 24hrs so going through the usual per-trip worry phase

Hi, Got a question on one or my personal deamons - front wheel bearing adjustment. My d/s wheel's fine. Rocking the wheel off the ground gives a little movement that you can hear/feel but not so much you can see it. The p/s wheel on the other hand gives me a choice of no movement you can either hear or feel with the split pin through one hole or, if you back it off to the next possible hole/castellation pair so much movement you can not only hear and feel it you can clearly see it. Should I go for the "my god that seems like a lot of movement" slot of the "according to the book this is too tight" one? Having had a friendly MOT station 'just nip them up' as they were too lose to pass the test in the past, resulting in them being over-tightened, the outer bearing friction welding itself up/to the tip of the stub axle and fracturing the stub axle while on the motorway I'm a bit paranoid about the front bearings. On the other hand I'm amazed by the strength of the disks/calipers, as they were all that kept the wheel on the car!

In theory you'd fire the spark when the pistion hit TDC on the compression stroke, there would be an instant burn and the force of the expanding gas would push the piston down the cylinder, driving the crank. In reality petrol doesn't burn instantly and as soon as you go past TDC you have the crank pulling the piston down. Fire the spark plug at TBC and chances are the burning gases will just end up chasing the piston down the cylinder, rather than pushing it. As a result you need to 'light the fire' while the piston is still coming up on the compression stroke, retarting when the spark plug fires from the TDC to BTDC. Go too far though and you're lighting the fire too early and the expanding gases will actually reach, and start pushing down on the piston while it's still coming up the cylinder on the compression stroke. If you're driving up a hill you need to put your foot down, pumping more fuel in to the cylinders and raise the RPM, making the crank and pistons move faster. This means you both have more fuel to burn and a piston trying to run away faster from the expanding gases so you need to retard the spark, firing it further BTDC so the fuel has time to burn, expand and push the piston back down the cylinder. When you crest the hill though you just want to cruising down the other side so you take our foot off the gas, reducing the amount of fuel going in to the cylinders. The engine's still turning at the same RPM though. With less fuel to burn you don't need to fire the spark plug so early so you can advance the ignition back towards TDC. With a classic distributor you have some weights on springs that get thrown outwards by the spin of the drive shaft and are hooked up to a retarts the ignition more the further they are thrown out (the higher the RPM). When you close the throttle you're not just limiting the amount of fuel going in but the speed at which air can get in to the cylinder, which creates a vacuume - and this can be linked to a vacume advance unit on the distributor which does the opposite to the interal weights, advancing the ignition. You say you've replaced your dizzy with an electronic system. What that means will vary with the system. If it's just a points replacement system then it's still the weights controlling retardation/the vacuum controlling off-throttle advance. If it's a full electronic system like a 123 dizzy or MegaJolt you have a speed sensor to tell RPM (on the crank for things like MegaJolt/from the dizzy drive shaft for 123) and a vacuum sensor to tell engine load. There's then a table of RPM/load points, with an advance/retard value for each. The code checks the RPM and load, reads the advance value and fires the spark plug at that time.

You can fit the earlier 'block' number plate light to a later 'bubble' car/bumper, you just need to drill new holes for the block's mountings and bulb holders. The block will cover the old bubble light mounting holes.

Just to answer your first couple of questions... It's probably a bad earth. They all do that.

Am I the only one who though .oO(So we're just going to gloss over the whole rotoflex->CV joint conversion then are we?)Oo. ?

Used Wins many times, especially for bigger bits and never had any issues.

Like Gully I found you needed a ratchet strap too - preferably a wide-ish one as the amount of force it seemed to take to compress them gave me the fear of what would happen if the strap slipped off... No idea how I'll go about releasing them if I ever need to take the bonnet off either!

Which ITB are you using out of interest?

I've never needed one on my non-rotoflex Spitfire and the springs been in and out a number of times. Getting the spring and lowering block both in place and all the holes lined up through to the diff. is the hard part!

A what is it if not a night dimmer It is - and it's pointless in modern traffic. B how do I test if it’s working These almost never fail (in a bad way) - you just need to check for continuity between pairs of in and out pins. C where do I get a replacement if it’s not? If it's actually failed so you don't have any continuity then delete it, linking like wires directly to one-another. D how do I wire up Would have to look to say (and I'm currently 400 miles from my car) but once you have pull the black earth lead. Looks original but as no earth switching on the side lights can't complete the circuit so can't energies the coil and can't dim the lights (which were hardly like looking at the sun when new, let alone 40yrs down the line when all the silver has come off the reflectors.

I think you're about to become familiar with the joys of Recoil thread inserts... Sounds like the thread is knackered for one of your bolts. There's enough of it left for the bolt the pull down when under no load but when you try to actually pull it tight the bolt threads are just pulling through the housing ones. Recoil thread insets come in kits with a special drill and tap. You use the drill to remove the last of the old thread then the tap to cut a new thread. This is obviously too big for your bolt but it's the correct size for an insert. You wind one of these in and while it fits in the new, over-sized thread on the outside it gives you an original sized thread on the inside for your bolt to go in to. You'll probably be OK with the same, new gasket but might want to invest in a tube of gasket sealing compound (to use in addition to the gasket) as it's a little better at filling in the corrosion in the thermostat cap than the gasket.

Something else to check - have the slave/handbrake cam worn the back plate? The slave cylinder is meant to slide in the grove, and the handbrake cam slide with it but 40 years of wear on my Spitfire had left a few groves and the assembly would momentarily get caught in the wear marks, then suddenly release and thump the shoes against the drum.

I had to buy a ratchet strap to get mine to fit too. Maybe the piece of wood method works if you have a friend to help you but trying to compress and align on your own is next to impossible with a piece of wood/easy as pie with a strap.

For brake/clutch bleeding I'm also on my own and have tried all sorts, from pressure systems like Gunson's Eezibleed (could never find an adapter cap that fitted properly) to vacuum ones (could never get a good-enough seal on the bleed nipple so you just end up sucking air past the nipple rather than fluid through it). The only I always come back to is also the cheapest, the Vizibleed ( http://r.ebay.com/xUayek ). That one's £3.48 with free shipping and, well they just work.

OK, so it seems the shop search is running on exact rather than wildcard or fuzzy matching. I searched for "cone" and only got back diff cone mounting kits. I also tried searching for the product code, as published in the printed accessory/regalia catalog but it doesn't look like that's used at all by the only shop, either as a code or included in the product content for searching.

Great - a shiny new store front (with a completely different pallet to the rest of the site), just a shame there's nothing in it. Any idea where the heavy duty bonnet cones are hidden (HDBC001)?