JohnD

Sean, Except possibly in a very hot climate, a road car needs an oil cooler like a fish needs a bicycle. The water radiator does a perfectly good job. Worse, oil 'works' as a lubricant at a little over water boiling point. Without an oil cooler, the increased pressure in the water jacket and an effective water radiator will deliver just that. If you insist on fitting an oil cooler for ordinary driving, then even if the water jacket gets hot enough to open the water thermostat, the oil never will - it will stay at less than the effective temperature. Your engine will wear faster, because it only ever sees cold oil. If you must have an oil cooler on a road car, you must use a thermostat. However, it's quite likely that it will never open and cycle oil through the cooler! How can I be so emphatic about this? I do have an oil cooler on my SofS Vitesse racer. It has no thermostat, but I do have an oil temperature gauge. The oil takes a long time to warm up, and then on the road it stays where it should be, just over water boiling point. If I did a lot of short trips in it, it would be wearing out quicker. John

How sad! The Spitfires are gonners, I fear. The Dolly (?) might be saveable. John

Hope your new flasher dos he job, but suspect that you will have to improve the earthing to the car's lamps. Originally, Triumph earthed the lights to the lamp fitting, and relied on the contact between the fitting and gthe bodywork to complete the circuit. Age and corrosion will have made that pathway more resistant, so a wire from the lamp to a central earth, or just to a convenient spot on the body will help. Also, don't forget that by splicing into the wiring next to the lamps, and running the trailer board from that, you have doubled the current that the original wiring must carry. If that is old and tired (aren't we all?) it may also have increased resistance that will limit the current. Go around with a multimeter, measuring the voltage at the lamps and comparing it with battery volts. There should only be a fraction lost between battery and lamp. If there is more than the wiring may need attention. John

Not unless you really, really fancy making life difficult. All the followers will be at different heights, so you will jam the cam shaft on the next follower or the one after that in trying to pull it out. Worse, they are bound to slip down and then you'll have to poke them back up from below, while pushing the 'shaft back in, so the sump will have to come off anyway. As long as they don't fall right through. Take the head off an do it properly. Anyway, why take the camshaft out? JOhn

Wimps! Stick a finger in and crook it! Like doing a 'finger-jam' while hanging upside down over 3,000 feet of un-roped climb. or something. The ridge isn't wear, it's gungy deposit. John

A picture, please! The usual hardtops for Vitesse/Herald make it very dark inside, with poor rear/side vision, which is one reason I returned SofS back to saloon. Amicale Spitfire has one of the best galleries of hardtops : http://www.amicalespitfire.fr/hardtop1.php but only Spitfire/GT6. Is yours like the Bermuda top, near the bottom of the page? John

Hag, As you can see more easily if you have the head off, this oil gallery is made up of three drillings: Up from the face of the cylinder head. Across from the back left corner. This one is sealed with a short bolt and copper washer. Make sure the bolt isn't too long! Down from the top of the C/H. If you have taken that bolt out and squirted oil into that, and it appears at the rocker shaft, then that part of the gallery is fine. It can get blocked where the foot of the rocker pedastle meets the head, esp. if someone uses gasket sealer. If you aren't getting oil up to the rocker in use, and given that you had an oiling problem before you replaced the shaft, then the blockage must be in the lower drilling. As Pete says, that may be blocked by overuse of gasket sealer. You can't get a wire around the corner from the middle drilling, so I'm afraid it's head-off time. An external oil feed is a bodge that would get around this problem, but again as Pete says you must fit a restrictor. A copper disc, cut from a piece of central heating pipe, with that tiny hole drilled in the middle can be inserted into one of the connectors and will still seal. But that hole must be tiny! A 1mm drill turned by hand, from both sides until you can just see a point of light through it will be right! John

Because it's easy to get a nice smooth, shiny finish on them. That would take many coats, rubbing down in between. Even if the cost of that was acceptable, ever tried to rub down the paint on a spring? But that smooth, shiny coat needs to be thick, to thick to flex and it cracks. Underseal is flexible, but looks terrible. As I said above, a thin coat of paint over a good, thin coat of primer for springs. OR, grease them well. Dirt will build up, but dirt can be washed off. JOhn

Thank you, doug, I hope Brendan enjoys the joke too! But powder coating is still a technology for still things - window frames (in a house), white goods. The thick coating usually applied to auto items is rigid and splits off springs. Or rather, cracks, lets in water and keeps it there, with exactly the opposite effect to the protection it is supposed to provide. And anyway, you are never going to bring joy into the MoT man's life - all miserable buggers, in my experience. JOhn

Ah! TR4/6! You didn't say. Sorry, withdraw my offer. John

Paint on gasket surfaces? You really do have Boatbuilder's Syndrome! No, no, no, no, no. Clean bare metal, every time. Paint the assembled engine. Why make more work? Blast the front/back plates? Why??? Scrape clean, polish with Scotchbrite is you must. DO NOT PAINT! As you say yourself, you don't need VHT paint on the engine itself, it doesn't get that hot. Ordinary paint is fine. Bent front plate? Big no-no. Straighten completely with hammer and a straight edge - THAT is worth obsessing about. JOhn

Painting the rear spring, so that it is a "joy to look at"? You can't see it when it's in the car!!!!!!!!!! Join "Boatbuilder's Syndrome Anonymous" today! "Hello, my name is Brendan, and I want to paint my Spitfire's rear spring" "Hello, Brendan! We feel your pain and are here to help you fight your deamons!" Seriously, powder coating ALWAYS flakes off parts that flex, especially springs. Use good quality matt black spray paint, thin coats over thin primer. After all, the suspension is going to get dirty, isn't it? John

You could operate the system before you install the slave. See the slave working. And with it in place, and in gear but no engine running, try pushing the car with the clutch pedal up and down. If the clutch is released, then it will be a lot easier to push! JOhn

If you ever decide to do it, I'll swap you for an RHD rack. I've been looking for an LHD at reasonable price for a project. John

Come on, Coxy! What ya got?

Try a magnet on it. I think it's very, very, very fine metal wear particles, so fine that they got through the filter. If so, on the magnet it will look like much coarser, spikey slivers, as the metals forms along magnetic lines of forces, but as you say, feels like ointment. John

I'll be travelling between Coventry and Lancaster this weekend, with a small trailer in tow. If anyone wants me to collect and drop off parts for Triumphs, between those two centres, or in between, I'll be glad to consider it. Please PM me. John

Impossible to answer without dismantling the engines. The block skimming would have been either to deal with damage to the face (unlikely) or to "deck the block". This procedure also involves skimming the crowns of any pistons that are higher than others, and then the block face, so that each piston rises exactly as far as the others. Any sign of that on the piston tops - loss of normal markings? The objective is to have them all rise to the top of the block face, which production engines don't achieve - all part of 'blueprinting' a competition engine. The thick alloy gasket - how thick? To compensate for an over-skimmed head, that raised the CR too much, would need a gasket less than a millimeter thicker than normal, almost unnoticeable. I suspect that this was used to LOWER the compression below normal to allow forced induction. Could be turbo, but people have put superchargers on Triumph sixes. Such a gasket may be several millimeters thicker Anything on the car that might corroborate that? Mods to the exhaust and intake? Extra pulleys to drive a 'charger? If that was the case, then the stress on the pistons, conrods and especially big-end bearings is enormous, so look carefully at those. Your other engine - does it turn over or is it seized? You could free it up, by soaking the bores in oil and paraffin or white spirit for a few day and then turning it backwards and forwards until it freed up. Spark plugs out, of course. No point in dismantling if you can't free it. OR, just take both to the engine rebuilder, Let him choose. John PS if you don't want the other one - will you sell it?

You could start by listing all the parts you have here. And lots of people have eBay auctions for "One wheel nut - 0.1p" to advertise that they have a whole car's worth of parts to sell. "Contact me for details" they say, thereby robbing you of what protection buying through eBay gives you, and saving themselves eBay's fees. BUt why not join them? JOhn

Richard, "So the whole "car won't start" scenario looks like a red herring" No, just your car getting to know you. JOhn

Such a small drain current is likely to be small enough to measure with your Multimeter - they can usually tackle up to 10A. So start at the battery and check that there is such a small current when the ignition is off. And fripperies such as clocks disconnected. If there is, trace it through the loom, using the circuit diagram. EG next is the starter solenoid, which has three ways the current could go, starter motor, starter switch and control box. Obviously the possibilities multiply after that, but your meter will light the way, and lead you to the short circuit, or faulty unit. Method makes all simple, or as Holmes would say, " when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains must be the truth" So much better than guessing. JOhn

Joining lengths might need special skills, like TiG, but knowing of yours, John, I'm sure you include that! John

Ah! Reminded me of the windscreen surround from a LoCost, as described in Ron Champion's book. He suggests "round-edged aluminium extrusion, as used in shower cubicle construction" He gives no more clues, but does describe a self-built tool to form the curves. Loads on eBay, under "aluminium extrusion". John

A frame,for the door window? If you make short angle sections and rivet them to the upper door frame, they will stop the the window being bowed outwards at speed. The windows are bent inwards as you close the door, to clear the angle pieces. JOhn

Buy your polycarbonate as sheets and cut it yourself. Mark out using the original glass as a pattern, and as Clive says, it's quite soft, and easily cut with say an electric, or hand jigsaw. Cut it slightly oversize and trim with a Surform plane. But if you want to save weight by swapping glass for PolyC, you need to remove the winder mechanisms as well, as they are weighty. And devise some means of holding the PolyC in the door. Side and rear windows can be bolted to the flanges that used to hold the rubber seals, with a strip of closed cell, self adhesive foam ("draught excluder") between PolyC and flange. You could use a squeeze of mastic, I suppose, if you like cleaning up the mess afterwards. Strange - I know exactly what you mean by the fly deflector, a strip of perpsex across the bonnet, but I know also that all the best Le Mans replicas and original cars today do not have one. John