Conor L

Looks like good progress. Bookmarked

Thanks for the info Pete picked up some Castrol 20w50 at stoneleigh yesterday makes sense to use a quality oil on a freshly rebuilt engine. I'll order some gear oil this week too

Thanks to all who replied to my gearbox query all advice is much appreciated! After some jiggling I did manage to line up the laygear with the thrust washers which wasn't easy due to a tight space with big hands. with that hurdle out of the way I placed the nos reverse idle gear at the bottom of the gearbox, then I could slide in the main shaft being carful not the lose the c washers (grease helped with this) then the input shaft was pressed into place when this was complete I installed the selector forks and then jiggled the rear extension into place with a fresh gasket, bearing and oil seal I'm pleased to report that all gears select nicely and the gearbox turns freely which I'm quite proud of. All that remains is to fit the bell housing, top cover and output flange then I can give it a fresh lick of gloss black paint to match the engine. Massive update on the tub I had a text yesterday from the restorer to say that he has finished painting the underside so after work this afternoon I drove straight over there to have a look and I wasn't disappointed As I'm sure you'll agree it looks great and I'm very happy with the finish just as I wanted it. It was quite difficult to chose what shade of red I wanted but after a lot of thought I settled with Ford Radiant Red which is pretty close to signal red. Next weekend I'm hoping to fit the engine and gearbox into the chassis and fire it up for the 1st time since 1984! Which brings me onto the question of what oils to use in the engine, gearbox and diff. I know the engine should have 20w50 however I'm unsure whether to use a cheaper oil to run the engine in with or not as always any advice is welcome. I shall also be at Stoneleigh tomorrow for the spares day and wish everyone a safe journey in the high winds and rain. Conor

following the last update I have since cleaned up the remaining arears on the floor pan and coated with hydrate 80 which means that its now over to the restorer to paint the underside of the tub ready to bolt back onto the chassis Before the chassis goes back to the restorer I wanted to fit the engine and fire it up as I have never had it running in my ownership plus I rebuilt it in 2018 and just want to check its going to work. Unfortunately there's 1 problem, The gearbox. when we took the engine & gearbox out in 2018 I discovered that the gearbox is knackered, when I removed the top cover I saw that all reverse parts were not in a good way it actually looks like someone put it in reverse at 50 mph. This left me with 3 options Buy a second hand unit and pray it works, Buy a reconditioned unit or rebuilt the original, because I like a challenge I decided to rebuilt the original. After stripping down the gearbox we can see the worst of the damage The worst being the laygear cluster Thankfully I managed to source a good second hand cluster, 1st & 2nd gear selector hub and a NOS idler gear on Ebay otherwise he box would've been scrap. I also ordered a rebuild kit from Rimmer Bros which has all of the essential parts to assemble the box. When all the parts arrived I got to work reassembling the mainshaft and replacing the inputshaft bearing And also putting the needle roller bearings into the cluster (that wasn't fun) old vs new With all this done I attempted to rebuild the gearbox 1st was to place the cluster at the bottom which is where we've hit a problem. The kit I ordered from Rimmers contained new cluster thrust washers however I was unable to fit 1 of them when the cluster was in, thinking they were just too big I tried refitting the old washers same thing happened, the larger of the 2 washers fits nicely however when I try to fit the 2nd smaller washer the gap between the cluster and the gearbox casing doesn't seem large enough and this isn't something that covered very well in either the workshop manual or on the internet. is there something I'm doing wrong? any help and advice is always welcome starting to wish I bought a recon. Conor

Thanks for the continued support Colin finally feeling like I'm getting somewhere now. The underside was plastered in underseal in some places it was very thick, I used a blow torch to warm up the underseal and then used a standard scraper to scrape it off, quite time consuming but worked well. After that I went over the area with the wire wheel on a grinder and a wire brush on the good old Black & Decker for the tighter spots.

1st update for New Year and the New Decade so Happy New Year to everyone on the TSSC forum! Things have been pretty steady over the Christmas period including driving around the area looking at all the lights, starting a new job back on the spanners and giving the daily some TLC (Scrubs up well for a £70 car) But more importantly there has been progress with the spit starting with completion of the chassis With that out of the way I contacted the restorer regarding the tub and shooted over there the following weekend to flip the tub upside down and start prepping the underside for paint Over the past couple of weekends I've been at it with a wire wheel which ultimately revealed a few pin holes but on the plus side the underseal did the job by protecting the remaining metal after a quick wipe down the 1st coat of Hydrate 80 was applied that pretty much brings us up to date I shall be going over next weekend to finish cleaning up the floor and lower bulkhead, applying more Hydrate 80 then it will be over to the restorer to apply the zinc primer, seem seal, stone chip and top coat. Safe to say that the very near future is looking very exciting for this little car even though I still cant decide what colour red to paint it. Conor

Thought I'd give a bit of an update on the caliper situation along with other things. After a little bit of research, measuring and swapping about turns out that I do indeed have the wrong caliper and the seller advised just to grind it out a bit which I don't really feel that happy about doing. Aside from the issues with the caliper the front end rebuild is now complete with just the copper brake pipes to route. Btw I have tidied up since this picture So with that end done my attention has now turned to the rear of the chassis starting with the Diff as this will be the 1st component to go back on. Unfortunately pictures are lacking here. On 1st inspections the Diff was in a right mess covered with 40 years of grease, dirt and oil. I removed the input/output flanges then split the case in half the reveal 1 very clean wear free diff, Happy Days over the weekend I have degreased the case and that's all ready for reassembly. Now moving on to the drive shafts. After searching the internet I managed to score a second hand hub puller for a reasonable price which arrived today (If anyone wishes to borrow this in the future feel free to drop me a PM) after wrapping up warm I took a brave pill and faced the almost tropical temperature and went outside to see if my hubs will play ball. Unfortunately things didn't quite go how I wanted them to due to the fact the hub is still on the shaft and the wheel nets decided to strip their threads (thankfully the studs are ok) Now because I'm strange I no longer work in a garage but instead sit behind a desk all day collecting council tax and being swore at because an enforcement agent is at someones property (I know quite a change in career) this means I no longer have access to heat so im a bit stuck for ideas. I know people have had problems before with removing these troublesome hubs so all tips and tricks are welcome. On a side note I had a great day at the NEC last Sunday walking around some amazing cars and the TSSC looked pretty impressive with all of the lovely Heralds on show, I would've come over and said Hello but all of a sudden lost confidence for some reason. There was also this lovely Mimosa Spitfire which gave me an idea of how my car looked back in 75 Also this week I shall be going over to the start work on the underside of the tub, stripping it back to bare metal which means I will need to make my mind up on what colour I'd like. Something I have never really talked about on this thread is how I actually want my car to look like. I have had a vision in my head since I 1st saw a Spitfire 6 years ago in my high school car park as pictured below, I recently saw a car on google which is more or less exactly how I want mine to look with these wheels So there's a slight insight on where this whole idea came from and what id like the end result to be. I think you've had enough of me waffling on now but thank you for all of the support so far and I promise in the next big update there will be more pictures! Conor

Just had a look both calipers are Type 14 and both are refurbished girling items. on closer inspection the nearside caliper is slightly different to the offside. Another thing to note is the nearside caliper (the 1 that fits) says its a Mk3 and the offside says Mk2. Could this difference be the issue? I've fitted the nearside caliper onto the offside and there are no clearance issues which to me confirms there is defiantly an issue with the caliper

I've just taken a further look and also fitted the other side for good measure and to my surprise everything fits fine My conclusion is that I think the offside caliper is a Girling type 12 instead of the correct type 14. is that a possible cause?

Thanks Colin. I can see an even gap either side of the disc so I'm pretty confident that it's all lined up. I think the issue lies in the picture below as there appears to be no gap at all between the edge of the disc and the caliper. Conor

Unfortunately progress has been a bit slow over the past month. Well actually that's a lie has things have been done just not enough to document. At the end of September with my 1st proper wage for a few months, a order was placed for the remaining parts to rebuilt the chassis along with the most important part, Paint. I do apologise at this is stage as I've been a naughty boy and haven't really taken any pictures of progress. So the angle grinder came out and 2 weekends were spent wire brushing the chassis to remove and old paint and all of the surface rust, soon to be followed by a good coat of Hydrate 80 to hopefully keep the rust at bay for many years to come. I then applied a coat of some zinc rich primer then the chassis received 5 good thick coats of satin black chassis paint. Once this was completed I clean up and painted all of the components in order to rebuild the front of the chassis. All of the suspension arms were polybushed too which will hopefully sharpen up the handling and improve road feel. When all of this was completed we ended up with this, Overall im quite happy with the result. Whilst everything was apart I took the opportunity to upgrade to Freelander wheel studs and a trunnion conversion kit was fitted, Since these picture I have built up the other side to the same stage. Now with everything going back together nicely I knew in the back of my mind that something would go wrong and I was right. When I fitted the recon Girling Type 14 caliper we hit an issue as can been seen in the picture above there is no gap between the caliper and the disc and as a result has completely jammed the disc solid in place. Only thing I can thing of is that the disc is too big and is fouling the caliper, are there any other causes for this? So now with the front pretty much complete that just leaves me with the rear which all well and good and progress on that will soon commence when I find the correct hub puller at a reasonable price. Conor

Dont worry Hammerite will be going no where near this car I'd have to think twice about using it on the garden bench. My thought is that as the underside of the tub is going to be body colour (red) I was thinking of painting the chassis black to have a nice contrast between body and chassis. Still torn between a gloss or satin finish though. I was thinking of building up the layers of paint before a finish coat to maximize protection for years to come. Never thought about putting the converter inside of the chassis so that is definitely on the to do list along with spraying a load of Dinitrol in there. I was also going to stay away from POR - 15 as I've heard mixed results.

Wow over a month without an update, time sure flies when you're having fun. Not much has happened on the Spitfire since the last update. However now I've finally got myself back on my feet with the help of a new job/career. After much thought about whether to get the chassis blasted or to wire brush it I've opted for the latter, main reason being all of the shot blasting companies in my town all wanted nearly £300 just to blast the thing which is quite simply £300 I dont currently have. So over the past couple of weekends I've been out wire brushing up the chassis and I'm quite pleased with the results. I've also gave it a couple of coats of Hydrate 80 to convert any remaining rust and hopefully prevent flash rusting. The question I have is, what should I use to paint it? Obviously I want something that can be easily applied, durable with long lasting protection and with so many different products out on the market some advice and recommendations is welcomed. Conor

Haven't tried it myself but would be interesting to see what "ingredients" are in it and how long it lasts. In the world of detailing this would be classed as a QD (quick detailer) which is an easy way to add gloss and protection for a few months. Most of these contain SI02 which is silicone based and provides a real deep glass like shine.

As per the title I'm after both front upper suspension arms for the offside I believe they're the same as the near side though. There was nothing wrong with my original 1s however we had no choice but to cut them as the bolts were badly siezed in the bushes. Willing to pay and cover postage. Many thanks, Conor

Thanks for the feedback Doug can't really understand why the previous owner towed a boat with a GT6? The mind does wonder. When I removed the rear spring from mine it was completely shot, 2 broken leaves and loads play between them which explain why the car was very low at the back, I already have a new 1 in stock when I took advantage of the rimmers spring sale and the difference is like night and day. The chassis has had a bit of welding with the outriggers and the front cross member needed repair too which has been done thankfully the rest is only surface rust. Did the company that blasted it paint it with epoxy? Not a bad price if so and will be worth thinking about. Unfortunately I haven't got the expertise or facilities to blast it however just down the main road from me is a company that some people in my area including my uncle and the restorer highly recommend which is handy. I don't normally trust people with my belongings not even a pen in some cases and they never used to get returned in school and working in the trade we always used to get in cars that had just had an MOT but they were nails kind of thing. I'm intending on going for a no expense spared restoration hence why I asked about shot blasting as it can get into places a wire brush can't however with being made redundant 3 weeks ago and with finding a job proving to be quite difficult I thought about the wire brush.

Well this happened on Wednesday, yes that's right the chassis is finally back at mine and as soon as it was delivered it was straight into the garage ready for disassembly. Before I knew it the front end was stripped (steering rack removed after the picture was taken) I decided to then compare old strut to new, Quite a difference and on closer inspection you can still see the original blue paint on the old damper, Then I moved onto the rear which only took a few hours to disassemble, I worked it out that it only took 9 hours to take a part and surprisingly everything came undone relatively easy with little fuss and only 5 nuts needed to be cut off not bad considering its sat for 35 years! Ive pretty much got all the parts in stock ready for the rebuilt with improvements such as trunnionless conversion, poly bushes all round, inch lowering block for back and inch lowered springs for the front. I'm trying to build the car so I can blast it around the B roads in the day and then be able to take it to a local gathering on the evening basically a mix between a drivers car and a show car in 1 package and hopefully I'll achieve this with set up I'm going for. 1 question I do have is should I have the chassis shot blasted or do I attack it with the wire brush on the angle grinder? Both have there pros and cons would id like to hear what other people have to say before I make a final decision. Thanks for reading, Conor

I've seen a few 5 GT Turbos at a few local meets this year. I believe most of the older models like the 16 and 25s are becoming quite rare probably due to rust. A couple of years a go we had a 25 automatic come into work and was a rot box with fist sized holes in the inner sills. Shame really as it looked like a nice car.

Haha that's brilliant. mine has had a few bits done to it but nothing that ruins the way it drives. Can your mate pull them out of the backs of Mercs? would've needed him in January but that's another story.

So this happened the other day, Finally we have removed the tub and I'm pleased the report the chassis is in good condition which is a massive relief! Expecting the chassis back in my garage in 2 weeks time ready for the strip down and rebuild. Exciting times ahead and it really feels like progress is being made. Bit of a side note. Just over a week ago I went over to The British Motor Museum for the BMC & BL day. Had a great time and saw some amazing cars, never seen so many TR7/8s before quite amazed really. Here's a few of my favourites, Looking forward to the big weekend next month at Stratford Racecourse even though I'll be in the Clio. Any love for clios on here or is just me? Thanks for reading, Conor

No problem bud. I have had a quick look in the Haynes manual with not much luck unfortunately. Thanks Colin for the photos seems pretty straightforward. when I bought the replacement valance piece I only quickly offered it up to see what it looked like. the next time I'm with the car i'll take a closer look. Thankfully the replacement quarter valances came with the little plastic pieces in them which was good i'd never even seen them before.

So i'd need to make a couple of brackets to mount the reg onto the valance but do you know how the valance bolts on to the chassis? that's the bit that's got me confused. Thanks for the link to Aidan's thread ive also just read yours about this and it looks like tidy install.

Not much to report however I've made a start on cleaning up the inside with the wire brush ready for rust treatment and a layer of Zinc primer which will hopefully give it protection for years to come. some pinholes were discovered during this process which have been filled with weld and ground back. I also have a couple of questions that hopefully can be answered on here. Being a 1500 it originally had the lower plastic spoiler which I'm personally not a fan of as I think it clutters up the front end. Ive bought a lower valance panel from a MK4 to tidy things up and so I mount the registration plate on there too. My question is, how do you mount it onto the chassis and what fixings do I need to use? I can see 2 very small holes on either side of the cross member but I'm unsure if that's the fixing point. My second question is I'm thinking about upgrading the fuse box to a more modern and safer blade style box with there being a fuse on each individual circuit like a modern car. May seem a little crazy thinking about the electrics at this stage however will I need to modify the area of the bulkhead where the fuse box lives? Obviously I'd like to achieve the necessary modifications before paint. Conor

thanks for the tip Dick! I have got a few things to refurbish like the master cylinders and heater box but its just been too cold recently but hopefully now the weathers warming up these tasks shall be completed. just read up about your puma spitfire and im really interested in the build! hopefully it'll be painted towards the end of summer. the tub is supposed to be coming off this weekend which will allow me to rebuild the chassis at home and see if the engine will run. after that itll be paint!

Thanks for your kind words. Sometimes it was really hard to keep motivated and I thought about getting rid of it but I'm happy I didn't because i want to achieve my dream. It wont be staying yellow as I'm personally not a fan, ha I always said that I want going to buy a yellow 1. Itll be going Audi brilliant red.