Adrian Cooper

I've been out to the garage and it looks like the frame goes into the mounting tube for just under 10cm. There is no paint on my frame where it goes into the mounting tubes and it is quite a snug fit. You seem to have good thickness of paint on yours and that won't be helping.

Yes, the frame on mine goes down until the tabs are nearly touching the trim on the edge of the deck/wing. I have the hardtop on at the moment but I'll have a look at the frame and see if there are any witnesses marks I could measure. Adrian

Goodness me! I think I've ridden that bike! We were recording at Youth's Butterfly studios in the late 90s and some special bass guitar strings were needed urgently for a particular track. As he knew that I used to own a BSA, I was the only person he trusted to make the dash to the nearest Brixton music shop on his treasured Sunbeam. However, I doubt my connection with it will influence its value. What a funny old world! Adrian

Peter, have you checked the tightness of the bolts that hold the wishbone brackets to the chassis? I had a similar problem with my Mk2 a long time ago and this was the cause of the problem. Adrian

Hi Neil, Can you post a picture to show what you mean by 'not neat at the front'? Is the reduced headroom a problem? I'm 6'4" and I don't have any problems once I've scrunched myself up to get me in. It might be that your hood frame isn't sitting far enough down into the B post tubes? Adrian

This morning I spotted an advert for an Aston Martin DB6 in a colour described as 'beautiful burnt almond'. In the picture you can see that it is a cunning renaming of a colour that is clearly poo brown. This reminded me of a paint shop in Lewes that gives creative names to their custom colours; my favourite is a muddy pink colour called 'prosthetic limb' Adrian

Start by fitting the frame into the sockets on the b posts. Push down on the frame to compress the springs and lock it in the compressed state by rotating the stems in the sockets so that the pins engage in the cutouts. If you find that these are a bit stiff then lubricate them by rubbing a soft pencil up and down the stems to put some graphite into the sockets. Place the soft top over the frame and tuck the metal reinforced edge under the lip at the front of the windscreen frame capping. If your soft top has the poppers already fitted then pop these in place at the ends of the windscreen capping. if your new hood hasn't come with the poppers already fitted (they usually don't) then move on to pulling the rear edge of the hood backwards and fitting your new steel bar into the 2 chrome clips on the rear deck. Now you can mark where the hood poppers need to be fitted on the front edge of the soft top (if they haven't been factory fitted) and the poppers where the hood attaches to the rear deck (should be 3 each side). Take the hood off again and fit the poppers. The soft top also attaches round the front frame bar with a flap and 3 or 4 further poppers. Repeat the above steps. Once the hood is clipped in place and the poppers attached, rotate the 2 frame stems to release the spring tension in the frame. Pull out the elastic tensioners at the front of the draught excluders and clip them to the hooks near the top of the windscreen frame, partly hidden under the rubber moulding and pull the rear ones back round the frame to the poppers fitted on the frame uprights. Easy. Adrian

Hi RTB, I have 4.5 rims with 175/70 tyres. I would worry about the tyres rubbing on the front wheel arches with the 5.5 rims. Tubeless rims remove one of the worries but I'm not convinced that the danger is great. My local tyre fitters, Eastbourne Tyre Co (a real family firm in its fourth generation), say that fitting inner tubes into tubeless tyres has never been a problem in their experience. Common wisdom is to change the tyres and inner tubes at least every 7 years regardless of mileage and that goes for tubeless steel wheels too. Now that you have your car and you are getting it how you want it, can I ask how you plan to use it? Will you run it all year round or just the summer months? Adrian PS I've just spent a happy 2 hours cleaning my wires in preparation for a car show tomorrow. I'm envious of your whitewalls!

Done. Thank you for setting this up Chris. Adrian

It depends on how well the hood has been made (and some don't even come with the elastic tensioners fitted) but you should be Ok. I can't say that I often bother connecting up the tensioner straps on mine and the hood seems to be perfectly watertight anyway. When you come to fit your new poppers you might find that the self tapping screws have made the holes in the body too big for the pop rivets to get a grip. To sort this on mine I used bigger pop rivets and filed the heads down so that they still fitted within the male stud. There was a discussion on here about this recently and someone, Colin I think, said that they had found bigger rivets with smaller heads from some supplier. No doubt he will be along soon to clarify or refute. Adrian

I'm sure you're right Pete, mine doesn't flash. RTB It will just be loose screws giving the fore and aft movement. Just undo the two screws on the top and bottom of the black metal cowls (might be plastic on the later cars) and you will see that the light stalks are attached with two screws, one on top and one underneath. These often work loose. Adrian

The Surrey top stiffener set you linked to is right for the front as the Mk1&2 Spitfires shared the windscreen frame and capping with the TR4. Very expensive though, and I'm stunned at the price of a new hood!

Probably the screw is loose

If you don't get the bar with the new hood (I haven't with any of the hoods I've bought) this is what you need to find. There is a bend in the middle rather than it being a continuous curve and so it shouldn't be too difficult to copy. The original is 3.5mm thick and 19mm wide by about 72cm long although these dimensions are not critical. Just as long as it will fit in the jaws on the rear deck and span the gap between them.

It's not clear from the website whether the rear bar is included and I would imagine that the 'Original quality fasteners included' statement refers to the poppers only. I'll go and take a picture of the bar you need and get the measurements.