Josef

As I now know this is a thing that can be wrong I’m going to have to check at the weekend… Though my rack was replaced in about 2007 by a non-classic but pretty competent garage so fingers crossed.

My exhaust down pipe partly falling off the manifold (cause the corner cracked and one of the stud / bolt holes broke) manifested as loss of power when going uphill, or at least that was when I really noticed it. Exhaust manifold gasket leak could do something similar. You would expect some loss of power under all conditions there, but the engine working hard would make it more dramatic.

The way to correct this is to park the car with the wheels dead ahead and disconnect the UJ that connects the lower column to the steering rack. Then rotate the inner column till the indicator cancel cam is correctly aligned (east as you say). After that, refit all the switchgear and test, then remove and refit the steering wheel so it’s correctly orientated. No need to mess with the actual wheel alignment!

Ah, thanks all. I was thinking something along those lines but couldn’t picture what the male part would look like. I guess the peg things will also be tonneau fixings given the context of the rest of the bag.

So I got these in a job lot of mostly BL parts (not as much Triumph stuff as I was hoping). However, I have no idea what they’re for! The threaded thing is like the retainer used on late Spitfire seat frames, but shorter. So it may, or may not, have a similar application? The other parts, no idea at all. The whole lot were in a bag with some hood press studs though. Any ideas anyone?

This is what I learned and why my Spitfire’s LHS is much better than the RHS! I did the right first, and did do some ‘just weld it on as the panel must be right’ which was then hard to recover from.

Well, perhaps dodgy panels, but also dodgy fitting of said panels and all that lies underneath them! My Spitfire came with a huge stick out at the bottom relative to the rear wing. This was mostly cause the b-post had been repaired wrongly, and this pulled in the bottom of the wing/rear sill in far enough to affect the fit of the door. I spent aaaages going back and forth, cutting and adjusting this part with a NOS Rover sill and BMH rear wing to get the door to fit nicely (having first rebuilt the door). My rebuild of the b-post I suspect is still a few mm inboard of where it should be (I had bugger all available to reference though so not unhappy there really - the door fit looks good therefore it is good).

So from what I can see in your photos it looks like the wooden bracing is not fixed to the metalwork. That would mean it would only stop the body from moving inwards. If you cut the lower a-post off now then the upper a-post will move outwards (I had to put a ratchet strap in to pull the two a-posts together). That was what I was commenting about . Of course I may have missed something / some fixing isn’t visible in the pictures

I think this is probably the best course of action. They’re relatively cheap panels after all. Depending on the condition of the inner sill it might be worth trying to save it (either by not removing it at all, or removing and refitting it) as the shape weight be better than any repro one you buy. That said I think the ones Fitchetts sell are pressed on the original tooling. The one I had from them went on very nicely, but then I had nothing original really to compare it to so… If you remove the rest of the sills you will definitely need some better bracing than the wood that’s in your photos. What you have now will only stop movement in one direction in one dimension, and you need to worry about all directions in three dimensions! Some of the more experienced people here might have better advice about working with the body off the chassis though, I built the body to and on the chassis myself.

For smaller items there’s also a DIY option for example this https://www.gaterosplating.co.uk/plating-kits?product_id=293 I’ve had good results with their zinc plating kits. It’s also possible to use brush plating to touch up larger items such as bumpers. Can’t see any brush plating kits in stock with Gateros at the moment though. Both DIY options will likely not give good results if there’s any pitting though. Also, hazardous chemicals may present shipping difficulties. Simplest alternative is to paint it all black! Matter of opinion on how good that looks of course Suits yellow cars rather well IMO (and see Mathew’s Spitfire resto thread for an example of that)

Like Chris I’ve also only done two sills (both sides of one car) so same caveats apply, but I do agree that trying to replace the whole floor pan without removing the sills is likely to not go so well. My advice would’ve been ‘if your sills are genuinely good then consider if the floor really needs to come out or if it can be repaired’. But too late for that on this side at least! At this point my gut feeling is that if you have an original inner sill panel there it would be worth trying to save it and refit it, but ultimately with the floor coming out it would be best to build the sills out from the floor. I made life hard for myself by trying to keep all the outer panels in place on the first side I did while I fitted the floor. But someone else may chime in with an alternative. One thing I would definitely recommend would be to remove the rear wiring loom complete before trying to do any welding near the rear of the sill! Chances of melting it otherwise are pretty high.

Staring on the road to gearbox reassembly - getting a bit of paint on the case!

As to the distributor drive gear position: I’ve looked through my factory reprint WSM that covers the Heralds, Spit 1-3 and Vitesse and it makes no reference to differences in drive gear positions. Same for the Autobooks manual I have that covers Spit 3, IV, and 1500. Attaching some photos of illustrations that might help you (and one of the Spitfire vs Herald valve fixing differences as it’s been mentioned above).

I know exactly how you feel. When ripping apart the Spitfire I’d had ‘professionally’ repaired and painted I kept thinking how it was that I, a complete novice welder/fabricator, could be doing a more competent job than somebody who made a living from this work. Some of it I figure is that welding and car panel repairs are not the same thing. You need to be able to weld to repair a car body, but cleaning up, cutting, and welding two bits of metal together is really pretty easy. (Re) building up the complex shapes of a 50+ year old car body requires the ability to weld, but is not the same skill, and is definitely the harder bit. So someone hired as a welder may not actually be a decent (or even competent) fabricator… Anyway, progress is progress, and at least you’ve identified these problems before they became even bigger problems!

That was a terrible choice of speaker location from whoever fitted it, acoustically and car structurally!

Will do when I’m back home on Monday if nobody else has found the info for you by then.

Well the Spitfire 1500 engine is just an evolution of the 1300 engine so the info you have about the dizzy position should still be relevant.

I had considered switching to Spitfire Mk3 spec BO needles as the FD engines are closer to the GE than the later ones, but figured it currently ain’t broke so…

Yes, I have exactly that setup! GE engine, rebuilt at some point as it’s got plus size pistons but otherwise standard as far as I’m aware and twin HS2s. I have the standard (for the carbs as they’re Spit IV I think) AAN needles. The crankcase breather is just vented via a tube down through the engine bay, and the two breather tubes on the carbs are joined by a short bit of hose. I bought it like this in 2007 and it’s run happily ever since (with maintenance of course!) Only problems I’ve ever had with them have been the float valves and floats degrading cause of ethanol, so I’d suggest replacing those with ethanol proof versions as a matter of course.

The certificate of conformity is a much more modern thing. It’s a manufacturer declaration that’s just not applicable to a GT6! So as Pete H says ‘n/a’ or leaving it blank is likely the most appropriate thing.

FK31796, so does match them being earlier and later ones. Or as I said they could well have been reconstructed in the past…

The photos here mostly just show quite how knackered the shift hub in gearbox number one is. I think the edge of the tooth profiles of the outer gear on the shift hubs are slightly different, and the outer from gearbox one will not fit on the inner of gearbox two. Though given the state of the inner from gearbox one it’s reasonable to suppose that has resulted in some damage to the corresponding outer so that might be why. Anyway, I definitely now have enough parts to build a whole gearbox. So have ordered the replacement bits I’m going to need, and will get on with rebuilding it when they turn up.

I was about to ask what the full new gearbox number was. I’m rebuilding a FK box with a D type overdrive and wondered if that might give an idea of where the change to J type happened. But then I thought we’ve no way of knowing if these two gearbox cases were built up as overdrive boxes of the given type from the factory. Plus I feel it’s far too much of a nerd question anyway, even for me All the running gear looks to be coming along nicely there!

Anyone have a spare three rail gear lever and the cup shaped part that twists/clips onto the extension? I don’t care what model it’s from. I just want something to be able to check selection feels normal after reassembly, and before I commit to taking stuff off the car(s). Neither of my gearboxes came with a lever…

Don’t forget that it was 1968 before cars had to be supplied with belts, so for a 1966 car something that looks period is as ‘correct’ as something that’s actually period! And of course as Pete points out a modern belt is probably a better plan.