NevSpit

Hi all, Looking to buy a torque wrench for working on the Spitfire (and Mini) and thinking of the Halfords Professional 40-200 nm (30-150 lbf.ft). The question is whether people think that is a suitable range of nm to go for to cover the most common jobs. As always welcome your expertise / experience. Cheers, Paul.

Super, thanks Clive.

Hi all, back again... I have a 3 pin flasher unit now with a '+' '-' and 'L'connections. Anyone know which one goes where? Thank you.

Thanks guys, much appreciated. I will take note of the weight distribution too.

Hi, Just fitted a tow bar and electricals to the car and tested each pin with a test lamp and all seemed to work ok. However, when I hook up the trailer board the indicators on the board are rather slow and dim. Do the good people of the forum know if I need to upgrade the 'flasher' unit or do I need to wire it in a different way (I have just tapped into the indicator feeds in the boot). Brake and tail lights are fine. Any assistance gratefully received. Thanks, Paul.

Just by way of closure it worked!! I was fairly confident given the condition of the old UJ but you can never be certain that there is not some other dark force at play... I know it has been a while since I raised the original thread but there have been demands of everyday life to deal with and whilst the car was up I sorted out the other jobs I had been meaning to do such as painting the floor / chassis, a healthy dose of cavity wax, greasing, trunnion oiling, painting the exhaust with VHT paint (now that does smell when it cures!) etc. I'm ready now for some more sunshine!

Brief update, driveshafts looked ok as far as I could tell (that's not to say they are guilt free at this stage) so extracted the props shaft - after the swear box was suitably topped up removing the rear nuts / bolts... Looking at the rear UJ it was 'sticking' on one plane so a replacement UJ was sourced. Once on the workbench I used the over and under sized socket plus big hammer method and after quite some persuasion managed to separate everything and this is what it looked like: As can be seen three sides are shiny and one is not and this is what the a couple of the caps look like: Now, the one on the right I may have mangled more than it was in trying to get it out but as for the needle rollers I have no idea where they are (and yes that was on the 'dull' side of the UJ). It was not loose when it was on the prop and I have not found them on the workbench or floor so no idea what happened there. Hopefully this is the cause of my problems but if not then it needed doing anyway!

Thanks for the pointer Pete which is appreciated, but for the purposes of clarity (you can tell I am no expert in these things) which bit do you mean on this diagram :-)

Spitfire Mk4 1971 O/D I have all of a sudden developed a vibration from the rear of the car (was fine on the outward leg of a journey but seemed to appear on the way home the same day) at around 45 mph and over. I have admittedly not taken it much over that as it does not appear to go away. It is not engine speed related as the problem still occurs at the same road speed irrespective of gear. I have swapped the wheels front to back and the problem still persists. Having trawled through a small portion of the web the symptoms seem to point to the prop shaft so off to the garage this morning to extract it. Any tips on removal or is it simply a case of removing the nuts / bolts and dropping it down? It is a non sliding one prop and when I had to drop the front end to replace the overdrive last year it was not that simple given part of the OD output protruded into the prop. Hopefully the back end is 'flat' so that will just drop down and give me the movement to take the front off - if you follow me. Any other tips or pointers to look for whilst I am under the car or indeed once the prop is off would be most welcome! Cheers. Paul.