Works Spitfires

The chap that owned it was an interesting fella. I was impressed when he turned up at the HQ in Nottingham when I was on my training in a Jensen Interceptor. I've never forgotten his name (Richard Hartley) because I had to write it out on the banking envelope at the end of each days trading then walk through the town with a couple of grand in cash before sticking it in the Nat West night safe. How I never got mugged for it I'll never know.

We used to sell a ribbed (for pleasure?) alternative to the original straight one, it made fitting so much easier. They used to come on a cardboard sheet in little tear off plastic bags (yellow coloured branding with a blue Lion, can't remember who though?).

That's the one

We have some of those here, I'll dig them out.

My first full time job was as as a trainee manager in a Motorist Discount Centre (the owner of the chain had ambitions to be bigger than Halfords, and have more branches which he managed the week before it folded!). I remember our best trading days were Saturdays, and our fastest moving items were Mini exhaust systems (£9.99), Mini cylinder head bypass hoses, Cortina void bushes, and those miracle oil things (there was another brand other than STP that I seem to remember being popular).

Or those gloopy snake oil concoctions you used to be able to buy from Halfrauds, and the like which promised to silence the worst mechanical malady's.

Nine times out of ten its shouldn't be a problem if gearsets, and clusters are kept together when stripped for rebuild. The problem usually occurs when a used/repaired cluster is swapped for a damaged one, or individual gears are mixed up from various stripped similar core. Its its any consolation the noise shouldn't get any worse. My daily driver Courier has had noisy 3rd for over 10 years which hasn't got any worse. It was built with a replacement cluster (bushed ends), and a mixed up set of driven gears off the shelf. I wasn't worried about potential noise issues, because its a Courier!

Only 20 MKI's left, what a load of tosh! If that were true we have a quarter of the survivors here! We also have over two hundred customers who identify as Spitfire 4 MKI owners.

Gearboxes don't bed in. Like others have said its a mismatch of worn parts. Just the experience of a gearbox builder.

I fitted a Spitfire tank to a Herald in the early 90's. It was fitted along with a Herald Estate tank to increase range without compromising boot space. We needed the extra range for the long gaps in fuel provision whilst driving down West Africa.

Its only the two outer leaf clamps that would damage rotoflex couplings if you accidently fitted a MKI spring. If you look at a genuine MKII roto spring the two outer clamps are bent around the leaves instead of being bolted. You can replicate this (if you felt the need) by removing the bolts from the outer clamps, and hammering the legs around the bottom leaf. In effect that's all they did on a roto spring anyway.

Yes in Sheffield no less, where all the best steel comes from. I'm not sure anyone else is replicating this spring because of the minimal sales on it. If there was an option for an imported one like there is for most of the other models they would be a lot cheaper. We did have a customer recently who came to us after being told by another supplier that a Vitesse MKI spring would fit (and be suitable for) his MKII!

and the solid links are still available, we sell quite a few to the historic Formula racers. They are a stronger alternative to the later drilled for lubrication link. In theory the drilling on the later links is a good idea as it provides a 'well' for extra oil, but in practice Triumph didn't factor in neglect by their customers which leads to them breaking because they are weaker (because they are drilled). When they dry out the subsequent rust on the screw thread leads to stress risers right in the critical area of weakness.

From your pictures it looks like you have a few less spring leaves than a standard rotoflex MKII Vitesse. Standard spring has 11 leaves, might be worth counting yours.

They have always had a tin base even before their first use on Herald's. The Standard 8/10 had a nipple screwed into it to lubricate the screw thread on the vertical link. If they had left it like that we wouldn't have half the problems we have had over the years with vertical links breaking.

The parts supply market is fluid, quality changes on a regular basis. I have no recent experience of repro trunnions, so I am unqualified to comment.

Yes they exist without the STANPART brand. Most of the repros are made in Turkey, and they are easily identified as they have little if any obvious branding. Because of the (considerable) trade price difference you will find the majority of the retailers are selling the unbranded types.

No that's not correct. There have traditionally been at least three manufacturers of trunnions (until fairly recently anyway). There is one very obvious difference in that one of them has the STANPART brand on it. They come from a supplier in Coventry from the original dies. They may cost a little more than the others, but buy with confidence.

Poor old Joe who spent over 6 months scanning in all the factory parts books, and then making them interactive for our on-line catalogue. I watched all the life drain out of him!

Bent reverse idler selector lever, or incorrect spacer behind idler?

Colin thanks for the recommendation. The actual number we use for these is; https://www.canleyclassics.com/?diagram=triumph-spitfire-mkiv/1500-mkiv-oil-cooler&ptno=715863/4 However ignore the advertised price for the time being until the next website update. Good news though as I've just reviewed the price, and unusually in this day and age I've actually reduced it to £32.29 inc VAT for the pair.

It was Walsh's in Coventry, a large engineering company that unfortunately changed hands some years ago, and then ceased trading recently. John Kipping used them back in the 80/90's, and we continued using them until they changed hands, and things got difficult (MOQ's went up, prices went through the roof). Mick continued to use Walsh's after he left us, but came up against the same issues eventually. He probably persevered with them longer than us, but because of the volume of stuff we were doing in the trade, and retail back then it was too much of a struggle to maintain reliable supply, so we left it to others. Shame because we were (and probably still are) left sitting on the largest core stock in the trade.

Bread and butter stuff for any old school machine shop. The sleeves used to a an off the shelf thing, but in the end our place made their own. Set up charges used to be the killer so we used to have to do a minimum of 25 gears (or it might have been 50?) to make it reasonable money.

This was a common fix in the gearbox shop back in the John Kipping days. Worn 1/2" tip mainshafts were ground down to take an off the shelf Torrington sleeve (I still have a box full of them somewhere). Then a steel cage tip bearing was used to compliment it. Worn 18mm mainshaft tips were ground down to the next common size (Ital?) and used NOS Unipart needle rollers that were as cheap as chips back then. Cluster gears were bored out, and sleeved usually as a matter of course on one end at least. I think Mick Papworth was still doing this until fairly recently (learnt from his days in the JK gearbox shop). There used to be a gearbox supplier who used to drill the end of mainthafts and glue in a new tip. They didn't last long!

John Kipping used to offer this service to customers. He would drop off some worn mains caps to me, and I would weld them up as per the above. I'm not sure what he was charging his customers, but I always did it as a favour as it only took a couple of minutes. I suspect most of the people doing it though were swinging it with badly worn crank thrust faces in the hope it would last long enough to flog their cars.