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Oil seals are "unexpected" on this design. The outer seal, by the "proper" bearing, goes in the "normal" way - lip toward the grease - because its job is to prevent that grease leaking into the drum (and causing your brakes not to work). The inner seal, by the needle rollers, goes with the lip away from the bearing because its job is to prevent water getting in. They do leak a bit of grease into the cap there and it's harmless... providing your maintenance schedule complies with the factory spec. You MUST grease the rear hubs at every service. Not much - just enough to replace what has leaked. The guide is "four pumps until it begins to appear on the shaft" - in other words stop once the intentionally leaky inner seal begins to weep.

On one occasion, my GT6 got left in mum's garage for three years. Once I'd persuaded it to start again, and warmed it up, it actually ran OK on the old petrol. Half a tank of fresh stuff mixed in and it was perfectly fine.

Being really pedantic... The numbers are not, strictly speaking, the viscosity but the viscosity grade. A 50 grade oil, when hot, is thinner than a 10 grade when cold. But it's much thicker than the 10 grade when they're at the same temperature. A 10w40 oil is one which, due to use of additives, does not thin out as quickly with temperature, so that it has the viscosity of a 10 grade at a specified "cold" temperature but retains enough viscosity to match a 40 grade at the specified "hot" temperature.

As I understand it, the bearing pre-load setting involves some expertise and the use of engineers blue for the final check (you're looking for a clean deposition from pinion to ring with nice central ovals) but can be carried out in a reasonably well equipped garden shed. Never done it myself, though. I guess syphoning the oil ought to be possible. As has been mentioned elsewhere, while the diff doesn't have a drain plug it does have the flat where said plug hole should be drilled. Probably worth adding one when you take it off the car for any work.

A lot of tyre fitters trained this century will be accustomed only to the double-seat style wheels that modern cars have, which are supposed to be more resistant to shedding tyres. They often, mistakenly, think that a single-seat wheel like our cars have is therefore not suitable for tubeless tyres. Mind you, I've also come across a young tyre fitter who declared, with absolute conviction, that it is no longer legal to use inner tubes at all. I asked him what he'd suggest for a car with wire wheels, where the rim itself is not guaranteed to be sealed. Before he could come up with an answer, his father (who had owned the garage for years) came out and told him to stop being ridiculous and just fit my inner tubes. (I don't have wires, I have 45-year-old porous alloys)

I had a diff like that - except FAR worse and not only at speed - which the reconditioner swapped FOC because he was ashamed of it. That was just a bad case of something not right and the chap had been unable to get the clean tolerance marking to confirm the pinion pre-load. If yours has been on there five years and has developed this over time then it might be a similar cause. The hypoid gears don't quite mesh nicely and rub like a violin bow. At low speed this isn't noticeable. At full throttle, or full lift, it's pressing too hard to sound properly (violinists have to develop accurate bow control because the tone of the sound is very dependent on how hard they press). But at high speed and light throttle it "sings" jolly loudly. Given that yours is not too bad at the moment, you may be able to improve it by replacing the diff oil. Use a good quality heavy GL4 - perhaps EP140 grade (the supplier of my GT6's current diff recommends that).

My simple job yesterday - fit the new wiper arms and blades to the Spitfire - turned into a frustrating investigation of electrical faults. The wipers didn't work when I tested them, and I found the fuse had blown. Swapping the fuse instantly blew that one, too. Testing with a handy bit of wire suggested a serious short to ground, which was not the wiper motor. It went away when I disconnected the gearbox harness, and the wipers then worked properly. So now I need to work out which of the two switches (reverse lamp or OD inhibit) has a dead short to its body.

It's a while since I had the oil filter off a four (Toby's needs changing but I was waiting until the engine ran without problems before doing it) but that looks deeper than some. Perhaps this is one of the engines built for the knurled adapter in dave.vitesse's post Anyway, looks like your fix should do the trick fine.

I think 13BTDC is the Mk1 Vitesse/GT6 timing for 100 RON fuel (5 star). For 97 RON (4 star) it was retarded to 10BTDC. I don't recall the Mk3 GT6 figure offhand but I suspect its 10. Interestingly, Mk2 Spitfires were 13 and Mk3 were 6, but when my brothers owned one of each we discovered the POs had set them up the other way round, and neither car seemed to object. I don't think you'll find an ATDC idle setting on a UK car. That would be the US emissions spec with the vacuum retard capsule to slug the idle and force higher air flow.

That is the correct arrangement.

The smaller valves also improve air velocity and thus fuel mixing at low speeds, which gives better economy on a low-revving engine like the 2500S at the cost of marginally less top-end power.

I'm tempted to say FIA is the bane of my working life, but they're not really, it's the teams that make it awkward. Federation Internationale d'Automobiles - the governing body of most motorsport. John's SofS ("Son of Silverback", I believe) is a circuit racing Vitesse and thus has lots of (FIA-regulated and otherwise) additional features. I'm sure he'll be along with the correct details soon.

I wouldn't advise the use of an open-ended spanner on a crank pulley nut. They really are only good for low torque use. Ring spanner at minimum, proper socket is best. Unless, of course, your only reason for it is to turn the engine over.

It doesn't need a huge amount. When I had a PI estate, I started it up one morning to find the idle heading for 2500RPM as it warmed up. That was caused by a mouse eating a 2mm hole in a hose.

I used Ivor Searle for my Vitesse engine (block and head) and also found their work to be of high standard.

I have a feeling the 1 13/16" is the 1500 spec (possibly Mk4 too?) and the Mk3 small bearing engine uses a smaller one. Unfortunately my Mk3 now has a 1500 fitted so I don't have an original to measure up.

Perhaps a little cynical, John? While it may be tempting to suggest that the FBHVC list is a list of those clubs "opportunistic" enough to see this legislation as a chance to make a quick "consulting" buck, the behaviour of the DfT so far seems fair. I think, for the majority of owners of what most of us would consider "unmodified" cars, the self-declaration will be cheap, possibly even free, and largely devoid of legal mines.

They shouldn't touch the floor. If they did then manufacturing tolerances would mean they wouldn't be guaranteed to sit properly on the top of the tube. I'd expect at least a quarter inch of clearance but I don't know the actual meaasurements.

On the earlier column, you can get away with pushing the old bush down inside and ignoring it. At least once. But it's a bit of a bodge. I'm not sure whether the late type is similarly tolerant.

I think so. I don't think the actual bumpers changed from Mk4 introduction on, American spec excepted. There were possibly some under-rider changes?

It's not so much the absolute clearance as the fact that it looks to be parallel to the wall and thus vertical. I find that really awkward as I'm "hanging on" to the ladder when I should just be climbing it.

Never had a problem with fumes in the pit. I would say, that ladder arrangement is like my current pit and I wish the builder had not done it that way. My old pit had a (wooden) set of steps, which was much nicer, but mostly because they were at a 25deg angle to vertical. You have enough length there, I would definitely have set the bottom a foot further away from the wall to make access/egress easier.

Don't run the engine with that terminal earthed. On most alternators doing so would cause damage,

When I worked for Rover in the 1990s, my boss reminisced about his Dolomite Sprint he'd had as a company car in the 1970s. He said he always instructed the BL main dealer to leave the carbs well alone because they had screwed them up by only adjusting one of them. It's not a matter of lost knowledge, it's a matter of stupidity.

Pete is right - the curved on goes on first, from the end with the handbrake lever, and with the curve towards the backplate in the middle. Then the flat one goes on top of that. This arrangement minimises the friction surface against the backplate, because the cylinder has to be able to slide so that the shoes work equally.