ricky30dk

Wow - that was a bargain! What a beauty 😃

Hi Pete, I think these might be a relatively recent development - at least I haven't been able to find original magnolia speedo and tacho faces for early Spitfire. There is one for Herald, but only goes to 100mph and isn't 1248tpm. I don't believe anyone makes anything like the originals. Heiler-tacho will make you a face for the speedo, but you need to send your old face to be printed.....and then part with 90 Euro.....for one face : Dials Jaeger Oldtimer for the conversion of US models, 59,99 € (heiler-tachodesign.de) Cheers Richard

I had a Mk2 Spitfire a few years back with an interesting clonk from the back on take-off. After a lot of head-scratching and wriggling about under the car, I noticed, almost by accident, that the new rear spring has quite a lot of clearance between the clamps and the leaves of the spring. What was happening was the leaves were moving on hard acceleration and hitting the clamps. I checked on another car I had with an original spring and there was no clearance. So I stuck some pieces of nylon in the gap......no more clonk..... I wonder how many diffs have been replaced due to poorly manufactured rear springs....

Now available in a km/h version (also in original black/white) 😀

I don't bite 😃 I'm having some more faces printed - I could be persuaded to let you have a set....send me a PM if you're interested cheers Richard

+1 for treating laminated screens with greater care than toughened- I have broken two over the years, causing levels of swearing that caused wife and kids to come running...

Hi Colin, I think just about anything that isn’t soap and water is going to remove the printing. The Herald speedos were my initial inspiration - I just couldn’t get the temp and fuel gauges to exactly match (I guess they fade differently depending on where they’ve been) and then of course there was the missing tachometer - but yours are presumably destined for one of your Heralds?

I painted the car with cellulose and my own compressor and gun in the garage. Bloody hell was that a lot of work, but also satisfying - plus I saved the 150,000 + danish kroner that I was quoted by a local professional ( yes, I had at least 15 conversations along the lines of “I know a guy who could do it for (insert significantly lower price here)”, but they never came to anything - I even stayed home all day for one painter who never arrived to collect the car). I was quite happy with my own painting efforts at the time of finishing the car (last year), but after 6 months or so sitting in the garage, the paintwork has gone quite dull, which is a bit unsettling. I’ve polished a small area with T Cut, which brings most of the shine back, but I don’t understand why it won’t stay shiny. Do you think I cut the paint too soon and if I do it again it will stay shiny? I don’t need high gloss, just something period appropriate and that doesn’t need me to T Cut it every 6 months.....

Thank you all for your kind words! I think the hardest part was creating the graphic file for the UV printer - that took forever. The rest was just grunt work : stripping down, cleaning, painting, etc. I managed to track down some modern material equivalent for some components. Also managed to destroy 18 needles in one go - acetone strips the paint but also eats plastic ...... I have a few spare sets - am also experimenting with different needle and bezel colours :

Finally having a house with a garage has enabled me to get up to all sorts of shanigans (including painting my own car). one project I finally finished was creating magnolia-faces gauges for early Spitfires - sadly several years late for any of my own cars.....what d’you think?