DVD3500

They claimed it was because it was a federal hood/bonnet but I am not aware of any differences in the hinges etc. ... More likely the welding was not not as straight as it could be and/or something else was twisted...

Pretty good show on restoring a Spitfire... Not sure about hoods/bonnets not rusting much though... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AppkpUXuaVs&t=1372s

Gosh thanks for all this! Very very useful and helpful!

I put it four non return valves from an aquarium set. One before and after the pump and one in each hose to the jets. Seems to work... might be over kill...

So simply measuring inner and outer diameters suffices? Resistance etc is the same?

I am breaking my project down into "modules" i,.e suspension, body, motor/transmission etc and one big aspect is more or less restoring/upgrading the wire loom i.e. electrics. I presume it was done according to some British standard. I actually have 2 looms from the two cars I bought (`72 European and `76 Federal) plus a guy gave my a European MKIV loom of unknown model year so I have lots to check. However, should I need to replace a wire/cable I would want to get as close to original as possible (or even slightly larger...) I did several searches but all I could find was the European standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60228 But I am not sure what standard was used on our cars so no clue what the equivalents are. (I do have the Lucas chart for the standard of what colors are used for what on a typical loom) Just buying a new loom doesn`t make sense because the car will have multiple upgrades such as relays for headlights, upgraded heater, possibly subtle DLRs/fog lights etc... Engine mgmt will also be nonstandard... Cheers and have a great day!

BTW they arrive safe and sound and now the parts are back from the power coaters so I can finally start the rebuild!

My son's school sent an e-mail round just as the Christmas break was ending pointing out that one of the reasons cited for driving the kids to school was "safety". The email claimed (and I admit I have not followed up on this) that the number of injuries within a kilometer of schools has dramatically increased since the trend of driving kids to school has taken off i.e. late 90's. There was a spike in the late 2000's as cars got bigger and heavier. I doubt you can see a 2nd grader from inside a G-Wagen.... My daughter had to walk clear across town to her after school care. We followed at a distance or a while and sometimes would also spy on her during our lunch breaks. The rules laid down were: Obey all traffic rules and NEVER walk alone. There were never any problems...

Thanks! The process of making a resin copy is largely non-destructive but I would want to remove the lights/horns and stickers... I keep getting told to use 3D scanning and printing but I do not have the talent or time to do it... My local slot car club does 1/24 and 1/25 scale racing and Triumphs are sorely under represented...

Oh I would love to make a mould of that and turn it into a slot car! How rare are they and how hard to get??

Thanks both! I have a distant cousin on the wife's side that lives near London which could be an option... In general shipping to from the ex-EU country doesn't cost more these days. It just takes longer and requires more hassle with larger items. I now have two 3.89 diffs and the innards of a 3.63. Given the car will have more horsepower and torque than original I went with a 1500 gearbox from Jigsaw Racing (which arrived on 23 Dec 2020). Somehow I didn't twig and get the diff at the same time (with the higher ratio)... There is a place a few hours away I could take the lot (Bastuck) and they have the aluminum casings as well. It will likely run north of 1000€ and have a 3 year guarantee. They claim they can do 3.27 as well but given the scarcity of those I doubt it plus I am worried about the carrier thinness so often mentioned... I realized after having the suspension parts at the sandblaster/coaters I still have the seats that need stripping! I hope to get them to him before he treats the other parts!

I introduced my self almost 4 years ago... here is my first update...: I have been keeping quiet about my project because frankly there wasn’t much to report on. The car left in October 2021 and since then has been at a workshop in Stuttgart. The car was acid dipped, galvanized, primered and some body damage came to light. By this point the guy who runs the shop (is essentially a one-man shop) had other projects that he thought he would get done quickly (a ’63 Beetle that came in for rocker panel/sill work and ended up being a body off restoration). Plus he is known in the area for allowing other people to do their work on their cars there. Once I was there a guy was swapping out the gearbox on a BMW 3 series for a better one… The original plan was to send everything off to Poland and then build it back up. One of the local Spitfire drivers who is a master mechanic and helps build protypes for a star car manufacturer in Stuttgart pointed out how much Spitfire bodies flex (even with strengthening) and since the car obviously had had a few dings maybe we should make sure everything fits since banging and welding into a freshly painted body would be somewhat annoying… putting it mildly. We will have the chassis and the underbody painted in the final color (Cobalt Blue) but leave the other panels until it all fits up nicely. I know many cringe at the effort of getting panel gaps to fit but this guy hung the doors back on after the dip and they are already nearly perfect. As idle hands are the devil’s work he is having all the suspension components powder coated and I will put them together on the bench so that when the body is ready for the first test fit we can just bolt them on to get the whole thing rolling. Then the rest of the car will get the final coat(s) of paint and I asked to have them put in the windshield/windscreen as I don’t have the skill for that. Then she will come home and I can do the rest! Only minor hiccup I see is the guy I had lined up to do my diff (convert it to 3.63, put an aluminum casing on it and overhaul it in general) says he can’t get the shims to do it. I tried to convince him but so far no joy. There is a company that will do it for about 1000€ but I was hoping to not have to go that route… Open to offers! 😄 While I wait for the powder coated parts I am reading up on best practices for fitting the bushes. I got my Dad’s tap and die set and will chase the threads with that. Feels good to have them in my hand again after almost 25 years. I have some upgraded parts from the US and am tempted to put lightweight hubs on the front but the Finance Dept. might not approve that! 😄 So with any luck, sometime in the Spring she will come home and I can report back as I stumble through such tasks as: Rebuilding and upgrading (relays!) the wiring loom from scratch Upgrading the heater motor and wiring Trying to find a way to mount a third brake light without it looking crap Making a custom dashboard (see comment about new powertrain) Rebuilding the top/hood frame (luckily I have two, one original and one refurbished in parts) Reupholstering the seats/installing the interior (to a point… we are resto-modding the powertrain so may leave some of that to the very end) Re-installing the windows (I have hands smaller than some former president’s so I don’t mind. 😊) Etc etc etc… Watch this space! To all who celebrate something this time of year: Happy Holidays and wishing you all a great new Gregorian new Year!

Ohh... good point... ! 😄

Doesn't always work though... a bank was testing face recognition at an automatic teller to withdraw money and Heidi Klum tried it before putting her makeup on and withdrew 1000€ from Angela Merkels account!

With regard to guns: They have a very limited range of household uses when compared to say... x-rays...?

Why use technology when a little bit of nuance and misinformation will get humans to fark it all up for you? I was working in a "computer science lab" in the early 90's and we were hooking everything up to the Internet after being on ARPAnet for years. The first time we got it working we were genuinely excited. Look at ALL this knowledge! All free! Humanity can not but benefit! We mistook knowledge for wisdom...

Many thanks all. The more I use my Dad's tools the more the project becomes mine. I will be getting all the suspension parts back and we will be mating the body and chassis back together so I will need to chase the threads as every thing has been powder coated/galvanized/painted. Thanks for the input!

Hi All, My Mom is cleaning out stuff from my Dad's toolbox sent me a picture of this tap and die set. If I understand the standard correctly the 1/4" 24, 5/16" 24 etc are in line with the UNF standard.... Am I correct? Thanks!

I would love to have a 1/24 scale MKIV/1500 Spitfire model... I keep looking for a 3D model but so fr no joy...

Do they wear bells?

I abhor anyone who takes a totally binary view of anything, which given the essential two-party "democracies" around the world make me a bit grumpy when it comes to comes to politics.... There are people that love steam engines. People who love 2-cycle engines. And of course people who love all other manner of transport. Personally I pride myself on being able to smell an over-rich mixture but that is a dying skill... No one has the right to tell you you are wrong for loving your car the way it is no more than anyone can really fault you for how tall you are or how big your feet are. But to your point Colin I know these drivers well and they are not EV freaks in any way. In fact one of them is an accountant who has very little interest in technology and engineering as a whole. In almost all cases the engine was acting up so often that they had reached the point of spending more time and money mending than driving and for them the electric motor fixed that. They still fettle... the suspension and drivetrain need attention. You have to keep your car clean of course. All the work still applies except the motor bits. one of them is in fact an electrical engineer and he does whip out the laptop and play with some parameters from time to time. For those of us who grew up on computer games we do like a bit of hacking. So who all is for a bit of Morris Dancing? 😄

Most responses don't surprise me here... I guess growing up in the US with V8s near a super speedway I am a little over the whole engine noise thing. Noise is really wasted energy at the end of the day. The Spitfire driver down the road actually says one of his main motivations was he wanted to hear more of the outside world when driving scenic routes.... so maybe that has its value as well...? As far as how it drives: I know a half dozen converted cars and all the drivers have the same problem: They drive their cars 10 times more than before! All the drivers owned the car before the conversion. Some of them are second owners. They know what it was like before and all of them prefer the electric motor. Oh some of them have a second problem: Everyone else wants to drive their cars... 🙂 Range and cost are still a problem but batteries are going into production that will have about 5-6 times more energy for the same weight. It will be a while before they trickle down to enthusiasts... costs are coming down. Lithium has dropped 60% and nickel and other metals between 20-40%. Costs will come down. Personally I don't know if I would do it to a rare car like a MKII Vitesse but then again the straight six that was in it was more or less the same as the GT6 and Triumph 2000. Like they also said: Totally reversible ... which after reading all the rules is the case for most conversions. If you cut/drill the chassis or a structural part you lose your road-worthiness. There was a Porsche 968 for sale here. The guy only wanted 5000€. Why? Engine and likely gearbox totaled. Actually perfect for a conversion. Interior was OK and electrics seemed to work. I passed. Why? Because the 968 is rare and the last of the transaxles... The car is gone but I have not seen it on the road yet. Makes me wonder what is better... dying in a garage, crushed or getting a heart transplant...? Because at the end of the day: Whether or not souls exist is a matter of philosophy. Better creature has a heart and that heart beats with electric impulses... Be seeing you...

We went shopping in Alsace last Friday and realized food was on average 2-3 € cheaper per item (not counting wine which was sometimes half the price) all around. It was so much cheaper that it be worth it to drive there to do the shopping (it's about 80 km) especially when you factor in they had products that you can't get here in Germany.... Only thing that was not cheaper but was roughly the same price was meat but you can't get horse meat in Germany... 😄 My American cousins (that's not a euphemism. i r 'merican) seemed to be constantly in debt until they were pushing 40 and usually only were able to get out when they combined financing with a partner. I have to agree with some of the statements here that they often left for work (often in a gas guzzler), drove to a Starbucks/dunkin' doughnut/McDs got "food", ate out for lunch and were just "too tired" to cook for themselves in the evening. OH yeah, most of them smoked too... They almost always had the latest gadgets and thanks to social media I reckon they must have been spending several hours a day on said devices. The worst case though was the man my aunt married. Up until the mid "noughties" roughly 2006-2008 in the US when you got a credit card bill on the lower third of the last page there would be a sentence in roughly 5 times the font size as the rest: "You owe $20." Regardless of how high the actual bill was. In many cases that wouldn't even cover the interest. He was however steadfastly convinced that paying that 20 $ was all he needed to do. She tried all she could to bring the debt down but when she discovered he had given his card(s) to his grand daughter who was routinely spending 4 figure amounts per month (she even bought a used car with it) she ended up divorcing him because she would have gone bankrupt. The simple principles of home economics and financing seem to elude many people and it always comes to a head when times get tough. I think Germany if you have no house insurance they can foreclose on the house, even if it is paid off. I am not sure if that applies when your insurance is not "adequate" i.e. you live in a flood plain and your house sinks. Personally, in the US my family filed for bankruptcy twice. This scarred me terribly as I almost never want to borrow money. When we bought our house in 2011 I did not sleep for a week even though we had more than enough to cover the payments and all costs. I admit it is a neurotic fear but I sometimes wish I could spread it around so that others might be a wee bit careful with their money...

Blinking with the indicators is also "verboten" I am afraid but I like how small and slim it is!

Mounting on a "roll bar" would be OK. IN fact I believe a BMW had that as standard. The main rules are: Higher than the regular brake lights (can't find any rules about how much higher...) "Centrally" located Must be "mechanically fixed". Mechanically fixed means you can't take it off with bare hands i.e. you must use tools. Some point out that the modern license plate holders really don't meet this requirement as you can pry them open on one side and slide the license plate out but I figure something like a screw would suffice.... I agree that in good weather it is likely less useful but I am going to great pains to make the car useful to all legal drivers in the family which boils down to making things stupidly simple. I don't want someone coming home saying "Dad... I accidentally tore the the rear central brake light off...." 🙂