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DVD3500

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  4. The car of the Future (yes, Triumph related)

    in General

    Posted

    17 hours ago, Gary Flinn said:

    Yes seen that clip before, still good to watch it again though😀

    I wonder if the car survives, no MOT or Tax history shows up so probably not☹️?

    Gary 

    Yeah I just thought of all the cars to exhibit this stuff on a Triumph was very cool... Also interesting to see how much finally made into production cars in the end.

    • Like 1

  7. Still loads being scrapped

    in General

    Posted

    Most of my kids' friends have a very different attitude to cars than we do. Look at what they grew up with though... All the blobby, rounded, silver nothing specials rolling around...

    The fact that car manufacturers have dedicated branches called "lifestyle cars" speaks volumes.

    I grew not far from Detroit so our car culture was a little different most I presume. i.e. you picked on of the holy trinity (Ford, GM, Chrysler) and you stuck to it. We were a GM family.

    Keeping things on the road was essential and it was uncommon to sell a car with less then 100,000 miles on it even in Michigan (pronounced MISH- again, Mitch-again 😄 ) with its hard winters and salted roads.

    We only ever took our cars to a specialist to have the alignment done. All the rest we did at home. My Dad taught my Mom and sister how to change a tire at the very least and check all the fluids etc.

    Cars now are just like smart devices. Throw away, barely reparable and as mentioned above sucking up more and more data about you.

    In the project I am hoping to work on (if it gets funded) I want to point out to the youths how having an older car gives you more control over how things look and work.  You don't need to go to garage every time something bings or bongs.

    Please you put your blood sweat and tears into it!

    Personally in general I have no problems with someone modding a car, be it electric or or V8. I think a car's soul is what the owner has done and does with it less if it is farting dino juice. If that grandfather clock is essentially irreparable I would rather someone put an electric motor in than have it sit broken in a corner.

    In fact, I think it is more o a problem when someone sits on something classic and refuses to do anything with it. There was an episode of Car SOS where they were restoring the Sebring Sprite and the guy refused to sell  some of the parts that would have made the car as original as possible (I think it turned out to not be the engine they thought it was after all but still). What is the point in that?

    I have a problem with rare or pristine cars getting converted. There was a Gordon Keeble converted on Vintage Voltage recently and that turned my stomach, partially because of the rarity but also because it was not reversible.

    As they said in Fahrenheit 451: Books were banned because society demanded it

    I think these young wipper snappers are losing the ability to think for themsleves...

  8. Still loads being scrapped

    in General

    Posted

    44 minutes ago, Colin Lindsay said:

    The problem with them is that they're really just another modern car, ok they're reliable and more comfortable than ours but it's more than just the drive, it's the era, the nostalgia, the whole experience.

    I hear this a lot about the "whole experience" and I am starting to think that is almost as subjective as what the best color is.

    The last issue of the German Spitfire club magazine had a long report about their first outing since 2019. 3 of the 5 pages was about all the break downs and DNFs.

    While we all know the beauty of these cars is that fact that you CAN still do the work on them I can also understand why many people would wonder why the lack of reliability is .. well.. desirable..?

    Don't get me wrong: One of the main reasons I bought my Spitfire(s) was because I could walk out and do 89.3% of the work myself. Roll the car out of the garage, roll it back in.

    But for me the main reason is I can make it MY car and make do things the way "I" want to.

    I am involved in a project with a classic car club and its goal is to attract young people.

    The elders go on and on about how the classic have "character" , "Soul" and that there ain't nothin' like 'em anymore...

    Which is all true and for some people may seem attractive (see my previous comments about Morris Dancing...) but kids these days... they do not realize how they have lost control.

    Now more than ever they are being told what to say, do and think and in a much subtler way than Orwell or Huxley ever thought.

    I may have mentioned my favorite TV show of all time is "The Prisoner". I started watching it about the same time I got my first Spitfire.

    At first I just liked the premise and a lot of the allegory went over my head. But look at it now: Constant surveillance because your phone knows EVERYTHING. People wear devices that track their firggin' heartbeat and "health".

    In the first episode the main character destroys a radio and before he can completely smash it to pieces a repair man comes along.... Google knew more about the latest flu epidemics than any other organization.

    I don't believe in government conspiracies and over regulation. I believe humanity as whole will make personal choice and freedom more difficult. In same ways that is a good thing. We in the West have been bleeding other countries dry for years. There ARE better ways of moving people around and how to power them. There ARE better ways to produce our food both from an environmental and health aspects.

    Heck, at the recent launch of the new Lotus "hyper SUV" they talked how it was designed by their "lifestyle" branch... I cringe and applaud at the same time because if it saves Lotus fine (like the Cayenne and Macan saved Porsche) but it says a lot about humanity as well.

    I told the Club that the project should about teaching these young people that they have their lives in their hands and to not give in to too much of the outside world. I don't think I got through to them (the elders) though...

    For me my Spitfire when I am done will be my magnum opus. And I probably will be the only one to like it like that!

    But it was MY choice. MY work. MY sweat and tears (and €€€€€) that went into after years of thought and I will use it to visit people I care about. Probably one of my last truly free decisions before some debilitating disease takes me! 👨‍⚕️

    That is MY whole experience.

    What's yours?

    • Like 2

  9. No fuel

    in Out and About in my car

    Posted

    2 hours ago, Chris A said:

    It does seem that you in the UK are having some difficulties, it could simply be that the panic buyers are sucking the supply chain dry and there isn't a real shortage, as is often the case.

    It might explain why over the last week I've seen more GB/UK stickers on cars around here. Or are they just nipping over to fill up with our fuel? 🙄 Not the Teslas though of course, seen 3 this last week all white ( do they only come in white?) maybe our electricity is cheaper then yours 🙄

    Germans are jumping the border because France's fuel is a good 15-20 cents cheaper than here. Luxemburg as well.. even cheaper.. Switzerland has always been cheaper...

  10. moteur

    in Engine

    Posted

    Il apparaît qu'il y a des problèmes avec Eureka... Si ils ne répondent pas aux messages e-mails ou par téléphone il faut peut-être contacter les autorités ....

     

  18. How good is the GT6 heater compared to the Spitfire? (Probably a flaw in my thnking ....)

    in Cooling System

    Posted

    The whole thing started with two things happening with the rabbits between my ears moving levers in a violent fashion:

    1. Once I bought the hard top I remembered how my windows on my Spitfire would fog up when driving in the dead on a Michigan winter

    2. I remember seeing the eyeball vents on the GT6 and thought it might help by redirecting the air to the windows.

    As I said I plan on using the car year-round and while I doubt I will have to deal with meter high snow here in Southwest Germany we get a lot of cold, wet days and the next worst thing to not being seen is not being able to see!

    A Smart/Micra fan should be pretty easy to come by. I really want to make it work with the existing switches

    I highly doubt my motor will create as much heat as the inline 6.

    1 hour ago, Mjit said:

    I've done something similar on my Spitfire, but rather than hacking the heater box about I went for adding some plumbing "Y" pieces into the screen vent hoses to feed both the screen vents and dash eyeballs.  Takes a bit of squeezing in and the plumbing "Y" pieces needed a bit of sanding to get their o/d down to match the hose i/d but just about fits behind the dash.  Only issue is that just highlighted how asthmatic the aging blower is so on to trying to source/fit a modern motor/fan - along with wiring in a hazard switch to the dash and turning into a Covid hermit which means I'm actually back 3 steps and trying to get the starter motor to turn over and bring the beast out of a 9-ish month slumber...

    Were these the standard Y pieces seen in the thread I linked?

    I plan on more or less rewiring everything to make it as daily usable as possible without deviating too much from the standard layout.

    Crazy things on my list:

    Rear window defogger for the hard top

    Heated (and possibly massage) for the seats

    Front/Rear fog DLR ight (see other thread )

    Relays for the headlights

    LEDs where it is legal i.e. in the dash and for the heater controls etc etc.

    I won't be putting in a radio so I have that space for additional switches etc.

     

  23. Show me your fog lights (front/rear) and/or daytime driving lights (w/ interior switches and wiring if possible)

    in Electrical System

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Colin Lindsay said:

    I know we looked for them a while ago  but whilst a lot of suppliers tempt us by listing them, they're then marked unavailable.

    Best option is probably to utilise another pull-switch of the period, the Lucas version with the amber light on the end as used in Landrovers is quite nice. I presume it's mandatory to have them illuminated, or at least have a warning light somewhere about in front of the driver.

     

    Yes the must be illuminated (well technically if they were not originally they don't have to be but it is easier if they meet modern standards... LEDs make that fairly easy...)

    I think I have seen that Land Rover switch somewhere...

    I will look for TKC5067  though..I have plenty of time!

  24. Show me your fog lights (front/rear) and/or daytime driving lights (w/ interior switches and wiring if possible)

    in Electrical System

    Posted

    8 minutes ago, Colin Lindsay said:

    It's a pull switch, but very hard to find - at least, it was a while back when another member was trying to find one. It lights up when pulled. 

    Thanks!

    While I want things to match as close as possible if it is a choice between an original at 50 of your favorite currency and 10 for something that is darn close I would lean towards the latter... 😄

     

  25. Show me your fog lights (front/rear) and/or daytime driving lights (w/ interior switches and wiring if possible)

    in Electrical System

    Posted

    3 hours ago, Mjit said:

     

    Fog Lights
    At the back I know a few people have replaced one of the reversing light bulbs with a red fog light LED, so still looks standard.
    At the front one of my many (many) daydream jobs is to find some suitable modern fog lights and fab. them into the Mk IV/1500 chin spoiler.

    Daytime Running Lights
    The easy option would be to fit some 'halo' headlights.  Well I guess the REALLY easy option would be to rewire so your sidelights via an ignition-switched relay, so they came on as soon as you turned the key in the ignition.  Actually if you did that you might be able to use the now-unused 'sidelight' light swiitch position for your fog lights (either using the sidelight position for headlights/headlight position for headlights+fog lights, or sidelight posiition for fog lights only/headlight position for headlights only - I know in the big saloons the fog light position gave fog lights on/headlights off, which was scary as the fog lights did diddly squat on the illumiination front the one time Ii tried them in actual fog!).

    Do you mean the "side light" is the middle position of the standard switch in the middle of the dash?

    I would have to check if one of the reversing lights can be repurposed legally in Germany. I have seen a youtube video of this but I am fairly certain it is not 100% kosher.

     

    18 hours ago, Josef said:

    Not coming out too well, but here are the bits on original fog lights on the last Spitfires from the John Thomason originally guide. 

    PNG image.png

    image.jpg

    Thanks.. I actually have that book too. Thanks for reminding  me! Do you know if the switch was a button or twist? I presume it lit up when on...

     

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