Spitfire / GT6 (squaretail) door handle parts

[Nick Jones]

My son Chris has been fiddling about with the doorhandle mechanisms on our GT6 project.  As usual, there are broken plastic bits to contend with and these are apparently NLA from the usual suspects.

He has dealt with this by getting drawing them up in Solidworks and getting a friend to 3D print them in ABS plastic.  It's the orange one in the pic though other colours are available.

These could be produced in moderate quantity and retail @ around £ 10 ea were there a market for them.

P/nos. 520260 - RH and 520261 - LH

He's also looking at the plastic rocker that operates the door lock (the ends have snapped off both of ours and been bodged) which might be a little simpler, quicker and thus cheaper.  

Anyone interested?  Whole doorhandle assembly is ~ £ 100!

 

Nick

[dougbgt6]

It's deja vu all over again!

The same part! There were two made I have one, still working after a year, but its not got the use. Someone else had the other which I believe is broken.

Doug

 

[Adrian Cooper]

Hi Nick,

It's wonderful how enterprising the younger generation can be with this exciting new technology. We have actually been down this road already on this forum in a thread started by our own Uncle Pete 

To cut a long story short, my son also produced a 3D model of that same part and we had it printed in ABS and PETG. One of our valiant fellow Triumpheros had the part on long term test in his car and the printed part failed in the same place after about 8 months. However, my son has uploaded his 3D model to the Shapeways website where it can be ordered in any material you choose. Several have been ordered in aluminium I believe and these seem to be reliable so far.

Pete did also start a thread asking for suggestions for other parts that are unobtainable that could be commissioned for 3D printing and there were very few replies and so we didn't progress with anything else.

I hope your post rekindles some interest in this idea as I think there are real possibilities with this technology.

Adrian

[Pete Lewis]

I agree good ideas on reproducable unobtainium needs a kick up the doo dah   a lot of time and effort from Adrians family 

And for what ,   its Barry who managed to fail a mk1 plastic and is now fitted a stainless version from the shapeways site

Doug you need to get out in the car more Ha!   Test them carpets at the same time 

Lets have some ideas to work with 

Pete

[Nick Jones]

Nothing new under the sun......

If the failure was snapping the skinny end off at the pin-hole, our take on the reason for failure is that the part is actually a bit short as standard and holds the handle off its rubber stop. This means that if the handle is leant on or pushed towards the car, the part is put under tension and fails at the weakest point - which is the pin hole. In normal operation they are in compression.

The "production" ones are a touch longer to prevent this. They are fitted to the handles and work fine but not tested on the car yet.

Nick