Hoarding

[ahebron]

One of the many pleasures of owning a car for 37 years and collecting various parts or whole cars over the intervening years is the joy of once again finding parts long forgotten.
While rifleing through my spare parts to locate a gearbox switch for my Vitesse 6 with the Dolomite 1850 J type single rail conversion I found the J type overdrive gearbox I removed from my Mk4 Spitfire last century when i was fitting it with Mk2 Vitesse running gear and a big saloon o/d gearbox. And a D type overdrive with out box which is from a Triumph Spitfire - all MK3, MK4 to August 1973 (to chassis no. FH60000 and FM10000). Then after finding the switch I was looking for I located the overdrive switch bracket and  gearchange with the extension to activate the switch, that save a bit of time making one. Next is the three backing plates for Vitesse engines that I have acquired one of them only 7/64ths thick while the other two are 17/64ths. Also in bits is a HC gearbox from a Vitesse.
The one item I was aware that should be there was the Type 9 gearbox with Canley conversion and a spare V6 input shaft.

 

 Adrian

[Colin Lindsay]

I used to have to buy spares when I went to the mainland for shows; postage was very expensive and local parts were hard to come by, so it was a case of buying anything bulky, heavy or rare... I literally used to fill the car boot with stuff and then hoard it at home, all 10p, 20p sort of prices. On the last day of Stafford vendors were practically giving the bits away rather than take them home.

Regrettably when I got home I used to give a lot of it away to local members who needed bits, and still regret parting with some of the parts... alloy bellhousings for a tenner... mint Herald bootlids (£10 too)... 4.5J wheels... but I've still got a huge amount of spares salted away and recently looking for parts I found a mass of stuff that I'd forgotten, bought years ago for my Heralds then boxed and stored away. It's like Christmas!

[ahebron]

TBH that is the same reason I collected all the parts. Being 12000 miles from the country of origin used to make getting parts expensive and time consuming.
I even parted out one of the two at the time Mk2 Saloons in NZ as it was rotten, its mechanicals went into the Mk4 Spitfire.

And it helps that as we got older we forget what we have