The Spitfire that just needed a tidy up...

[Piglet]

Wow. That took some time Josef!

Alex

[Josef]

49 minutes ago, Piglet said:

Wow. That took some time Josef!

Alex

Yeah, Don are not winning any awards for lead times… Does look good though. They included poppers too, which is good, but I didn’t expect it and bought some a while back!

[Piglet]

Well...sort of an added bonus! Mine had none. But as you say, you bought some...

Anyway glad it's there. It's still unseasonably warm at the mo, will you be putting it on soon?

Alex

[Josef]

Yeah I want to get it on soon. The Herald is currently undergoing chassis surgery still though so I need to get that finished first. 

[Josef]

Tiny bit of hood progress, got the rear securing bar fitted. 

[Piglet]

I need to do that!

Alex

[Josef]

Got the poppers that fix round the rear deck on just now. I didn’t fancy the idea of removing the hood and carting it to the bench each time I needed to fit a popper though. So with the aid of some blankets and a long bit of wood balanced across the wing tops I did manage to do them on the car. The only casualty was my left thumb which I managed to smack several times. After I switched to holding the riveting tool with pliers, of course I didn’t slip once…

[Piglet]

A solution I wish I'd thought of Josef! Looking very smart indeed.

Alex

[Josef]

1 hour ago, Piglet said:

A solution I wish I'd thought of Josef! Looking very smart indeed.

Alex

Was a tiny bit risky though. I would’ve been less than thrilled if I’d slipped and smashed a hammer into the rear deck…

[Josef]

Well, that’s the scariest bit of the hood fitting done. There’s some bits that aren’t as smooth as I’d like, but it’s not too bad really. I’m leaving the glue to set before turning over the edges etc.

[Pete Lewis]

on seat production all we used was a steam lance to ease shapes on vinyl covers   its gentler than heat guns  

makes use of the wallpaper steamer with a bit of pipe for a lance 

but a gentle blow may aid the stretch of the hood 

Pete

[Josef]

I might try steaming it Pete, but I’ll see if it settles down by itself for the time being.

Got everything tidied up yesterday and this evening. I made myself a tiny spacer on the lathe to do the rivets for the seal channel as even my smallest pop rivet nozzle wouldn’t fit. I didn’t have much joy trying to slide the header rail seal in, but was able to push in one lip and tuck in the other with the aid of a screwdriver. 
 

With that, all the major jobs are done I think. 
 

[Piglet]

Looking fab Josef! Coconut oil works wonders on the rubber seal.

Alex

[Neil Clark]

2 hours ago, Josef said:

I might try steaming it Pete, but I’ll see if it settles down by itself for the time being.

Got everything tidied up yesterday and this evening. I made myself a tiny spacer on the lathe to do the rivets for the seal channel as even my smallest pop rivet nozzle wouldn’t fit. I didn’t have much joy trying to slide the header rail seal in, but was able to push in one lip and tuck in the other with the aid of a screwdriver. 
 

With that, all the major jobs are done I think. 
 

Looks brilliant Josef

[Josef]

Well now the hood is on and therefore the Spitfire is at last a fully functioning car again, I drove it to work today! First time I’ve been able to do that since 2018. The cockpit was surprisingly civilised at speed with the hood up, my Herald gets very draughty over 55 ish. One problem I found though was the overdrive indicator light I have. It’s an LED bulb, and in the dark of early morning is bright enough to illuminate the whole cabin. So that’ll probably need to be replaced with an incandescent one. 

[Piglet]

Stunning.

Alex

[Josef]

Well in between welding the Herald’s bulkhead I cannibalised a selection of boot handles to build the Spitfire a shinier one than it had fitted. Discovered that the thing that annoys me about it is cause the bit of the boot lid the lock bezel locates to is worn, so haven’t been able to fix that (the handle can move a lot when locked) oh well. Nothing exciting to photograph, so here’s one of its trip out yesterday evening! 

Edited March 25, 2023 by Josef

[Peter Truman]

I do like that blue soft top, daughters Mk2 could do with a new roof the cars the same navy blue (Porsche) as yours, now to convince the wife to forgo a new pair of very expensive Italian red suede shoes, think I'm on a loser!

[Piglet]

That is lush. How did you manage to add a pic? It's all gone tits up for me and the normal add a pic link has vanished.

Alex

[Josef]

11 hours ago, Piglet said:

That is lush. How did you manage to add a pic? It's all gone tits up for me and the normal add a pic link has vanished.

Alex

There have been some permissions changes associated with moving the actual TSSC members into a different forum user group. So it’s possible that’s why you’re seeing something different? Nothing has changed for me. @KevinR are you able to suggest anything here?

[KevinR]

19 minutes ago, Josef said:

There have been some permissions changes associated with moving the actual TSSC members into a different forum user group. So it’s possible that’s why you’re seeing something different? Nothing has changed for me. @KevinR are you able to suggest anything here?

@Piglet The forum is run and paid for by the TSSC. Until recently, all forum users had the same allocations, but recent changes to give TSSC members an advantage (as their membership fees are paying for the forum) has resulted in some restrictions being placed on non members.  
one such example is the storage space allocated for pictures.  Even now, after the restriction has been put in place, the TSSC forum is still more generous than other similar forums, but has limited the storage space for pictures for non TSSC members to 200Mb.  TSSC members get unlimited picture storage.

[Piglet]

I think this is a very bad idea. I can't really afford to be a paid member here, like lots of others I'm sure. However I like to think I do contribute to the site and isn't that what these forums are for? I am also on 5 other bike/car forums and none have ever asked for money. Ever. I feel this will alienate a lot of people who use this site and for me and the rest who feel the same way, I think that's terribly sad. 

Alex

[johny]

You only have to delete your oldest photos once in a while or join if you want to keep all of them on here. Dont think it'll be a disaster if I remove mine so seems fair.... 

[Josef]

Went to the local TSSC area meeting today, as I was leaving someone spotted my tailpipe had fallen off the back box! 

Back home, and some fairly ugly welding later, it’s back in service. I could see a loose baffle inside and the system is pretty rusty looking, so a new one will be on the cards. However, I don’t want to take the car off the road while I order and fit an exhaust so this’ll do for the short term. 

[Josef]

With the sun actually being out I figured it was finally time to fit the new hood bag. 

All went fairly well till it was time to do up the poppers that fasten round the frame underneath and hold the leading edge of the bag round the folded hood. The originals have wire clips, and repros expect you to do up a pair of poppers on a strip of elastic.

Trying to do up those poppers was extremely awkward… I didn’t actually succeed in getting even one set closed. So I decided to make myself some original style clips! An ex dry cleaners coat hanger was sacrificed and straightened out. 

Then I used some old copper electrical wire to measure how long my blanks would need to be, and cut a suitable chunk of wood to act as a jig. 
 

Three wire rectangles bent up, joined with a spit of weld (on a brass heat sink to stop me melting the wire into oblivion) and cleaned up with a sanding disc on the die grinder.

 

A bit of judicious bending and there we go!

Triumph had it right in the first place, these little clips are 1000% better! I need to get the hoover out though as the carpet is covered in debris from the last few jobs.

Edited April 2, 2023 by Josef