Major milestone !

The body is back on the chassis !
I know, i know... it still doesn't look like much of a car but believe me this is a major step (i might have dreamt of it these past few months).

The underneath, the inside and the firewall have been painted Triumph royal blue, the original color of the car.

Thank you Tyler and Jussi for giving me a hand unloading from the trailer.

Spitfire body tub mounting points

Exciting, I prepared all the nuts and bolts for the tub coming back tomorrow.

This might come in handy, here are all the connecting points and what they look like in real life :

Spitfire overdrive retrofit, part 2 - The support plate

Telling the story as i make progress.

You will need a different support plate because the gearbox silent bloc is different on the overdrive.

Made one out of 1/8 steel or you could buy one from the usual suspects.

One thing that I did not think of is that the original plate is lowered on the rubber mounting point. Would not have thought of that but a trick i was suggested is to mount the plate underneath (thank you Thomas)

See the photo with the old plate sitting on the right for comparison.

Installing and greasing the spitfire universal joints

Not a job I especially like. I somehow always end up putting grease everywhere (everywhere i dont want it like tools, hands and bench).

Now i have had a few "deja vu" while doing this :

1. Struggling to remove and install the new ones and telling myself it would have been just impossible without a press and flanges in this condition.

2. Installing the new UJ, putting the lockring on one side and wondering if i have the wrong size it really looked like the lockring would never go on the other side. It does eventually go in after more fiddling and pressure....

3. Using the grease nipple and gun after install and wondering why i simply didnt put lots of fresh grease inside before installing since it was all dismantled. Would have been easier, faster and cleaner.

Anyway, a good thing done. As well you can see on the photo, not leaving the grease nipple on but using these little screw plug.

Oh and driveshaft has been balanced and received a special treatment, more in a different post...

Waterproofing

11 hours of banging, sanding, welding today !
Sprint to get the tub ready for tomorrow. Almost every piece of rusty metal has been replaced.

Put new caulk as well where panels join, an english car needs to be ready for the rain !

Getting close !

Big progress today although I did not do as much as I had hoped.
Check this, starting to look good ! Not super happy with the junction I made for my floor but it will have to do.

Need to hurry and complete all the other patches needed so I can drop it for paint in a week.

This is what my workbench looked like today after an afternoon of work. Time to tidy !

Replacing the ring gear on the triumph spitfire flywheel

Finally a job that did not take longer than expected !

My gears were in really bad shape as you can see on the photo. It is possible to buy just the ring part at an affordable price from the usual supplier.

Step 1 : Remove the old ring. I did a small hole followed by a bigger hole almost the same size as the ring. Once I was near completion of the bigger the ring cracked, relieving the pressure and I was able to remove easily.

Step 2 : Ring was resting on the end of an anvil, and heated it up with a torch. Not too hot but was checking size from time to time with a small rod you can actually see on the last photo. Not too hot is key, it did not get red and did not smoke.

Step 3 : Grabbed the ring with pliers and placed where it belong, went in not problem, no need to push or anything. Note that the bevelled size of the ring goes on the clutch side when you have the starter motor like me where the gear it outside and moves in when it rotates.

Voila !

Stitch welding

Second floor panel in in place.
Now that's what you call some stitch welding. Did an (offset) overlap, makes for much easier but better welds too.

Spitfire overdrive retrofit, part 1 - The buy

Oh yeah, did I mention i was using the opportunity to add an overdrive ?
It gives an extra gear in 3rd and 4th, makes the driving nicer and hopefully cruising on the highway easier.

First i bought an overdrive mount that you can see on the left and now i will test fit it to see where it lines up on the base plate i made out of 3/16.

Will update as i progress on this overdrive saga.

Could not find anything at a reasonable price on ebay or ksl. Bought it from a contact on the forum, shipping was decent but of course no guarantee on the condition.

Spot weld removal - The can opener technique

I have one of these spot weld cutter drill bit from harbor freight that mainly consists of cutting a circle around the spot weld then you grind what is left over. Over time i have aquired a decent technique, basically hold as flat as you can and get a very stable grip on your drill.

But it still takes a lot if time. Much faster technique i was able to use here was to cut around so that all is left is a strip of sheet metal, then pre drill each spot weld with a nice and sharp bit, then leverage with strong pliers. No kidding this whole side was done in 10 minutes. Feels good to relate a success story !

Seat attachment on floor boards or murphy's law

As i was getting the second floor board ready i had one of these feelings where maybe i should check that these bolts welded on align with the seat base. They don't !!!!

So i drilled new holes, removed muts from the old floor (seemed stronger) and started to spot weld in place, only to realize that these nuts have had it !

So i wasted my time and now i have to remove them again ! Argh only good thing is that i get to confirm how strong these spot welds really are... (Look strong sigh)

Spot welding

Got to use my new toy and I loved it !

Glad that is was easier to use on the car than on my test samples, probably because  there was more material to absorb the heat.

This spot welder comes from harbor freight and I have to admit it was good value but did require taking apart the handle mechanism, grinding for smooth action, adding grease and putting back together. ow works like a charm. It is the 240 model and I have good hope it will work in France too.

So easy to use :
1. Press together. Not too hard but tight enough. If the metal sheets are tight use a set of locking pliers like on the photo
2. Flick the switch and keep it on for 2 or 3 seconds till you feel you have melted something and not so long that it becomes a puddle. Did quite a few and I could recognize when to stop when I was hearing a buzzing sound.

It is rather heavy so I had to come up with a technique to move it easily in the awkward places - check out the piston seat technique eh eh

The welds it makes are so neat and look original, I wish I got it sooner.

And by the way, check out the progress !

Rear floor board repair

Finally started on the rear floor. Becoming good at cutting these spot welds.
Took a day to create this big hole, luckily i get help with the wire brush

Some areas looked ok but after removal you can see how bad it looked.

See what the new floor board looks like, can be used as chalk board too !

As usual had to make patches all around, see the triangle shaped one on the floor.

If all goes well it's all welded tomorrow !

Spot welder

Got a new toy, happy thanksgiving !
Can't wait to use it for the floor boards replacement

Trunk floor complete

Took quite some to finish all the welds and add details like the spare wheel support but it looks good !

Now onto next steps...

Triumph spitfire trunk floor replacement

Alleluia the new trunk floor is in location !

Took "ONLY" 3 hours of cutting, banging and swearing.

Honestly don't think i would have been able to do it without the cleco fasteners, i don't use these often but when they come out you know it's a tough one.

Now just need to button it up, saving that for next week.

Patch mania

So far, had to build 8 patches in the trunk area, got only one left before attempting to install the floor.

Each one had to be hand built and welded. If you don't see how there can be that many, check out that photo !

Bodywork

Shaping some parts of the body for the trunk area out of new metal. Shiny !

Getting ready for the trunk floor

Back into welding !

Prepping the surroundings before the new trunk floor can be installed.

Mainly consisting of :
- removing parts of the old floor that were spot welded (50% done) by grinding and trying to peel it off
- fixing the rusted parts, see bottom of photo below had to fabricate a sheet metal replacement.

All good fun, goal is to be done with the trunk in 2 weeks !
Let's see how that goes...

Spitfire rear leaf spring spacer

So... It's been a while !

Work, sport, other and other priorities took over the project for a few weeks but it's not bad. Nothing such as a little break to find yourself with fresh motivation !

Remember on one of the previous episodes I had rebuild the rear spring and used tge teflon spacers. It looks like they will work great but they end up raising the height of the spring. That plus in an effort to get the stance and supension working right I decided to add spacers.

Sounds easy enough. Had the spacers fabricated out of aluminum (free favour wouou) to find out that the holes were drilled on the wrong side. No biggie i added 2 holes in each to find out the sapcers dont fit right with the studs in. Starting to get annoying, fine i ll sand and file the spacers till it fits, to find out i need longer studs.
Cant find these anywhere, found the trick online that you can use engine head studs. Grrr ok i ll take these from my parts car.... Of course they were rusted solid in there and each one had to be heated up to be removed !

So... Not such an easy job in the end but a good thing done. Well now i pray that with the weight of the car the stance will be just right.

A photo of the spacers in place for your viewing pleasure below.
See you soon.

Front floors finished !

Fitted the one i built this week. Then since i had made a passenger one that looked much better than my first attempt i cut it out and put it in place too.

It took so much time it's not even funny, next time i am buying the floors...

Now onto the rear part of the floors, quite a challenge.

Spitfire floor panel forming issues - continued

Yesterday's post probably didn't make much sense, half the text got lost in the internet maze, so here it is off my chest :
- The good news : i refined my technique and it looks way better than the passenger side i did.
- The bad news, i did the channels the wrong way round so really i did a passenger side again !!!!I 

Have been making these with my bead maker, here it is in action. On this one i will do some final touches by hand with the hammer.

Spitfire floor panel forming issues

See what i am trying to do here ?
Doing my own floor panel using the cheese look alike old one.

Your typical tuesday night

Resto rule #10 : if it comes from the parts car it will but rusted solid

Driver side foot well

This weekend i attaqued where the driver puts his feet and extracted these 4 rusty puzzle pieces.

Now on to reproducing them out of fresh metal and welding back in place. Endless fun !

I see wheels !

Historical moment the chassis has wheels !

Will help free space in the garage while i work on all the other stuff...

Spitfire rear bearings replacement

I remember a long time ago, my british friend Craig had told me that replacing the rear bearings on the spitfire was a bit more involved than the front ones and I shouldn't mess with it unless I know I have a bearing issue, he was right. It's easy once you have done it but deserves some photos to help the next one.

Start by removing the flange and for that you will need the special tool so that you don't bend it. I think I had a post on it, it takes a lot of force and will come out with a bang so be cautious.

Then push the axle out, I used a standard extractor.

Push the old bearings out with drif and hammer but note position and orientation of bearings and seals.

Might as well change the U.J. while we're here

Press or push the bearings and seals back in.

Then push the hub back on the axle. I used the press but it might work with gentle hammering the important part being to push on the inner ring of the bearing so use a tube the right diameter.

Now that's the part where I scratched my head for a long time !!! What is the position of the hub supposed to be ? There is nothing stopping you. In the manual it talks about the position of the grease cap but that doesn't really help. Eventually I realized that when torquing the big nut back on it will push it where it's supposed to be. This is my second attempt, see I only pushed it to over 2 1/2 just enough to be able to thread the nut properly.

Then torque the nut to 110 and it will push the whole thing to where it's supposed to be,

A look at the assembly on the car. Maybe we can put some wheels on soon !

Spitire Universal Joint

Changed one of the UJ. Easy with the press.
The grease nipple seemed in the way so i cut and sliced a small screw to put in place.

Note to self for the next one, might as well grease it before installing it's way easier !

Did I say I love electrolysis rust removal ?

Let it run all night and these parts were badly rusted. See the result by yourself...

Spitfire rear spring like new

Should add a before/after picture really...
Cleaned and repainted each leaves and used plastic buttons (from the ebay guy) instead of the rubber ones. Hopefully these will never wear out.

It raised the spring so i am trying to have a cheap spacer built.

Looking good, now on to the rear hubs.

The differential is in !

I have to start with the photo of the spitfire differential landing into position. That felt good !

Trouble started when I opened the diff and noticed a cracked case. A previous owner had rebuilt with some sort of glue...

Luckily the spitfire community is amazing and Steve from Vegas sent me an other case just for the price of shipping ! Thanks Steve !

Although the outside needs a good clean and paint the inside looked ok and was not making any noise so it's just new oil seals and outside bearings. See previous post for the side seals.

For main pinion seal, pretty straight forward. Remove the nut. (Count the number of turns if you have a later differential)

Remove the flange.

And pop the seal out. Now that was the only part that took me a while, nothing could set it loose, so I ended up welding a little stick to it and pulled it with the slide hammer.

New paper gasket, refill with fresh oil and hopefully good for a lifetime !