Spitfire battery box replacement

It's one of these jobs once complete you think eh wasn't that bad but it was a pain. The only difficult part is to remove the old battery tray.

See the tool I used, it's important to get a good first punch so the drill doesn't go wandering around, if you need to, drill a small hole. It got easier as I did more holes, you basically have to cut around the spot weld without cutting all the way through.

For the welds at the back I had to make the spot weld drill bit longer using an extension bar from my ratchet box. It was easier this way, maybe because it allowed for a bit a movement correcting for the drill mandrel not being so true.

Here is what it looked like once all spot welds were done. Not pretty. In parts that were still holding together I ended up cutting the battery box  and peeling the part that is welded on like you do on a sardine can using a good pair of pliers.

Pushed the 2 reinforcements aside rather than remove the top part. Saves on more cutting / welding and you can have them out of the way without pushing too far.

A bit of hammering to bend the back lip and all around made the new battery box fit right. Held with vise grips during welding to keep as close as possible

Final result, tada. I will never let water accumulate at the bottom of the new tray ! Dont want to do this again...

Finally having the little helper is what really made it easy :-)

Spitfire steering rack

 Probably one of the most messy jobs so far. Fully dismantled the steering rack, cleaned everything and re-greased. There was nothing that looked too tired to need replacing apart from the boots, so I got some new ones.

Cleaning all the old grease just so I could paint was what took the most time.

There's a pretty smart balljoint system with a spring on both sides that needs removing in order to pull everything out. After that, pull out the gear and the shaft can slide out. When you pull the gear, careful not to loose that little pin ;-) (See previous post)

Clean, paint, the regreased everything.

Finished product looks good as new ! It's a lot harder to turn now but absolutely no play which is great, the spring play reduction system was probably frozen solid by old grease.

Last, you always need little hands to help with this kind of job !

Steering rack pin

Argh so annoyed ! Just spent hours removing the fresh steering rack I had just installed and removing the one from my parts car just because I had forgotten to reinstall (and lost) that one little pin.

See the culprit below, if you ever do a full dismantle of your steering rack remember that little guy ! Photos of the project in a few days.

Spitfire passenger floor

Finally started installing my homemade passenger foot floor.
Was quite a learning experience to make it and fitting is not easy either ! Lets just say that a lot of swear words were used, hopefully the driver side wont be as rude.