Spitfire engine stand

Engine is finally on stand !
Will make working on it much easier.

Spitfire accelerator linkage

I could not remove the pin whatever i tried, push, pull, hammer, drill you name it.

Had no choice but to cut the end and finally got it in the vice. Will have to reunite them with a nice weld.

Spitfire dismantling - part 3

Great progress made today !

Not much left in the engine bay, tried to label things as much as possible and lots of photos. Hopefully to put back together i'll just follow the photos in reverse order.

Engine is off !

That's it, did not take long.

Now here is some advice, if you ask your wife to help you and lower the crane, tell her to turn the switch very very slowly, not just slowly... Luckily with the help of my panic scream day was saved and the engine stopped less than an inch from the floor. Thanks for the help honey.

Spitfire dismantling - part 2

Next step, engine is coming out !

Spitfire dismantling - part 1

Ok it's not going as fast as I was hoping but eh, some of these bolts have been stuck for over 40 years.

I still did some noticeable progress though

Before :

After :

3, 2, 1 ready ...

Last ride today. All is in place, dismantling starts tonight !

Spitfire drive movie

I have an other proof it drives at least semi ok, took my longest drive ever today for at least 15 minutes !
Sorry forgot I had the waterproof case on the camera, so no engine sound.

Broken intake manifold heater pipe

Went for an other ride around the block, car starts so well now, what a pleasure to start on first key turn, choke on full for 5 seconds, then half way for 10 - 20 seconds then that's it. When back, proceeded to removing the vinegar and replacing by water to get a good flush of the engine. While I was at it I decided I would fit the new water hoses...

The good thing with vinegar is that it will clean the inside. The bad thing is that it will dissolve rusty things that were held just by rust... that's what happened to the intake manifold heater pipe. I have a little piece of tube pushed in there for now so I can run the engine but that will be something to fix during the real restoration. Starting very soon by the way.

Rotisserie 2

Good progress on the spitfire rotisserie tonight !

Generator brushes

Slow progress this week end, but did some of those things that had been on the back burner for a while.

Replaced the brushes on the generator as well as painted it while i was there. Not related to my voltage charging issue i ll have to track that one later.

I found a few weeks back that the engine tends to overheat after a while so i took out the thermostat and filled the engine with vinegar instead of water that should clean the inside pretty well. Can't forget to take it out next week and put coolant liquid back in. I suspect my thermostat is opening a bit high and might buy the 82 celsius one.

By the way, good news, now the engine starts easily, looks like that previous hard work is paying off !

Spitfire rotisserie

Started work on the rotisserie, exciting !

Spitfire gear shifter repair

Today, finally fitted the gear linkage repair kit I had ordered, it was not as easy to fit as  it looks because one of the retainers is a pain to remove. The kit contains a lot of parts some for different era spitfire so it took more time trying to decide what parts to use. Overall it improves the feel on the gear lever and will make gear change a lot nicer.

Since I am at it I sanded the gear knob, super easy just fitted it in a drill, clear coated, hopefully it will look nice.

I went round the block again but noticed that now my voltage it too high so it looks like I need to give the voltage regulator an other look. Ah, british electrics... gotta love it !

On the road again

Eh forgot to mention, yesterday I ... wait for it...   drove the spit !
What a good feeling, not a major milestone for the project but it is for the moral !
Car still doesn't handle very well but the gears change a lot better and it's nice to have brakes.
I have the video to prove it :

When I got back replaced the coil, capacitor, points and cap that is a repro, does not say lucas on top it fits tight and doesn't move at all.

Spitfire voltage regulator

I finally got round to checking the voltage at the dynamo output and it was higher than the battery so I decided to give the voltage regulator a second look (it had already been cleaned and inspected) and I found that one of the contacts from the relay was broken so drilled the rivets to be able to take the contact part out and welded a new piece of coper in place.

The pic below will explain better, good news I now have an engine that charges the battery when it runs !

Engine prep to run and coil removal

Here is what I did (over the course of several hours this afternoon :-) ) trying to follow all of the advice I got on the awesome triumph experience forum : 

- Refit the wrong but at least new spark plugs as my order for the new ones hasn't even shipped. Did adjust them to 0.025 before fitting though. 
- Took the dashpots off, and tried on starter fluid. Was not real frank but car ran for a bit. 
- Drained the carb dashpots from their oil (20W50) as I found it was real difficult to move the piston inside up and down, I put that oil in maybe 6 months ago and I wonder why it was so sticky. 
- Turned the electric gas pump on and looked to see if from excessive pressure gas would be forced inside the carb, none, so I ruled out the pump putting out too much pressure, although I'll have to get a gauge to check how many psi it outputs. 
- Turned the jet nut to have the jet flush, fitted the pots back on and checked that the cylinder inside was descending freely 
- Unscrewed the jet nut by 12 flats 
- Tried many times to start, no luck 
- Tried with starting fluid, massive backfire in the exhaust, neighbors probably thought someone got shot :-) 
- Adjusted timing back to -6 BTDC by lining up with 6mm to the left of the dot on the pulley (I believe I was a 0) 
- Managed to start on fluid 
- Finally managed to start with choke fully on 
- Could not get the car to keep running without the choke so I opened the jets even more, another 12 on each and it ran finally ! 
That's definitely too rich I backed it up on one side and will need to do some carb tuning. 

So by the way there's still no oil inside the pot but as it seems to work like that I am thinking of leaving it out for now as it might have overcomplicated my problem 

I now pray that I will be able to start easily with a cold engine now. 


While in there I removed the screws holding the coil, these are big philips type screws, they would not move and the head was quickly ruined. Had to use my favorite technique : welding a nut on the head :-)

Won't run

So I could not get the engine to run this week end !
Plugs were pretty black from last week's run, I removed the carbs and adjusted the butterfly on one of them as it was always letting air leak through making the adjustment impossible.

Now I redid the advance setup as 6 BTDC static but I am wondering if the little hole on the pulley stands for TDC or 6deg BTDC ?
Can't get the engine to run and have suspicions around the whole ignition system since the plugs usually smell of gas when I take them out. And the plugs I was using are nit the correct type.

Next steps :
- New plugs (champion 9YC), rotor, distrib cap and coil
- or maybe a genius idea
-  start to sort out the dashboard or do some bodywork to take my mind of this crazy engine start issue. Bodywork therapy !

Engine ran tonight

So i did a few things and got the engine to run for 30 minutes :

- cleaned the plugs

- redid the setup for the timing and breaker gap, one of these is probably what helped although the tachmeter I bought is giving erronous readings so it's tough to check correctly. But at least i have the stroboscopic light and i can take readings. From unplugging the vacuum tube it looks like both the weight and vacuum advance are working. I am reading 28 degres on the flywheel at around 2 or 3000 rpm, is that too much ?

- After much time trying to start with every combination of the chocke I could finally get the engine to start properly and move on to try to setup the carbs a bit better and that's where i could not make sense out of it anymore.
First my idle is high and on the left side even with the idle screw out it was still high. So i wonder if that's due to an air leak or the mixture ?
Then adjusting the jet nut on the left side made no sense, whatever i did (tighten or losen) the engine would still slow down when i lifted the pot.

At least when warm the engine would not die anymore like it used to when i accelerate.

Got a few actions to do this week :
- ask the excellent triumph experience forum for some ideas
- looks at the plugs, between the front or back ones and see if some are black
- see if the engine starts easy like it did when it was warm.

There is hope !

Choke cable and start

Well it's been almost 2 months since I last made progress, not easy to restore a car when you have a newborn at home !
Luckily i have an understanding wife and it will just get easier from now.

So this week end I installed the new choke cable that i ordered a while back. It has an upgraded design where you have to twist to release but unfortunately the knob from the old one cant be put on that one, so i ll have to order that. Hopefully it looks like the old one to keep the original look.

Then my goal was to start the car and finally test these new brakes. Starting was noooot easy..... So here is what i ended up doing to get it to finally start :
- cleaned all plugs, they were black but it looked more like oil. I wont rush to conclusions on that one because i still havent had the chance to rev that engine properly while taking the car out and drive more than 5 minutes.
- replaced the ht coil flat connectors
- check compressions, 150 on all cylinders, at least that sounds like good news.
- cleaned the top part of the distributor so it can move more freely.

So i managed to start after many attempts but that took a while plus at the beginning the engine would die as soon as i accelerate. I believe this could be due in part to a poorly adjusted timing so I guess I ll have to buy one of these stroboscopic lights.

Next steps : get the engine running better, get out of the garage (finally !) and test the brakes then work on battery charging circuit.

handbrake work

The new homemade guide next to the old one. This is a temporary fix, just need to tac weld in place for now.