Monday 9 April 2012

This blog needs to be re named the rarely updated Spitfire Blog!!


This blog needs to be re named the rarely updated Spitfire Blog!!





After a very successful 2011 10CR (TEN COUNTRIES RUN) with Club Triumph which was a superb event taking me and my co-driver Neil through England, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg, Belgium, Lichtenstein, and Netherlands.


I picked Neil up from Warrington, before making our way across the Pennines to meet up with Mike Charlton in his lovely MK3 Spitfire.

After meeting up with Mike we headed down the RBRR route, also meeting up with Steve and Gaz who’s turn it was to take up the mantle of Team Shorts.

We headed towards our B&B which was about 10 minutes from the Plough where we would be starting the run on the next day.



As we pulled up at the B&B, we were met by Tim and Louise Ward in Tim’s uber GT6 mk3  and Roy and Julia Lacy in Roy’s classic looking white Gt6 they arrived as we were waiting for the electric gate to open now how’s that for timing!



Well 5 days later and some 2300 miles the 10CR (2800 in total) was complete, photos always speak a thousand words and I have attached some for you.



The Spitfire ran like a dream, one big issue I had was with the sparkplugs sooting up and making the car run like crap, replacement sparkplugs were the cure, so altitude and carb run cars do not mix! So having a look on my return was to inject the car sooner than later, so I stated my homework on the inlet and on pricing everything up and after long deliberation, I decided to convert the Spitfire to Zetec powered injection.




Some may ask why! The main reason would be reliability and service intervals, the spitfire really could have done with a service mid 10CR, the tappets needed adjusting and the oil would have benefited from a change. With a Zetec engine the service intervals would be every 12000 miles or 12 months, oil would be cheaper as would service parts, so Ebay provided a new 2.0ltr Zetec crate engine.


So it begins.




Engine and gearbox, chassis body all removed and engine was fitted  to my type 9 gearbox by means of a RS2000 alloy bell-housing, the bell-housing had to be altered to fit between the chassis rails. (Thanks Tim) Fabrication on the engine mounts have started and within the next month I plan to have the engine fitted and the body back in.



The Megasquirt ™  has now been fully tested on the Stim and my throttle body hooked up and the Idle valve calibrated. Really looking forward to getting this in the car and running.