Another Year another excuse

Well its been a long time since I posted. In my defence I have been very busy and I have made progress on the house. garden BBQ area and also the Spitfire.


A little progress.


The Subaru Limited Slip Differential is now fitted and the car is back on all four wheels now. the front brakes are now four pot running vented discs. The rear brakes are now converted from drum brakes to disc brakes and almost finished.


Ok ready for some info? The Subaru differential has been fully fitted and linked up to the Rover 100 shafts, inner Subaru CVs and outer Rover CVs which are fitted to the Gt6 rear vertical links which have been machined out to take the rover 100 outer CV with the larger MGF TF bearings fitted to the vertical link. Outside the VC is a MGF TF disc and calliper, I made the calliper mount myself to allow the MGF rear calliper to fit the GT6 vertical link. Got that???


The radius arm for the Spitfire are mounted to the outer location points on the body (at the rear of the seats in the cab) where as the GT6 utilise the longer radius arms and mount to the inner mount to the inside of the cab. As such the Radius arm locating bracket on the inside of the cab have been cut out and moved to the inner mount location (These parts are no longer available hence I did not buy new)


My seats were eat by mice a couple of winters ago whilst at a friends barn as I did not have a garage at the time and the carpets are shot due to the same fury friends. My plan is to replace the leather parts that were eaten and buy a new carpet set.


The Zetec engine is supplied fuel by a very successful system consisting of a low pressure fuel pump providing fuel to a swirl pot that then feeds a high pressure fuel pump via a high flow fuel filter the fuel passes along braded high pressure rubber fuel pipes to the fuel rail and any excess fuel is passed back to the swirl pot and an overflow back to the main tank from the swirl. The combination of the swirl pot/low pressure fuel pump/high pressure fuel pump and fuel filter in the boot took up some needed space and decided a few years ago now to replace with a fuel pump swirl pot and sender unit (for the fuel gauge) to be in tank and save space in the boot so for this blog entry I hope to cover this.


I have extended my tank range by 100% by adding steel and providing a great location for the fuel pump.

The fuel pump is a webcon supplied in tank unit and is not cheap but I have since found the fuel pump elsewhere for a third of the price *(hey I got a spare) anyhow the matter of fitting the fuel pump to the tank. I ordered metal rings from a laser cutting company measuring the outside diameter of the fuel pump and the outer some 15mm larger they came today.

The rings arrived plain so I could use one welded to the tank and the other on top of the fuel pump held down by bolts! so I drilled the pair to accept 6 x M6 stainless Allen bolts, the pair now become the upper ring and lower ring the lower will be welded to the tank. The lower ring  has been tapped to accept the M6 Allen bolts meaning they will be fixed permanently to the ring and held in place with thread lock.

The rings drilled and lower ring threaded then I test fitted them together and found them perfectly fitted.

 

 

Next was to test fit the fuel pump in to the rings and it fitted superbly. Now to cut the tank.

 

Tank was cut with a jigsaw and was straight forward and allows me to clean out the tank of any welding swarf and debris I will carry out some seam welding with my Tig to tidy up my welding on the extension of the tank prior to welding the lower ring in place.

The ring was placed on the tank to test fit and it fits great and allows the fuel pump loads of clearance on the surrounding and the fuel pump being spring loaded will compress to sit at the bottom of the tank. I also baffled the tank whilst extending it to slow and reduce the sloshing of the fuel in the extra large tank.

 

 

My next job is to get more welding gas as I am all out and need Argon as well as Argon/C02.


Bye for now.

Bobbyspit

I must read and update soon.

Well I must start with an apology, I have been busy.
I moved to a house which was not finished and as such have been very busy building.

My first big project was a new garage for the Spitfire, Yes a purpose built stone garage built to help me upkeep and upgrade the Spitfire (or Spitford as its been nicknamed.)

Well Pic attached of the  new garage and I must add that I have been busy with the car also.

The rear differential was weak, 130bhp at the wheels did cause some issues with the Differential causing the bearings to give up about 2 years ago, leaving a horrible noise when driving so I have decided to give it a BIG upgrade , that being a Subaru LSD . Good for 250bhp.

More to come regarding the Subaru Diff upgrade.

I will say that if you have any questions please mail me on bobyspit@sky.com as I don't always get notifications from here with messages.

Well pic of Garage attached and welcome back to the blog.

Rob

wow an update. Well its been years!

Well this is my first post in a very long time. I have been busy!

First the car! It was finished in 2013. (if it can ever be called finshed) This was a great year for doing too much with so very little time. I moved jobs, moved to Scotland and travelled to Manchester on 5 or so occassions to work and complete the Spitfire prior to completing the 2013 10 Countries run.


The car was MOT'd in July with a seriously hot running engine which I had mapped with a basic set up on the megasquirt. I returned to Manchester in the end of July and drove the car to a Rolling Road in Maclesfield Cheshire. A great rolling road set up was done producing 150bhp at the crank and an indicated 130+ at the wheels. This was a new engine and should loosen up and give a few extra horses.

With the car set up on the rolling road, I headed to my new home in Scotland, 325 mile journey was great, is shook my alternator bracket to pieces and threw up a few other little niggles. Well with the trip back to Manchester the day before the 10CR, to my Well the 10CR was superb, the car had one minor issue with the set up and I had set the EDIS to cut out when the engine got too hot and it only went above my setting once in the hills of Italy, which required a stop and wait whilst the engine cooled down. This has now been increased and is now not an issue.

The 10CR was a superb test of the new set up, in total with the return trip to Scotland I managed 3000 pain free miles with superb fuel economy, at one point 50+mpg.

The car looks and sounds all things Triumph , but has the go the car was meant to have.

The car returned with me to Scotland in 2014 where I was to take part in the Auto Ecosse however the event was cancelled and the car was mothballed as I am now in the process of building a garage in the grounds of my new home near Crieff in Perthshire. The car is in need of a new Differential as my last one went POP I suspect too much power. The plan is to go LSD in the near future, I have a replacement diff ready to fit, lets see what 2015 brings.

With the garage build in progress and the list of things to do ever increasing I see no real movement on the Spitfire until 2016 where I plan to return the car to its original finish and upgrade the brakes and diff. More to come.

I promise I will update this Blog a few more times this year.

Update on the Triumph Spitfire Zetec Conversion

Been Busy with the conversion so far. All adjustments have been made to the chassis and the engine and gearbox are fitted and the body has been put back on with the help of a few friends the other week.

Chassis has been treated to new front shocks and springs which are fully adjustable and the springs are more uprated than the ones fitted prior to the conversion, new vented discs have been purchaced and the GT6  bigger calipers and spacer kit ready to fit.

Really motoring now but there is still some way to go.

New stainless 2.25 inch pipes were collected today and hopfully in the next few weeks Ill have the exhaust fabricated and fitted.

Pipe WerX near Ormskirk provided the stainless pipes bent and they will also provide me the water rail once I have the spec required.

Really looking forward to getting the car on the road now.

All for now

Rob

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.

Long Time No update.

Pic 1 taken prior to the run, yes lots of polishing.

Ok, sorry for the lack of updating of this blog, passing of exams at work and recent change of job has left me with little time.

I have not attended many meetings this year at the Pendle and Pennine near Barnsoldwick, and I think this is going to get worse before it gets better.

The positive news I can bring you is the car is fixed and has completed the Auto Acosse in the beginning of June with Steve Thompson (Tiggrr on the Forum) We had tho great days low flying around Scotland on a great event. I am looking forward to next years event as I hope the run will take in a different area of Scotland. The roads were superb if the weather was not. We did have sun but we also had rain and cold weather, I can report that the roof did not go up until after the event!! It was great Pics attached.

Pic 2 again after a good polish.

I had put the new clutch plate in the car and this was its first run (in anger) and the car ran great, no issues and with a recent upgrade to the brakes performed superbly. The front brakes lock up at will now and are very predictable.

Interior back in at long last.

A veery wet run round Loch Long.

The next run is Club Triumph's 10CR.

10 Countries run. 10 Countries in 5 days.

The last time I attempted this event I failed dramaticly in Country 2 (France).

I hope to complete the event this year and enjoy the roads and company. Cannot Wait!

Problem Found

Well after a day of taking the Spitfire apart, I can say one thing.

ITS NOT THE GEARBOX.

Its the Clutch plate. Bought from a supplier 2 years ago, I see this as a premature failure, I will be contacting the supplier tomorrow, I hope they see it as I do.

Pics attached.