Well its beginning to look like a car! For the first time since I bought
the thing, I managed to spend an entire weekend working on the Spit.
The first thing I did was finish the front end work that I had started the
previous weekend. I don't know if I told the list, but I was forced to stop
working on the car last weekend because I had found that the driver's side
upright was bent where it goes into the trunnion. I was also somewhat
disuaded from continuing because the bolt that holds the trunnion to the
A-arm was siezed to the metal bushing inside the trunnion, making it impossible
to remove without cutting something.
My solution to this was to get an entire left front suspension off of a
friend's parts car, and to use the upright and lower A-arm from it. I ended
up using a checkerboard of parts from the two cars: brake disc and bearings
from my car, upright and lower A-arm from parts car, upper ball joint from
a pile of parts that I had leftover from something else, brand new trunnion
and bushings. When all was said and done, the front suspension was basically
perfect. Now when I get around to replacing the bushings that hold the
steering rack on, the car should drive perfectly. Its not bad now, actually.
The next thing to tackle was the left brake caliper. I had already rebuilt
the right side the previous weekend, but had run out of the life blood
castrol brake fluid when I started working on the left side, so had to stop
on that too. The rebuild was uneventful, except for some trouble finding
castrol to buy (the local automotive supermarket didn't have a drop on the
shelf; I don't understand this at all, because it wasn't on sale or anything).
The Spitfire is the only car that I know of that one person can bleed the
front brakes on by themselves -- I used a big screwdriver as a lever to push
the rod into the master cylinder from inside the engine compartment. Next
I rebuilt the clutch master cylinder (I told you this car was a piece of
junk!), again without incident. Of course I bled the clutch without assistance
-- pretty neat that you can do that too.
The ratty interior next got my attention. I had about half a carpet set
in the car, and had most of the rest of what I needed from my friend's parts
car. The passenger seat wasn't bolted in, and the driver's seat was only
held in with a wing and a prayer. I put in the carpet, bolted the seats in,
vacuumed the interior (full of wet leaves and dirt. Ick), and it began to
look like a car. In my cleaning out the interior I came across the snaps that
mount to the body for the top and tonneau to snap to, and finally the car is
watertight.
Next it was onto fun stuff. I thought the front of the frame was bent because
the bonnet was at the limits of adjustment, and was still not aligned. So
I drove the car to a friend's house, and we took a 4x4 piece of lumber, put
a chain around it, looped the other end of the chain through where the
bonnet hinges mount on the frame, and prepared ourselves to jump up and down
on the 4x4. We started pushing down on the 4x4 to get everything seated,
and *creak* the part of the frame where the bonnet hinges mount moved down by
about an inch. Wow, I thought, that was easy. It turned out that the bonnet
just mounts on little sheet metal box sections welded onto the front of the
frame, and all we did was bend the box section. Nevertheless, it seemed to
be what was out of alignment because things worked better; so we bent the
other box section the same way and aligned the bonnet. Ah, much better.
Now finally, it was time to touch up paint the car. We hit a couple of spots
where we had buffed through the paint with another coat or two. Won't be an
improvement until I buff it in, but at least the paint is sitting on there.
Another problem solved was that the car wouldn't run without the choke on almost
all the way. It turned out to be simply that the idle screw wasn't opening the
throttle at all. A simple idle speed adjustment solved that problem.
Geez, now I understand why I was so exhausted yesterday. It makes me tired
just typing about what I did to the car. The car now looks pretty good, and
drives nicely, although I need to bleed the rear brakes and replace the rack
mount bushings. I still need to make door panels, and buy and install door
waist seals, weatherstip all around, and replace some of those damn Lucas
electrical connectors. Then all that will be left to do will be to re cover
the dash... and re-upholster the seats... and... and...
Joe
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