Then and Now
Last Updated on Sunday, 04 July 2010 14:50 Written by Nige Sunday, 04 July 2010 09:36
I've been sorting through the hundreds of photographs of this restoration before I get stuck in on the articles that will cover everything done to her. First though, I thought I'd give an overview of where I'll start and show you a couple more pictures of where she is now.
This first picure is of me in around 1971, just before she was stored away in a garage for the next 36 ish years.
Well, according to the stories that my uncle bill has about her, she has seen the best of the 60's. She has been raced at lots of auto tests, raced on tracks, visited most of the UK, carried five people from Coventry to Dover! and has seen some real adult action (as a broken seat will attest to).
It's all this family history and the stories told of her that hold me to this car and make it so that this is one to pass along the family line.
I first remember steering this down the side road where my gran lived, whilst Bill operated the pedals.
The plan was to restore her to her original spec, add an extra touch of class and uprate her enough to keep up with the demands of modern driving.
She's now back to her original Lichfield green and original red interior. I have however styled it a little from my own imaginings. The dash is now red rather than the original black, the dash and centre console are, well, check out the pictures.
The engine is the original high compression 1147cc one. It has been rebuilt to the highest spec that I can use comfortably on the road. This included work on lightening, balancing, shaping the crankshaft, head skim to bring the compression up to 10.1:1. The head had new valve inserts for unleaded running, the exhaust valves were enlarged to match the 1500 engines and stainless steel ones were put in. The cam is a fast road from Piper with matching springs. The flywheel was lightened a small amount and balanced. The head had the chambers shaped slightly, inlets and outlets were ported and polished as well as being mated to the tubular (mk2) manifold and the custom carb inlet manifold.
This engine has been given a complete (but not yet final) upgrade of life support.
I knew that I'd be needing halogen lights, bluetooth stereo, electric fan, etc powering, so the first thing was a better supply of electricity. The dynamo needed to go. Now, this is a shame because the dynamo/regulator are just awsome looking bits of kit. But, the alternator conversion was needed.
Next is the ignition. Now, I'd have loved to have kept the original distributor and just used the Pertronix ignition module, but the alterations to this engine would necessitate a recurve and the easyest way to do that is on a computer. :-/. Due to this, the ignition system is now a Ford EDIS being controlled by a Megajolt Lite Junior system. This one isn't permanent. I do intend to replace it with the ignition side of a Megasquirt from ExtraEFI in the UK and have it hooked up using the original distributor and coil arrangement. I don't like the look of the EDIS. That's to come though.
The carbs were replaced with a pair of Keihin CR specials from PRI racing in the USA. Again, these are brilliant carbs once set up, but they do have their problems which I'll cover in its own article later. Due to these problems I am probably going to recondition/rejet the original carbs and put them on.
If you saw the last article, you'll know that I was having one final problem preventing me from announcing her as a reliable car that I felt could set off on her travels in the UK once again. Well thanks to some assistance from a couple of friends that is now sorted out.
The problem was that the higher compression ratio and other modifications all added up to blowing out head gaskets. I'd tried several times to seal it only to have it start squirting oil onto the exhaust manifold, or water would find its way into the chamber and I'd have plumes of white sickly sweet smoke/steam pouring out of the exhaust. The amount of times that I drove home looking like I was on fire are uncountable. it was pretty depressing at the time.
My neighbor Steve has a nice classic spit and motorbike thing going, he also has a very tidy garage. Yes, he's an engineer. :) They all have tidy garages don't they? Well, it turns out his brother is also an engineer at a place that makes nuts/bolts/fastners, etc.
After I bought a new set of studs for the head and found that they were snapping before I could get them up to torque, Steve said that we could get them tested for hardness by his brother. The test showed that these studs were incredibly soft and probably made in China. I won't go into detail here, but Steve managed to badger Trevor into making some studs up for me.
These studs are excellent quality and were torqued down to just over 50lb/ft with Mini wheel nuts. I think that I can honestly say that the gasket blowing days are over. I now have a reliable spitfire that I think I could drive anywhere with no problem. I'll be putting up an article on this alone soon as the efforts put in by Steve and Trevor and the generosity of friends shows the community spirit that keeps classic car ownership a joy to be a part of.
There's an enormous amount more to all of this than I can fit in a single update article like this, so each of the above and much more besides will go into their own articles.
Nige
