Macau Spitfire progress

Work on the Macau is progressing all be it in a less than hurried fashion.

It had always been my intention to remove the wheel arch extensions it gained sometime in the 1980's when it was still in the USA.

At the same time I wanted to restore the hump on the rear deck to something like its original profile, and size. The original hump had been removed by Kas Kastner in 1966/7 to comply with the regs for the series he was racing in. During a restoration in the 80's a hump was reinstalled. It was a nice job, but it was overly large, and slightly the wrong shape.

After consulting with the original pattern maker at the Triumph (David Lloyd) who produced the Macau's rear deck and hump when the car was built in 1965 I thought it was time to bite the bullet and tackle the job. We carefully removed the 1980's aluminium hump from the glassfibre deck to reveal the shadow of the orginal hump still visible in the deck where Kas had removed it and glassed over it all those years ago. This helped considerably as now we knew exactly the plan profile, and shape. A hump buck was produced using this, and Davids guidance, and the many pictures I have accumulated over the years of the car. From this buck we (thanks James) layed up a mould, and then used the mould to make a new hump. It was then a simple matter of dropping the new hump into the deck, and bonding it in with matting and resin.

As it turns out the hump is now roughly a third smaller in height, and width than the alloy 1980's version, and I am very happy with the result.

Thin coat of etch primer.

Followed by a couple of coats of high build.

As a result of bare metaling (actually bare aluminium'ing, and bare glassfibre'ing) the rear end prior to primer I now have a time line of the cars history through its previous owners. Its paint prep at the Triumph was interesting, and quite specific. This was confirmed with some recent work we have done on ADU 4B.

If you should ever get offered a works Spitfire I would be happy to offer my services as an originallity inspector having gained a unique insight into how these things were put together. Learning the many foibles, and nuances of these cars right down to the bare metal so to speak has been an interesting journey, and the more I get into them, the more I get to realise just how different they are to the myriad of replicas that have sprouted up over the years.

RBRR Preperation Part XI

OK I know its a little bit late, but I finally tracked down that Stanpart front wing that eluded me when I was restoring the Tiny Lewis RAC rally class winning  Herald Coupe TL5 last October.

Anyway after 7 months of searching a suitable wing poped up on the Bay, and was mine for not a lot of money. It was quite surface rusty, but as they all get media blasted as a matter of course it mattered not.

As soon as it came back from the blasters I welded it on along with the previously assembled inner, and outer arch bowls.

The offside outer arch bowl was a Stanpart original I had in my stash for my own projects, the nearside outer was one of the pressed reproductions we sell. The ease of fitment was equally good, and the finished result is virtually identical.

That elusive Stanpart wing finally finds a deserving home.

TR7 and TR8 Development

Only for the hard core enthusiast!

http://www.canleyclassics.com/?xhtml=xhtml/experimentalcars/tr7and8experimental.html&xsl=experimentalcars.xsl

RBRR Preperation Part X

So that concludes work on our 2014 RBRR entry Herald Coupe for the for the time being. This morning I have to concentrate on servicing this years entry our Courier Van!

Seriously though what a shame, nearly but not quite. In reality I just couldn't claw back those 12 hours I lost. Effectively I got to where I wanted to be Wednesday night by about lunchtime yesterday. At one stage I did consider bolting the whole thing together half in primer, and half in still drying top coat.

What did I learn from this exercise? It is just about possible to do a full chassis off restoration, including a full mechanical rebuild  on a Herald in just under three weeks if you have the facilities, and the spares to hand. Where I went wrong was not building in enough contingency, another day would have definitely done it. In my defence however I had also done some customer work in those three weeks including building diffs, and reconditioned halfshaft assemblies, etc.

What did it cost? Approximately £350 in shotblasting, £300 in paint and materials, and very approximately (at retail prices) £2,500 in parts. If I had been charging myself labour I wouldn't have got much change out of £9K, which would have just about made up for some of those 5am mornings, and 11pm evenings!

Now I might have to explain to Patsy, Bill, and Andrew why I haven't managed to restore their cars in under a month each.

Thanks to James, Mike, and Ron for their help. If I ever mention trying to pull off a similar stunt like this again chaps you have my permission to slap me, and hide the workshop keys!

See you all at the Plough later, I'll be the one in the blue Courier Van asleep in the passenger seat. 

RBRR Preperation Part IX (Spanner in the works!)

Dash in;

Front suspension, and brakes complete;

Doors skinned, and in etch;

Its at this stage that things went a little pear shaped. I had planned to high build 2k prime, and top coat the doors, and rear tub before I went home last night. However having primed the doors, and the underneath of the tub I couldn't turn the tub over on the trestles on my own to paint the top (well I could but I would have probably damaged the wings). Bad planning on my part, I hadn't thought that there wouldn't be anyone else around at 11 o'clock at night to help me. The plan had been to bolt the painted tub, and doors to the car this morning, and trim it out. So that's put me a full 12 hours out.

One other tricky issue is the bonnet. Having welded the Stanpart drivers wing to the top panel yesterday with no issues, and things seemingly going really well disaster struck. I had previously emptied my sample stores of Stanpart panels to go towards the Coupes build, and one of the few panels I didn't have was a passenger side front wing. A repro was sourced, but when I came to fit it yesterday I was surprised to find it was nearly 1/4" shorter along its length than the Stanpart drivers side. When offered up to the bonnet top it is obviously wrong, and I'm not going to fit it.

Show stopper, might be. I'll plod on today, and see where I get to.

RBRR Preperation Part VIII

Painted the bulkhead just before I went home Monday night;

Having started to build up the front suspension earlier that day;

Yesterday I stripped and checked a diff (turned out to be a minter with a lovely gearset) adding new seals in the process. The only small problem was corrosion on the seal diameter of the front flange, and quarter shafts, easily rectified on the lathe with some fine emery.

Having virtually finished the rear suspension and brakes I bolted the bulkhead to the chassis, This stage always gives me a bit of a boost as (in my mind) its already started to look like a car;

Just before I ran out of energy (started at 5.30 am, still going at 10 pm) I managed to get all the sound deadening pads glued back in;

Apologies for the hazy pictures. I must have left my phone lens up when I was painting earlier and as a result I had a fine layer of white overspray on it.

RBRR Preperation Part VII

Saturday was a bit of a blur with a couple of absolute stars turning up to lend a hand things progressed much better than I had planned.

Mike Weaver at work trying to make a silk purse out of the sows ear 'frilly' bulkhead.

James adding the last repair panel (I hope).

Yesterday (Sunday, I know, who would have thought it) I popped in to spray the chassis, turrets, sills, rear quarter valances, and inside the door frames. Finally some top coat, I can see light at the end of the tunnel.

Thanks again to Mike, and James, much appreciated.