12th January 2011
Work on the MK 3 Spitfire has been pressing on well lately. The latest work is mostly centered on the boot area and in fitting the new bonnet as supplied by T D Fitchett. The bonnet has been a minor challenge as the owner elected to use the bonnet fixings from the old bonnet rather than order a complete made up unit.
I don't know if the accident caused the problem of if bonnet support tubes are always like this but it took considerable effort and four hours to persuade the tubes to go onto the bonnet in the right place. The last bolts fitted on either side were especially hard to get in as the tubes really wanted to point in another direction completely.
This was only half the battle as then another four hours were needed to get the assembly onto the car and trim the excess steel so that the bonnet would line up with the doors and dash top properly.
A bit of a nightmare that I need to re-visit again next week. The annoying thing is that the bonnet will need to come off soon for painting and then I'll have to do it all over again!
The Spitfire project is well under way now. A pair of unrestored doors have now been fitted to use as a guide for the door gaps. As the body panels are removed it's all too easy for the body tub to sag- leaving poor door to wing and sill gaps and general miss-alignment.
The body is quite frail at the moment so I'm taking one panel off at a time, starting with the passenger floor. Usually the sills and lid floor are removed in one hit and then the new panels are fitted. This time I have roughly cut the old floor out leaving the sills and other panels where they are and then by lots of trial fittings lifted the new floor up from underneath and gradually trimmed the old floor back until I had a good fit. This has been quite successful, however the new floor is slightly narrower than the original and if welded in place right now, the sills would appear to roll under the car and look odd.
The next job will be to remove the floor and widen it. Luckily the return edge is quite deep and there is plenty of spare steel to work with.
I did have a long conversation with a pattern maker once and apparently reproduction panels are pressed using cheaper aluminum dies rather than cast steel ones. As ally wears more quickly, the repro panels start to acquire rounded off edges and the narrower dimensions that we see on the panels that I am using.
Once completed, it should be hard to tell if the floor has ever been changed.
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Monday 20th December 2010
Original Stanpart door- sadly it's for the wrong side.
Brand new bonnet made using the original press by T.D. Fitchett. Bargain at around £800
Part of a large consignment of blast cleaned components due to be painted by the owners.
Blasted front bulkhead. The lower panels are amongst the best I've seen- the top panel is one of the worst!
Study of my feet as seen through the boot floor.
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So far we have stripped it down to a bare shell, braced the main body tub and removed it from it's chassis. From here the chassis and main body tub were sent away to be blast cleaned.
The bonnet could have been saved with a lot of work but T.D.Fitchett's in Telford still make the early type bonnets and do a good job for around £800.00 so it's financially better to replace rather than restore. Similarly the boot lid was looking sorry for it's self and so a new one has been bought.
One of the doors was in surprisingly good order however, the drivers side one had rusted pretty badly and was a bit beyond repair. A good new old stock door was found on eBay. Sadly it's for the wrong side so the search will be on for a replacement. Original doors are out there but they are getting increasingly hard to find ~( -anyone?).
Once the blast cleaning had been done, which took ages, the body was mounted onto the chassis for a trial fit. The mounting kit was supplied with a rubber block for each mounting point which as far as I'm aware is not standard. I have fitted them anyway as they may damp out vibration and as long as all the mounting points have the same blocks they will be at the same height.
There is some distortion in the body shell from an accident in Belgium in the distant past. When the body is rested on the chassis, one mounting point is distinctly higher than the others at the rear of the car. I did find that despite this the body bolted down to the chassis easily( in fact it was one of the easiest I've ever worked on), and the door gaps are still as good as ever.
Because I need a Driver's door still I'm using a spare one at the moment from my spares pile. It's not a very good one and the hinges are too worn so I'm holding off doing any welding on this side of the car for the moment- you need the door to ensure that the shut gaps are perfect, on a Spitfire this is a good yard stick to tell you if the body tub is starting to shift as you work on it.
The passenger side is a different story and as the gap looks to be spot on I'll be fitting new floors and sills beginning next week.
