MadaboutKitcars

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1963-Triumph-Herald-based-Miglia-Kit-Car-with-1600-straight-6-Vitesse-engine-/131508286710?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item1e9e8134f6

Hmm, shiny paint job but I can see that there might be a few difficulties finishing it to a good standard.



It'll be quite a challenge getting the wheels centred in the arches front and rear, I'd say it might even need the one piece body shortening to get the front ones anywhere near where they should be.

That could also be down to the rear arches being centred on the back wheels without the desired toe in/out being set first. I wonder if the body's been bonded on yet?

From the angle of the bonnet, unless that picture was taken with the engine out, I'd also say that the bodyshell is set too high at the front. As it is, if you lower the front enough for it to look right then the chassis will drag along the ground and you'd have no suspension travel left. If the body is bonded on already that would be a major issue to correct.

Finally, the wire wheel axles are almost certainly going to be fitted with Triumph 13" 'short' splines, which won't fit 14" wires.

On a more positive note, I do really like the look of those lowered floorpans. Nice.

I agree Mr T.

Interesting that it has no doors. Is it a trick of the light or does the left sidd of the rear deck have heat damage or a weird fjngal growth?

Just noticdd in the background of one of the pics is an MX250 - No. 77.

I think the body shell is just resting in place and not permanently set up as a "gasser".

As the petrol tank is shown separately and would need to be fitted before bonding the body shell on.

Although it would be worth mentioning that on the ebay advert, as the photos of a high front end don't do the car justice.

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In the Tribute "Useful Info" thread "next door", that car is listed under Dave Lowes.
Build Thread and Paint Thread



It also looks like there is another type of car in the background of the photo with the wheels & petrol tank.

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Either way, I hope their sale goes well, Paul.

cheap enough at the moment . Miglias do have a wheel alignment issue in the arches in much the same way as a Sammio , so some work needed there as you say.

Its an issue right across the range of Rib/Mig/Sam cars and has been well documented on here.

The Spit based Miglia also has this trait but none of the pictures I have seen yet have highlighted it.


PAINTED A BIT PREMATURELY IN MY OPINION

Agreed, probably in the hope some inexperienced muppet on eBay will be taken in by the shine and stump up a bigger bid.

May also be the builder has suddenly realised his faux pas and is dumping the project because he doesn't have the skills/inclination to shorten and fettle the body to fit the wheelbase properly. I don't always buy this 'redundancy' excuse, I don't believe all I read, especially on eBay.

As the owner of the Spit based Miglia, I haven't yet noticed a wheel alignment issue when my bodyshell is on the chassis, and the body shortening job Mike did looks good to me. But maybe others know better than me...

Marc F - I posted some photos of Miglia's on the "Useful Info" thread the other day, and nothing about the wheel arches jumped out at me either.

Take a look at the picture above though. In addition to the front arch being at a wild and unattractive angle, which might just be down to the springs, there's definitely a wheel alignment issue with the front arch.

It could just be that the rear wheel has too much toe in, moving it forward from where it should be and pushing the front arch out of alignment when the body is fitted with the rear wheel centred in its arch. Does that make sense?

That shell definitely has a wheel center alignment issue but not to difficult to fix for a small price. I agree with Paul in that the shell looks to be resting on the chassis which makes the alignment solution easier to deal with.

All in all may be a good buy for somebody, i may of been tempted had i not had a few projects on the go.

I could be wrong, but i think that the doors are there but they have been glassed in place as in the side-on pic I can recognise the inner-door mouldings and I know where they end.

If you want to leave them like that then fine, although it's just a matter of a few mins with an angle grinder to cut them out and then filling/sanding/filling/sanding/filling/sanding/.... to make them useable again. Not a biggie.

As far as the wheel centring is concerned remember the wise words of the great GaryJ "no one looks at both sides at the same time"

TBH for that price if I had a double garage and didn't have this rusty hunk of VW Camper to get on the road for the summer I would be sorely tempted as the donor is good and what is included in the kit of parts he's offering is good.

Probably a good thing I don't have space for it!

I saw your car parked outside the workshop that did the framework on your car and with the body correctly seated , the arches weren't truly centre'd.

Your car does look good though and should be very pretty when done.

This is very true and you could add that dimensional accuracy can be outweighed by aesthetic quality !!

It would be very easy to get very frustrated after a tape measuring session on ANY of these cars , the Sammio has issues with dimensions , the Miglia too - my Miglia body was similar in dimensional issues to the Sammio range for obvious reasons and my porthole front vent positioning was interesting side to side too , but these cars were originally created as a starter project to create a 50's style Special or Sports car ( and priced accordingly ) nothing else available now or then was anywhere near this price - look at Tribute kit package prices for a comparable .

As the cars became popular , the quality of build became better , this highlighted issues not relevant on earlier budget builds and without the product being completely reworked and totally started again , it wasnt going to change that , so builders wanting higher quality cars were left with the only option being more work rather than more initial expense. A concept I personally still embrace but appreciate that not everyone pursuing this dream would choose that path .

The introduction of the Miglia was heralded (no pun intended!) as the step forward - a reworked Cordite/ Spyder combo based bodyshell conceived from an earlier Sammio one off was introduced as the new , improved option and the price increased 50% to justify this.
The Miglia is a better looking product in many ways , nice and shiny , seperate doors etc. but it isn't without its build issues and irregularities , so in many ways its a stretched Sammio with seperate doors for 50% more money.

Basically you make your choices and pays your money but either way the cars require a little effort to make roadworthy , a lot of effort to make truly stunning but it has been and will continue to be done.

As a side note : Davecymru , you commented on wheel centring but didnt clarify , are yours centre'd now ? and if so , did you centre them or was it supplied as such ?

I will get some photos over the weekend, but mine are "good enough for me, for now"
As mentioned above, I'd say that initial lineup of the Miglia shell was better than my Sammio, but it will always be affected by how you fit and modify your frame and also any differences in the original Triumph chassis construction.

I wanted to get mine together, on the road and enjoying it. And I am! And now I can look to modify things like rear lights, wheel centering etc. Over the next few years as I'm not afraid any more to just chop a chunk out, reposition it and then repaint it myself! And that is exactly why I went for a Miglia/Sammio, as (imho) you can have much more fun "tinkering"

I agree with everything EP says above, the original Sammio concept enabled quite a few people to put nice cars on the road for very little money when compared to the competition. I spent less on my whole car than a 356 Speedster body alone typically costs.

As for the wheel alignment issue, there are two aspects to this:

One is getting the wheels close enough to the centre of the arch so it looks right; and the second is getting the flow of the arch to follow the curve of the wheel so the gap looks even all round.

On the Sammio Spyder the rear arches could be centred by careful jiggling of the rear body prior to bonding in place, and then the bonnet could be lengthened or shortened to get the wheels centred, and lowered at the front to get the curve right (in my case necessitating a great big hole in its middle to let the engine poke out).

Before bonnet chopping -



...and after -



You can see the similarity between my 'before' shot and the unfinished one on ebay -



Looking at it, it's going to be far more difficult (though not impossible) to get the wheel arches right for both length and angle with a one-piece body, and that shiny paint job sure won't survive the procedure.

It's also a truism that you can't see both sides at the same time, but you can see both ends of the same side...

Without wishing to keep flogging a dead horse, the Cordite was heralded as the step forward from the Spyder.

[color="blue"]"We have reworked the body on the Cordite , so it is our best yet ...dearest too !! But still leagues ahead of the competition !!"[/color]

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Well I can see both sides of this "bespoke" body shell at the same time when it left the Sammio factory.

Call me old fashioned, but I think it might have a few symmetry issues.



I also think Michiel did an amazing job to end up with a back end that looked as good as this.



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I'm looking forward to seeing some more photos of your car.

Cheers, Paul.

Agreed , the work on Michiels car is shocking. A modification carried out under financial and time restraint pressure by the Sammio Company who also , possibly , put a little too much faith in the person who did the modification at the time . Michiel was gracious enough to accept the car as was , has done a fantastic job of straightening her out and even gave the initial modifier the chance to put the final colour on the car , a job that was farmed out to his regular paintshop at that time and came out looking fantastic.
Probably my favourite example to date.

OK, my last post on this thread before I really start ranting & raving.



I wish you would make your mind up, as on Michiel's build thread you blamed someone else.



However, regardless of who actually did the work, it was still Gary's company and therefore his acceptable standard of workmanship.

Next you will be telling me that the "financial and time restraint pressure" has nothing to do with the way Gary did business?

This quote comes from Rods 'n' Sods where Gary had just been banned for the way he did business on that site.

[color="blue"]"Making mistakes is one thing. Repeating them time and time again moves towards becoming a trait."[/color]

http://www.rodsnsods.co.uk/forum/topic/need-contact-gary-janes-bay-area-rods-17930

To be brutally honest, if I'd seen that thread in time I wouldn't have touched Gary, or the Cordite kit, with a barge pole.

Please Note:
I know there were lots of happy Sammio customers who have no complaints whatsoever and some great cars have been built.

I just think that in the interest of fairness this "poor Gary" defence that keeps being rolled out needs a bit of balance now & again.

Cheers, Paul.

PS
Found out my younger cousin died yesterday and I fly out for his funeral tomorrow, so accept I am posting this while in a pretty bad mood.

Sorry to hear about your personal circumstances.

Sorry to hear of your sad loss Paul, there's not much else I can say to console you.

As for the business practices of all those concerned with the Sammio/Ribble/Miglia cars, all I can say is that I met with Gary, Mike (Miglia) and the two Andys several times, and I don't believe that any of them deliberately ripped off or let down customers.

With Gary and Mike my view is that both had more raw design talent and practical ability to turn their vision into an actual product than business acumen. In Gary's case the project (unexpectedly?) just ran away and got too big for him to manage and his enthusiasm burned out, hence the sale to the Andys.

I don't think Mike's heart was really in his project, I get the feeling it just seemed like a good idea at the time.

The Andys had great ambition and enthusiasm for the product but didn't have the time, skills or business ability to improve the product to the standard they wanted and market it to new customers before it soaked up too much money to make the company viable.

I do hope someone takes over the Spyder project and gets it back into production as there wasn't much wrong with the original concept and car in the first place imho, which was cheap, simple fun.

Oh, and it'd be a shame if El Primer stopped contributing to the forum, I'm aware that he was quite close to the origins of the project and built at least one Spyder to a really good standard, so is able to make valuable contributions to the discussions on here with a fair bit of insider information.

Anyway, the sun is shining and I've got the day off, so I'm going out for a blast in the 1950's silver race car I never would've owned if it wasn't for the Sammio motor company.

Wheel arches issues

Hey guys, I'm really pleased this car came up for sale and generated this thread.
I'm about to cut and extend my spitfire chassis, just awaiting my subframe delivery next week? ( mike promise )
This is for all who have built.
Do I extend the wheel base on the conservative side or be more liberal with my millimetre measuring?
All the data that I have seen, says 8.5 inches longer, or do I make it 9 inches?
Lots of thoughts please.
Thanks

Hi, my advice would be do not cut the Spitfire chassis.

If I'm reading this right you have 2 chooses.
(A) get a Herald chassis.
(B) cut down the original Miglia body work and cage frame to suit the Spitfire.

You have to bear-in-mind the Spitfire and Herald chassis are by their very nature designed to "flex evenly".
By welding a join in it you are creating a "stiff" area which will eventually cause cracks around the join. I know this because I have done it!!!

Option (A), most of the Spitfire bits will fit a Herald chassis and those that don't can be found cheap on E-Bay.
The Miglia cage frame, body, gear stick ect are designed for the Herald chassis so it makes sense to use the correct chassis.
Your build will be quicker, easier, less stressful and maybe enjoyable.

Option (B), If you welding and engineer skills are good enough to cut-and-shut a chassis then the cage frame would not be a problem.
As for the body work just look at some of the threads on this forum to find out how. While doing this you can also sort out some of the alignment issues.
Finaly as a bonus you will have a unique car that you yourself have created out of the original.

Only my opinion but above all, have fun and enjoy building it. eace:

+1

If you cut & extend the main chassis rails then there is no escaping an IVA test.

The Miglias (and the Sammio / Ribbles) were never designed with passing this test in mind.

That is not to say they couldn't be made to pass it, but is seems like a lot of extra hassle to me.

Good luck, Paul.

I would even venture to say it would be impossible. Unless you have a very good engineering qualification and can certify the resulting strength and flexibility of your work to the standards to satisfy the examiner or can find somebody who can, it will never pass an IVA and it shouldn't pass an MOT either unless you completely reconstruct the connection which is almost impossible on a Triumph chassis. We aren't talking about a rust patch repairer here, which may be acceptable for the MOT depending on where it is (some parts of the chassis can't be repaired, I am told).

I have installed the Ford Transit chassis extending kits on their pickups and it's no minor procedure. They are plated with sandwich plates, inside and out and all bolted, 10mm bolts into captive nuts attached to the inner plates, welding is NOT allowed for the reasons Micky has mentioned above.

Modding the body on the other hand would be a doddle and nobody (in authority) will question it.

Good luck with the build!

Cutting Spitfire Chassis



Thanks for the info. Can you expand on the problems you encountered?
The guys at the garage where we play with our classics think its doable.