MadaboutKitcars

I like the "Egg crate".

I'm not too keen on the egg crate (just my opinion) and think the mesh looks much, much better, although the egg crate might look better with more slats. Have you thought of doing the mesh in body colour like some of the old Alfa Romeos? I have also been looking at which grille to fit to mine, I'll post a photo on my thread shortly.
Cheers, Paul

Never thought of mesh in body color. That would be neat!
Easy to mock-up to see if you like it too.

Personally I like the work that went into the egg-crate.

But the mesh actually is a cooler look especially against that dark colour. So my humble opinion go with mesh.

Dave

Difficult choice, as both options give the car a good look.

I like Old Jock's suggestions of extra slats on the egg crate and doing the mesh in body colour, similar to this one.



Good luck, Paul.

Or something like this?

I confess I liked the Egg crate style but for me the mesh reminds me of the Napier Rialton
So I would choose the mesh


http://i.wheelsage.org/pictures/napier/-railton_special/autowp.ru_napier_-railton_special_1.jpg

Yeah I love that napier, but those pics with the red grille look pretty good too

hmmmm

So finally got my registration back today - my car is now properly registered as a 'Triumph T48 spyder '

Congratulations, well done!

Thanks, I'm very relieved

Have you done anything with the grille yet?

Car Photographer - Belated congratulations on getting your V5C changed.

Thanks Paul

Not yet, I'm not sure how to go about it really, I have a jag grille but not sure if getting a aluminium surround for it would be cheaper than having the whole front remoulded in fiberglass,
Any thoughts your end?

done a few photoshop renderings to see how it might look etc -
1nose3w by paul ward, on Flickr
1nose2w by paul ward, on Flickr

I think the 2nd photo of the grille without the surround looks better.

As this appears to be more in keeping with the old car photos seen in the posts made in July.

Mind you, your other two grille options both work well, so no need to change if it is a pain to do.

Good luck, Paul.

Cheers, I'm going to look at some options and see if I can find someone who can fabricate something - if anyone knows someone who could do something like this, let me know
Cheers

Ok, so today we finished doing the suspension work - we fitted avo ajustable dampers all round, lower (330) springs on the front and took one large leaf out of the rear leaf spring.

it is a much better, softer ride now, the front stance is nice and low - but the camber on the rear wheels is a bit extreme (top image was taken before the rear spring was altered)
- not sure how I can correct this - other than getting a slightly longer leaf spring made up specially ..... any ideas?

[IMG]DSC_0071 by paul ward, on Flickr[/IMG]

DSC_0016 by paul ward, on Flickr

The front end looks great, have you driven the car on a twisty road to see how it handles yet? The back end looks a bit extreme! Why did you remove a long leaf of the spring? Was the suspension really that stiff? The old racer's trick was to remove the ends of the second longest leaf to prevent it binding at extreme cornering. Have you fitted a lowering block? You can get these of different thicknesses depending on how much you want to lower the rear end. This also changes the amount of negative camber, sort of in proportion to the thickness of the lowering block. Back to the leaf removal, the longer the leaf, the greater effect it will have if you remove it. Why not put the long one back in and try removing the next one up and see how that looks and feels when you drive it. How many leafs do you have in the spring, mine has five? The lowering blocks seem to come in 1/4", 1/2" and 1" thicknesses and, from memory cost around £25 including the longer locating studs.
On another subject, have you sorted the wing supports yet and what did you do?
Happy fettling, you have all winter to get it right!!

Hi
so firstly, no - I haven't tried charging around twist roads - to me it feels very hard and bumpy and when you corner it feels quite unstable - like it wouldn't want to go too fast, so when I have driven it I've taken it easy (with no roll bar protection and given my accident in the Porsche last year, I'm probably being overly cautious but I just feel very nervous driving it too fast )

Basicly - with the old suspension setup there was almost no give when you try to push the body down.
now with the new suspension mods there is a bit more give - I have only driven it about 100 meters up the driveway so far, but it does feel more comfortable than it did.
there is no lowering block - by the look of the clearance under the body - there wouldn't be room for a lowering block anyway (not sure if this was just how it was built or if it could be altered for your build) but the large gap between the body and the diff on the donor spitfire doesn't exist anymore on this car. Anyway I think the lowering block actually produces more negative camber which is the opposite of what we want here.

I've been going through old pics while we built the car and by the looks of it there was always a bit of negative camber on the car anyway - its just that this new suspension mod has accentuated that camber slightly so now it looks a bit more extreme.

I've had alot of people trying to give advice - most of the spitfire forums aren't helpful - I think maybe they don't understand the fact that the car is much lighter now and so haven't ever come across this issue.
the sammio forum on here has given some good advice and various ideas - and also Mick at Fiorano has helped a bit too.

at the moment there seems like a couple of viable options -
1. changing the half shaft length to the shorter ones.
2. Fitting the adjustable vertical link mod.
3. getting a bespoke leaf spring made up to the correct length and weight ratio needed to adjust the camber.

The vertical link mod might be the cheapest, but would require welding onto the link and that could be difficult to get done properly,
the half shafts are going to be hassle because you'd need to pull both hubs and rebuild them to fit the shorter shafts - canley classics used to provide ready made ones, but they don't anymore.
The custom spring looks like it could be the most expensive option (around £300 to £400 to get it made up) but actually fitting it would be far easier than the other two options. So at the moment I am tempted to pay more money just to get an easier fix, but still haven't decided really.

The wing supports will hopefully be made up by next week, he was supposed to do them this week but got sidetracked by other jobs.

any more news on yours yet?

So here's the before and after images - hopefully you can see that there always was a slight negative camber even before the mod was done - [IMG]Screenshot_2016-11-22-23-06-38 by paul ward, on Flickr[/IMG]
DSC_0016 by paul ward, on Flickr

here's the spring - and the leaf we took out
DSC_0011 by paul ward, on Flickr

Hi Paul, I see what you mean about the negative camber. Normally, when you reduce the weight bearing down on the rear spring you make the camber more positive, not negative as you have. Do you know which spring and half shafts you have in your car? Mine are both from the later Spitfire with the 2" wider track and if I fitted the earlier spring, I would get an excess of negative camber like you have. If you like, I can measure the length of my spring eye centre to eye centre so you can compare yours and mine to know which spring you have. Have you asked whoever you bought the car from if they did anything with the rear spring?
Regarding my own car, once I got it back from the welder I set about rust proofing it with a product called Metalmorphosis which seems to be well thought of by the Landrover Club. It worked very well on the rear of the chassis where there was still a bit of light surface rust and gave a nice dark blue almost black finish. The rest of the original chassis has also been successful but the new metal has not. In fact, the finish looks as if the product has caused the surface of the new metal to rust. It's really strange, because I attacked this with a wire brush in the angle grinder and the metal itself underneath the Metalmorphosis was still nice and bright with no sign of any rust at all. However, I am going to remove it from all the new metal then give it a few coats of normal undercoat before finishing it off with a nice silver top coat. I don't think it will happen any time soon though as it's really too cold (-8 degrees last night) for the paint to cure and dry properly and that cold weather is forecast to remain for a while. Let me know if you want me to measure the spring and half shafts, I should be able to do it on Saturday.

ok sure - if you get a chance measure it for me,
cheers