MadaboutKitcars

No worries, you will be getting a bastardised half of the $30 popper shown in the link through the post shortly

PM me your address and I'll send you something in return for the favour :-)

Don't worry - you can buy me a beer if we meet.

Today

I have a wood burning stove, which is very nice, but it consumes wood like a voracious monster, so I am constantly working with a chain saw to keep it alive.

Luckily I live in the country, (I didn’t know they grew on trees!) so there is a plentiful supply. (Wood that is, not the other)

So this slows down my work rate at times, however I did some small jobs today.

Thinking ahead, I looked at the Spitfire hood, which while it will not fit now.
some of the bits it has, I can use and modify to build one that will.

I took off the hood brackets and put them on the car to see if it was feasible to build my roof using the same anchor points.

It was, and I am sure it will be fairly straightforward, which will be a “first” with this build I think!

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boot rain channel drain tube



When I re-designed the boot lid aperture and put the rain channel in place, I was aware that eventually it would need a drain hole each side.

This is a bit obvious, but I had it illustrated to me one day when the cover blew off and it rained ( at that stage the body was outside) the boot had lots of water inside.

Well its done now, I used two lengths of 8mm copper tube, flared the ends and glassed them in.

Rubber pipe will be used to channel the water down through the floor later.

One more time consuming job that had to be done, finished at least,
another 5 thousand to go...........

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Inner wheel arches



Mister Towed:

It finally stopped raining enough for me to take the cover off my Triumph GT6 and study the inner wheel arches.
(Having sold my Spit bonnet, I could not remember what the arches looked like)

The arches are not attached at the rear, as obviously the whole front bonnet flips forward.

I will end up fabricating something similar, preferably removable if possible, to allow better access when and if.

I took some pictures which will definitely help me, and hopefully yourself also. Your comments most welcome, or anyone else for that matter!

(I did take a picture of the front part of the arch, but unfortunately it got deleted in the uploading process, however, it is not that important as you can see most of the front bit in the centre section pic)

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Scottie - I had a look through my old photos and these were the only two I had of my donor's bonnet.





Not sure if they are any help.

Cheers, Paul.

Thanks Paul that is helpful, I think Mr Towed is on the right track with possibly making the arches out of a plastic barrel.
I will be watching his progress!

Have you considered goiung to the scrap yard and getting the plastic wheel arch liners off a modern car and cutting to size?

Mine uses the wheel arch liners fromt he original z£ with a couple of cuts to optimally align them. This has the advantage of already being approximately the right size and shape, made of tough plastic and being cheap. I should imaging there is less of a rattle when stones hit the arches using the proper plastic rather than the more brittle, hard plastic most barrels are made from.

Sounds good, I will look into that WCA.

Speedometer surgery



I have put a lot of thought into what I am going to do about a Speedo for my build.

I have, and will use, Jaguar dials. But it would be nice if I could get them to work, as Spitfire / Jaguar instruments are totally different, and cost hundreds of pounds (I am told) to get calibrated/ electronically modified etc.

I sorted the rev counter problem out by grafting the Spitfire rev counter guts into the the Jag housing and it worked . (Described earlier in this thread)

Anyway today I took the Spit speedo out of the car and had a good look at
It. I decided it may be “do-able” to copy what I had done with rev counter.

I couldn’t fit it on one plane, so I …………… put it on two.
Don’t you just love that TV advert!

Right, so I stripped both the speedo’s down, and successfully grafted

the two together and it only took a whole day!

Chris once said to me “it’s possible to make anything fit anything”

Of course that’s not strictly true, I could see enormous problems trying to graft a double decker bus body tub to a Sinclair C5 for instance…..

Anyway back to the speedo…..

It will not read totally accurately, as the Jag dial is calibrated slightly differently than the Spit, BUT, although the speedo will be out a bit, the recorded mileage will be as accurate as it was previously, so my trip mileage and total mileleage will be spot on. I have a mini GPS which I will mount discreetly so I can monitor my true speed when I need to.

Here are some pics, which may help others going down the same road.




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I'm impressed, great work. I'll be even more impressed if it actually works on the car!

great work I think I would have bottled it and bought a cable to connect my old gearbox to my new speedo from speedy cables and had them calibrate it too

Mister T.

Have some faith!!
It worked when I took it off and it won't know it has a different face will it?

scimjim.

I had to do this, it worked with the rev counter, ( tested on the car and works well) I wanted to use 1950's Jag dials in keeping with the illusion of a 50's car.

I really enjoy the challenge as much as anything!

Kind of like therapy if you will.

What a cracking job , good to see somebody still has a jewellers screwdriver set , Geoff .

I could see enormous problems trying to graft a double decker bus body tub to a Sinclair C5

Why is that? The C5 is a very flexible donor vehicle

C5

Well, you did ask WCA........


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Didn't most C5 drivers end up crushed under buses anyway?

Absolutely Mr T, The C5 needed an awful lot of bracing in order to avoid me ending up the same way!

Final finish

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Leather seats



Yesterday I stripped one the worst Jaguar seats from its frame.
It was the driver’s seat I would guess.

I started to clean 40 odd years of grime off it.
I always use gunwash to do stuff like this.
(To those that may not know, gunwash is the cheaper paint thinners normally used to clean your paint gun with.)

To clean the leather, I use my finger and a bit of absorbent rag,
getting in the seams with a toothbrush

It does several things: It cleans off the grime dirt and grease

It takes off some of the original colour

Most importantly, it dries the leather right out, usually a bad thing, but not in this case as that is exactly what is required.
It leaves the leather really “thirsty” so when it comes to
re-colouring it, the leather sucks up the applied colouring
like it’s gagging for a drink, and good adhesion is guaranteed.

I have so much still to. do so I chop an change my tasks to avoid boredom!

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first one

Well that's the first seat squab completely clean.

It's taken 40 years of crap off, but more importantly, it's left 40 years
of wonderful creases still present, so that when it is re-coloured and connolised, it would have looked brand new, except for the creases.

So it should look 40 years old but well preserved, hopefully a perfect result.

All I have to do now is strip and clean all the rest of it, re-design it all, recut and stitch them up to look right, fit right, then re-colour etc etc..........

Anyone interested in an unfinished kit car?!!!

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Nice work on the seat covers.

And the job you did on the speedo was simply outstanding.

Good luck, Paul.

If you sent me a parcel I think it has arrived. I got a nice leaflet from the post office telling me they failed to deliver it. I found this when I walked down stairs to answer the doorbell just in time to see a red van speed off!

Ifyou hadn't been so busy posting pics of your car all over the forum, you'd have heared the doorbell you bitch! :-)