MadaboutKitcars

...only on the Midget, I'm afraid. I bought it a year ago as a summer runaround while I finished my Speedster and it's turned into a full on running restoration.

It's now mechanically perfect but I'm currently stripping it down for a full respray. Once that's done then I can get on with the Speedster.

Really sorry for the delay, note to self - don't buy another project until you've finished the last one.

Hi Paul, thanks for sharing that, I'm always looking to pinch ideas from pro builders

That car isn't my favourite outlaw as it's a little overdone imho. I much prefer the silver Coupe with the 'holed' wheels in the background in one of the scenes.

Work started on my Speedster again yesterday after a year spent fettling my MG Midget, so I hope to post some progress reports soon.

Just trying a different image hosting service as photobucket don't seem to want me to share any pictures even though I've reduced my stored images to below their 'free' limit

Anyway, here goes...

https://ibb.co/rMyGK97

Doh!

Try again.

Ahh, there we go, BBCode Full works on IMGBB.

Been a while since I posted any updates as I hadn't got round to finding a new image hosting site.

I've been making some progress recently, anyone who's familiar with my front engined speedster project will notice that the chassis is now wearing wide-five bolt early steel wheels (4"x15") on adaptors, and that I've cut the bonnet off.



Although I really liked the MGF 'square peg' alloys, ultimately I felt that they just looked too modern, even for an Outlaw style Speedster.

The bonnet 'mod' is down to me living with an MG Midget for eighteen months and really missing the easy access to engine and suspension components that the flip front on my Spyder allowed. So, my Speedster will have an opening front bonnet for oil and coolant checks and the whole front will flip forward for everything else.

With the front end separated from the body, I've also let a pair of MGF cooling vents into the front and trial fitted the lights -



I have a pair of Marchal fog lights that I might fit inboard of the air intakes, it just depends on whether I like the look or not when I trial fit them.

Another change since I last posted is that I've moved the engine back in the chassis by 80mm so that the front carb clears the underside of the bonnet. That was achieved by fabricating a pair of engine mounts to take MG Midget rubber mounts and using an overdrive prop on a non-overdrive box -





80mm is as far back as it can go without having to use a different exhaust due the 4-2-1 stainless system fouling the chassis.

The result is quite pleasing, allowing about 10mm clearance for the rear dash-pot and giving a fair bit more space ahead of the engine for a radiator. It also moves the whole engine behind the front axle line making it effectively (front) mid-engined.





I'm hoping to get the lower section of the frame welded together during the Christmas break so I can mount the body, start fabricating the floors and look at fitting the doors.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Oh dear, not sure why some of the pics are huge. Will have to look into that.

Thanks guys, I'm aiming to be on the road for Goodwood next September, which I don't think is unrealistic now I've (mostly) finished the Midget. I just need to get on with it.

The MGF alloys kept nagging at me every time I went into the garage so I'd occasionally look for wide fives on ebay. Originals often crop up in ones and twos in varying condition, and while reproduction ones are available, I really wanted an early matching set in the slotted style.

So, when a full set of five 4x15's that had been blasted and painted OEW came up locally for a starting bid of just £50 I pounced and won them as the only bidder.

I already had a set of Triumph to 4x100 adaptors on the shelf and the 4x100 to 5x205 adaptors were £25 each from Limebug. The adaptors widen the wheelbase by a total of 100mm, which is around 40mm less than splined adaptors for MGB wheels did on my Spyder. I'd already replaced the spindly Triumph wheel studs with Land Rover Freelander ones - they're a straight swap - so I've no concerns over the adaptors failing in use as the LR studs are made to cope with a vehicle four times the weight of my Speedster.

When looking at tyres I was tempted by 155/8015 Vredestein Sprint Classics, but settled on 165/65/15 Uniroyal RainExperts which are half the price at £200 for five, and I know grip like limpets on the road as I had a set on my Spyder.

They also fit without fouling anything while the Vredesteins would've been marginal as their sidewalls are 16.7mm taller and there's only around 17mm clearance on the Uniroyals.

Anyway, if anyone wants a set of five MGF square peg alloys complete with wheel bolts and centre caps and fitted with new 175/65/15 tyres for £100 (collect from Downham Market, Norfolk), PM me and they're yours. (more pics on the 'for sale' thread).




Anyway, Merry Christmas to one and all!

Sound advice, and if both sets of adaptors were steel I'd definitely weld them together and have them balanced, but one set is steel and the other aluminium.

To make sure everything will be safe I've fitted Land Rover Freelander studs to the hubs, which, being much heavier duty than the spindly Triumph ones will easily take the additional strain.

Additionally, the Limebug adaptors are very thin at just 8mm, so there's very little extra 'leverage' to cause problems. https://www.limebug.com/product/view/3779/4x100-to-5x205-pcd-wheel-adapters-drums-only-945

As for having two sets of nuts and bolts to connect the rim to the hub, from an engineering perspective that's really no different to fitting split-rim wheels, which are bolted together with much lighter duty fasteners than I'm using.

All the bolts, locknuts and studs are new and will be assembled with a drop of loctite, so I'm confident that nothing will break or rattle loose. The inner adaptors are also wide enough to ensure that the Limebug ones don't foul the brake calipers like they would on a Bug axle.

The wheel bearings will obviously be taking more strain, but that will be a fair bit less than on my Sammio as the engine is a third lighter and the wheels aren't pushed out as far from the hubs as the MGB wires were with splined adaptors fitted, and I never had a problem with bearing failure on that.

Overall, I'd say that there's less risk running these adaptors than there would be from using second-hand splined wires. After all, if the splines fail you completely lose all braking on that wheel, while it's not unknown for the spokes to collapse during 'spirited' cornering which is likely to cause the car to flip.

And finally, the wide fives just look so cool I don't want to fit anything else...

Thanks for your interest, guys.

Great inspirational youtube clips, Paul - the first one is very much the look I'm going for with the front cooling vents and '550' feel inside and out.

Biggles, I did start by swapping over the suspension turrets which moves the engine mounts back too far, pushing the gearbox way back into the cockpit and leaving no clearance for the exhaust system. I would've needed to use a 4 into 1, Herald/early Spit/MG Midget manifold and narrow bore, modified down-pipe to clear the chassis rails, and I'd already got a 4-2-1-2 big-bore stainless system that I wanted to use.

As I only needed to move the engine back by two inches to get the front carburettor dash-pot under the bonnet, and I already had an overdrive prop on the shelf, which is 3" shorter than the Mk I-II-III prop that fitted my MkIII spec engine and gearbox, it seemed sensible to just move it back by 3"

That's put the engine fully within the wheelbase (so it's now technically mid-engined), given plenty of clearance for the front carburettor, (just) enough clearance for the exhaust system and left more space ahead of the engine to install the radiator and ducting to get the air from the MGF cooling vents through the rad without wasting any.

Anyway, I'll be getting on with this project again shortly so will post more pics when there's visible progress

Hi Paul, I suppose it has been a while since I posted an update.

Progress has been made, but mostly invisible. i have now fitted Gaz ride and height adjustable front shocks with new 170lb springs to get the front end height right and added camber shims to help the handling.

While I had the front suspension apart i also replaced the lower wishbones as when I trial assembled everything before I noticed that the trunnion holes were elongated on both sides through wear.

That's caused by the plain shank of the bolts being shorter than the gap they have to fill, which leaves the threaded portion of the bolts bearing against the inside of the trunnion hole at the nut end. That results in the bolt wearing down as the metal's thinner where it's threaded, and the movement that allows then wears the hole in the wishbone.

I had seen some longer bolts available to prevent this, I think from Jigsaw Racing, but they seem to have ceased trading recently.

Anyway, hoping for some nicer weather soon so I can get on with this project and post some nice pics in the sunshine...

Thanks for that, Keith, I'll get some ordered.

Some progress now made during 'lockdown' - I've cut all the pieces of the frame to size on one side and built the bridge across the chassis to link the two sides together -



There's going to be a lot more space in the cockpit than the donor Spitfire, the white floorpans are splash moulded from the floor of my donor car and you can see how much wider the floor of the speedster will be (about a foot wider in total) -



My driveway and garage are getting a bit crowded now that my teenage son also has a car, so there's lots of juggling of cars and bits of donor going on whenever I need to get anything out of the garage -



Should be more updates soon as I'm now in a position to get on with it for at least a few hours every day of the week.

Dammit, I'll come back later and resize the images.

There we go, 800x600 on imgbb is a reasonable size. They started out at over 4000 wide!

One challenge when using a Spitfire as a donor is locating the rear suspension radius arms, and that's what I've been focusing on over the last few days.

The Herald/Vitesse chassis has a full perimeter frame consisting of front, centre and rear outriggers connected by side rails, and the radius arm brackets are bolted through the rear outriggers, giving them a solid location.

On the Spitfire, the chassis has stubby outriggers front and centre, but nothing at the back, and the radius arm brackets are bolted directly to the bodyshell just above floor level.

I've seen some imaginative approaches to locating these vital suspension components on various kitcars, including at least one that used modified radius arms that extended all the way to the centre outrigger stubs, making them about three feet long.

I wanted something a bit more factory spec, so decided to pretty much copy the Herald/Vitesse setup -







The sharp-eyed may have noticed that I haven't used rear radius brackets, but front wishbone brackets, and the reason for this is twofold:

The brackets that came in a box of parts with my donor turned out to be for a Rotoflex car, so are completely the wrong angle as they are mounted about six inches inboard of non-rotoflex brackets.

If I did have the correct brackets, the mounting studs are too short to go through the 50mm box-section that I'm using for my perimeter frame, so I'd have had to drill them out and replace them with longer studs anyway.

As I had a selection of front wishbone brackets 'on the shelf' and they have studs that are long enough (and are far more substantially built than the rear radius arm brackets) I decided to give them a go.

To get the necessary angle I fabricated some angled plinths (out of an old sofa frame I'd kept), and you can see these best in the first picture above, which is partially completed. The wishbone brackets are very slightly narrower than the radius arm brackets, so to get the bushes to fit I had to grind about 2mm off the metal tube inside the bushes.

In the other pictures you can see that I've welded steel plate across the top and bottom to seal the unit and add extra strength, and what you can't see is that the stud and extra bolt both run through 2mm wall tube welded between the plinths to prevent the box-section from being crushed when the nuts are tightened up.

All in all it's turning out to be a robust and quite elegant solution to the problem.

More later.

Thanks Peterux. The lower frame's now all tacked together and I've trial fitted the body - so far so good.

Next step is to reverse-engineer (bodge) front and rear upper frames to support the body, brace the lower frame and hang the fuel tank, handbrake compensator, steering column and possibly the pedals from.

Although I have a floor mounted pedal box in similar style to an original 356, I'm not sure I can make it fit as the master cylinders for the clutch and brakes (x2) stick out quite a long way forward. Initial placing of parts and head scratching suggest that the pedals will be uncomfortably close to the driver, leaving the 'Italian Ape' driving position of outstretched arms with legs bent into the foetal position with your knee joints either side of the wheel next to your hands.

That'll be familiar to anyone who's ever driven an Italian sports car or coupe, and I quite liked that driving position when I had a Fiat 128 3P Coupe back in the day. The trouble is, I was 21 then and quite a bit more slender and bendy then than i am now, so I have a set of Triumph pendulum pedals on standby just in case I can't fold myself in behind the wheel with the floor pedals in place.

More later with pictures...

More progress to report as the rear frame is now taking shape nicely -









As you can see, there's plenty of space for the fuel tank, spare wheel and plenty of luggage.

The frame will also give me somewhere to hang the exhausts and nerf bars from -

Some more progress to report -

Exhaust now routed so the (bike) silencers protrude from just under the rear valance just as all non Carerra Speedster exhausts do -



The dash that came with the car didn't do it for me - it had been hacked about by previous owners, the pod over the instruments wasn't deep enough to allow a 4" tacho to fit under it and I just prefer the look of the 550 Spyder dash - so I sourced a 550 dash to graft in to the 356 shell -

This is the best shot I have of the original 356 dash -



Initial fitting -



As the 550 Spyder is about 5" narrower than the 356, my replacement dash needed a bit of 'Jigsaw' construction using bits of the old dash, plasticine, etc. to get it to the right width -



next job was a week of fill and sand, fill and sand, fill and bloody sand until it starts to look as if it was always there -



At the moment it's made out of ticky-tacky and is far too heavy, so the next stage is to finish it to a good standard, paint and polish it, then use it as a plug for a mould so I can make a unified and lighter replacement to bond in.

More later.