MadaboutKitcars

Hi Paul, no more progress to report just yet as I've been busy with other things recently.

Will be getting on with it soon, though...

Hi Deni, thanks for the positive comments they're always appreciated.

I've now sourced a pair of 150lb front springs from Moss Europe. I've gone with the softer rate as my car isn't going to be very heavy - the 180lb springs were perfect on my Spyder, which ran a straight 6, but the Speedster's only got a four pot - and a car with overly firm suspension is dangerous on the roads where I live.

The fen roads round here are very undulating as the ground they're built on is about as solid as blancmange, so stiff suspension on a car can make it impossible to drive safely at anything over 50mph. As an example, I attended a single vehicle RTC near Wisbech where a garage delivery driver had been driving a customer car, a Porsche Cayenne SUV on 20" alloys and 'uprated' suspension on a fen road. There was a particular straight where the road dips and rises twice in quick succession, and the Porsche was launched into space as it failed to damp the second rise after hitting the first dip way too hard - there were witness marks where the car had bottomed out. It struck a telegraph pole just under three metres above ground level almost twenty metres from where it took off, and ended up in the roadside ditch. The driver was fine, a bit shaken and probably in need of a new job, but the car was written off.

Anyway, back to the springs. Here's a list of what Triumph fitted and when:

http://auskellian.com/paul/links_files/springs.htm

And here's where you can buy the 150lb springs from:

https://www.jamespaddock.co.uk/front-spring-mk1-111-spitfire-2

I also use Gaz ride & height adjustable shocks on their softest setting and almost fully extended to get the stance just right.

https://rimmerbros.com/Item--i-GSA366GAZAS

Not cheap but excellent quality and infinitely preferable to cutting the springs down.

Anyway, got to go as I'm on holiday and wifey wants me to get ready for dinner

At last I've found some time to get on with my Speedster. Part of the reason for the delay was that I've just been so busy doing other things since I retired, like holidays abroad, visiting English Heritage and National Trust historic buildings and digging up the past in the fields near my home.

The other reason for the delayed progress is that I wasn't happy with the way my subframe and floorpan efforts were coming together. It looked fine, but I had niggling doubts that it was starting to get cumbersome, overcomplicated and might just not be up to the important job of locating the rear suspension.

As I've been following progress on the Old No.7 A6 GCS Coupe with interest, I had a bit of a lightbulb moment the other day as the answer has been sitting on my driveway under a tarpaulin for about the last four years.

I have an early Triumph Spitfire body that I had intended to turn into a GT-Sixfire by putting it onto a GT-6 chassis that I just happen to have in my shed, but tbh I'd rather build another special once I've finished my Speedster (probably an A6 GCS...) so I decided to sell both the GT-6 chassis and the Spitfire body.

Someone bought the body and then bottled it the night before they were due to collect it, but that's when the penny dropped and I realised that I should really use the Spitfire body as a subframe in the way that Dan at Tribute/Old No.7 do with their Triumph based cars.

I don't know why it took me so long to think of it, but I have now so I have gone at it today to see whether it will work with my 356 body.

First job was to remove the (fibreglass) rear wings -



This revealed a bit of a hidden horror in that a previous owner, after welding in new floors and sills, filled the sills with builders' expanding foam, which blocked the drainage holes and trapped water against the new metal



Thankfully, the sills survived the experience and the only rusted part is the non-structural bottom edge of the wheel arch liner, which I'm going to cut out anyway.

First trial of the body looked promising. This isn't a great picture, I'm afraid, but the back end grounded out about four inches too high as the Spitfire's inner rear wings were fouling the body while the Spit's rear valance made it difficult to lift the body on and off.



So, out with the angle grinder and chop, chop chop...



I eventually had to cut away the inner rear wings completely and part of the rear deck, while I also cut away the 'rear seat' area on the Speedster body so I could see what was going on inside. I'll reinstate that once it's all fitting together.

So, at close of play today, the body sits on top of the Spitfire frame perfectly, and the door apertures match exactly, which is more by luck than judgement!







Before packing up for the day I trial fitted the dash, and all that needs is for a bit of the Spitfire's dash panel to be cut back and that will fit perfectly too! I suppose the fact that there's only 8mm difference in the wheelbase between the Spitfire and the Porsche 356 helps

[QUOTE=redratbike;107987]that is a positive step forward , i

[QUOTE=redratbike;107987]that is a positive step forward , i

Forum's playing up again, my last post completely failed to appear

I did keep a draft, though:

That's a big YES on both counts:

I'm pleased that I've seen the light and realised that I should use the donor Spitfire's body as a subframe as it resolves a lot of design headaches that I'd unnecessarily set myself.

Retirement is also agreeing with me this time round (I unretired five years ago).

After 43 years keeping my nose pressed firmly against assorted grindstones, I've now finally accepted that work sucks and that I've had enough of it.

As it happens, doing your own thing all day every day turns out to be a much better work/life balance than putting work first and life second and I can thoroughly recommend it.

Now, back to my Speedster. I'll be mostly working on the Spitfire 'subframe' over the coming weeks to address the holes in the floor and to strengthen the sills to take the weight of the Speedster body, once I get back from Goodwood, anyway.

I need to get a move on, really, as I want this car on the road for Goodwood next year (that's always my target completion date), and a quick check on Google threw up the fact that prices of the real thing haven risen so much, almost a million pounds for a RHD Carrera Speedster recently, that a decent replica can now command the kind of price you'd have paid for a pristine early Porsche 911 around ten years ago - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/134200976503?hash=item1f3f006477:g:fb4AAOSwkMhifNPW&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAoC%2BYFWufH%2BhHT579nEq0FynYLmHnfz9u1S9giXcDungLOKCuQjcaHf9srb96aR9qOKq1wWjZUpFik4kir%2FkTM%2FpnxY7L0YcSE0QaN3sQe1jzdfWl90qVmVK1x4YEKfnGMXPPi%2Bpz0jiuHpKN5Q5xkz3KaQuqxV%2F8zPuDK1vvnyG0evXqyScegNNkiAJ6XJSyLmEFPx4DGwqBeAn%2FwcnF0iw%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR_rGqe7kYA





Well, seventy grand is at least what they're asking...

Now I know that the Speedster body will fit on the Spitfire tub with a bit of jiggery pokery, my main job for today was to separate them and move the Speedster body outside so I can work on further trimming down and repairing the Spitfire tub before reuniting it with the chassis and getting it to the Moon Rover stage.



Hmm, looking at that I can't help thinking of James Dean's 550 Spyder...

Hi Paul, yes I'd noticed that my boot floor had been replaced with some square steel tube, good news really as it's been welded together really securely and pretty much matches what I made myself.

It's good to see a picture of your 'Moon Rover' as it's given me a few ideas. Did you do away with the outer sills completely? It looks like you just have a steel box section tube where the curved sill should be. Cutting mine out and welding in something similar to what you have would make it much easier to mount the body.

I will be going with Triumph pedals - one of my reasons for having to rethink the floors/bulkheads was that my floor mounted pedal box was going to be too close to the driver to use due to the length of the master cylinders. They do pedal boxes with them facing the other way but they're much more expensive and harder to install.

I'm at Goodwood on Friday and Saturday and it'd be great to catch up. Do you still have my number? If not, let me know and I'll pm it to you. I'm afraid I lost yours when I threw my phone onto a concrete floor at a car show - it wasn't in a fit of pique, it slipped as I took it out of my pocket to take a picture and in trying to catch it I ended up propelling it into the concrete like it had come out of one of those Spanish Pelota ball scoop things.

Old No.7 A6GCS doesn't have much presence on the forum or otherwise online but they do seem to be selling a few, particularly overseas. Most of what there is is on facebook, but it takes some searching - https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=2488463538135651&set=pcb.2488463654802306

Anyway, hopefully see you at Goodwood

Okay Paul, I just checked through your build thread, and I see you did away with the Spitfire floors completely and used the Cordite frame instead. Still given me some good ideas, though

Hi Biggles and anyone else who's reading, sorry for my disappearance from the site, I've been so busy with projects since I retired I haven't had a moment to myself, but normal service will be resumed soon.

Like the changes to the forum, by the way, it's very glossy.

Just checking to see if my images still paste as it's been a while...

https://ibb.co/fYb2DqRD

Just checking I still know how to paste images...

As I was saying...

Now that I've finished a few projects, like restoring my MG Midget twice, then selling it once I was happy it was as good as it was ever going to be, and doing the same with an early R53 (BMW) supercharged Mini Cooper S, I now have the space, time and money to finally get on and finish my bonkers Triumph Spitfire based Outlaw 356 Speedster!

So, it's been sitting under a tarpaulin on my drive for about four years, and apart from everything rubber having perished, the chassis has faired pretty well. It only needed a good clean, a lick of paint and replacement of the perished items and it's as good as new. Obviously the fibreglass body didn't suffer from its slumber, while the Spitfire body, well, what's left of it, hasn't got any worse, thankfully. Here's some pics of the body and chassis (I'm afraid they're a bit big as I'd forgotten what size they needed editing to):





You may notice that the chassis doesn't currently have an engine fitted, as I've dismantled and inspected it. As you may recall, it was a second hand engine that I bought when I decided that the Ford Puma engine and Mazda RX8 gearbox combination might be a bit ambitious, and all I'd done to it was replace the head with a big valve one from a Spitfire mk IV and have the camshaft reground to Piper 270 spec. I ran the engine up to break in the camshaft about four years ago, but it hasn't been run since. Now I have a bit more time and money on my hands, I decided that rather than risk running with a used engine, I'd strip it, inspect everything thoroughly and replace all the bearings and anything else that was at all worn.

The good news is that the end float was at the low end of its recommended tolerance, while the crank is in perfect condition, with its main and big end bearings just beginning to show a little colour through their coatings, so ready for replacement.

The not so good news is that when I ran a spare piston ring up and down the bores and checked the ring gap (I don't have a bore gauge), the gap varied enormously as the ring moved up and down each bore, so a rebore and new pistons are required.

After getting quotes in from a few different machine shops, I dropped my engine block, crank, flywheel,, clutch, cylinder head and a set of +.060" pistons off at Ivor Searle Engine Services, who just happen to be about half an hour away from me in Soham near Ely.

Rather than just a rebore, I decided to go a few steps further and they will also be soaking the block in an acid bath to clear the crap out of all the coolant galleries, skimming five thou of the block, twenty-five thou off the cylinder head, shaving around 2kg from the flywheel and balancing the crank, rods, pistons, flywheel and clutch.

That should give me an engine that will spin up nicely and rev smoothly to the red line without losing its cool, while delivering a little more power and torque and better fuel economy into the bargain. The fuel economy should also be helped somewhat by another modification that's being driven by two factors: one - my wife can't stand the smell of petrol that goes with driving every classic car I've ever owned, even when they were new cars, and two - the front carburettor dashpot fouls the inside of the bonnet, so I had planned to cut a hole for it and hide the protruding dashpot under a fake fuel cap. Now I could solve point one above by finding a new wife, but I rather like the one I have and divorce costs too much anyway, so I needed to think of another solution, as I also rather like her accompanying me on my classic travels. The idea I had to hide the dashpot with a fuel filler has also gone out of the window, because it would be offset and I saw these racing Porsches with Fletcher Aviation advertising on their bonnets that only really works with a centre filler cap, and I really want to copy that look:



After a little bit of head scratching, I decided to solve both issues with Electronic Fuel Injection!

Now, I've been buying bits and pieces in for a while, and now that the engine's away I've made a start on putting some components together that weren't designed to be compatible. What I've decided to use for this job is marry up a Spitfire 1500 inlet manifold that's intended for 1&1/2" SU carburettors to a pair of injection throttle bodies from a Triumph triple motorcycle:





As you can see, the inlets on the manifold are 40mm and circular, while the outlets on the throttle bodies are a sort of flat oval that's approximately 43mm wide by 36mm tall. The good news is that the actual size of the two openings is almost identical - if you were to stretch the bike outlet out into a circle it would be about 40mm while the inlet manifold hole is 39.5mm, so they're perfectly compatible - while the throttle bodies, in addition to having a lower profile than the 1&1/4" SU's I had fitted, are also angled downwards a fair bit so will give me even more clearance.

So, today I've started work on the adaptor plates I'll need to connect the throttle bodies to the Spitfire inlet manifold.

Starting with a 200x100x25mm slab of aluminium, I marked up the limits of the openings on each side, then drilled out the area that was common to both:





Then, a great deal of sweaty effort with a selection of hand tools and a Dremel to smooth out the file marks, I have the beginnings of my adaptor plates:







It might not look like much, but with a little more smoothing to aid the air flow and some securing studs, it looks like it's going to work.

Oh, and the selection of 25mm thick alloy might seem a bit of overkill, but it was specifically chosen to solve an issue where one of the inlet manifold stud holes will overlap slightly with another on one of the throttle bodies. With a 25mm adaptor, I can put a stud on each side with half an inch of thread in the adaptor and it's problem solved! Hope that makes sense.

Anyway, it's nice to be back on the forum and I'll make sure my images are the right size from now on.

Hi Lucky, nice to hear that you're still around too.

As for your projects, at risk of going all Grease on you, tell me more, tell me more...

Ooh, shame about having to go back to SU's. Phil J put six bike carbs on his green Sammio back in the day. They were a pig to set up as I recall, but made lots of power - more than 180bhp from a 2500 fitted with a TR5 camshaft.

With the modifications to my Herald 13/60 motor I'm hoping for something like 85 to 90bhp, which will be plenty enough for a car that should come in at around 600kg's.

Oh, and on that note, when I wrote the advert to sell my Midget recently, I discovered something interesting about it: at 720kg's it actually weighs less than the battery in a Tesla model Y, which tips the scales at 771kg's. And just how exactly is putting three quarters of a ton of rare earth metals and minerals into every car going to save the planet?

As I recall, Phil J had some issues getting the bike carbs running cleanly too. He eventually solved the problem by altering the manifold to angle the carbs upwards, raising their inlets in relation to the cylinder head, which left them running perfectly but required a very large blister in the bonnet to accommodate them. The result was a Sammio that could knock on the door of 140mph (3:63 diff and overdrive), but went everywhere sideways.

On my Sammio (Mk1 Vitesse motor) I replaced the original 1.5" Strombergs with 1.75" Strombergs and a 308778 camshaft from a Mk2 Vitesse/136hp 2500 PI in the search for a bit more oomph. The power gain was negligible, but those modifications had the unexpected benefit of improving fuel economy from around 24mpg to over 30. Not sure why, but maybe my original carbs were worn out.

You are right, though, 105bhp is plenty in a lightweight car and it's more about the sound and the emotion than the speed in these crazy projects we build. Having driven high performance cars at serious speed in the Po-Po, I firmly believe that there's more fun to be had on the public road driving a car with 60hp at ten tenths than one with 600hp at three tenths, which you'd have to do to avoid losing your licence.

So, is your plan to use the Marlin as a donor for a Formosa? Always liked the Marlin myself, although I found the cockpit a bit narrow when I tried one back in the day.

Hi Paul and Biggles, nice to see you're both still about too.

My budget for the EFI conversion is realistically around the £1,500 mark, while the engine machining adds a little over £800, and new pistons shells seals, etc. came in at only about £250, so I'm expecting the effectively new fuel injected motor to come in at under £3k all in. There's a recent episode of Wheeler Dealers where they makeover and EFI a Peugeot 205 1400 Rallye, taking it from 70hp to 130, and their budget for the EFI parts and dyno time was listed as only being about £800, but I can't see how they did it for that little, to be honest. Worth a watch, that episode.

I wondered if anyone would notice the white body shell in the background, but I'm not surprised you did, and, yes, it's my next project. It's an A6 body from Old No. 7, which is in the style of the Maserati A6 GCS coupe, but I'll be building mine as a Lancia D20 Berlinetta as the A6 GCS and D20 were pretty much the same Pininfarina design. The D20's were really successful in 1952 with one winning the Targa Florio, but the cockpits got so hot that their drivers suffered heat exhaustion, so Lancia cut the roofs off them all and they became the D23 and D24 Spyders for the '53 and '54 seasons. That's going on a spare Mk2 Vitesse chassis I happen to have lying around, and it'll be running the Vitesse's 2 litre engine on TR6 throttle bodies with EFI and will also boast A/C for those hot but wet late summer drives.

I'll post some pictures of progress on the speedster later as I've now made a few more changes to the sub-structure after much staring at it with hands on hips.

So, been on holiday for a few weeks so no updates, but I'm back working on the speedster now.

Task for the last day or so has been to continue mating the bike throttle bodies to the Spitfire intake manifold using my bespoke adapters, and here's some progress pics:








As you can see, the TB's and manifold now bolt up to the adapters. The last image also shows just how low profile the whole caboodle is, which is terrific for an application with limited under bonnet space like mine.

Jobs left to do on this modification include port matching and polishing everything to give the least possible restriction to airflow and shaving excess material from the adaptors. I'll also be using the big bit of aluminium that's still attached to what will be the front TB adapter as a heat soak for the ignition module. I'm not sure if it needs a heat soak, but I've seen ignition modules advertised with heat soaks at extra cost, so there must be a reason for that.

Before I get to that, though, I need to make some sort of bracket to hold the butterfly spindle from the unused centre throttle body in place so I can reuse the bike linkage. On that note, I had a choice here: either use the bike linkage, butterflies and throttle position sensor (TPS), or remove the bike butterflies and their spindles, blank the holes they leave, make a bespoke plenum chamber and mount a single MGF throttle body on the end of the plenum. That would give the advantage of only having one butterfly, so no problematic balancing is required, but as I only have two TB's that won't be particularly difficult anyway. I also rather like the uncluttered factory look of the Daytona's setup, which is why I want to keep it. For my forthcoming six cylinder project I do have a TR6 plenum and will be taking the single MGF throttle body approach as it will result in a much simpler setup and still really look the part.

Back to the speedster and I'll also need a custom fuel rail as the two TB's I am using are 1cm closer together than they were on the bike, so I intend to chop up an MGF one I happen to have in my other trousers and repurpose the two ends into a twin injector fuel rail of the right dimensions. The two centre injector mounts I'll have left over won't be wasted, though, as they will get spliced into another MGF fuel rail when I make a six cylinder version at some stage down the line. The added bonus with using the MGF fuel rails for this is that they come complete with a vacuum sensitive fuel pressure regulator built in and only cost pennies on ebay.

More on that later

Just a taster regarding my next project, here's an image of the Maserati A6GCS Berlinetta that the Old No.7 bodyshell is based on, together with a pic of a model of the Lancia D20 Berlinetta -





The basic bodyshells are strikingly similar, with the most noticeable difference being the front windscreen pillars, which are angled pretty much straight down on the Maserati like those on a '57 Chevy, while the Lancia windscreen pillars have a more conventional rake. That actually works in my favour, because the Old No.7 A6 body is designed to accept a Porsche 356 coupe windscreen, which is shaped to fit a conventionally raked opening.

As for the colour, I'll be deviating from my preferred silver or blue and going two tone, with Lotus Regency Red over Triumph New White, my inspiration being this Alfa 1900 that was featured in Octane magazine a while back -



Bellissima!

I had similar thoughts myself, but with a removeable hardtop. The reality though, is that I want a coupe for those summer days when it's hot and humid and hosing down with rain, which is why it's going to have air conditioning and windscreen wipers fitted. The A/C is partly to keep the occupants cool and partly to stop the windows steaming up, and will mean I have a year round useable classic in addition to the fully open speedster.

The other thing with cutting the roof off the A6 bodyshell and running it open with a flyscreen is that the end result would look very much like this:



Been there, done that...