Introduction
I’ve had a Triumph Spitfire 1500 since I left university in er, well let’s just say it was a long time ago! I drove it everywhere, entered, and won, competitions in it, took girlfriends on first dates in it, polished it to within an inch of its life and knew I’d never part with it.
Thankfully I never did but for the past 25 years I may as well have because it has sat, in several pieces, in my garage looking very sad. It was about time I restored the car.
There was a plan to take the car on a trip with five friends and their cars to drive the North Coast 500 in Scotland. Of course the car was nowhere near ready and so I did that in my Mazda MX5. You can see how that went here: North Coast 500 Video
There are so many trips I’d like to do one day in this car and I’m dying to get it restored but one of the reasons it’s taking so long is that I want to build it to be just a little bit special.
Let’s Look At The Chassis
With the chassis back we were able to start building the suspension and we started with the front.
Front Suspension & Brakes
The wishbones were blasted, painted with a rust converter and multiple layers of filler primer, sanded and finished with black chassis paint. We considered powder coating but decided touching up chips and marks once the car was on the road would be far trickier if the parts were powder coated.
We’ve had new height and ride adjustable Gaz shocks on the shelf for a while so we added those together with 330lb springs, trunnionless vertical links, red poly bushes, a new 1″ thick anti-roll bar and brand new shiny nuts and bolts! You can also see here we’ve started with the braking system. We made and added new copper brake lines and fitted new braided flexible hoses.
Everything here is just loosely bolted together for trial fitting. It will all be torqued up later.
Here you can see we’ve also added the steering rack. This was treated with new red poly bushes, tie rod ends and new gaiters.
Rear Suspension
The differential was good so was simply drained of oil, cleaned and painted and fitted to the chassis with new red poly bushes. The trickiest part was fitting the bushes to the rear of the differential. They seemed to be way too thick and so were thinned down a little.
You can also see here we have a 1″ thick aluminium lowering block which will lower the rear of the car. The rear spring will sit on top of this.
The pivot box was sanded and painted and fitted to the rear spring with a new red poly pad. The spring will require longer studs to attach it to the differential due to the additional thickness of the lowering block.
Back To The Front…..
New drilled and grooved discs went on next using the original hubs. The hubs were degreased and cleaned with a wire brush before being painted and treated with brand new bearings and longer wheels studs from a Land Rover Freelander. These are fitted in anticipation of deeper wheels, possibly too deep for the original studs to reach through enough. This next video will show you how to fit new front bearings and brake discs.
Rear Differential
Before we move on to the front callipers, we fitted those bolts I mentioned which attach the rear spring to the diff. As I said they had to be quite long to allow for the 1″ lowering block but they went in ok.
Rear Suspension & Brakes
We also started to build up the rear suspension which includes adjustable Gaz shock absorbers.
The rear brake back plates were manky but saveable. Firstly all the gunk, old paint and rust was removed with a wire brush drill attachment. They were then treated with Kurust (a Hammerite product which will convert the surface rust to a hard paintable surface in about 15 minutes – it is a white, milky liquid which turns the rust blue and then, when dry, black) and then painted black.
One of the back plates is missing a bracket that the brake pipe attaches to. This will be fabricated and welded into place.
Front Brake Callipers
The original callipers were refurbished and painted with gold calliper paint. We’re using Greenstuff pads as they’re a good compromise for road and track.
Starting On The Body
The Brooklands Green body had been badly painted orange many years ago but was then never used. It’ll be returning to green but this time British Racing. The first job was to address the bulkhead which was by far the worst part but even that had only surface rust.
The loose rust and dirt was removed with a wire brush drill attachment before being treated with Kurust.
The worst area was then sanded further revealing quite a lot of deep pitting. This was treated again for surface rust, cleaned thoroughly, painted with etch primer and then filler primer.
The filler primer will next be sanded before the remaining pitting filled with a fine 2k filler.
Meanwhile the floors of the bodytub were reasonably solid with just a couple of small rust holes and so the floors were cleared of dirt and loose rust and then treated with Kurust. Any rubber plugs were also removed.
The boot floor has been painted with something similar to underseal. It will need to be removed before it can be painted. Some areas were removed with a wire brush drill attachment. The rest will come off with a DA sander.
The body under both wheel arches was covered with a thick underseal. Removing some of the loose material revealed a number of areas of body filler. You can see some of the grey filler in this shot. Watch the video to see what we found under the layers of filler, underseal and loose paint in the LHS arch:
A first look at the underside of the body tub:
Driveshafts
The lure of shiny new parts is always irresistible and so a few bits and bobs were ordered to enable progress to be made to the chassis. I really want to get a rolling chassis complete with all brakes and suspension sorted as soon as possible. When the bits arrived I progressed with getting the driveshafts cleaned, painted and rebuilt with new bearings, oil seals, gaskets and grease. Here’s a video of all the parts ready to be put together:
Rear Brakes
Now this is slightly embarrassing. As you know, I’ve had this car for a very long time but I have only just noticed the rear brakes are not standard Spitfire. They’re much bigger and likely to be GT6! That’s great in that it means they will be more effective with a bigger shoe surface area. It does however mean I can no longer add the Alfin finned brake drums I was planning to use as they’re not available for the GT6. At least I’ll save around £500! Look at the size difference:
Well, they’re not GT6! What are these rear brakes from?!!
We have a dilemma! Should I paint these boring looking but larger than standard rear brake drums gold to match the uprated front calipers? What do you think?
We have heard back from Nick at Rimmer Bros www.RimmerBros.com and he has discovered which car our rear brake drums are from! He has scoured their warehouse and found a match with Triumph Vitesse! These are a Herald bodied car with a straight six engine, hence the larger drums. Brilliant! Shoes have now been ordered so fingers crossed these will go on ok and we can move on with the project!
Meanwhile the results are in regarding whether we should paint the brake drums gold to match the front calipers. The overwhelming vote was to NOT paint them gold so they will be polished and painted black to match the chassis. Thanks for your votes!
Some of you who follow us regularly will know we’ve been selling some of our project cars lately. This is because our business changed to be solely involved with classic car and bike painting rather than restoration. Some projects we bought many moons ago with the intention of restoring will never ever ever ever be finished. They did get attention in between customer paint jobs but that time was scarce. What I really need to do in these rare moments of peace and calm is to progress with this fast road Spitfire project! Another reason why the unfinished projects had to go. I’ve since sold two MkIV Spitfire projects, two Mk3’s and a Mini Mayfair. The Celica GT may also go, freeing up more space and time for what is more important!
With these cars gone I’ve become excited about this project again and can’t wait to get stuck in! The next step will be to get the body tub over to the unit where all my kit and painting gear lives. There I’ll have the space and tools to get the body tub ready for paint.
Keep checking back to see how we get on!