I really didn’t have time to do anything this week because I was busy with work. I did however, manage to pick up an overdrive transmission for the spitfire. (minus the angle drive .. bugger!)

Overdrive Tranny (next the the standard tranny):

Here are the drive shafts for the spitfire. The shorter one (I hope) is for the overdrive transmission

The Spitfire minus the doors:

This weeks job was to clean the engine compartment chassis and the interior of the car. I also removed the doors by sawing off the door rivet and undoing the six bolts per door. The doors are really light so it was just a one man job. I took the master brake cylinder off this week and pulled the remainder of the wiring harness out of the car

Clean front chassis: (note the corrosion on the top shelf, this will be fixed soon)

Cleaned and stripped interior:

I decided to do the seats this week. I have ordered seat covers and seat foams from British Parts NW. Expensive but worth it. I dismantled the old seats and instantly threw everything away. (fungus covered seat covers w/ rotten foam). Rust gets everywhere and so I sandblasted the seat frames, repainted them. I also made new seat straps using upholstery elastic. I then glued on the new seat foams and put on the seat covers. What annoyed me is that with the 500+ dollars this cost, I didn’t get anything for the head rests…. Well, I’ll do those later (probably just replace the foam) Here are the final results for the seats:

Worked on building new interior parts. I am NOT going to spend the amount of money it requires to get new panels for this car. The prices are daylight robbery so I will make new ones myself. The old panels are in a good enough shape as to make templates. I went to Eagle hardware and picked up a couple of sheets of hardboard and cut out door panels, rear panel, trunk panel, and rear side panels. I then went to JoAnne fabrics (down the bottom of the hill) and bought some felt and tan colored cloth. I applied the felt to the hardboard with 3M adhesive spray (miracle stuff that is) and when that was dry, I glued the cloth over the felt so that it was padded. Next is to protect the fabric with scotchguard spray. Here is the finished result, what do you think?

Week 6: (November 7th 1998)

Removed the Transmission, front suspension (sway bar, wheel springs). I also pounded out the front of the frame where it was damaged and have started to clean the chassis. There is so much oil and grease built up where the engine and transmission was that it’ll take a while. The tranny is removed and so I’m going to bite the bullet and when I put this car back together, I will install an overdrive transmission. This should turn out to be easy since there is a local spitfire guy that is also in the process of retrofitting an overdrive. There will be a lot of help from him.

Engine compartment this week!! I took the front hood of and hung it up on the wall.

I then removed the air pump, alternator, carb, and radiator. I unbolted the engine from the transmission and removed the motor and finally the rack and pinion.

I am concentrating on the exterior of the car this week, I have removed all of the black molding as well as all of the exterior lights and rubber. I can now tell that this car has been repainted…. very poorly. There is overspray on the molding as well as the finishing caps by the door. The chrome headlight covers are basically ruined with blue paint as are the hood latches. At least the bumpers were clean when I took them off. The original paint must not have been treated correctly when the car was newly painted. It is just bubbling and peeling off. It definately looks as is I am going to have to grit blast the car down to the metal and repaint from scratch.

So, With the vehicle inspection out of the way, I can start to strip the car down. So, I did just that. I started with the interior by removing the seats. The slide mechanism for the seats was jammed so I could not get access to all the bolts that hold the seats down to the chassis. I solved this problem by squirting wd-40 into the roller mechanisms. With the seats out, I took out the carpets which were in really poor shape and so they went into the garbage. Next up is the dashboard. I removed the torn cardboard gloveboxes, steering wheel, wood dashboard, lights, gauges, and then the top dash cover. I have also taken the door panels off and the door handles/window handle mechanisms out and the top assembly. The interior is pretty much stripped (down to the metal)

Here are some photos of the interior before I stripped it:

Drove the car to to the inspection station this week. Hey, the chassis number on the car and the title don’t match!! Well, that raised red flags at the state patrol. So, they are going to run the correct number through the stolen car registry. All my co-workers are giving me hell. 🙂

Got the car this week, it actually runs which is a shock but the plates have been expired for over two years. I’ll have to go by the licensing department and get a trip permit. Washington State has a vehicle identification inspection that is required for all out of state cars. (I picked this one up from California).