I had to work this weekend so I didnt’ get anything done. Have to have an entry though.

Well, after spending about three months taking the car apart, I am almost done. This week I finished up taking all the little things apart to clean and paint. This included taking the door glass hardware out of the doors, taking out the windscreen and the top chrome finisher, and removing the headlight assemblies from the hood. To protect the windscreen, I thought it best to install it in my other ’78 spitfire (didn’t come with one). Ahh, you ask, where did this other spitfire come from? Well, I bought it about two months ago for 500 dollars. Included a ton of brand new never used parts so I think it was a steal. There is not much more I can do to the body for a little while, or at least until things get a little warmer. I can’t paint when it’s 40 degrees in the shop. During the next month or so, I’ll rebuild the stearing rack, the rear brakes, replace the u-joints, etc. Stay tuned! It’ll get exciting.
Of course, here are the photos for the week:

Door with all the hardware removed:

The windscreen removed from the spitfire:

I removed the back end of the car this week:

Left wheel / axle
Right wheel / axle
Main drive shaft
Rear Differential
Leaf Spring
Brake hoses
Fuel Lines
Brake lines

Here are the photos:

Didn’t really do anything this week, to busy with work. I removed the fuel tank from the back end of the spitfire.

It is almost time to sandblast this car to clean all of the old paint off. In order to do this, I need to remove everything from this car (clips, steering column, gas tank, brake lines, hoses, heater, glass). Joe Curry and I also had some discussions this weekend about the overdrive transmission chassis mounting plate. Unfortunately, the 4-spd transmission plate is not useable for the overdrive. David Gates provided an excellent template for creating a new transmission chassis plate that I will fabricate for the installation:

Photos of the car this week:
Here is the front of the car with the heater and steering column removed:

Here is the trunk removed (but the gas tank is still installed, it’s full of gas, bummer)

While cleaning the car, Joe Curry and I noticed some stress fractures in the car. Here is a crack by the front left drivers side seat bolt. This will need to be repaired hopefully with a welder when the car is sand blasted.

Here is another fracture in the engine compartment (by the tranmission tunnel opening). This will also have to be fixed.

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.