The body was painted and polished as far as I was happy with so next up was to install the engine and gearbox before lowering the body onto the chassis. I got the engine moved from my shed where it had stood since I rebuilt it, ready to turn over with assembly paste on all the bearing surfaces. The gearbox and overdrive were […]
Now the body had been repaired, epoxy primed and sealed, I moved on to the chassis. I have actually been here once before and started to build up a rolling chassis a couple of years ago. I wasn’t pleased with the paint job though so the chassis went off to be stripped with the rest of the car. I basically had to start […]
Once the gearbox was complete the overdrive was next up. It’s a Laycock J type used on many cars of the era. Mine always worked quite well so I wasn’t expecting to find anything particularly out of order. It basically consists of an epicyclic gear system which allows the input shaft to reduce speed by about 25% in 3rd and 4th gears. Much […]
When I first took the Spitfire off the road I thought it would be best to exchange the gearbox for a reconditioned one as some of the parts were a bit scarce. I saw a single rail (non-overdrive) gearbox on eBay not too far away and decided to take the chance on it so I handed over a tenner and took it home […]
It’s been a while since I posted anything but I’ve been working on the diff again recently. I ordered the carrier bearings and the two pinion bearings, small and large. All was well until I realised that one of the pinion bearings was the wrong size. It’s part number is M88040, I needed M88048. They also share the part number M88010 which I […]