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 […]
The time had finally come to get the body stripped down and start work on repairs. I decided to go down the chemical stripping route and in February last year, sent all the body panels, body tub and chassis to Prostrip Ltd in Nottingham. I had the chassis done since I wasn’t really happy with the paint finish on it from last time. […]
I originally stripped the whole engine nearly 4 years ago. The main caps and big ends/conrods were already numbered so I think it may have had new big end and main bearings or something at some stage. The pistons look like the original ones as they are stamped with “Stanpart”. I knew the big end was on the way out again though because […]
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 […]