Triumph Spitfire Body Work

The More You Look, The More You Find

 

 

THIS IS page-1, the Spitfire Bodywork page of the car.

Jump to page-2, the Paint page for the next story on this project.

Jump to page-3, the Paint-Pics for more painting details.

Jump to page-4, the Finish page for the final story on this project.

 

 

The Triumph Spitfire is a good efficient and simple design, but built in the most efficient way, not the highest quality. This is one of Britain's most popular cars in Europe, and extremely efficient on fuel, except those with the California & EPA modifications. 

 

The EPA forced all cars to conform to the standard equipment of the fuel injected cars. Fuel injection is smoother running, faster response, and easier to start, but this is a fuel hog! The gas is injected in the manifold directly before the intake valve, which gives it no chance to vaporize or atomize. To compensate for the unburned fuel, the superheated catalytic converter is needed to burn off unused fuel that comes out of the engine. The EPA now requires all new cars and imports, to have a functional catalytic converter, and they only function when heated by extra fuel. 

 

Another disadvantage of the injection system; they are entirely dependent on sensors and computers that make cars more expensive and less friendly to repairs. Imagine if your home computer controlled your water, air temp, doors, windows, lights, clocks, radios, TVs, and assigned when you could leave (auto-door locking). Now if it had a glitch and started shutting down, it could ruin a good day to find a sensor or other part that made it fail, yet nothing was wrong with your doors, windows, etc.

 

The fact that a Spitfire originally has two very efficient S-U carburetors, means that there is no unburned fuel to superheat the EPA mandatory catalytic converter. The EPA's fix for this, is to add a re-burner from the exhaust and a blower pulling valve cover gasses into the intake, and use a single butterfly carburetor. This ensures that there is unburned fuel going through the engine, to heat the converter. That mandatory modification for California & EPA standards, takes the car that can easily average from 55-75 MPG, down to 25-30 MPG. The same engineering was done for Mazda rotary and several other good designs, bringing them all to injector standards, and killing the efficiencies. So much for the political end of things. This car is getting rebuilt to the most efficient design that can be found to be practical, unless some wiggie gets in the way.

 

Now for the fun stuff. Being that the car was assembled quick and easy, some common refinements are notably missing. The assembly machines have to grasp something to bring the pieces together, so there are Jig holes in all kinds of places, that are simply finished off with a rubber plug to fill the holes. There are also some seams that do not match well on planarity, so that is adapted into the style of the finish. These are not big negatives, but touching up the crude spots, gives the whole car a smoother and sleeker finish. So this takes a bit of effort and time for the minute refinements, but it should yield a classic of real value, and higher value.

 

This is my experiment, and as with all experiments, there is a lot of rework and do-overs and trials of other methods. Only the finished product will tell if it was truly worth the effort. As you will see in the photo's, every step that was taken, reveals something else that needs to be added to the list. There is still a search for the final color and interior, but that may be revealed in some of the experiments.

 

Feedback and suggestions to the author are always appreciated!

 
 


1,2,3  This is the car in a field in Colorado, where it sat for several years. Mice had eaten the interior beyond repair, but it wasn't too good before the critters moved in. The only fix was to gut it, and replace the interior. The 1500cc engine would start, but had a bad knock. The engine naturally tilts up in front, which is OK for S-U updraft carbs, but this has a single Webber carb on top that does not atomize well. The sparkplugs were lean up front, progressing to carbon black and wet in back. I could adjust it  to normal on front, but the back would flood with fuel, or lean in front and almost flooding in back. The two center plugs would show the progression of the mix as well. There is no way for a butterfly carb to work right on this car, unless the manifold was drastically redesigned. The rebuild should go back to the original design of duel S-U Stromberg updraft carburetors.

4,5,6  The car was stripped down, and the engine is overhauled, but I have not located the pictures for it, they are likely on another computer. The engine is shown setting on the bench, just over the trunk, in the center photo.

7,8,9  Mainly, the car was just dirty with a bit of rust, a bad interior. and ran very badly. I drove it to work a few times, back in  2003, but it left me about a half mile short of home once. The pickup truck pulled it into the field, where it sat till 2009. Then I towed it 600 miles to Kansas, overhauled the engine, and decided that a good engine is not going into a funky car.

10,11,12  Working under the dash, with the top on, and all panels in place, made this a common automotive problem to see where any wire was going. It helps to have a light color for a peripheral view of the work under a dash, and a well planned layout.

13,14,15  Even with a tug on a wire, it was hard to trace destination if it went through a wrapped bundle. And what a mangled mess of a layout! All wires on a diagram are identified by color, and colors fade in ten years if they are exposed to any light.

16,17,18  This is what electricians consider a rat's nest of a wiring bundle. This should look a lot better when it goes back together, but it will get modified to my technique.

19,20,21  The only way to get a truly good base is to strip it down to the individual parts. So everything came off, and the body was removed from the frame.

22,23,24  The under-panels and wheel wells are complicated to reach, and impossible to get them redone well, if you cannot reach them. So - I borrowed my brother to help me flip the body onto a mobile cart. It felt like about 300 pounds, so we each had roughly 150 lbs. to maneuver.  Now you can see the bottom corrosion, and get to the dings easier.

25, 26,27  Starting with an area that never got it's factory weld, my skills show a great lack of talent, but it is effective.

28,29,30  This joint had some crude putty from the factory. I cleaned it out and filled the gap with a nail.

31,32,33  The nail welded in place, filling the gap and strengthening the joint. Notice the 3/4 inch Jig holes, that were originally filled with rubber plugs. I filled them with wire weld, the ground them flush.

34,35,36  Some gold bond body-putty finished the contour, after several lays and a lot of sanding.

37,38,39  A good layer of road film and oil-tar was coating some of the bottom. Gunk engine cleaner mixes with diesel fuel, and takes it off nicely. Then clean with thinner, and then with acetone, to a very clean surface that will take paint. Now the joint on the other side, had corrosion by the wheel-well.

40,41,42 It is hard to see here, but a level shows that the two panels were miss-fitted nearly 1/4 inch low at the back, and near the door, the back panel stuck out 1/8 inch. I ground and hammered the high spots to a good contour, then welded all the gaps and holes, especially in the corroded areas. Then body-putty-bond'o filled and sanded into a seamless shape.

43,44,45  The body base had many of these Jig holes to fill. I remember driving through deep water when it rained, and having to pull plugs to drain it out. So i took some mild steel, borrowed from a computer frame, cut it into 1-1/2 inch squares, and some inner tube cut the same. I tack welded the squares over the 45` rotated rubber, just loose enough to allow water out, but seal shut from water coming in like a valve. Some time later we may see how well this works, but the idea came from working on C-130's. They use a rubber flap in the belly of the plane, to keep pressure inside, but allow outside pressure in, to keep from having a negative pressure. If it does not do well, then it will be easy to knock the valve off and replace the rubber plugs.

46,47  The front-end firewall and interior under the dash will get some light colored primer, to give it workability and a clean look. The plan is to add plugs to the firewall for all wiring. This will improve the troubleshooting capabilities, and probably make it more versatile for modifications.

 

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THIS IS page-1, the Spitfire Bodywork page of the car.

Jump to page-2, the Paint page for the next story on this project.

Jump to page-3, the Paint-Pics for more painting details.

Jump to page-4, the Finish page for the final story on this project.

 

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This page was last updated  03/22/24  by Steven C. Buren