nerves like nylon, nerves like steel

Not Spitfire related, but after much cleaning and re-arranging, I can finally fit two cars into my garage. The Spitfire takes up the front half of one side, with my workbench, radial saw, tool chest, and air compressor in the back half of that side. There is even enough room in front of the Spitfire to work on it.

My wife’s Quad Cab takes up the other side. Amazingly enough, there’s room to open all the doors to get the kids in and out.

What made this possible was the Rubbermaid Storage Shed we purchased at Sam’s Club. I was skeptical about a Rubbermaid shed, but decided to try it, as I’ve become a believer in other items from there (Gorilla Rack Shelving is amazing!).

It took my wife and I an hour and a half to completely assemble the shed. A good portion of that time was spent carting the pieces to the assembly location. Now my garage isn’t inundated with garden equipment.

One thing the car needs to pass the safety inspection: working wipers. However, the wiper motor is frozen. Upon disassembly, I determined where the problem is: a gear shaft is frozen to a press-fit bearing. Now to un-stick the bearing. Hopefully soaking in liquid wrench will help unfreeze it.

“Vacuum leaks. Very dangerous. You go first.”

Set the timing on the Spitfire last night. Instead of a nice 10&deg BDTC (Before Top Dead Center), it was somewhere around 22&deg. That calmed the idle down somewhat. However, it still wanted to stick around 1500 RPMs, and not very cleanly. Messed with the mixture adjustment (which in hindsight probably wasn’t the smartest thing in the world to do), and it still runs really rich.

Gave up, started putting the tools back in the chest and cleaning up, when inspiration hits. Vacuum leaks. You never checked for vacuum leaks.

Re-started the Spit, grabbed the can of starting fluid, and sprayed potential candidates for leaks.

Aha! One of the capped off emissions lines on the carb, when sprayed, causes the RPMs to increase. Looks like the rubber cap has deterioriated over time.

Add it to the list of things to buy at Auto Zone tomorrow.

A blog. Wow. I’ve joined the growing number of people who find it necessary to capture every part of their waking lives on the web. So, what does this say about me? Am I self-centered? Do I need to be taken out behind the proverbial woodshed and beaten with a stick?

No, it says that I’m too lazy to deal with editing .html files, generating content, managing it, etc. We’ll see how well this works in practice.

Nothing here, move along.. move along.

“Vacuum leaks. Very dangerous. You go first.”

Set the timing on the Spitfire last night. Instead of a nice 10&deg BDTC (Before Top Dead Center), it was somewhere around 22&deg. That calmed the idle down somewhat. However, it still wanted to stick around 1500 RPMs, and not very cleanly. Messed with the mixture adjustment (which in hindsight probably wasn’t the smartest thing in the world to do), and it still runs really rich.

Gave up, started putting the tools back in the chest and cleaning up, when inspiration hits. Vacuum leaks. You never checked for vacuum leaks.

Re-started the Spit, grabbed the can of starting fluid, and sprayed potential candidates for leaks.

Aha! One of the capped off emissions lines on the carb, when sprayed, causes the RPMs to increase. Looks like the rubber cap has deterioriated over time.

Add it to the list of things to buy at Auto Zone tomorrow.

After a week of bad weather, I finally had a decent afternoon on Saturday. I fired up the Spit and drove through the neighborhood to get a feel for the car. It had been 15 years since I had driven a stick, and I was more than a bit nervous driving one again. It turns out that it’s a lot like riding a bicycle: the mind may forget, but the body remembers. I then took it up to the corner gas station (stalling it on a hill at a light) to fill up the tank.

I drove up and down the street a few times, then headed back home to park and do some work on it. I ended up giving my wife a ride up the street, then her sister. After I’d parked the car and was about to start some tuning, Kayleigh said that she wanted to go for a ride in it.

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Kayleigh and Daddy, about to head out into the wild blue yonder.

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Once more.

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And here we go!

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When we started out, Kayleigh wanted the window on her side up, so the exhaust noise was quieter. Once we hit the bottom of the driveway, she asked to have it rolled down.

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Driving by the bottom of the driveway, on the way to her friend’s house. Ever since, she’s asked for rides in the E.L.B.T. (Evil Little Black Thing).

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Before I can plate the car in Missouri, it has to pass two types of inspections: safety, and emissions. To pass the safety test, I need to fix the wiper motor, horns, and various lights on the car. I’m not too worried about that, as those things appear to be easily fix or replaceable.

The emissions test is more problematic. The engine doesn’t appear to want to idle at less than 1500 RPMs, and tuning that has been… difficult. Exacerbating this is the fact that all the vacuum lines are capped off, including the advance for the distributor. I’ll borrow a timing light and see how far off the timing is.

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Even though the engine had been prep’d for storage, we took some precautions when starting it up. The plugs were removed, Liquid Wrench sprayed into the cylinders, and the 6 year old gas drained from the tank. A quick trip to Auto Zone provided a new battery.

After installing the new battery, the engine was turned over until good oil pressure was seen. The plugs were re-installed and the Spitfire roared to life on the first turn of the key.

Kayleigh was excited about Daddy’s new car, at least until we started turning the engine over. The exhaust noise reverberating in the garage was a bit loud for her tastes.

No, Daddy, spray it there!

After many months of cleaning and re-organizing, my garage was finally ready to be the new home for my new toy: a 1974 Triumph Spitfire that my father had given me. He had purchased the car from the original owner in 1986, rebuilt the bottom end of the engine, and driven it periodically during the following summers.

In the fall of 1996, he parked it in his garage, prep’d the engine for storage, and left it to sit. The car had been left there until late summer of 2002, when he towed it from Michigan to my home in Missouri.

After 12 hours on the road, Dad and the Spitfire arrived. We decided to get the car into the garage that night, as it was due to rain that night and the following morning.

Some pictures of the car:

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Rear quarter view. In the wheel well is the original blue color. The first owner had the car painted black. The hardtop is a factory option. Here the car is covered in 6 years of dirt and grime!

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There is no rust on the underbody of the car, and minimal rush anywhere else. Purchased in California, it has never seen a winter. The interior of the car is where most of the work will be done. The carpet is wrecked, the crashpad cracked, and the seats are splitting.

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Mechanically, the car is very sound. There are some problems with the gearbox in reverse and first, but I have a potential replacement available. One advantage this has over my daily driver: I don’t have to fix it to get to work!

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