Thoughts rather that actions are now fully geared towards preparing the Spitfire for the Round Britain,with knee operations ,house restorations and child care duties in full swing whilst my wife is abroad working 2 or 3 days a week I have only manged to steal a few hours shed time,thus I have to plan my time resource very carefully to avoid a repeat of the manic work undertaken in the run up to last years 10CR -still not sure how I manged that!
The list of things that need doing look like this-
Fix the stuff that went iffy on the 10CR
Finish the stuff I should have done before the 10CR
The first thing was the blown manifold gasket-this has been done now along with the cylinder head gasket and general clean up de-coke and some new rocker gear
I spent some of my precious shed time making sure the exhaust manifold and in inlet fitted the best they could using the correct studs and "lug thinghys" as I call them, the dowels were missing from the head to line the inlet up on so I had to be very patient lining it up etc -you can see from a pic I took how far out of alignment you can get the inlet if you just throw them on -and this engine doesn't need any help in loosing power !
Next I found time to re-build the carbs -this I could do in the kitchen whilst the kids were asleep,I think the smell of carb cleaner may have helped,I hurriedly refurbished a bitsa set of carbs for it just before the 10CR,anoyingly a leading? supplier sent a bitsa refurb kit! (two different jets)-the front jet feed tube slightly too short meaning I couldn't get it to seal properly in the float bowl ,so I had to run the 10CR with a old worn jet on the front carb
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| Leaky bastard front carb due to incorrect jet being supplied |
Ebay provided a second hand set of carbs with correct linkage and now with the correct jet supplied I had enough bits to build up a decent set
Next was to sort out a decent bracket for my homemade heat-shield
Then onto sorting out the oil cooler lines-I was never happy with how tight the pipes were to the engine mount but I only had straight unions to hand and were due on the ferry the next day,I had to make a heath Robinson bracket to support the thermostat plus I didn't have time to get a temperature probe in the loop so time to sort all those niggles..
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| Oil cooler Heath Robinson install hours before ferry -so glad I persevered and put the cooler on as its a non OD car it was held at high revs for long periods of time during the 10CR in high ambient temperatures .
Trail fitting - homemade bracket (rubber bobbin mounted) to support the oil thermostat, and the addition of a temperature take off union ,plus the use of dog leg take off unions from the sandwich plate to give better clearance past the engine mount
  
This looks a bit better than that first effort,along with some braided sections from the thermostat which are a bit more exposed
  
Next on the list was to sort out the diff-it made some interesting noises on the 10CR ! clonky bonky
I knew it was dodgy before we set off but it held out,I had picked up a second hand spare but it had a snapped stud plus it looked like it had been stored in a pond as I emptied out brown watery sludgy stuff -after much discussion on the CT forum regarding dodghy diffs The removed one is on the left-both a bit clonky bonky I decided to track down a less dodgy unit to put back in ,then I decided to go the whole hog and tracked down a decent tested OD gear box, prop shaft and diff which I should pick up this coming weekend,so I will remove the drive shafts replace the UJs,do the same for the second hand OD prop and replace the seals on the diff , hopefully I should have a good solid reliable drive without clonky bonky for a few thousand miles
That will all have to wait till mid July as I've a deadline to hit on the house restoration work ...so back to the skirting boards whilst thinking about what I can get up to in a few weeks time- locked in the shed with all these old bits hmm nice....
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