Some progress..sort of

Firstly many thanks to all that have donated to the RBR charity- Children With Cancer- via the donations page and the E-Bay auction of the "Shedtune Olympic torch"-great way to start off the fund raising for this years event -keep an eye out for more "interesting" auctions!
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

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..

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....

SHEDTUNE Olympic year Torch 2012

Look out for other famous shed items coming up for sale to raise money for this years Round Britain Reliability Run charity in the mean time feel free to bid on this unique item!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SHEDTUNE-Olympic-year-Torch-2012?item=130700759778&cmd=ViewItem&_trksid=p5197.m7&_trkparms=algo%3DLVI%26itu%3DUCI%26otn%3D3%26po%3DLVI%26ps%3D63%26clkid%3D8612011893048380208#ht_631wt_1105

some archive pictures!

Shed activity..

Its been a while since the last proper post with words and pictures -10CR was the last I think - since then I had a new knee fitted ....not in the shed I hasten to add

Anyway after the Knee I decided to take my head off ...........-the manifold gasket was blowing after the 10CR, so after deciding sitting on the wheel wasn't too painful   I thought I might as well take the head off as well

As you can see can see it needed a clean up- which was all I could afford!-all though I did manage to get a new set of rockers as the originals were badly worn,the bores didn't seem too bad -tough luck if they were! My intention just to clean it all up as best I can and getting it running reliable for the summer and RBR

Head cleaned up 

                                                                                                 


Markings on the pistons revealed its had a +30thou re-bore at some stage in its life ...not sure if this is a good thing or not!

No wonder the manifold gasket blew -the manifold stud"lug" had been replaced by a "zebedee" nut normally seen on unistrut used in electrical installations  

Head cleaned up -checked for flatness using a thick flat piece of coffee table top (glass). valves cleaned and lightly ground back in,new gasket etc and it was back together -I haven't fired it up yet - House renovations took over again once my knee allowed. I want to do some more tinkering with the carbs etc,then I've got to swap the diff - I hope to get this all sorted by the end of April to go for a "Drive it Day" greasy spoon- feel free to join in here http://burtlemc.blogspot.co.uk

Shed news

Whats been going on in the shed recently...lots of stuff this happend last week which was good fun ..


http://burtlemc.blogspot.com/2012/02/first-meeting.html

10CR sheds and all that -Part 4 and a bit -the very last bit

Plenty of beers started to flow following the arrival of the Trumpet and Drum band -what a laugh ,I was very good and only had a two beers to keep a clear bowel for the next day ,this was following Homers complaints after the Italian full fat pizza (I'm a ceoliac hence no wheat etc otherwise things can get a bit runny and smelly )

Homer got tucked into the beers and took great pleasure in going to the ladies toilets thinking Dames meant gents-knob head ,his impressive one arm sun burn was also providing the busy bar with lots of entertainment

Come the morning a car park fettle session was called for several PI cars needed tweaking one stalwart Club Triumph member and  Lucas PI expert confessed to being "still too full of last nights piss" to carry out delicate metering unit adjustments and handed the tweaking stick to his crew mate

Our car was doing OK just the exhaust blow to add to the noisy idler gears and clunky diff pinion bearing (which was present when we set off but got no worse on the run)
Today's route was mainly motorway or should I say traffic jams  -several times we got bored and took the next exit  just so we could keep moving in the right sort of direction -found some quite nice roads but got well behind schedule ,not helped by a touch of "Belgium Panic" IE running out of fuel and no sodding fuel stations on the motorway - pissed about trying to find fuel -bloody annoying as we were within sniffing distance of Rouldac food and beer- I am definitely going to invent a bigger fuel tank for the spitfire,having money to pay for fuel is a good idea as well as my account had been blocked since leather clad fanatic land.
Rouldac was found in the pissing rain with fuck all help from the route book instructions- which completely missed a motorway intersection ,lucky Homer was expecting such things and we started to recognize where were were from the previous run in 2009
Had a great night- I  stuck to the red wine to prevent any mishaps on the way to the ferry the next day.
The last blast back to Calais is the worst part of the run as to fail now would be a nightmare but made it we did the exhaust blow getting quite bad but not as blowy as the channel crossing 5 hours on the boat,least I managed to get some kip which set me in good stead for the final drive from Dover to Somerset

Mission accomplished! roll on the next one