Triumph Spitfire Chassis Restoration #16

Not an incredible amount of progress today, but I got some stuff checked off the list. The main goal was to get the rear suspension sorted, but there were several odds and ends that I wanted to wrap up as well.

First, I needed to get the chassis closer to the ground so I could start using a floor jack. I got some 2x4s for support distribution and a jack stand at each corner to get it close enough to the ground to be floor jack accessible.

Hurts my back more, but I'll be able to get it rolling on tires this way.

Next, I painted the anti-roll bar and blasted and primed the front brake line supports and emergency brake cable fork ends and operating levers.

Anti-roll bar painted with POR-15. Figured it would be better than regular Rustoleum.

Brake line supports and fork ends. They need their top coat of black. Operating levers weren't painted yet and, thus, not shown.

I also sorted my concerns for the threaded holes in the chassis for the body mounting points. As you may remember, I didn't pay attention to thread protection when I was painting the frame and I gummed up most of them pretty good. Today I was able to get them all cleaned out and it appears as if only one suffered any damage that may required re-tapping (for the bonnet pivot link...don't even remember what the bolt is actually securing...future me).

To limit any further potential damage, I first took a small stainless steel brush from Harbor Freight's Engine Brush Kit, chocked it up in my drill and cleaned the threads out thoroughly. On a side note, I really like this brush kit. But, at $17, it seems a bit pricey for Harbor Freight and what you are getting. The brushes get beat up pretty rapidly and the handle that comes with it broke on me in the first several uses (which wasn't unexpected). If you don't have one, I'd recommend it. If you do, baby it as best you can.

The small brush.

I also used a bolt from the black car's body mounting hardware and cut a groove in the threads. This is a trick that I've seen used elsewhere and even Triumph's parts manual calls out their use in various applications (gas tank bolts on my car). The groove provides a cutting tooth as the bolt is driven through the threads, removing any debris. My thread cleaners also use this technique, but the bolt I was using has a "nub" on the end which helped align it better in the hole before I started engaging threads.

Groove cut using a cutting wheel on my angle grinder.

The debris deposited as the bolt came out. This was AFTER using wire brush, too, so this is pretty effective!

With some patience and being careful, I was able to successfully thread each and every hole except the one I previously mentioned. Looking at it, I definitely jacked the first several threads up so I may have to drill and tap this one. We'll see.

The last odds and end thing was cleaning up and installing the 3- and 4-way junction/manifold for the brake lines. After the brake line leaves the master cylinder, it travels to the front, 4-way junction/manifold. One line goes to the back while the other two split to deliver fluid to each front wheel. In back, the 3-way junction/manifold takes the feed from the 4-way and delivers fluid to each back wheel.

Front 4-way splitter. The master cylinder feed comes in to the top.

Rear 3-way splitter. The front feed comes into the (looking at it) bottom port.

That's was the ends and ends that I did throughout the day while dealing with other stuff. And when I say other stuff I mean the rear suspension. That turned out much more difficult than I thought it would so I needed several frustration breaks!

First thing was to get the vertical link attached to the leaf spring arm. I had to use the wooden 2x4 spreader that I used when going through the hell that was installing the rear trunnions for the passenger's side vertical link, but this was minor. I used my rubber mallet and drift punch to get the holes lined up and got the bolt in.

Spreading it out a bit.

Bolt in. Like the front, this bolt will be left loose. May have thread engagement problems here, but we'll see once it's tight.

The driver's side did not require the "spreader" so that bolted right up. The next step was to "Jack up the vertical links, fit the dampers...and reconnect the axle shaft couplings. This step was not so easy. Since there really wasn't any weight to the chassis, at least not a lot, when I jacked up the vertical links, the entire thing came up.

First, I just tried to load up the chassis with some weight.

Floor dry, two flywheels, my Hobart and my bench press. Not even close.

After that, I solicited the help of my father-in-law, who was in town, and my garage mate who happened to show up around the same time. My father-in-law sat on the frame while my garage mate stood on it and pressed against the ceiling as I jacked up the vertical link. This worked pretty well. With some Sil-Glyde and my freshly cleaned top shock absorber mounting bolts, I was able to get the upper shock mounts in (the lowers were already installed on the vertical links).

Cleaned on left, not-so-much on right.

The Sil-Glyde stuff is great. The rubber bushing for the shock would not go in without it.

 

Another thread protrusion concern. The parts manual calls for "thinner" nyloc nuts that I was not able to find. May have to source from on of the suppliers.

Once the shocks were mounted, the axle shafts were next. This required some brute force which, in hindsight, would have been made easier if I had loosened up the rear trunnion bolt. But, I didn't do that so I grunted and sweated it together.

Following axle shaft to differential bolting.

 And that was about it. All in all not a bad day. I've got a parts list that is getting pretty long so I'm going to take stock on my next trip to the garage and then get some stuff, especially engine bearings and such. Next trip I should be able to get the rear brakes installed along with the emergency brake cable and then I'm going to start bending some brake and fuel lines. I'm sure that will be a treat!

Triumph Spitfire Chassis Restoration #15

As you may remember, I left it last time with the passenger's side lower wishbone not wanting to go into it's chassis mounting holes. I conquered this problem and moved smartly along with more assembly. As a matter of fact, I'm to the point now where I need to get the chassis down off the sawhorses and closer to the floor (within floor jack range) because it's rapidly becoming too heavy to lift by hand. Onward!

Here's what I was faced with last time.

Besides my scratched paint, shows how far off the studs are from the frame mounting holes.

Following a rather lengthy and detailed discussion in my favorite forum, it seems the two-piece design of the polyurethane bushings that I am using don't allow for an offset like the original one-piece bushing design does. The following two pictures show that.

Polyurethane bushing installed. The lower wishbone is nice and centered in the mounting bracket (makes sense to me).

Standard rubber bushing installed on the black car's lower wishbone. Note how it is offset to the front (in this case).

The fact that the polyurethane bushings were essentially forcing the wishbone to be centered about itself meant that it wasn't being centered about the frame holes, hence the offset. For the passenger's side, I removed the wishbone from both mounting plates and set them into the frame.

Forward side of lower wishbone aligning with mounting bracket.

Rear side of lower wishbone aligning (kind of) with mounting bracket.

It's obvious that the alignment wasn't perfect. However, I didn't feel that it was skewed enough to do any modifications to the bushings (e.g., polyurethane removal) so I used my rubber mallet to drive them home, aligned the holes with a drift punch, and got it all bolted in. Oh, and I did remember the shims that go between the mounting plates and the frame. I bolted it all back together exactly how it came apart.

Forward mounting bracket with shim in place. The bracket is not tight to the frame in this picture.

Following that ordeal, it was a simple matter to mount the upper wishbone mounts to the suspension turrets. Of note, neither the upper or lower wishbone bolts get tightened down until the suspension is fully loaded. This is called out in the workshop manual. This fact went in my log book as it will probably be one of the last steps I do after engine AND body installation.

Uh, oh. Starting to look like a suspension is coming together!

The damper and spring were next. This was a bit of a pain since the suspension was fully relaxed but the spring was under tension around the shock. Hard to explain, but I don't think the workshop manual expects you to have everything taken apart. Without some support under the wishbone (like the tire on the ground), everything is somewhat crooked. But, since there isn't any weight to the chassis yet, I couldn't "support" the suspension with my jack since it would just lift the whole thing. It took some work, but it finally got it.

You can see how the spring is a bit crooked near the top. I expect this to fix itself once it actually is supporting some weight.

Upper damper mounted with new nyloc nuts and washers. Oooo, pretty!

The driver's side was a repeat of the passenger's side except I was able to put one of the studs for the lower wishbone mounting brackets in its hole, then push on the assembly with my hip and fit the other into its hole. It all went in rather easily using this method and I probably could have done it on the passenger's side as well as I did not damage any threads (my biggest concern).

I also tried to make the damper/spring assembly installation a bit easier. To do this, I unbolted the upper wishbone (two sides) from the upper ball joint.

Upper ball joint unbolted (two bolts/nuts here).

This allowed me to drop the lower wishbone and vertical link down and out of the way, so to speak. I put the damper/spring assembly in, got the top three nuts started, then pushed the lower wishbone and vertical link back into the damper lower attachment. I got that bolt through and then worked everything back together, tightening everything a bit at a time. A bit hard to explain and I didn't take any better pictures of it, but hopefully you understand.

Passenger's side assembly in.

After that, I was essentially out of time for that day but I tied up a few loose ends by getting the steering rack placed (not installed, really) and also the rear spring set.

Steering rack placed.

Rear spring placed.

On my next visit I got the rest of the front suspension assembly installed as well as starting the rear suspension installation.

For the front, I needed to get the hubs and rotors on as well as the brake calipers. I had all the hardware I needed. When I did the front hub inspection and cleaning a LONG time ago, I determined that everything looked good and I didn't need new bearings or races. I did, however, get new felt seals and hub washers.

There's been a lot of discussion on new felt seals. They are essentially a two piece assembly. One piece is the metal retaining ring that is interference-fit into the hub. The other piece is the felt seal that is lightly attached (with a thin bit of glue, I suppose) to the metal ring.

From what I've read, many of the currently available metal retaining rings are too thick and do not fit into the hub. Some of the forum posts also mention the seals themselves are very thick. I compared my new seals that I got from SpitBits to what I removed from the car. Circumstantial evidence both on the car and in the workshop manual (pen marks circling part numbers) show that these have been replaced at some point. However, it looked like the PO had to deal with the thicker retaining rings while SpitBits provided me the more correct, thinner rings.

Front hub seal as removed from the package from SpitBits.

The other side of the seal.

Comparison of the thickness of the two retaining rings. What came out on left, new on right.

My new seals simply tapped into the hubs with a rubber mallet. One side was easier than the other, but neither was difficult nor did either seem like it was too loose or too tight. I guess it all depends on where the "too thick" part is. If the outer rim is too thick to the outside, it would be too big for the hub. If it's too big for the inside (preferable, I would assume) it would be too small for the felt seal. In any case, it worked for me!

New seal, oiled and installed.

One other thing I read, though not as frequently, was that some resources, including older workshop manuals, show the felt seal being installed backwards. Note the picture above shows the felt seal on the BACK side of the hub. Properly, the felt seal should come in contact with the face of the vertical link, NOT that face of the hub. It seems pretty obvious to me that that is the way it should be, but there you go.

Driver's side hub assembly installed. One of those brake calipers is next!

Of note, I also replaced the front hub washers. I assume it was improper installation, but for whatever reason, the washers were in horrible shape, especially the passenger's side. These were replaced as a matter of course.

Holy cow! What a groove. Not quite sure how the hub spun by hand when the PO fitted it <assumes he tried, of course!>

After that, it was a simple matter of putting on the brake calipers (with the new internal o-ring seals that I pray do not leak!).

And there it is. I have new pads and all for the brakes installed, but didn't take a picture from this angle.

The reverse angle. Ooooh, aaaahhh. Now on to the other side.

The passenger's side was essentially the same procedure, just the opposite. I did not encounter any surprises or problems.

After that, I moved to the back. I installed the emergency brake cable. This was a bit tricky and I kick myself because I didn't take adequate pictures. There's a trick to this that I discovered in this post. I truly apologize for not taking any pictures but I deformed the cable a bit doing it the first time and didn't want to take the chance of deforming it to the point I was afraid for it's integrity by pulling it back out and taking more pics. Maybe I will, though, who knows?

After that, I pulled the rear spring back off and pulled the studs. As these studs penetrate into an "open" void where oil will be, I wanted to use some thread sealant when I decided it was time to actually put them on for good.

What I used for thread sealant.

I installed the studs with the thread sealant, put the rear spring back in and torqued the nyloc nuts as specified.

I also got the u-joints between the differential and the rear axles installed. As I chronicled previously (here, here and maybe more), I originally went with grease-able u-joints. However, when I ran into issues with these, and since I was placing an order anyway, I went with Hardy Spicer ones from SpitBits. This was a bit of an impulse/name-brand buy, I must admit. The ones I got from Rimmer's were probably just fine.

Picture rotated to show part number sticker. Guess these GKN guys are equivalents for several "old" companies?!

The final thing I did for the night was figure out that I made a pretty bad rookie move in not providing more attention to protecting the threads during chassis painting. Several of the body mounting points...all, actually...bolt directly into the frame. Unfortunately, I didn't have the forethought to protect these threads from the POR-15 (and red base coats) to prevent clogging them up. I figured my thread cleaner would make short work of that oversight, but it hasn't. So, before I got too far ahead of myself and damaged some threads, I stopped. Though I've cleaned a few, most points where the body will bolt to the chassis, as it is now, will not accept that bolt. I'm sure I'll come through this, even if it means using a HeliCoil kit, but I should have known better!

Passenger's side rear-most body mounting bolt hole.

Triumph Spitfire Chassis Restoration #14

I have finally defeated my mortal enemy. There are too many posts that covered my differential restoration but they all essentially boiled down to the same problem - the rear bushings. In short, these things go in very tight and are a real bear to get in there. Once again my favorite forum came to my rescue and provided me the correct formula to get the bushings in. Unfortunately, I pressed one through too far, preventing the differential from fitting into its place in the frame. I could not get the bushing pushed back out and I started to tear the whole thing apart in preparation for burning the bushings out and starting all over again.

But, as the saying goes, "the right tool for the right job" saved the day. And, of course, the fact that my garage mate had the 20-ton press that I needed helped! With his help, we were able to position the differential just right and pushed the bearing back the other way just a bit.

A beast of a press. Rated for 30 tons, but it has a 20 ton bottle jack on it.

Another problem that I had was that the mounting bolt would not fit through the bushing sleeves. My guess is that I had mushroomed the ends a bit from all of the banging and pressing and all of the other torture that I put those things through. But, a few quick swipes with a rat-tail file and it was fine.

The rat-tail file I used.

And the bolt goes in.

And, finally, the inner sleeves were just a bit too wide to fit into the frame with doing some serious banging. I assumed this was supposed to be a rather tight fit to prevent the differential from moving around too much back there, but I wanted the bolt to be able to compress the frame a bit to capture the differential instead of it being banged into the frame.

I did some quick measurements of the mounting points in the frame using the "inner" side of my 6 in. Digital Caliper. I then measured the bushing sleeves using the "outer" side of the caliper. I carefully used a flap disk to make the two nearly match.

You can just see the light grinding done to the inner sleeve (and some of the rubber..whoops!).

Quite some time ago I had purchased the polyurethane differential mounting kit (P/N DMK9/U) from The Roadster Factory and I was finally getting to use it. To help me with the weight, I flipped the frame upside down to allow the differential to rest in its mounting points. I placed the upper mounting bushings for the front mounts down and put the differential in place.

The upper (frame flipped here) mount goes on first.

The differential front mounts are like a sandwich of bushings - the lower mount, then the differential mounting plate, then a polyurethane washer, then a metal washer, then the nut. The original metal washers were in good shape and quite a bit beefier than the ones that came with the mounting kit. Given my desire for using original parts as much as practical, I went with them. I didn't believe that the thickness would impact the stack up or thread engagement for the nyloc nut.

Thickness comparison. A bit easier to see the difference in person.

Once I had the differential front mount all sandwiched up, it was time to get the rear bolt in. I used a generous amount of Permatex Anti-Seize and coaxed the bolt through all of the holes using a dead-blow hammer.

Rear bolt in and tight.

Then is was back to the front mounts to get them bolted in.

The passenger's front mount all done up.

After that, I flipped the now much heavier frame over. I touched up the paint on the differential as best as I could since I had nicked it and banged it around so much trying to get the bushings taken care of. After that, I moved on to the front half.

A milestone! The first real part re-installed.

First order of business up front was to get the front suspension turrets back on. I had saved all of the old shims, but bought new bolts given the problems that I had found with the old ones. I purchased Grade 8 hardware (bolts, flat washers and lock washers) because I figured this was high stress stuff and would benefit from the better quality hardware. What I didn't consider, however, was that the bolts were now harder than the threaded holes I was putting them into and, therefore, would more easily strip the threads of those holes.

This is the kind of job where you have to start each bolt, but not tighten any of them until they get set. Then, slowly tighten them all in an alternating pattern. Maybe this is why they were stripped...in the factory by guys trying to get the job done? Anyway, while doing this I thought I had stripped out the driver's side upper mounting hole threads with the harder bolts. While I did do some damage, it was only the first few threads and there was a lot of good thread left.

Upper mounting bolt, with the original shim installed.

Passenger's side mounting bolts.

Finally, I attempted to install the lower wishbone and suspension sub-assembly. Unfortunately, this didn't work out for me. For some reason, even though the hardware that's going back on is the same stuff that I pulled off, it wouldn't fit.

The front (right) stud is in its place. The rear is not...by quite a lot!

Close-up of how far the stud is off. And, yes, I scratched my paint. Not happy.

In discussion with my favorite forum, we are under the impression that the bushings that mount the lower wishbone to the bracket with the stud are not centered about the wishbone. Since I have polyurethane bushings in this application as well, and they are two pieces, I'm not sure that I agree. But, I couldn't see the problem the other night and, not wanting to make a bad decision trying to fix it, I stopped work for the evening.

Both boys are playing basketball again this year and the games are set up such that there is one on Saturday and one on Sunday. I am also helping coach my youngest's team. Given all of that, weekend garage time will be curtailed, but I still intend to go at least most of one of the days. We'll see how it works out.

As I left it. Well, I did put the wrenches away!

Triumph Spitfire Chassis Restoration #13 / Engine Rebuild #3 Note

Join me for the continuing saga...

Both Saturday and Sunday I was lucky enough to spend at the garage. I took some engine measurements and everything looks good. I wasn't that meticulous and not what I would consider especially careful as I was just looking for a gross problem that I would need to address (like a new motor, perhaps). I do intend to perform a much more careful and extensive "blueprinting" of the engine at a later date and will post on that when it happens. I also disassembled the head down to where only the valve guides remain installed. There are some issues with the head (pretty sure I'm going to need a new set of valves) but I will post on that later as well. For now, take it that engine work is on pause.

We don't have the gas turned on in the garage yet (propane heat) but the garage warmed up enough after lunchtime on Saturday that I decided to spray the last bit of red that I needed to get on both the frame and the front suspension turrets.

In the sun it was over 60F, so I moved the turrets outside and shot them with a dust coat of primer. If you remember, I had previously painted one red with regular Rustoleum. Not a match, of course, so it was time to get the proper color on.

Dust coat of primer on both turrets for better base coat adhesion.

Oooo, ahhh. No clear coat yet.

In between getting the turrets shot, I set up my "paint booth" again and finished up the underside of the frame with the two coats it needed for full coverage. I let everything dry completely overnight. Sunday I came back to put the clear coat on everything. The directions call for 3 to 4 coats, waiting 10-15 minutes between each coat. It was still a good temperature in the garage, so that's what I did.

It's far from perfect. The clear coat on the frame wasn't great, and there is quite a bit of orange peel. But, it is only the frame after all. I will say again, however, that I am very happy with the quality of the paint from Automotive Touchup and how evenly it applied. It wasn't cheap, but it was worth it.

Look at that shine!

Opposite side.

In between coats, I worked on cleaning up the front suspension turret mounting hardware. There are five bolts that hold a turret in place. Four are on the outer part of the frame and one bolts down from the top. There are nut bars that fit into the frame that sandwich it all in.

How the suspension turret bolts in.

In my case, most every one of the bolts was stripped in some way. I didn't take any pictures that came out clear enough, but a few had just a thread or two that was deformed while others had a quarter of the threads completely flattened. One of the four nut bars had bad threads as well.

I still have the black car's hardware and discovered that several of those bolts were also in bad shape. Not as bad as Dorothy's, but for a rebuild, bad enough not to re-use. All of the nut bars were good, however, so I cleaned those up and primed them for use. I also cleaned up the shims.

(L to R) Lower wishbone shims, nut bars, and turret shim all cleaned up. The shims are from Dorothy.

That, along with the engine stuff I mentioned at the beginning ended my weekend. But, I'm very excited that my next visit to the garage (already done as I write this) included actual chassis assembly!

Sneak peak.