An accidental purchase
Idon’t know quite how to explain this, but I’ve bought yet another car. During the usual festive family meets, I got chatting to my uncle Chris, who quietly mentioned that he was thinking of selling his beloved Triumph Spitfire. He’d bought it eight years previously and my Dad had helped him tow it home (in a terrible state). Over the next couple of years he’d spent a lot of time and money getting it into a nice roadworthy condition. Once back on the road it’s had very little use; only 500 miles in the last five years, primarily due to the fact that he’s got a much nicer soft top to play with – a 1952 MG TD.
I’d often admired this unused Spitfire and it was one of the reasons I bought my MG Midget back in 2012. You may remember my disastrous attempts at getting insurance – which meant I never even drove it – and ultimately forced me to sell. I’d always hankered after another sports car and my two years of trouble-free driving since meant that insurance quotes were much more reasonable. So, after a careful inspection and a lot of penny pinching, she was mine! It’s not quite as smart as the Midget was – the paint is far more original – but it seems much less bodged, although there’s always room for improvement.
Barring a wash and polish, the first job was to smarten up the original factory hard top it came with. It’s certainly no weather to be driving around in a convertible of late. It hadn’t been touched since my uncle had bought it and, with flaking paint and a nasty dent, was in dire need of attention. Following the advice given in CM 207, I brushed on a layer of paint stripper and covered it with a layer of clingfilm, which makes it considerably more effective. With the top back to bare metal, I set about sorting the few spots of rust and the dent in the roof. Thankfully, by using a soft mallet and a dolly, I managed to get rid of the worst of it and with a skim of filler you’ll never know it
After a careful inspection and a lot of penny pinching, she was mine!
was there. Although the more I dig and scrape the more holes I find, so it will require a few little patches. As ever, it is proving a bigger project than expected, so I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’ll be driving the Spitfire without the hard top for quite some time.
Meanwhile, back in the warmth of the shed, progress on the Lowlight continues steadily. This month I’ve been mainly concentrating on the engine. After winching it out of the car I split it from the gearbox. Before I’d even stripped it down, the prognosis did not look great; draining the oil revealed a horrible mix of coagulated oil and water. Not good. Needless to say, this had a highly detrimental effect on the main and big end bearings – both of them being spattered with rust spots – so a regrind will be necessary. Thankfully further stripping down only revealed one broken piston ring, so it wasn’t all catastrophic news.
Before getting the crank reground I thought it prudent to source new shells, so my first port of call was MMOC Club Spares, run by Bryan Gostling. He came up with some big end shells and a single pack of piston rings from his collection. There’s something about the way parts used to be packaged that’s really lovely – with colourful boxes and greaseproof paper they’re much nicer than their modern counterparts. It almost seems a shame to fit them.