Spitfire 1500
Canadian Larry Spouler is a serial amateur restorer of Triumphs, with a CV that includes two Spitfires, a TR4, a plastic TR6 (aka a TVR 2500M) and a more challenging Mayflower. He recently finished this 1974 1500, and incorporated one or two modifications
Father and son make one or two subtle changes during a joint restoration.
It’s easy to find old British sports cars to restore on the west coast of North America, because that’s where most of them were exported. Larry Spouler has restored several of them and his restorations have generally been completed on his own, but this one was a fatherand-son project with his son Aaron, who is the owner of the Spitfire. However, Aaron is busy building himself a garage right now, so the Spitfire remains with dad for the moment.
There’s one key picture of the restoration that Larry showed me, and it is one any of us involved with – or considering
– a restoration should take to heart. It showed the front suspension before restoration. Larry had taken a picture and annotated it with a note that says: 'radiator stay mounting bolt.' This photo took 30 seconds out of his day while he pulled a glove off and took the phone snap, and then the annotation probably took a minute on the computer in the evening. Larry then put that bolt in one of many neatly stacked plastic boxes, this box labelled 'front suspension' and containing sub-boxes and bags with labels such as 'Front suspension nuts and bolts R.'
This approach means that when Larry is putting a restored car back together two years after taking it apart, he might see the spare nut and bolt in the bag and wonder what it’s for. He can then click his garage laptop and find what it is and where it goes in 30 seconds. Multiplied by a whole restoration, this approach saves a great deal of wasted time. And while saving time is not necessarily a good thing when the project is a hobby, not wasting time on irritating, boring and unnecessary hunting for things has to be a good idea. This level of detail control might not suit your personal style and you might actively enjoy the puzzle of looking at an apparently purposeless bolt and wondering where it’s supposed to go, but it’s certainly worth thinking about.
I have to confess that I’m slightly tempted to take an extra bolt next time I see Larry, and discreetly drop it into a storage box. I wouldn’t really do that because it would drive him crazy, and he is actually showing us the best way to tackle a restoration. I only wish I had the willpower to achieve proper control of the pieces of my dismantled cars.
Having said all that, this was a relatively easy restoration in that the car had only covered 78,000 miles from new and had no serious rust. Most of the exterior panels are still the originals, apart from one door that was replaced with a secondhand one. The cloth seats are a good indicator of the general condition of the car – they have been cleaned, but are otherwise as found. However, after 78,000 miles and 50 or so years, even a fairly good car is going to benefit from a full strip and rebuild.
Something amusing about this project is that Larry still thinks of the car as a standard Spitfire, when the list of modifications is actually fairly extensive. None of his mods are dramatic, and all of them could be reversed by anybody insisting on a 100% correct car. Although having said that, there are still enough rough Spitfires around that any of us who want to rescue and completely transform one can do so without any guilt. You probably wouldn’t and shouldn’t put a V8 in a Triumph Roadster or turn a Mayflower into a slammed convertible, but rescued Spits are still fair game.
The most visible mod made by Larry is one that you wouldn’t notice in the UK, as it’s the reversal of an American horror story inflicted by US safety clerks. There used to be huge and hideous rubber blobs fitted on the bumpers, but these have been replaced by earlier relatively discreet black plastic overrider caps.
The engine is the original, rebuilt internally as standard but fitted with a downdraught Weber carb and a manifold to suit. The late Spits over here had a single Stromberg carb strangled with emissions gear, so replacing it with a simple Weber is a smart move. Big sidedraught DCOE Webers can overwhelm a smaller engine, but something like a 28/ 36 downdraught is a good idea. Again, the original carb will be in a neatly labelled box, available for refitting in the fullness of time if there is ever a reason to do that. The fuel pump is electric, with a manually controlled pressure regulator, although for Larry electric pumps have not proved as reliable as the standard engine-mounted fuel pumps – with a new diaphragm every few decades, those simple creatures still do the job.
The exhaust system has also been upgraded, with twin pipes and quad tailpipes. The original system has enough spare flow capacity for quite extensive engine mods, but there’s no harm in exhaust fun, and the volume and tone are not excessive. Exhausts are in focus with my own project, as I wonder if doubling the engine capacity in my TR6/Cobra from 2500cc to 5000cc might overwhelm the TR6 exhaust? Maybe not, because the almostmatched primary pipes and dual 1½in TR6 main pipes give similar flow to a single 3in pipe, and some Fords using the same 302 V8 have a single 2¼in exhaust pipe. These may be back- of-the
envelope calculations, but that is often the best way to start. And you only have to listen to a passing TR6 to gauge the lack of restriction in the standard silencer, so I think we’re good to go with that.
Back to Larry and his Spitfire. Pertronix ignition replaced the Spitfire’s points and condenser, and given the current dubious quality of available replacements for those parts, that’s not a bad idea. For the sake of completeness though, I should note that my personal failure rate with aftermarket electronic ignition remains at 100%.
The radiator retains the same proportions and upper and lower tanks, but has been rebuilt with a thicker core.
An oil cooler has also been added – you don’t usually need extra cooling in the reasonable temperatures of coastal British Columbia, but the heat in the BC interior can get a bit cheeky, and Californian summer heat can be brutal. And for convertible car owners, Highway 101 along the coast from Vancouver to Los Angeles is an irresistible lure
There is a single hoop roll over bar, although it’s interesting to note that single hoop bars are now sold as 'style bars' in the Mazda MX5 world as they are of limited use if a car is moving when it rolls over, and nobody wants to be sued by the estate of somebody who bought one for its protection. Such bars need to be triangulated to be of much help, although it’s been pointed out that if they’re braced too far backwards, that can also cause problems in a rear impact. On the other hand, bracing forwards to a beefed-up transmission tunnel is a little full- on for a weekend roadgoing sports car. I’ve found that roll protection does alter my driving style towards the cheekier end of the spectrum, so I only fit it if I mean it.
Another of Larry’s sensible and easily reversed modifications has been a stiffer rear transverse road spring. The later Spitfires have much improved suspension that is less