TRIUMPH SPITFIRE MKIII
RUN BY Julian Balme OWNED SINCE 1967 PREVIOUS REPORT Nov 2018
Not long after my mum’s passing in early 2006, I put her Spitfire up in the air in my garage and prodded around with a screwdriver while renewing front and rear dampers and bushes. The car’s previous home wasn’t the most substantial piece of architecture, and during the winter months she would get quite despondent about how damp it was, and the film of moisture that would cover her little car.
To be fair, there weren’t any truly frightening pieces of rust visible below deck, but while lying on my back I could see a number of areas in need of some attention. The bottom of the A-posts showed signs of bubbling and the constantly damp carpet in the passenger footwell didn’t bode well. There were pinholes in the complicated panel above the rear axle and the vertical panels that form the support for the parcel shelf, as well as locating the trailing arms. There was crispy metal at the bottom of the inner rear arches, along with the return flange at the rear of the boot floor, which had seen better days.
Having overhauled the suspension, I put the car back on the ground and tried to forget what I’d witnessed below the water line. Although shiny and serviceable, the paintwork topside had strange snail trails on a number of panels, which, once blasted, revealed where leadloading had been used to correct door gaps in the early ’80s and had subsequently been affected by moisture getting between the layers of metal, filler and paint.
The bottom 3in of the windscreen surround had blown so badly that the glass and rubber could be moved by hand. It being an early car, the hood latches are in a different place to later ones and the surrounds are not easy to find, particularly those with rain gutters. I managed to trace a secondhand one at the Spitfire Graveyard, then promptly forgot about it for 10 years. Just like the hardtop I bought on ebay at around the same time…
The two boxes my dad regrettably hadn’t ticked when he ordered the car were said factory metal roof and overdrive. I’ve always preferred the MKIII’S silhouette with a hardtop, so when one came up I snaffled it and squirrelled it away. It’s proven to be a remarkably sound purchase – for me at least – the condition being excellent after blasting.
When Wilf Stacey delivered the blasted and primered shell to welder Barry ‘Baz’ Hilliard, most visitors to the latter’s workshop enquired whether it was a heritage shell, the appearance being far better than the reality. Working from the middle of the car, Lincolnshire metal magician Baz has methodically gone through every piece of the shell one bit at a time, then cut, repaired, shaped and welded both old and new panels into place. Where he has had to cut panels he has butt-welded in the new material and ground away the join. He should be an invisible mender, because his attention to detail is meticulous – simple things such as reinstating the wiring harness clips and using spot-welds to echo the factory construction, rather than the sloppy seam welding carried out in the ’80s.
The work is time-consuming, though, and the hourly rate would be no different if the car was worth 50 times more, but I’m confident that I’ll struggle to find a betterrestored MKIII Spitfire shell. On my previous visit to Baz’s shop there was still a fair bit to do, but with the doors repaired and hung, most of the rear of the car – including the bootlid – in place, and the lower front bulkhead repaired, it did feel as if we’d crested the peak.