But Why?

(Written on 1/20/2022)

I've seriously let down my wonderful wife of 37 years. In the spring of 2020 we started talking about retirement being only a few years away. The nest was empty, and it was time to start relaxing a bit and enjoying life. She surprised me by suggesting we go to a BMW dealership to test drive something fun. We're basically Hyundai people, so this was pretty heady stuff. We took a Z5 out for a test drive and loved it. It's a wonderful mix of sportiness and refined comfort. Conversation turned to thoughts of purchasing a Z5 upon retirement.

Then I started thinking hard about what I really wanted in retirement. I thought about what gave me enjoyment and satisfaction. I decided happiness for me wasn't buying the "perfect" car. What I really enjoy, and what retirement will hopefully afford me the time to do, is create, build, and restore things. During high school my father and I restored a 1964 Sunbeam Alpine. See "1979, a good year". I've always loved the looks of the Triumph Spitfire. I even impulse bought one in horrible condition years ago. At that time our first child was an infant and I was balancing fatherhood with focusing on my career. Sure, let's add restoring a car to that. One would call that a bad idea at a bad time, and I sold it in less than a year. But now was the time. As dreams of the beautiful BMW evaporated, my wife, showing little emotion, said "sure, find yourself a Spitfire to restore".

Working on a few cars in my youth, I found that I don't enjoy body work. So my objective was to find a Spitfire with as little rust as possible. After a few months of searching I lucked out and found just such a car: a 1979 Triumph Spitfire 1500 that had spent most of its road life as a California car, and then spent 20+ years parked in a garage in NY state. Get any images of a pristine beauty that needs a wash and wax out of your head. Upcoming pictures will show you that this Spitfire was not pampered, and it will require a lot to bring it back. But it won't require sheet metal work and bondo. 😉 

In August of 2020 I purchased the Spitfire and my son-in-law helped me transport it home.


 

Location: Chambersburg, PA, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hurry Up and Wait

Image
(Written on 1/28/2022) As soon as I bought the Spitfire, friends and family asked how soon I'd have it on the road. I genuinely admire those folks who can turn things around in no time at all, but I'm not one of those guys. When my brother and I were boys I can remember him asking in frustration why I made a project out of everything. The answer: I like projects, and I like things done a certain way. Not only did this frustrate my brother, it pretty much drove my father crazy. Dad admonished me for being a perfectionist, but I know full well I'm not a perfectionist, for try as I might, I've never managed to make anything perfect. 😉 My answer to anyone who asks when Penny will be done, is ten years. In reality I have no idea how long it will take, and I don't really care. Driving her will be fun, but so is the process of rebuilding her. In addition, I never have just one project going at a time. This life offers so many interesting things to learn and e...
Read more

Better Late Than Never

Image
(Written on 1/16/2022) Welcome to my blog. OK, I wasn't sure why they call these "blogs" so I just looked it up. It's short for weblog. What I actually wanted was a website to document rebuilding a 1979 Triumph Spitfire I purchased. But I didn't see an easy way to do that, and blogs are easy. So, a blog it is. I'm going to back date the "published" date so they indicate when I should have written them. The date they are actually written will be in parenthesis at the end of the post. The Spitfire was purchased in August of 2020, and it's now January 2022. I decided I better get going on documenting the rebuild. Whenever I do any projects I take a lot of pictures. Typically these are texted to my family and close friends who are simply enthralled by the minute details of how I built this or fixed that. 😆 I'm surprised they don't delete my number from their cell phones. Capturing the rebuild details here will allow them to feign ...
Read more

Taking a Detour at the Mill

Image
I prefer not to post until I have some quantifiable "thing" complete. That's good and bad. It allows the post to document a sub-project in a meaningful way. Unfortunately there are multiple things I've worked on that I haven't written up. I have a disassembled and cleaned Ford T-9 transmission sitting on a table in my basement. "Quasimotor" is a really cool full size engine mock-up I made to test fit the Mazda V6. My son-in-law Ken 3D printed a remote oil filter adapter model that I created in Solid Works. So there is actually a good bit of work that has been done but not documented here because it's "in process".  The plan for custom parts like the remote oil filter adapter, is to cast them in aluminum. Ken became interested in casting aluminum, purchased the equipment to do so, and has cast a few items. Very cool. But parts cast for use on the Spitfire will quite often need precision mating surfaces, meaning they will need to be machined....
Read more