1979 Triumph Spitfire Project

(Written on 2/06/2022) Test driving Penny before purchase had one little wrinkle: no brakes. The owner did make me aware that the brake pedal would have no effect. However, the parking brake did work, and allowed for a low-speed test drive around a flat yard. Once I got Penny to my house, I wanted to video the engine and transmission in operation. Going fast enough to use fourth gear requires brakes, so I decided to start with them as my first Penny project. The previous owner included new front brake calipers and rear brake cylinders with the car, but I opted not to use them yet. I am going to remove the body from the chassis, and completely redo everything including the brake lines. Connecting dirty, probably rusty, brake lines to the new calipers and cylinders would introduce dirt into them. Instead, I decided to pull the old calipers, rear cylinders, and master cylinder apart and clean them thoroughly to see if I could restore function. With a curb weight of only 1,821 l...

(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...

(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 g...

(Written on 1/16/2022) In 1979 I was 17, and like many young people loved sports cars. There was something about a small two seat convertible that screamed "let's have some fun". My older sister had an MGB that my father had helped her restore. If I could have had any car, it would have been a Triumph Spitfire. I just loved the look of the car. But I really didn't have the money to buy a decent car, so I read the used car classified ads religiously hoping in vain for a miracle. My dream Spitfire didn't show up, but a great deal came along on a Sunbeam Alpine. Actually it was two Sunbeam Alpines, a 1964 in bad condition and a 63 in worse. I had never heard of a Sunbeam Alpine, but the ad said that it was a British convertible sports car, and the price was right. Now my sister's MGB had met an untimely death when the wiring harness shorted out and the car burned up in a parking lot. So when I showed the ad to my father and asked him to look at the S...

(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 ...