Workshop stuff

I have had a break from building engines this week and have been back in the main workshop working on customers cars. We have a daily driver Spitfire 1500 in for a clutch, gearbox, and wiper problems. Wiper problem easily sorted with a new motor park switch, the wipers had continued to work long after they had been switched off, so the new park switch cured that. The passenger arm and blade had been stationary while the drives side worked perfectly. Probably something to do with the broken park switch enabling the poor thing to keep dragging accross a bone dry screen had led to the spline wearing out in the arm, a new arm cured that. The gearbox/clutch issues were interesting! The gearbox turned out to be a single rail out of a Dolomite lacking the facility to fit the two Spitfire type 'bobbin' type mounts. The previous 'mechanic' who had fitted this had simply ground off the studs off the top of the bobbins so that the gearbox would rest on them but not be bolted to the car at any point! The clutch driven plate had self destructed with a couple of the coil springs being found in various parts of the clutch cover, and bellhousing. A new three piece clutch, and a reconditioned gearbox and all is well. Only thing left to do now is a carb waxstat to solid jet convesion, a quick tune up, and good to go.
In between jobs on the above 1500 I have been prepping another Spitfire 1500 for MOT after a long period of storage. So far a terminally flat battery, some stale petrol, a dry clutch master cylinder (replenished and so far folding fluid, crosses fingers!), and a side light bulb is all that's obvious after a quick look. It's booked in for MOT later today so another once over this morning before I take it down is on the cards.
We have to clear a few of these Spitfires close to the weekend as there is a Stag coming in for some insurance work on Friday. I have ordered the panelwork from Heritage and it should be here on our normal delivery on Thursday so it should be fairly straight forward. It's a nice one owner, low mileage example so hopefully I wont find any horror stories when I start removing the front end.

Pimped 948 progress.

The 'Pimp my Ride' 948 saloon has taken another step forward with the application of some paint. Most of the shut's are now painted in colour, and the rest of the car is in high build primer with guide coats applied to help in the final prep. Some surprising ding's and dent's were found when the car was bare metalled, they had obviously been well repaired in the cars earlier life as they hadn't been apparent pre restoration. I'll have to ask the previous owner John Kipping if he was responsible!

Auction fever!

I had a day off yesterday, shock, horror! I have been on the trail of the one off Triumph prototype the Zest for some years now. It had been on sale in Classic car specialists Sherwood Classics in Nottingham (where else!) for approaching 5 years with a price tag of about £22,000. I had been up to give the car the once over about 2 or 3 years ago. The car is in fantastic condition allthough it has been customised by it's previous owner with some pretty tacky non original aditions, allthough fortunately nothing that couldn't be put right with a little work. I entered into a little preliminary negotiation and the price quickly fell to £20K, ahh I thought that was easy leave it a couple of months and it's a £17-18K car for cash after some serious haggling. Anyway that couple of months came and went and in the meantine we bought the Spitfire ADU 4B and that blew the car budget for a couple of years! Zoom forward to yesterday, I had found out that the vendor had given up on selling through a showroom and entered it in H & H Classics Auctions http://www.classic-auctions.com/ sale at Buxton in Derbyshire. Permissions were sort from her indoors and off we went to do the deed, or so we thought! The catalogue estimate for the car was £17-20K, right on the nail for what I originally thought it was worth. Only problem was there was a 10% sellers premium, plus VAT, no problem I thought serious buyers will have seen it's previous sale price (nearly five years at about £20K!) and factor that in. We got to the sale room as lot number one went through (the Zest was lot 61), allthough the room was full of punters most lots were struggling, and very few made reserve, allthough a lot were selling a little later at their preliminary bids, some real bargains were being had, how about a decent BMW 633 Coupe for £800! Things were looking good! All to soon it became the Zest's turn to go under the hammer, at first any potential punters showed little interest in raising their hands so the auctioneer started the things rolling with £12K to which someone to my right flicked his hand in the air, I quickly made the auctioneer aware of my interest and got the second bid in on £13K. The guy on the right nodded and it was now £14K, I have always found it best to bid confidently and quickly it shows you mean business so I nodded again and we were at £15K. Only trouble was my rival had the same atitude and he countered so we were now at £16K! My pre auction limit had been £17 1/2 K which would have brought the end price (with commission, and VAT) out to what I could have bought it for easily for when it had been at Sherwood Classics. Only trouble was the bids were going in £1K increments, so I nodded again knowing that this would be my last bid at £17K. Then it went quite, just for a minute or so I thought it was mine, OK it was more than I had wanted to pay but hey ho. It seems my rival had backed out, but then a new bidder came forward, and someone on the phone, and very quickly the car shot up to £21,000 plus commission, and VAT, which I make a grand total of £23467.50, bonkers! So that's nearly a couple of grand more than the car had been advertised for the previous 5 odd years pre negotiation which would have easily made it at least £4K more expensive, so that's why they call it auction fever! No time to sit around licking our wounds or watching any further lots go through as our car park ticket had run out 10 minutes previously and a fine would have really topped the day off nicely. Just time to exchange pleasantries with noted classic car journo Malcom Mckay on the way out (he had thought the car was going to make about £13K pre auction!)and off we went back into the fog and rain back accross the moors. Oh well at least the car fund is growing nicely!

Nice work if you can get it!

I was 'forced' by the owner of this rather nice TR3 to take it home over the weekend to check out a suspected overheating problem, go on then twist my arm! The workshop is currently fit to burst with a nice original Spit 1500 in for some re-commissioning/MOT work, a Spit MKII in for much the same, a TR6 in for long term bodywork, and a Stag in for some diff work, and a check over.

Pimp my ride 948 UK stylee

With no help whatsoever from Westwood and his crew progress on the blinged 948 Herald creeps slowly forward. I had to pop down to my mate Rich's unit in Coventry the other day to do a little last minute bodywork before they got into serious prep for the paint. Previously we had dollied the front arch lips back to allow for the 15" wheels and wide low profiles but completely forgot to do the same at the back. Fortunately Rich noticed before any serious painting had happened so I went down to 'persuade' the arch's out a tad. I didn't bother taking any piccy's as the project is still at that un-photogenic stage whereby the car is bare metalled, and Rich's unit is in a mess whilst they build a 50 foot long by 25 foot tall paint booth, it's a monster! The paint we have settled on for the 948 is 'interesting', originally the car was two tone Alpine Mauve over Spa White. It's still going to be those colours, sort off! The Alpine Mauve is going over a white base coat, and the Spa White is going over a red base with a flip in it. This paint job is costing more than I have ever paid for any Herald!