Triumph Sixfire - Mother Rustia

[RichardK]

What does optimism look like:

As you might expect there’s work needed everywhere - in some ways the saddest aspect is the way every little thing has rusted from the sunvisor metalwork to the boot floor and bulkhead - but job 1 bodywork wise is to make a start on the bonnet.

Opening and closing and the flex has encouraged the filler to part ways - helped by an exploratory prod to see what is there that is still solid.

Friend thinks we can patchwork quilt the wings and there are repair sections for the headlight areas; a search online suggests a few steel arches that will approximate the profile of the plastic ones - Mk 1 Golf rears are a strong shout but less curved, Mk 1 Escort bubbles are too expensive.

The tub needs repairs front and rear - underneath looks okay with a couple of suspect areas at the front footwell and passenger side floor, but the 1970s-style attentions may mean there are surprises yet to be found…

Bonnet first. A good bonnet appears to be one of the largest expenses on a Spitfire. And it can go and be dealt with while other bits progress.

Working completely haphazardly I may start looking at what’s needed to make a good clean wiring loom!

[Snake Charmer]

Looks like VW Beetle rear lights nicely grafted on.

[RichardK]

Yep. A look that suits it.

One reverse is glass, the other is plastic; I’ll find another glass

My preference would be to make some modifications to blend them in better rather than revert.

[Mrs6C]

I'd be inclined to let in patches where required and do the minimum needed to make it safe to drive and up to MOT standard, then give it an oil service and enjoy driving it around...

[RichardK]

1 hour ago, Mrs6C said:

I'd be inclined to let in patches where required and do the minimum needed to make it safe to drive and up to MOT standard, then give it an oil service and enjoy driving it around...

That’s the basic plan - but some areas are rather crispier than first anticipated; some of these bits are definitely worse than when I first saw the car, others are probably unchanged given the evidence of past repairs.

When looking at the indicator wiring and repairs needed to bonnet closing panel, the bonnet panel and indicator just crumbled away, leaving a lens hanging by a gasket - the other side is marginally better but I’ve been reluctant to poke it!

This looks bad because the filler layer cracked away so we had a look to see where good metal would be found with a few light taps of a rubber screwdriver handle (i.e. if it’s attached enough to stay, it stays). I think the best thing here is to flap wheel from the arch backwards and see how much metal needs replacing, horrible as that stage will look.

But as we now know the arches are plastic so that’s a coin toss between repair metal and reuse plastic and fill, or metal all the way. The reason I am leaning towards metal all the way is the amount of work needed on the front/indicator area - no sense doing that with (relatively) expensive repair panels then just chucking filler at the part of the car that is stressed when handling the bonnet. I suspect properly done steel arches would actually help that area’s strength, whereas the way this was done the handles and latches were essentially separated from the inner tub.

Though I’m going to fit gas struts for the bonnet rather than replace the metal strut. Cheap and avoid losing fingers as well as making it much easier to open & close and putting the lifting force on the metal frame rather than the wings or centre sheet metal.

Boot/rear valance:

Three panels there - inner frame, lower edge of outer arch, edge of rear closing panel which is also gone along the forward edge.

The opposite side has the same metal foil and fibreglass filler that had fallen out of the boot corner. Love ‘80s classic car restorers… I haven’t poked either side of it - this hole was already present!

Most of the scary looking stuff so far is the bonnet and I’ve got a friend willing to help with welding and fabrication - and very enthusiastic about it too. Not saying it’ll be fast but it should be done well, he’s a very good and creative engineer

Bodywork is bodywork - my main “this is gonna take a lot of work” fear is just making the rusted interior parts and any damaged wiring functional again - but there’s a plan for that; I guess partly I don’t want to do a good job in one place and cut corners elsewhere.

Doors, bootlid and roof are all minimal concern items (as long as the doors keep closing properly). They bolt on and if nothing else I’ll make sure they bolt off and on easily enough for later replacement!

[RichardK]

Taking a couple of days off work - not really any mission but decided to try and work out what is under the bonnet.

The theory of high compression had me wondering what the engine is made of - it matches the description of a TR6 block with Mk II 2.0 head for example. But the head is:

Casting: 

Number:

So it’s a Triumph 2500 PI or TR5/early TR6 head. That would match the block so if the compression ratio is 12:1 the engine’s been worked on rather than it being a combination of parts.

Exhaust manifold looks like a Mk 1 GT6 type.

I reckon the extra pipework in the boot plus the very obvious trio of bolts in the boot that looked very familiar (fuel pump in a TR6) suggest this started out with an attempt to retain fuel injection.

Every vacuum, PCV and other hose is perished so I’m amazed it ran at all when tested, but I can’t try it yet.

All the tyres have gone flat again - so much for easy rolling into the sunshine.

[RichardK]

Got the headlights out - I am ashamed that I had to Google because I forgot those chrome rings just snap on.

Once I’ve got the wiring detached and bumpers off, the bonnet can come off, and the extent of the fibreglass to rust to metal ratio truly established. It looks grim - but of course unlike most 1960s cars, everything here is just “bonnet”, despite being the equivalent of fascia, wings, inner wings and lower grille!

[Dick Longbridge]

I reckon you're going to owe your welder mate a lot of cigarettes/beer/spirits/narcotics to keep him sweet with glueing that crispy old girl back together! 

[Mrs6C]

3 hours ago, RichardK said:

So it’s a Triumph 2500 PI or TR5/early TR6 head. That would match the block so if the compression ratio is 12:1 the engine’s been worked on rather than it being a combination of parts.

As far as I know, it's a very early Triumph 2500 S (twin carbs not PI) engine that has had Standard-Triumph recondition it and provide it as an exchange unit. You'll find their little metal plate for that work somewhere on the engine block, next to the fuel filter glass bowl IIRC...

[RichardK]

14 minutes ago, Mrs6C said:

As far as I know, it's a very early Triumph 2500 S (twin carbs not PI) engine that has had Standard-Triumph recondition it and provide it as an exchange unit. You'll find their little metal plate for that work somewhere on the engine block, next to the fuel filter glass bowl IIRC...

Yep, the reconditioning plate is there - I’m going by the head casting and number, which comes up as 2.5 PI, TR5/6 or 2000 low compression, but I am also guessing a recon unit from Standard might have received different heads!

[RichardK]

38 minutes ago, Dick Longbridge said:

I reckon you're going to owe your welder mate a lot of cigarettes/beer/spirits/narcotics to keep him sweet with glueing that crispy old girl back together! 

Possibly,  but I’m also hoping to learn some skills here myself! The patches have patches.

Gotta love the way people treated cars in the 70s and 80s 😕

When I took the driver’s side light off the bottom half of the bowl and reflector poured out as powder. If  this car’s a vampire, Buffy has been about with the stakes!

[RichardK]

Bumpers off, it didn’t fight and the bolts unbolted having had lots of WD40. I still have flashbacks to my first attempt at 1960s car where my ADO16 snapped every bolt rather than undoing…

[RichardK]

Although it's been painted a few times, the car's build plate does say colour 32. Which is Signal Red

[RichardK]

Work ate me so little progress has been made, however, some tidying of the garage to free up space has happened:

What I have continued with is removing the rotten interior trim parts…

Which revealed the inner rear arches.

The arches are riveted and fillered on over, er, a gap. More worrying is the rivet that I think is holding a cover sill on.

Okay, so, no news there, it’s an old restoration of an old car.

Decided to remove the badges and store them with a view to seeing if the boot skin could be repaired, and revealed something…

It’s hard to make out but that is some bold type outline that once spelled “INJECTION”.

So I think we can be confident that the TR6 lump was originally installed with the injection intact, and that’s why there’s a familiar looking fuel pump arrangement of bolts in the boot floor.

Next: Having investigated a lot, I’m going to try undoing the seat bolts but if they resist going to cut them off - can’t get carpets out or repair seat foams with them still in the car.

Little bits at a time.  Hopeful I am wrong about the cover sills, but if not, the inners still look okay from the inside of the car.

 

[Tadhg Tiogar]

On 8/10/2021 at 6:50 PM, Dick Longbridge said:

I reckon you're going to owe your welder mate a lot of cigarettes/beer/spirits/narcotics to keep him sweet with glueing that crispy old girl back together! 

I was about to ask if there was going to be anything left after dismantling....!

[RichardK]

23 minutes ago, Tadhg Tiogar said:

I was about to ask if there was going to be anything left after dismantling....!

Floors look okay, it’s all frilly edges around the seams rather than completely rotten - and it could be bodged, my goal at the moment is to get the interior out, wiring sorted and something that could be driven but needs a bonnet and tidying. It’s just revealing all the skeletons in the closet!

What I wanted to was always going to be a mammoth task - steel wide arches, body good enough to support candy flip metalflake, and all the interior trim looking worthy of 180bhp+ of roadster.

[Mrs6C]

43 minutes ago, RichardK said:

I’m going to try undoing the seat bolts

You should be able to remove the seats quite easily by undoing the two nut & bolt combinations connecting the front corners of the seat to brackets on the seat runners, on which the seat pivots. With the physical seats out of the way, the seat runners are easy to reach. The seat runners have four bolts that go into captive nuts welded to the floor. They usually respond well to a few soakings in WD40 or similar. They are 7/16" or 1/2" from memory. The runners can be slid back and forth to get at the bolts holding them down, for a few overnight applications of the penetrating fluid. If you cut them off, they'll all need to be drilled out and then either new captive nuts welded on or much work with a tap to get the threads back. Two of the bolts per seat may actally go into little brackets raised above the floor. Can't remember if that is Herald/Vitesse or Spitfire/GT6 arrangement...

I recommend the 'Gold Book' as essential reading when renovating one of these cars. It will make life a lot easier to have it to had for reference. Here's a secondhand copy:
https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/books/lindsay-porter/triumph-spitfire-gt6-herald-vitesse/9780854295838

[RichardK]

Ah, I couldn’t find a top-down bolt at all - these feel like there are captive bolts as part of the seat mounting that are bolted up, from underneath. It’s all VERY flat to the floor, practically sandwiching the carpet. I’ll have a go at getting the seat off at the pivot - there’s plenty of time for WD40 to soak!

[RichardK]

Also, bought!

[Mrs6C]

44 minutes ago, RichardK said:

Ah, I couldn’t find a top-down bolt at all

They sit down a bit into circular dips in the bases of the seat runners... you need a fairly slim-sided socket to remove them...

[RichardK]

I think I found the front ones - WD40 still soaking.

In the meantime, more garage tidying and organising:

[RichardK]

My poor garage hoover. One mouse nest removed… Also got the seatbelts out of the way…

[RichardK]

Progress. The runners on the driver’s side are rusted so solid I had to use a mallet to shift ‘em but freeing off, and the aforementioned pivot bolts (thankyou @Mrs6C) undid easily so there’s room to work now, though I really should wear a mask when grubbing about in there!

Not shown; roof frame slowly being freed off.

Carpet out of passenger footwell - the floor is crispy underneath the absent battery tray but will know more once the dash parts are out of the way.

Also:

[RichardK]

The seat frame bolts are out! Partly because they’re 10mm into nuts and thick body washers under the floor, need to see what’s been going on there. But rubber mallet and much WD40 got the runners to move…

 

[RichardK]

Seat frame out, carpet up. Captive nuts for seat totally intact but whoever worked on this in the past saw fit to drill holes and fit the seats in a different place (nearer door, slightly forward).

Wish they’d seen fit to, er, paint the repair panels too.

Still, rainy day, car in pieces, swearwords hanging in the air and rust in my hair, Sleeper on the radio…

The same radio as I used in the 1990s

Also went to lift the bonnet and start some gunk on the necessary places, but without the bumpers it didn’t stop at 90 degrees. Did bend the plate, because it’s so heavy I didn’t notice the resistance, but it meant getting this shot.

Bonnet needs to come off anyway - constantly scanning eBay for appropriate parts. It almost got new parts this week, as there was a good deal on front indicators but maybe something to attach them two and wires to connect them to should be a priority!

[Mrs6C]

That face looking out of the front of the radiator is a bit weird... 

[Snake Charmer]

6 hours ago, Mrs6C said:

That face looking out of the front of the radiator is a bit weird... 

The ghost of Spitfires past?

[Six-cylinder]

Not a pretty site, you have taken my rose tinted spectacles away from me! I was hoping for a quick patch up and we would be cruising around in it, but now I can see it is not as simple as that.

The dream of a respray in metal flake cherry red to match its 1970s custom bubble arches  now looks a long way off.

[RichardK]

56 minutes ago, Six-cylinder said:

Not a pretty site, you have taken my rose tinted spectacles away from me! I was hoping for a quick patch up and we would be cruising around in it, but now I can see it is not as simple as that.

The dream of a respray in metal flake cherry red to match its 1970s custom bubble arches  now looks a long way off.

It doesn't to me - apart from the extra filler in the rear arches, I always knew what to expect from it - I haven't gone in to tear it to pieces, I just wanted to get the interior clean enough to sit in, doors working and strip trim to get to the battery box but ultimately just those simple tasks make it look very 'taken apart'. The only bit I hadn't considered is the state of the rear arches and tub generally - it is ROUGH, but I am leaving it well alone for now, whereas the front arches cracked and flaked with movement of the bonnet.

The metal is probably the easy bit too. Spitfire tubs seem relatively easy to fix and easy to find. It's all the trim and stuff that's making me catch my breath - seat foams at £300 set, plus base and metalwork (for the '70s dream car, I was trying to find high-back GT6 seats but no chance!). Carpets - driver's footwell is missing anyway, but they've really suffered, door seals, all that sort of stuff.

Economically it's madness, I've seen a 2.5TC engine and overdrive 'box for £300 on FB marketplace, we had that £50 chassis mentioned, etc. - but I'm happy to just keep plodding on with. You can spend all the time in the world buying, selling, weighing up costs and after ten years have gone through 50 cars and still be wanting the same thing, whereas ten years (I don't think it'll take ten years, this is about me and my car history etc.) of working on the same thing, you end up with what you wanted all along, time has passed, and there it is.

That's the philosophy I'm taking. I do think that it's going to end up being body-off rather than patching though, mostly because it's been patched so many times previously and access to the rear suspension etc. will just be easier that way! I could do all the mechanical bits with this tub removed and just put this tub back on as is, warts and all with some more patching, but it's a lot of labour to end up with a flawed outcome

TBF I'm also still thinking about modern injection. Reckon the compression ratio and thirst are down to those carbs being a very flawed solution and it was almost certainly an injected hot-rod to start with - just imagine what it would be like with a webcon alpha or megasquirt setup and throttle bodies! I suspect 180+ bhp would be within reach, assuming the block is good (and from what's been said I think it will be, should give it a couple of turns and oil to make sure it stays so).

[RichardK]

The mice apparently like the taste of gearbox tunnel 😕

Passenger floor is thin - some holes, I suspect if I wire brushed it it’d be like lace. But it does appear to be original (seat bolt bodgery aside - the passenger frame has a mixture of captive, bolt-through and missing).

I had hoped it would be okay but the battery tray’s absence makes it inevitable, I guess.

Today I learned the transmission cover is sort of fibreboard stuff, not metal.