Follow along for my random projects including the restoration of a 1970 Triumph Spitfire. On this channel we will also be visiting other people Project Car Garages, and see what other folks in the area are doing!
Do you live in Central Florida and have a cool project car that you want to share? Send me an email at projectcargarage@icloud.com
How interesting about that wear on your valve keepers etc, it seems to me that someone kept on using the engine at relatively high RPM after the valve springs were past their best and had started to go soft. The stress then gets passed on to the next part in the system
Your machinist is correct, if you keep the revs down, you won't have a problem with valve seat recession, it's the high revs for prolonged periods that causes the damage. You have an Overdrive transmission, that will certainly help.
That is what I have found the general consensus is across the communities as well. If I were racing or towing then yeah, but I’m hoping to do 1500 miles a year with the car.
These cars were designed for British side roads where they weren't revved high for long periods of time. American highways take their toll on these engines in the form of burnt valves and recessed seats.
I don't want to give you the heebie-jeebies, but when I lap in valves, when the sound changes, I lift the valve and stick and turn it 1/4 turn then lap until the sound changes again. Do that until you've made a full circle of the valve in the seat. When you check the grind after washing the valve, the wear pattern should be centered on the valve face and no wider than a 1/3 of the face with a 3-angle cut. The whole point of a 3-angle cut is to center the contact point on the face. Finally, have you taken to heart warnings about buying cheap parts? Two dollars versus 4 dollars for a set of keepers could be the difference between buying chineseium parts and genuine British reproductions. It's one of the reasons I bought exclusively from SpitBits and avoided Victoria British like the plague. Moss Motors bought out Vicky Brit if I'm informed correctly. Beware of Chinese parts from Moss Motors as they do not Quality Control the parts to the level they should and the Chinese manufactures replace imperial screws with metric, etc. Not a problem if you only want to drive the car and have it look good from 10 feet, but definitely not for use on show cars.
Good to know about the lapping. I’ll go back through them and do that. I did not want to take to much material. In terms of Spitbits vs Moss, I honestly have not found that Spitbits has better parts. I frankly think they are all made from the same source. The only exception so far with all I have ordered was bearings. The needle bearings from Spitbits for the rear trunion housings were a much higher quality but also 3x the price.
Ask the machinist for a guarantee that the seats won't burn for at least 50K miles. This is a known problem for these engines that were not designed for unleaded gas. If you don't want to confront the machinist about his ignorance, look into lead substitute.
Instead of the springs, I use solid tuftrided spacers between the rocker arms, note that it is not critical that the rocker arms have to be perfectly centralized above the valves.
Those nice supportive end pedestals were developed for the Le Mans racing Spitfires, before those, on the 1147cc Spitfire, they used much weaker end pedestals, as shown in the diagram in your Haynes manual, I did a conversion on my 1147cc engine using the later pedestals that you have, also I used 1956 Standard 8 rocker arms, (also used on the Le Mans Spitfire), they were Forged Steel instead of the later, much cheaper Cast Iron Rocker Arms.
In my experience, the adjuster nuts on the back of the rocker arms are precious, because the originals are much better-quality material than any reproductions that I have found. The repro's easily round off, whereas the originals do not.
Dear Steve, I am sorry to have to say this after you have had several positive comments, but surely there is something wrong when the top of most valves do not touch the rocker in its centre. Not only is the rocker designed so that it is strongest at the middle, but the way your rockers touch the valve at the of edge of the rocker, the rocker will quickly wear excessively on the new shaft you just installed, due to the force pushing down the valve not distributed evenly on the rocker shaft. I have never seen rockers on a Triumph Spitfire engine pushing the valves from anywhere but the centre of the end of the rocker. Indeed I have never seen the rockers in any overhead valve engine so misaligned as yours currently appear to be. I am sorry I cannot identify what went wrong, but if I was you, I would compare the alignment of the new rockers against the old ones as a starting point, as perhaps the replacements are not identical to the originals.
There is a pattern, the first rocker is too far right, the second too far left, the 3rd too far right etc. Each rocker requires a little machining (of varying amounts) to remove material from its surface closest to the vertical support.
Thanks. Were the original shaft's oil ports machined like this one? Springs are pretty hard and their ends can act like cutters, most other stuff has them riding on hardened washers.
Looks good to me but what do I know!! The rockers are going to float a but on the shaft hence the springs between them as long as the springs are not worn out but I say your good to go!!
Steve, the studs will set the spacing on the pedestals. Wasn't there a wavy washer between the last pedestal and cotter pin? The offset of the rockers on the valves should cause the valves to spin when they are depressed.
I had a feeling the studs would do the trick. There was no washer though between the pedestal and cotter pin. I checked the diagram too and didn’t see one.
Great video Steve! Two questions…how is your house so quiet, and how do you keep your manual so clean? Just kidding. I’ll pull my rocker cover and see how my arm to valve alignment is though mine is a 1500. Cheers!
Hahaha that manual is almost as old as me and my son was not home hahaha. I appreciate the support! If you find anything interesting let me know. I would imagine that they would be centered on the valves, but this is just a bit weird.
You got the water-pump fixings figured out, which is good. However, based on my experiences from about a decade ago, I would try to source good used water-pump studs. The originals are shorter on the housing end and longer on the pump side. The replacements I got from several vendors (again, about a decade ago) are of equal length on each side. This is a bit of a problem in all circumstances; however, the thickness of the bases on replacement water pumps varies quite a bit, and for the thicker ones the shorter studs are a serious problem--you'll never get a nut on them, especially with a lock washer. (I discuss this in a little bit of detail [with photos] in a segment of Episdoe 8 on my channel.) Anyway, I've been doing the exact same cleanup work on my GT6 water-pump housing, so your video is quite timely!
Thanks for the info! I saw that Rimmers had ones that were correct as you described. Ill be sure to look for that before I order. The ones I pulled out were going into the water channels impeding flow, so that clearly tells me they were wrong.
@@StevesProjectCarGarage If you get a chance, let me know what you get when you order studs. By my measurement, the studs should have 7/16" threads on the housing side and 11/16" threads on the pump side. Off the top of my head, I can't remember the exact vendors I tried, but the studs I received were about 7/16" on both sides. That's really too short for the water-pump side, especially given the thickness of some of the aftermarket water-pump bases. Keep up the good work!
Welding question...What size wire and setting you use? I have a Lincoln welding and currently experimenting with .030 at 15v and 110 wire speed. I currently have mine on a rotisserie but will probably have to put it back on the frame to replace the floor.
Im using 0.26 Lincoln wire with Mig Gas. In terms of settings I have been getting in the habit of measuring the steel before hand vs guessing like I was back when I made this video. Usually though I would be around B and 4 or 5, but I found that measuring before hand would reveal various thickness so it wasn’t a one size fits all setting for the whole car.
Check where the weep hole is, bottom of the pump, for leaking after startup cause it's about 50/50 chance to leak from corrosion working its way into the seal faces while its been sitting. If it's leaking, just let it run, with the cap off so there's no pressure pushing coolant through the seal, for 5-15 minutes to let the seal faces cut through any corrosion and start doing their job of sealing again. If 15 minutes doesn't do it, then it's time for another one. The studs should be available at any good(not a chain) auto parts place, seen those big orange Dorman cabinets with all the drawers of different stuff, or just cut up a bolt, or get a long bolt from a starter, generator or those wooden spools that electrical supply houses throw out and cut your own threads on it!. Just crazy to order stuff like that unless you're in the middle of the desert & all ya got is camel dung..
Thankfully while the engine was stored I would spin it so fingers crossed there isnt much corrosion. But we will see! I tried ACE and two auto parts stores this weekend and came up empty handed. Ill just have to tac it onto another order or smalls. Im running out of things to order. LOL
As for fitting the rollers bearings there is a guy mentioned by Elin Yakov- Rusty Beauties who has 3D printed a carrier to aid inserting them that was very slick.
Ouch, those blue-tinged drill holes must have been tough going! I have a basic Drill Doctor shaprener that's paid for itself many times over. A sharp drill bit is a beautiful thing. I'll take a freshly sharpened cheap bit over an expensive dull one any day. When one of my bits isn't cutting like it should, it's quick an easy to touch it up.
hey mate, there's supposed to be an l bracket on the top caliper bolt and the bracket to the hard line goes in front of the strut tower. There's an additional bit of hard brake line required on each side to the L bracket. Cheers
Most if not all of the carb cleaners are shit, they ain't what they used to be, pros have stuff that can make'm beautiful, don't know if any of them would just do the cleaning & plating for you with out doing the assembly. Does the piston fall with a solid metallic 'thunk'??? Is it the least bit different if you do it with the choke on/jet down? If not, it ain't centered, do it again! Float level? Find out & set the tab, also IIRC the float drop is adjustable too but isn't as important. Throttle shaft seems a little stiff, oil/grease would be nice, then again it attracts smegma and you're a long way from wearing out the shaft & body. Good luck.
Thanks for the input! I followed your advice on re-centering the jet. I had tried a number of times but just couldn't get it. This time I did it with the needle in place and I fully disassembled the jet and it worked! In terms of the float level, both of the float needle housings were driven all the way home. But I am going to order the adjustment tools from Moss for these and it has guidance and tools to help accurately adjust them. Thanks again for the input!
@StevesProjectCarGarage the Zenith Strombergs have an adjustable tab for the float, but as you probably saw there's a plastic tab on the float that's not adjustable. Makes life a bit easier.
Thanks for the shout out buddy! Carbs look great! FYI be careful of what’s in the ultrasonic cleaner before you put your intake in there. Some products with eat/etch the aluminum and turn it black.
I use one and a half gallons of that carb cleaner in a cheap stainless steel cook pot for my Weber 40DCOEs, I keep some big river rock pebbles, to surround the carbs and raise the level of the cleaning fluid, (thanks Archimedes), above the carbs, I strip all the internal parts out of the carbs and clean them in the basket. I leave the carbs soaking for three days, then once cleaned out, I flush them out with distilled water before drying them on the bench with a hot air gun. Webers have fine passageways, which do NOT like ethanol laced fuel sitting in them. My first and last fuel tanks of the season are always ethanol free fuel. The carb cleaner that's left, I keep in the shed to reuse next year! One day I'll get myself an ultrasonic cleaner!
It never fails. As soon as I need to replace something on my Spit, you always seem to have a video less than a year old that covers it. Thank you for your continued service, Sir. :)
Nice video Steve. Great update and really good to see the progress you are making. You must be inspiring many other DIY mechanics to have a go 😎 Also, a well sorted blasting cabinet with glass bead at 25PSI is an easy way to polish your aluminum parts.
Glad you sent the little end bushings to the professionals, they need honing too once fitted which is another thing not worth DIYing. Interestingly it looks like the old jets on your carbs have black plastic sections? That might’ve been part of why you were having difficulty getting it to run well when you got the car as the black bodied jets are for SUs with the float chambers at a different angle to the Spitfire’s (the correct ones are colour coded red).
Thank you! Yeah I thought I could do it on my own but decided against it after just one. The carbs are new to me. I had a Stromberg on the prior which I had rebuilt but could never get running right. So I threw in the towel and sprung for the SUs.
Ted told me he is an outlet for rimmers. If I understood him correctly, you can use him for any needed returns. Those would make cool pen holders. I'll take one off your hands when your finished with them 😂
No kidding. That explains it then! I was thinking pen holders too for the old pistons. I cleaned one up and gave it to Emerson as his first real car part lol.