The Triumph Dolomite Club - Discussion Forum

It doesn't actually mattter which end the CV and sliding joint goes...however if you fit it at the gearbox end then its more likely to preserve itself as engine, gearbox and overdrive fluids escape over time! The diff end is the the crud gathering end of the Spit.

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Steve and Nic
1979 Dolomite Sprint Brooklands Green.
Ever increasing box of spares.
Larger garage needed

So back the way it was then. Thinking about it; why does a car with a diff that doesn't move relative to the chassis need a pot joint? OK, so the engine can move slightly on its mounts but surely the sliding splines alone would cover it.

Yes you would think so....but the diff sits in rubber mountings.

The cv joint goes at the box end. 1500 o/d spits come with 2 props...early has 2 hardy spicers and a contraption of flexible bars held with bolts in a sort of square shape.

Last time I o/d converted a spt 1500 I had to move the engine forward on its mountings to get the prop in. Having done that and bolted it all back up it was fine.
Believe me the production tolerances on spits match the bonnet fit in almost every area....to the point of wondering if they actually ever had any at all and just built them
"best case" from the local pile of bits.

Jonners

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Note from Admin: sadly Jon passed away in February 2018 but his humour and wealth of knowledge will be fondly remembered by all. RIP Jonners.

The prop I took off the car was the early strap drive type. The replacement is the later CV joint, hence the confusion!

I'll put the CV at the gearbox end. Makes sense to me.

Bonnet fit? What bonnet fit?

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1978 Triumph Dolomite Sprint (project thread)
1966 Volkswagen 1300 (project thread)
1962 Austin Mini (project)
1962 MGA 1600 Mark II
1965 Mobylette SP50 (project)
2001 Rover 75 2.5-litre V6

Well the new propshaft went on a treat - managed to get it all bolted up in an hour. Still got the exhaust to refit, but I need to bodge the rear mount for the centre pipe until my next parts order

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1978 Triumph Dolomite Sprint (project thread)
1966 Volkswagen 1300 (project thread)
1962 Austin Mini (project)
1962 MGA 1600 Mark II
1965 Mobylette SP50 (project)
2001 Rover 75 2.5-litre V6

Exhaust back on today and the Spitfire is back on the road!

_________________
1978 Triumph Dolomite Sprint (project thread)
1966 Volkswagen 1300 (project thread)
1962 Austin Mini (project)
1962 MGA 1600 Mark II
1965 Mobylette SP50 (project)
2001 Rover 75 2.5-litre V6

Finally, an update! Whoohoo! I’ve been lazy in updating this thread, so you must rewind back to August 2012..

Ever since I've owned the Spitfire there have been a few niggling rust bubbles around the wiper spindles, especially on the passengers side. Over the last few years these have been getting progressively worse, and by last year had started flaking large chunks of paint off, so desperately needed to get treated ASAP. The windscreen needed to come out to do this, so it was an ideal opportunity to replace the knackered screen rubber and fit the missing black vinyl trim around the inside of the windscreen too. Ken kindly agreed to help me tackle this

I'll let the photos do the talking..













When I was buying the paint I asked the owner for advice about getting the Spitfire's paint nice and shiny again. I had tried several cutting compounds previously, but the paint was so bad nothing would touch it. By this time the paint on the car had gone totally flat and was rapidly turning pink! They recommended 3M Fast Cut Plus followed by 3M Imperial Hand Glaze. Not cheap at £40-something the pair, but the owner knew his stuff so I took the gamble and bought them. Ken nearly fell over when I told him the price, but after spending precisely 30 seconds polishing the front wing, the full original red colour shone through immediately. This stuff is wonderful!! Amazed at how well it worked, the rest of the day was promptly spent polishing the living daylights out of the car. It's never looked more red in all my ownership! Brilliant stuff









By this time it was getting late, so the car was rather cheekily hidden in the empty lockup next door to Ken’s until the next day so the paint had time to harden properly before refitting the windscreen. On Sunday, the windscreen vinyl trims were stuck in place and the windscreen fitted in a new rubber. It was a bit of a fight to get it place, but eventually made it. I do have the original chrome aluminium trims to go in, but Ken and I were pretty much out of enthusiasm by then, plus they look like a total faff to fit.

A couple of weeks later, while the dashboard was still out I decided to tackle the heater. It had never worked at all, totally dead. Investigation showed that most of the wiring was missing, and what was left was butchered, plus someone had destroyed the sliding control switch in the dashboard. A complete replacement unit, controls and all was purchased for £25 from The Spitfire Graveyard up North and fitted. I also bought a decent pair of sunvisors from them as my car had been missing these. Now I am able to have the luxury of heat (not that you need it in a Spitfire sitting 5mm away from the engine!) but the ability to de-mist the windscreen made it all worth while



Final job was to see to the very small rust bubbles that had been appearing on the sill. Thankfully this turned out to be nothing, so were ground down, treated, skimmed and the sills painted matt black.

Next up - the MoT!!

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1978 Triumph Dolomite Sprint (project thread)
1966 Volkswagen 1300 (project thread)
1962 Austin Mini (project)
1962 MGA 1600 Mark II
1965 Mobylette SP50 (project)
2001 Rover 75 2.5-litre V6

By this time it is late September, and it dawned on me that I would be away on holiday when the MoT ran out in early November. Not a problem, as last year the car flew through! So I booked the next Monday afternoon off work to take the car in, giving me the weekend to prepare it. A good going over a week before with help of a friend indicated that there was nothing obviously wrong other than the handbrake being a little looser than it could be, so after a quick adjustment I was feeling confident. The next day the horn brush fell apart, but that's okay, I ordered another.

Fast forward next Sunday - the day before the MoT - I was driving to the supermarket and oh no! Massive plumes of smoke started pouring out from the steering column! No idea why it suddenly decided to go, but the indicator arm decided it had enough and fell apart and burst into flames. Not to worry, as I have a spare.. but on fitting it that spare doesn't like to go left unless you hold it in place. The new switch then decided follow the first and the wires snapped off the back. AARRGGHHHH.

Both switches were then cut open and I managed to build one good one out of two broken ones. The original casing (dated 11/70) was kept, the insides of the second switch were soldered to the wiring loom from the original and all put back together with a nut and bolt scavenged from an old wall socket (a perfect size!).

The inside of both switches were covered in a very thick coating of dried on grease and crud. With all this cleaned off and lightly lubricated, the switch now works a treat, and actually has a really nice feel to it - a big improvement on the soggy switch that was on the car before. Please excuse the poor photos, as I was in a hurry to get it refitted!!









I finally got everything back up and running again at 1am Monday morning.. phew!

Early the next morning, feeling confident I drove to the MoT station and left the car there before getting the tube to work. On the way I did hear a strange clonk after going over a speedbump, but couldn't see anything wrong and the car seemed fine..



At lunch I got the news.. FAIL. Booooooooo...

Went back to the garage, he said there were two things:

1. The front seat was insecure as one of the nuts had fallen off the base.. but he had already put a new nut on for me. Great!

2. The front o/s anti-roll bar mounting had rusted away and the mounting plate had disappeared up into the chassis..

The tester pointed it out to me, and yes, there was a giant hole directly underneath the roll bar mounting plate! It wasn't noticeable during my inspection, but it appears the plate had rusted from behind the roll bar mounting plate and the speedbump that morning had been the last straw. The MoT station didn't do welding repairs, but pointed me to a great little garage I'd never come across before. It was a proper little gem, hidden away in old railway arch and had been run by an older chap for decades - literally a couple of streets away from me. He told me to bring the car to him on Wednesday and he'd sort it.

He did a very neat job of the repair, and while it was a repair that is visible, the rot was totally cut out, the inside of the chassis painted, a new patch made out of thick steel folded over the clean metal and seam welded on. The roll bar mounting plate was cleaned up and welded back on over the top of the patch. A repair rather than a restoration, but very neatly done and very strong.

A quick trip back to the MoT station and a fresh ticket finally in my hands, the next hour was spent nattering about old cars

_________________
1978 Triumph Dolomite Sprint (project thread)
1966 Volkswagen 1300 (project thread)
1962 Austin Mini (project)
1962 MGA 1600 Mark II
1965 Mobylette SP50 (project)
2001 Rover 75 2.5-litre V6

So now to bring everything up to date. Ever since the MoT the Spitfire has been trouble free, the only mishap was the speedo cable snapping - my fault, I had it too slack inside the car after refitting the dashboard and somehow wrapped it round the steering column.. Oops!

One thing that has never worked properly were the wipers. When I got the car, they weren't wired up properly, so only had one speed and didn't self-park. I sorted the wiring as per the manual, but the wipers then started parking in the upright position, which was a bit strange. The wiper motor was dismantled, the cog inside spun 180-degrees in order to adjust the parking stop, but after that the motor never worked again! Another motor was purchased cheaply, but that never self-parked either. At least the wipers wiped, and parked wherever they were when you turned them off, so I developed the skill of perfectly parking them manually and concentrated on more pressing issues (like the snapped front vertical link!!).



Two weeks ago I decided to revisit the wiper issue, so bought another motor, yet again from the most excellent Spitfire Graveyard. This worked a treat, but the perplexing issue of the vertically-parking wipers returned. After some head-scratching and being reluctant to dismantle (and break!) yet another wiper motor, I looked at the wiring, thinking that if the polarity had been reversed, the wiper motor would run backwards causing this issue. I posted this issue in the Spitfire section within the Club Triumph Forum, and most people seemed to think the cog was positioned wrongly again, but I refuse to believe this as the motor definitely came off a Spitfire. One chap mentioned checking the wiper spindles, as if they were fitted upside down it would cause this problem. "but it shouldn't be possible to fit them upside down"

You think?





Yet another strike on the list for the muppet who restored this car!! I've yet to resolve this as I'm sure it'll mean losing a few more knuckles in the process.. but will be done soon.

_________________
1978 Triumph Dolomite Sprint (project thread)
1966 Volkswagen 1300 (project thread)
1962 Austin Mini (project)
1962 MGA 1600 Mark II
1965 Mobylette SP50 (project)
2001 Rover 75 2.5-litre V6

Great progress Howard! I miss my Spitfire very much...

I hope the spring and summer are kind are you're able to enjoy the car.

If you'd said, I've got a spare heater and sunvisors, I'm so tall they just get in the way!

Paint looks awesome, mine's mainly pink at the back. And rougher than the glasspaper I used to try and flat it back...!

Aa

Today's update saw the n/s rear light assembly removed, cleaned up and reassembled. The lenses were full of muck and the whole assembly was generally in need of a good clean and new gaskets. Sadly the original MKIV rubber gaskets between the body and lamp unit (fitted to cars up to FH60,000) were unusable, and as these are no longer available I've had to make do with foams as per the 1500.. The internal reflectors had lost all their original silvering and some bozo had painted them silver. Someone on another forum years ago did some research, and found that painting them gloss white resulted in 60% more light reflecting than painting them silver or even with chrome paint! You can see the results compared to the untouched right-hand light

_________________
1978 Triumph Dolomite Sprint (project thread)
1966 Volkswagen 1300 (project thread)
1962 Austin Mini (project)
1962 MGA 1600 Mark II
1965 Mobylette SP50 (project)
2001 Rover 75 2.5-litre V6

Good heavens, really?! That is an excellent tip Howard, thank you.

PS When I next see you please remind me to look out some spare Spitfires light units I have...um...somewhere...

Oooooooooooo!

_________________
1978 Triumph Dolomite Sprint (project thread)
1966 Volkswagen 1300 (project thread)
1962 Austin Mini (project)
1962 MGA 1600 Mark II
1965 Mobylette SP50 (project)
2001 Rover 75 2.5-litre V6

Good to see you today Howard, I hope the engine proves to be a good'un for you.