The stripping of the front end has given away more history and maintenance of this car as I go. The back end has odd/different hubs and the front end also has odd hubs in terms of casting details. It wouldn’t be uncommon to have replacement service components but unless accident issues it would be strange to have odd castings on the major components themselves surly? The offside lower ball joint has been hashed together with what looks like nylon plastic pipe acting as a bush and length of threaded bar and nylock nuts holding it to the lower wishbone. This is now all off and is awaiting its cleaning before I can start replacing the bushes and starting the rebuild.
I have uncovered the frame number for the chassis which I’m still trying to decode in order to confirm age/manufacturing details however it would seem by research so far that the frame number is irrelevant to everything as it was stamped by the chassis maker prior to its supply to British Leyland for the Spitfire and no real records exists. I believe some people can give a guess of its age by its number respectively compared to a vehicle with history and its number recorded officially and if the frame number is higher or lower. However these chassis were manufactured and stamped then possible sat in a field for a few months prior to being put on the production line with BL and made up into the Spitfire. And even then when continuing its journey along the production line and being given its official Triumph vin it will have rolled off the finish line and spent many weeks/months sat in a holding compound awaiting registration and assigned to a dealer/customer. I have decoded my vin already along with paint code, trim code, engine number, gearbox number and body number. Everything marries up correctly in terms of original build criteria, so I’m confident to claim the chassis is original and unrestored/replaced.
So the chassis is now bare and I’ve hit it briefly with the angle grinder and wire wheel. It really is lovely and solid all over but I think I’ll look into getting it blasted or chemically stripped as it is caked in muck and years of grime and Shultz. A proper strip into all the nooks and crannies before a shed load of cavity wax and etch prime would be the best treatment in my opinion to keep the chassis solid for many more years to come. One little weakness I have spotted is on the front antiroll bar mounts. They look to have split on both sides previously and have been welded together again. The offside is worse than the nearside and because of the angle it had bent to it was hard getting clearance so the socket would go on the nut. I’ll be looking at possibly replacing these if they are available but I’ll have to think about beefing them up. The mounting plates are not made of the correct gauge steel in my opinion and need to be thicker. They take a lot of strain off the anti roll bar so thin gauge steel will just not work and will split over time and have to be welded. I think once the chassis is clean this will be my first modification/change.
I have also now removed all the perished rubber bushes from the upper and lower wishbones. Whilst these ones are not really very bad it would be foolish not to replace them during the build. Removing them is easy with a press…. But I don’t have one, so large socket, machine screw and a couple of washers…… job done. Like my cobra build I’m not doing the whole polybush replacements, if the rubber units are good for 40 odd years I can live with that. Some of the rubber bushes are ok to continue to use, like the rear final drive unit which has two top hat style bushes really really solid still with next to zero corrosion or perishing… I’d be concerned of replacing such bushes with supposed OEM quality units that are probably made of low grade rubber from a sweat shop in China. Either way now it’s time for a little shopping, another update soon.
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