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Finally doing teardown

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spit71

spit71

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Well some of you may remember me from this summer when I got some good advice from the experts here regarding my 1971 Spitfire that I bought on E-bay. It was not as advertised and needed some immediate attention. At that time I reported that I was having a serious vibration in the drivetrain, and recieved good ideas from the forum members (thank you).
I did not, however, do anything about it. It was just too fun to drive around our little town this summer and as long as I kept it below 35MPH I could put up with it.

So now it is winter and I can't put it off any longer. Upon teardown yesterday I made some interesting discoveries.

1. A puddle of motor oil on top of my stereo. (the stereo works!) I assume this is leaking out of the oil pressure guage. Speaking of guages, the PO has painted the bezels with black model paint with a brush. They look like crap. I noticed that VB sells chrome ones for $9. Do these look nice?


2. The fiber-board transmisson tunnel cover is oil soaked and soft. A large portion of it is missing where it would connect to the fire wall. Does anyone have any experince with the plastic ones sold by some of the suppliers?


3. The 3" metal straps (with a hole at either end) that fit on the drive shaft and allow the shaft to telescope a little, are not installed corrctly. Instead of being configured into a square, they are all installed parallel to each other. (I am sorry if this doesn't make sense. I will see if I can upload a picture tomorrow.) If you understand what I am talking about, do you think that this could be the cause of my vibration? I am taking the shaft in to the shop to be balanced tomorrow.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.
 
Just for giggles have you tried paint stripper on your bezels, you may get lucky. Never tried VB's bezels.
I've replaced the trans covers on my Spitfire and TR4, I was very happy I did it. In both cases the old ones were oil soaked and cracked and or broken in places, so they needed to be replaced. The ABS covers seal against the floorpan very well.
Not sure about the driveshaft, but balancing can never hurt.

Cheers,

Rob
 
If that is truly model paint on your gauge bezels, it should come right off when soaked in paint thinner... it will either just melt away into the thinner, or it will become soft enough to scrape off with a toothpick. The OEM black paint on the bezels can often be scraped off the chrome plating underneath with a sharp X-Acto knife or razor blade, but there is some risk of scratching the chrome finish. I scraped the black paint off of my Midget's bezels years ago, so it can be done. I'm about to scrape the black paint off my '76 Spitfire's bezels the same way, once the weather warms up a little.

Scott
 
I used lacquer thinner on the gauge bezels on my 78 and there was very nice looking chrome underneath. I don't know if a 71 has a CV joint at the front of the driveshaft or not but they are a possible source of problems on later models. Replacement shafts have ujoints.
 
Thanks for the replys.

I will try the thinner on the bezels before I go look at the new ones at VB. (I live reasonably close to the VB warehouse, so I can look before I buy).

I removed the prop shaft today and rearranged the metal straps into the correct configuration. I have a u-joint at both ends and one of them was almost completely frozen in one of the axis. I now think that the frozen u-joint is probably the source of my vibration. I always assumed a bad u-joint would clunk or click or something.

Anyway, I delivered the prop shaft to be refitted and balanced.

*today's adventure*
The Hayne's manual says "remove flange bolts and nuts and lift propeller shaft from car" I hammered, cussed, pryed, cussed more, kicked...it got ugly. I finally used my floor jack to force the shaft up and allow me to wedge a big screwdriver inbetween the flanges. It still required a lot of strong arm tactics to coax out. How the heck am I going to get it back in?
 
I'll assume your "strapped" propeller shaft doesn't also have a sliding joint. If it does, no problem. But if it doesn't, easiest thing to do is get a stout piece of wood or a pry bar to lever on or near the gearbox mounts and push that whole assembly forward a wee bit...after which you should have no trouble getting the flanges back together. Same procedure would've worked to remove it.

It's harder still on a Herald, most of which had a big old heavy tube of a driveshaft, but the same procedure works fine there. (I found I had a Vitesse -- or possibly later and/or optional Herald -- propeller shaft with a sliding joint, which obviously makes the whole job easier!)
 
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