• Hi Guest!
    You can help ensure that British Car Forum (BCF) continues to provide a great place to engage in the British car hobby! If you find BCF a beneficial community, please consider supporting our efforts with a subscription.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

Spitfire Thank you and my Spit is now ambulatory

Share this page

mikecyc72usa

mikecyc72usa

Jedi Trainee
Offline
First, thanks to all who've helped me with encouragement, parts, and advice. It took forever, but tonight I finally got all my parts back on my 1500 and took it for a 2 mile test drive. Other than a few hoses that needed to be tightened, it was pretty uneventful.

Tomorrow I'm taking my car to my club monthly meeting. Longest drive this car will have done since I've owned it, about 40 miles round trip. Pretty excited.

The last piece of the puzzle is to address the timing. I can't get my friend's timing light to work, but it's definitely off. It runs well at idle, great when you life off the throttle, but stumbles on acceleration. I can't recall if that means it's too retarded or advanced.

I'm runnig dual SUs, Pertronix ignition in the original vac advance distributor. Vac advance works perfectly. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Mike
 
Well, things didn't quite go to plan. Short version is the radiator a friend said "might" be good wasn't, so if gave up the ghost a bit unexpectedly. halfway across town. Actually, pretty much at the center of downtown. Eventually, a club member brought me a radiator to borrow so I could drive home. That worked well.

The other issue that's developed has been what seems like fuel starvation. I'm going to check all the filters and the inside of my new fuel pump, and make sure there's not loose debris inside the SU carbs I have.

Looks like I'm just going to go ahead and replace the aging gas tank, metal fuel lines, and then see what happens. A full on tuneup will probably work some wonders as well.

Amazingly enough, every last electrical item worked flawlessly. Go figure. So, anyone have a good radiator they want to sell? Not "might" be good, but verified, lol! Otherwise, I think I'll get one from Spitbits.
 
Some one once told me that the only way to shake down a car was to drive it and "the problem will identify themselves...."

Hang in there.
 
I look at it this way:
Head gasket worked great
New heater was flawless, no leaks
All electrics down to my ignition buzzer and lights perfect
When driving it shifted really well

I found these areas still need attention:
radiator (duh)
alignment
brakes are a bit soft
timing is a little off
fuel delivery

None of that is terribly difficult, just time consuming all put together. so today I think I'll tackle the brakes and start fixing the fuel starvation issue. After I go for a 4 hour bike ride and pedal some relaxation into my legs and I.
 
Back
Top