"BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires" (biturbo228)
11/09/2015 at 09:49 • Filed to: Spit6
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"BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires" (biturbo228)
11/09/2015 at 09:49 • Filed to: Spit6 | 1
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Replaced part of a floor panel in the spitfire and cut up the popshaft tunnel to clear my longer gearbox and mounts.
I fear i won’t be able to do much more for a while as the reconditioned alternator in my alfa (wedged inbetween the firewall, the rear bank of the engine and the subframe) has decided it would rather be an electric heater so after a few miles i lose all power.
That would be less awkward if the citroen didn’t need a new water pump and the jag needs new diff bearings i should have changed when i swapped the lsd in...
SnapUndersteer, Italian Spiderman
> BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires
11/09/2015 at 09:51 |
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Saw your post on G+. Awesome stuff!
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BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires
> SnapUndersteer, Italian Spiderman
11/09/2015 at 10:06 |
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Thanks man :) next up is the rust on the other side. It's mainly surface rust, but there are patches where it's getting rather thin...
Cé hé sin
> BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires
11/09/2015 at 10:10 |
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Nice to see there’s not much rust...
RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
> BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires
11/09/2015 at 10:11 |
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popshaft tunnel
Hey kids, let’s creatively misinterpret this as “poopshaft” and not “propshaft”!
Kidding aside, very nice. I assume that piece of floor patch is a piece of corrugated you had lying around - and nobody without a ruler will be all “hey, wait a minute - that’s not original floor!” Stiffness restored, that’s what counts. In the meantime, shame your herd are in open rebellion like that. Which of the two do you think will be easier, the Alfa or the Cit? Normally one would think an alternator swap, but by your description it’s a toss-up at best. I left “fix the Jag” out of the easy fixes matrix because I’m crazy, not stupid.
In rust-fixing news, I’m preparing
another great undertaking
. Possibly a foolish one, but we shall see. Good for no end of laughs anyway. 2m wide X 6m long, ~3.5m wheelbase.
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BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires
> Cé hé sin
11/09/2015 at 10:21 |
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Yeah it's not particularly pretty :S most of it is surface rust though so I should be alright :)
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BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires
> RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
11/09/2015 at 10:25 |
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Hah :) oops...
I made it up from a section of sheet using a sheet bender actually. If you make your first bend it tends to get in the way of making the other one in the other direction, but if you unscrew the clamps on the bending tool nearly all the way you can usually get it close enough to get a nice shallow step. It ends up a little wonky, but you can tack it in place on the body in stages to pull it straight :)
Citroen would be by far the easier job but it’s also leaking from the N/S rear suspension which could be an easy fix or could be a bastard it’s hard to tell. I’ve got a voltage regulator on the way and there’s a guid online about how to change the regulator without taking the alternator out so we’ll give that a go...
Nice acquisition! Does it drive?
Oh, and I spent the weekend previous wrecking a caravan we found dumped on the side of the road so we can get the chassis to make a car trailer. It’s only rather to 1375kg gvrw but that should be fine for most of the featherweight oldies that we go and collect :) plus it comes with working brakes and lights!
Currently pricing up box-section to make the frame and sketching out possible designs :)
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RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
> BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires
11/09/2015 at 10:38 |
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I don’t have a sheet bender - I have access to a proper box brake at work, but because you’ve got to set the flange depth for every fold, it’s not well equipped for making corrugations. A friend of my dad’s made a small manual metal brake of sorts that lives in our shop, but it’s completely rubbish and I haven’t been driven to improve it yet. I corrugated up some sheet a few months ago to
help fix a truck bed
, but for that I used a vise and some pieces of angle like a club-swinging primitive.
Suspension leaks on a Citroen: color me surprised.
Does the acquisition drive? No. Hasn’t for some years. It has a stuck engine (hopefully not too bad), but more to the point it has rotten rocker panels and more. Given that it’s a unibody (!) of 5000lb+, care must be taken to fix that before any driving is done. Red indicates rust - the rockers are a horrifying sandwich of madness with the lower half pretty much completely gone:
I’ve got to make up some long bent sections at work out of bonderized 16GA steel, and it’ll be good as new.
Oh, and the caravan car trailer is quite clever. The axle and lower frame being the only things any money was spent on making the trailer in the first place...
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BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires
> RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
11/09/2015 at 10:50 |
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Yeah the club-wielding-caveman method of sheet bending is the way that I tend to do it with anything 10” or shorter. A vice, a hammer and a guillotine are the main three tools I use for forming panels. With that you can make most things :)
Thnat rocker does look like a bugger to do. Pretty hefty construction by the looks of it, although not surprised with such a weight to carry.
Yeah we took one look at car trailer prices (~£1200 second hand) and thought ‘fuck that for a game of soldiers’. We were looking for caravan chassis on eBay but they were about £200 and all relatively far away (apparently no-one throws caravans away in the south). Plus, we're cheapskates.
Then one of my mates said ‘hang on, I drove past an abandoned caravan on my way to work the other day’ so we went out to get it :)
There's still half a wrecked caravan that needs taking to the dump, but the chassis is great! It's even got little legs so we can level it if we need to.
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RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
> BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires
11/09/2015 at 11:11 |
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The Lincoln is a trip inside and out. It’s a full 2’ from the edge of the front seat to the dash - cavernous. The tail fins from where they start on the rear doors to the back tips are a full 8’ long. Pulling the rear seat out, there’s 10’ clear to the back of the front seats from the back of the trunk. All sorts of lovely excess. Going to get all the pieces made that I need, fix the bits that fit to the dead rockers, set it up on cribbing under front and rear subframes one weekend, and weld in fresh metal for a solid day or more. Thence to get the engine right - may require pulling the oil pan, popping the heads off, out with the pistons, a quick hone-touch on the cylinder walls, fresh rings, done. Well, and the carburetor rebuilt and fresh dizzy wires, etc. It’s a 430 MEL, 7.0l high-compression open-breathing monster. 375 gross hp, actual number unknown.
In the US, a lot of states keep titles for trailers, so just picking up an abandoned trailer and refitting can be somewhat complicated... though some states have very easy rules for building one’s own trailer, which this would qualify as.
Andy Sheehan, StreetsideStig
> BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires
11/09/2015 at 11:23 |
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For a moment I thought there was actually a car part I’d never heard of called a “popshaft.”
Awesome work, though! I’m jealous of your chassis lore.