The Mid Engined Turbo Triumph Spitfire

Mid Engined Triumph Spitfire Audi 1.8 Turbo 400 bhp 685 kg

Brakes, Steering and Suspension

The car came with no steering, suspension, brakes or hubs, so where to start?

the aim of the project was to build the car for sub £30 components, obviously excluding the car and engine. The only other parts which exceeded the £30 budget were the wiring looms, the Audi Quattro rear subframe and brakes and all the steel.

I bought a set of BMW 1 series front hubs and discs, spitfire suspension uprights, spitfire shocks, a caliper rebuild kit for the Audi brakes and both Spitfire and BMW 1 series steering racks.

The rear calipers and discs were rebuilt, and look great.

The front was more of an issue, i had to covert the MacPherson struts to accept upper and lower ball joints. The required turning aluminium top mounts. These bolt into the standard Spitfire upper wishbones.

The lower ball joint is mounted in some 15mm steel, and welded into the lower A frame. For steering I used the BMW trackrod arms and outer steering links machined to attach to the Spitfire steering rack.

Due to the 17″ rims I had to lower raise the suspension mounts by 50mm, this lowers the chassis. and gives the car a more of a menacing stance on the road.

For brake hydraulics I used a VW Passat brake master cylinder without the brake booster, i just couldn’t fit the booster under the bonnet. If that causes an ossue I will have to invest in a dual remote booster at a latter stage.

For the clutch I used an Audi 80 slave cylinder coupled to a rebuilt Spitfire brake master cylinder.

Rear suspension

I had a real nightmare getting the rear of the car right, I went through three different sets of springs and shocks, starting with a set of MX5 coilovers, these were way to “fat” i then bought some Koni coilovers only to find out they were bike shocks, then I bought a set of Lotus Elise front shocks, they fitted beautifully but the springs were to weak, the I bough some Lotus Elise Bilstein coil overs, these were rotten, but I did manage to use the springs and now the car sits just right.

One of the rotten Lotus Elise rear Bilstein shock absorbers

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