21st November 2023

its been a quiet few months, the car drives beautifully, no issues to report. I am still fiddling with it, and tinkering but mainly just for something to do.

I have made a carbon fibre cam cover, looks smart, covers up any blemishes and is held in place by titanium nuts 🙂

I have also replaced the driver’s side front upright/spindle. The calliper did not seem to be biting down on the disc evenly, on inspection it looked like one of the calliper securing lugs on the spindle was bent. New upright sourced, fitted and the EBC Green stuff pads now run parallel to the discs and the front brakes feel much more positive.

24th August 2023

So what’s new.. I have a separate page on all the MAJOR updates to the Spitfire this past few months, i.e. the new Emerald K6+ ecu and the amazing hunter green vinyl wrap.

Those updates can be viewed here…

Now I am back to BAU, tinkering and just enjoying the car. yesterday i took it to Quantum tuning in Maidenhead to get an issue with hot idle fixed. I did a leak test on the induction system and found a massive boost leak in a bajo that supplies vacuum to the brake servos. After that leak was fixed the car idled like a dog when hot, John fixed it in about 2 minutes!

this is the rolling road at Quantum.. Well out of my price range!

The 2nd project is to remake the Spit’s cam/rocker cover. The current one has a number of oil leaks, and despite my best effort it leaks.. and badly. So I bought a new one, shaved it of all the ugly aluminium extrusions and got Dan Yap and Yap Fab https://www.yapfab.co.uk/ to ally weld all the holes. I have made a template and will use that to make a carbon fibre cover for the cam cover. The high points have been painted with silver wrinkle paint.. Hopefully will look nice and hopefully NO oil leaks!

6th February 2023

I have now fitted a brake servo to the rear brakes, I have also upgraded the front discs to MTEC slotted and drilled vented discs and added EBC green stuff pads.. However…

I haven’t been able to test the car as I have another coolant leak at the front, just before the Davies Craig water pump.. This one was bad. Coolant managed to get into the car’s main relay/power distribution block, shorting out the auxiliary relay and burning some wires. I was at work, my poor wife was at home with the Spitfire’s horn blasting out and smoke coming from out of the front..

So I have now fitted a battery isolator and new power/relay board 8L0941822A, the beauty of the car being VW/Audi based is that parts are cheap, the replacement board cost £13.59!

While I have the car in bits I am going to re-route the car’s heater matrix return pipe to before the Davies Craig pump, hopefully that will allow coolant to flow easier round the car.

January 2023

For Christmas my wife bought me a new fuel tank for the car The original was only 20 litres, 5 US gallons and was way too small. I designed a new 10 gallon tank and had it made by www.compbrake.com. Made from 3mm aluminium with baffles and a sensor.

Before I could fit it the car developed a bad coolant leak, on examination it turned out that the 2 T pieces I was using had badly deformed, meaning that there was no way to tighten the hose clips. These T pieces feed the car’s heater. I bought 2 new aluminium Ts, these look much better than the old bits. I also had to fit a new secondary water pump and relocate the heater valve, to make room for the fuel tank.

Lastly I had to change two resistors in the fuel sender adapter (this converts the output of the sender to work with the Audi cluster). It now seems really accurate, when the fuel dropped to 1 gallon, the fuel warning came on.

Things still to do:

• Make a breather for the fuel tank
• Check the clutch… It is so heavy, make me think something is wrong
• Get a hardtop
• Get the car’s tracking checked professionally
• Fit slotted and drilled discs all round
• Fit EBC green stuff brake pads all round
• Make a better rear diffuser

13th January 2023

I took the car out for a drive and to get some fuel, it was so low that if I accelerated too hard the engine started to die! So slowly I drove to Datchet, about 5 miles from where I live. After adding £30 of fuel, about 1/2 a tank, I went for a pose round Windsor. As i left Windsor I noticed steam coming from the coolant header tank. When I turned the electric water pump on the temp plummeted, if I turned on the car heater pump the engine started to get hot. The temp fluctuating between 80 and 110 Deg C.

So I stripped out the fuel tank and all the cooling pipes are started from scratch.

It looks like I got my pipes backwards.. Under the bonnet/hood all you can see are 2 x 11/2″ aluminium tubes, one comes from the engine, the other goes back to the water pump/thermostat.. I had it plumbed in backwards. So…

Now the Davies Craig EWP80 pumps water out of the bottom hose and back towards the engine’s thermostat, the other pipe carry hot water out of the engine and to the top hose and radiator fan control.. Phew.. hopefully that is now sorted.

While I had the fuel tank out I plumbed the Lockheed brake servo in to the front brakes (I had been using it with the clutch). Brakes bled.. and car all back together.

A quick test drive showed the front brakes are now very sharp, in the damp they lock up quiet easily. I will fit a servo to the rear brakes at some point to balance them up.