Hi, I thought I had better get around to posting one of my cars after lurking around for a couple of years.
P1000827a by karl stroud, on Flickr
P1000825a by karl stroud, on Flickr
P1000824a by karl stroud, on Flickr
P1000828a by karl stroud, on Flickr
P1000823a by karl stroud, on Flickr
P1000822a by karl stroud, on Flickr
DSC00239 (1024x768) by karl stroud, on Flickr
This a Triumph Spitfire which I have owned for about 24 years, in this time I have had a dolomite sprint engine tuned to about 145 BHP in it ( which broke my differential ), a Triumph 2.5 P.I. straight six ( which pulled like a train when the injection worked properly ) and the last engine before the V8 a tuned gt6 engine ( which ran nice but was missing the power of the previous engines ).
Putting a rover V8 in the spitfire is something that I have been planning to do for long time ( I bought the engine about 12 Years ago ) but kept putting the conversion off for one reason or another. I finally decided to get around to doing the conversion about 4 years ago when I pulled the car apart to restore it as the rust had got into the sills and floor again ( the car was restored about 22 years ago for the first time ) as the car was in pieces and being restored again it made planning everything out much less of a problem.
The engine in its first incarnation when put in the car was a 1978 3.5 litre rover V8 fitted with a holley 4 barrel carb and points ignition ( this was later changed to electronic ignition ), the gearbox is a LT77 5 speed fitted with a custom gear selector. The rear axle at that time was a spitfire diff fitted with a matching triumph rotoflex axle which was using a C.V. conversion instead of the rubber doughnuts. The brakes at the front are gt6 sized with a vented disc conversion with uprated pads, at the rear the brakes are the matching gt6 sized drums.
The only changes to the suspension at that time was a set of pollybushes and uprated shocks and springs, the only mods to the body was a small modification to the bulkhead so it missed the heads and the gt6 bonnet bulge was raised about 1 Inch so it missed the custom air filter that was made. The exhaust at that time was MGB V8 block hugger manifolds fitted to 1.5 inch exhaust system fitted to a pair of silencers taken the cars previous system.
P1000247 (1024x575) by karl stroud, on Flickr
DSC00261a by karl stroud, on Flickr
The car ran like this for about 2 months before the diff started getting very noisy so I decided to fix the noisy diff by fitting a stronger diff, the diff I fitted was a ford 7 inch diff from a Granada mk 3 with a better ratio of 3.38 to 1. I them also decided to uprate the entire axle as by putting a stronger diff it means the stress would now be on the triumph drive shafts and wheel bearings. To do this I made my own rear uprights which would carry the Granada bearing carrier I also had to change the Granada flanges from 5 stud to 4 stud radius of the Triumph ( so I could use the Triumph GT6 drum brakes and retain my wheels ), I reduced the length of the drive shafts to suit. I then made a stronger lower suspension arm to locate the upright and for the shocks to attach to.
DSC00254a by karl stroud, on Flickr
DSC00255a by karl stroud, on Flickr
DSC00256a by karl stroud, on Flickr
DSC00257a by karl stroud, on Flickr
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P1000336a by karl stroud, on Flickr
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DSC00278a by karl stroud, on Flickr
After I had sorted all this out and got it all working ( including having to change the speedo drive gear in the gearbox ) I had to sort out a problem that had been plaguing the car since I got it on the road, the car had been a absolute pig to start when warm first I changed the points to electronic ignition, nope not that, then I tried a new fuel pump and regulator, nope not that, so after trying a couple of other thing it turned out the carb was boiling the fuel because of the high under bonnet temps, damn. This meant I was going to have to do the EFI conversion earlier than I wanted to, I had managed to get the entire EFI set up of a range rover but to make that fit under the bonnet I had to mill 3/4 of an inch off the trumpet base and then slope the front edge of the plenum.
Next I bought a Megasquirt 3X unit to run everything, bought new injectors, fuel pressure regulator, swirl pot, injection pump, lambda sensor and other bits needed to get the injection system running. After fitting everything the car was set up to run sequential injectors but wasted spark for the ignition, this ran fine after I had managed to get the fuel and spark maps somewhere near right.
DSC00282a by karl stroud, on Flickr
DSC00285a by karl stroud, on Flickr
DSC00298a by karl stroud, on Flickr
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DSC00283a by karl stroud, on Flickr
This was running nicely about 4 months before it started to get an occasional misfire and started getting hard to start, so with the possibility that the old coil packs where going bad I decided to buy some new coil packs and go sequential ignition, this was all wired up and the car would not start at all now, thinking that there was a wiring problem on the car I decided to totally remove the cars wiring loom and replace it with a new loom made from scratch with a new fuse box and relay panel and the battery was relocated to the boot. After this was done and wired up I tried to start the car and it still would not start, now after much head scratching and swearing I finally traced the fault it was the new crank shaft position sensor had gone faulty ( it was only about 5 months old ).
DSC00387a by karl stroud, on Flickr
DSC00389a by karl stroud, on Flickr
Now that the car was running right I now fitted a new exhaust system consisting 2.5 inch piping and a pair of straight through boxes, this was always going to be fitted later when I built new custom exhaust headers but it was fitted earlier because where I live there are some very large speed humps and I damaged one of my old back boxes on one of them ( and I was only going about 10 MPH ).
DSC00330aa by karl stroud, on Flickr
This how the car stands now but future projects consist of custom exhaust headers, rear disc brake conversion, willwood pedal box with bias bar, Canley classics trunnion less upright and last but not least an eaton m112 supercharger.
On top of all that I have got two other projects on the go, a 1971 ford mustang Mach 1 which is getting total ground up restoration ( this will get its own thread later on ) and a 1988 BMW E32 735 but this will not get touched until one of the others is done.
I bet it sounds lovely! 