1969 Triumph Spitfire Mk3: Long term re-build 4AGE

[krissto]

A little more 2008 progress with day-glo coloured sprockets and a prototype upper bracket for the alternator relocation.

 


The gloves hanging out of the cabinet appear to be giving me a message?  ;-)

And then it got lobbed back onto the chassis and the tub reunited....

























The photos are slightly out of sequence, but the overall progress can be seen...

Thanks,
Chris

[percy]

Hi

Been following this as i am doing a similar project 77 1500 with a 4age, i presume you are cutting a few inches into the bulkhead to clear the air intake box?

Thanks

[krissto]

Apr 12, 2021 21:13:26 GMT percy said:

Hi

Been following this as i am doing a similar project 77 1500 with a 4age, i presume you are cutting a few inches into the bulkhead to clear the air intake box?

Thanks

Actually, no.  The AE86 (RWD) inlet manifold is clear of the bulkhead, so needs no cutting.  The only modification to the firewall is the 'cranked' section to clear the sensors at the rear of the cylinder head, which can be seen in my pictures.

[krissto]

With the engine back in the car, 2008 saw the development of the fuel system, electrical and cooling.  First was the fuel tank.  I sent a new Spitfire 1500 tank to a specialist who made me a new alloy item with integral swirl pot.  Safety foam filled, with VDO DIP tube sender, recess to allow diff access, roll over vent valve, JIC unions etc...










As any Spitfire owner  will  know, the tank sits between the rear wheel arches and has a flange all around its centre so as to bolt it in place.  Sadly, the maker of my new alloy tank decided to delete this option, so I ended up with having to make all sorts of brackets and stainless straps to hold it in place.  Undeterred, I carrid on and got a compromise installation sorted...

 






It ended up being a hideous mess of chopped up B&Q brackets and rushed welding...

 






...and a complicated set of plumbing to provide a lifter pump to feed the collector/swirl pot and Wallbro pump for the injection supply.








At this point I decided that at least I could get the engine running and prove the various electrical/cooling/fuel systems out.  Needless to say that this tank installation has been replace by a bespoke Pro-Alloy tank and much simplified system.  More of that in posts to follow.
Thanks,
Chris

[krissto]

It has been while since my last post. Now we go into late Spring/Summer of 2009 and the engine bay is filling up with stuff. Please bear in mind that this is by no means the final product and much has changed since. The intention, as stated in the previous posts, was to prove the electrical mods, fuel system etc., and get it running. Note that the steel wheels have been replaced at that time with 14" AllyCat Rallye Special.

Points to note (all superseded now):



- Using the cast iron exhaust manifold and my own mild steel downpipes.

- Braking system only single circuit.

- Pipercross filter not suitable for the car when bonnet down!

- Large 60A alternator high up on N/S.

- Radiator is full width but not the correct core.



I could go on and on, but I want to get these images out of the way and move onto more interesting engineering since that time. However, the setup you see was fired up and running in 2009 and all systems checked out okay. The only snag encountered was the fact that the injectors were clogged/seized and were sent off for ASNU cleaning. After that, the engine purred...

Picures:





























Oh, and the huge battery only used for getting it started...

Thanks for watching,
Chris

[krissto]

Gosh, has it really been nearly a month since my last post? Tut-tut to me...

So we now move onto what became a busy 2010, with all sorts of revised ideas on the path to achieving what I want out of this car. With the engine assessed as being functional and my other systems okay, time to pull it all apart!  Body tub off and some pics of the custom propshaft and the mods to the T50 transmission so that the clutch arm was further up and not interfering with the chassis:












Some might look at this critically and question the U/J angles.  It's around 6.5 degrees declination at the gearbox, but is equalised at the diff.  Also, the output from the gearbox is on a sliding spline.  I believe that all this will cancel out and not cause excessive vibration?  In any case, I am not building this car for daily use nor long motorway cruising.  The external clutch slave/arm has...guess what?... been superseded.  Posted here just to keep the timeline going.  Oh, and the experiments with magnets and reed switches on the rear of the T50 did not work out, so a Brantz conversion on the T50 speedo drive is now in place.  More of that when we get onto later uploads.
Next update might be fairly soon - given this shocking weather of late - meaning stuck indoors...
Chris
  

[OAY842F]

Ah. Spitfire. I'm loving the 80's vibe with dayglo paint etc and your proper journey with this. I have very little experience of Spits... except for one summer in about 87 or 88 when a friends brother was "looking after" a Spit while his friend was abroad. Cue the inevitable stuffing into an immovable object. This was about 2 weeks before the car was due to be returned having had some love and coddling over the summer... frantic chassis swap and bonnet replacement - that took us all a few evenings. Not sure whether he ever owned up to that one. Happy days.

[jimi]

Interesting to see the differences between that 4A-GE and the MR2 version.
LThe inlet manifold is the opposite way (intake at the "front" of the engine) The alternator is also on the opposite side of the engine.
Does that engine use the waxstat controlled AAV ( Auxiliary Air Valve) on the intake for cold starting ?
The later MR2's also have the IAT (yellow sensor) in the intake ducting not screwed into the manifold. It looks very similar to the early "1a" MR2 4A-GE.

[krissto]

Hello Jimi,
The manifold is from the AE86 RWD Corolla GT and does indeed have the air thermo sensor on the plenum.  I guess this is the same for the early 1A version of the  AW11 MR2?  The stock AE86 alternator is low down on the O/S, but I have moved mine to the N/S, higher up and similar to the placement on a Carina 4A.  As for the  cold start, we have a time switch and a standard wax-stat air valve that is supplied by engine coolant.  My 4AGE is quite 'racy' when warming up, as it will be on early MR2s.
Thanks,
Chris

[nze12]

May 21, 2021 19:35:10 GMT krissto said:

Oh, and the experiments with magnets and reed switches on the rear of the T50 did not work out, so a Brantz conversion on the T50 speedo drive is now in place.  More of that when we get onto later uploads.

Really interested in this - I have a dilemma coming up on how to marry a mechanical speedo to drivetrain that no longer contains the output bits.

The rest of your build story makes good reading too!


Cheers
Ken.

[jimi]

May 24, 2021 20:21:10 GMT krissto said:

Hello Jimi,
The manifold is from the AE86 RWD Corolla GT and does indeed have the air thermo sensor on the plenum.  I guess this is the same for the early 1A version of the  AW11 MR2?

Yes, it changed around 1987 to being located in the inlet ducting

The stock AE86 alternator is low down on the O/S, but I have moved mine to the N/S, higher up and similar to the placement on a Carina 4A.

The MR2 alternator is up just under the intake plenum

As for the  cold start, we have a time switch and a standard wax-stat air valve that is supplied by engine coolant.  My 4AGE is quite 'racy' when warming up, as it will be on early MR2's

Yes  same setup on all the MK1 MR2's they can rev up to 2/2500 rpm when cold, gradually reducing to 800 when up to temp. The waxstat is notorious on MR2's for sticking and causing problems. A very common mod is to bypass the waxstat and fit a manual "choke" works very well, I've had one fitted for years, on cold start the engine idles around 1500rpm and I have auto switch off after 3 mins. If your interested there's 3 articles here about the modification.  Linky


Thanks,
Chris

[biturbo228]

I'd also be very interested in any solution to the 'electric signal/mechanical speedo' conundrum as I've got a similar future problem with connecting the AJ6/Getrag 290 to a mechanical speedo in a Triumph 2000 mk1. I adore the gauges in that so wouldn't want to swap them out for electric ones. Swapping out the internals would be an option, but haven't worked that one out yet.

You can get clever electronic boxes from the States that convert electric signals into a cable driven output, which is another option.

Also, the UJ angles look fine. So long as they cancel each other out. Although saying that, the Spitfire and GT6 propshaft UJs are on completely different planes, with the gearbox as standard pointing pretty much directly at the diff nose and the diff being angled slightly downward if anything. Fine when you've only got 60-120ish lb-ft, but I've got a bit of a theory that the reason these diffs suffer with the torque of a 2.5l is the pulsing effect of the mismatched UJs amplifies the torque hit to the gears once a rotation.

Later Spitfre 1500s had a CV on the propshaft which would massively reduce the issue if fitted to the rear where the main mismatch is, but I've mostly seen them fitted to the front on standard cars which strikes me as a bit odd.

tl;dr prop looks fine

[krissto]

Really sorry to disappoint you all, but I have gone fully electronic with my gauges.  I have Caerbont Automotive Instruments (Speedy Cables) Eclipse International speedo, tacho, fuel and  temperature gauges fitted to my original Mk3 dash.  See www.smiths-instruments.co.uk/international/chrome-bezel

The speedo drive is a long story, but here goes:
1 - The output from the Toyota T50 transmission is a worm gear and sender unit that would have fouled on the Spitfire chassis and  certainly could not  drive a cable - even with a 90 degree 'angle drive' adaptor.
2 -  The AE86/4AGE ECU needs a speed signal input, taking the form of a simple reed switch inside the Toyota/ND speedo.

So, I machined the T50 sender to be somewhat shorter and re-threaded the M22 section.   The T50 sender worm/gear drive ratios are such that the cable rotates one turn for every propshaft turn.  The Toyota/ND AE86 speedo has four magnetic sections such that the reed switch pulses four times for every propshaft rotation.  As luck would have it, this Brantz device (  www.brantz.co.uk/product-page/japanese-gearbox-sensor-br3 ) gives out four pulses per revolution.  I do not need the cable drive at the rear so machined this away so that I have ample clearance to the chassis.  As I am an Electronics/Embedded Software Engineer, it was not that difficult to knock up a 'widget box' to provide the ECU with a reed relay signal and split this out to the Eclipse speedo.  That speedo is fully programmable, given the tyre data, number of propshaft pulses etc.  So, all in all, my ECU will be happy and think that it is controlling an AE86 Corolla GT - and the speedo can be calibrated very accurately.  One day, if I win the lottery, I will commission Caerbont to make me a set of electronic gauges that replicate the quaint Mk3 Spitfire Jaeger instruments - but that may never happen!
Chris.  
 

[Darkspeed]

May as well drop this stuff into this thread as at some point they may join the whole.


Some months ago now I had some parts sent over to me to do a bit of work on - the job has been dragging on a bit due to one thing and another and today I now have all of the parts to complete the task.

1" ID CDS makes up the main tube and 1" OD tube for the support tube.

The original design done by someone in the US I think was functional








krissto was happy enough for them to follow this design but I was struggling to build such and have my name on it.


So this is what I am doing - 45 degrees tubes are from tube-bender - tube-bender.co.uk/ used Tom for the repairs to my Stratos and tubes for the cage in the G15's








The Cross tube may end up in 7/8 CDS - not decided on that yet

Jig build next

[biturbo228]

Neat! Looking good to me

[krissto]

Thanks Darkspeed.

[Darkspeed]

Plan this weekend is to get the jig done and most of the weld preps - Has to fit in between stripping the kitchen and gardening ! What the is the world coming to...


Box section ready for welding together for the jig




Steel strip for tabs







Nearly done




Done




Drilling and welding next - early start tomorrow then

[krissto]

Excellent progress - thanks.  My rear caliper brackets were collected yesterday, but need a light ream before they will fit correctly.  Then they will be dropped off at a local company for zinc coating.  Looks like the planets will align soon and the car can be reunited with the garage floor.  I really appreciate the hard work, Darkspeed.

[Darkspeed]

Jig - Almost takes as long to make these things than it does the actual wishbones.

Holes





Jig foundation





Tabs aligned





Lets do some measuring and calculating








Notch the tube









Clean it up and check the fit









Check that its all as expected








All meets the expectations of the paper calculations. Next stage is to complete the jig with a main tube end stop - notch the other main tube - Notch the 1" and fit a couple of supports as the 1" will need to be raised 1/8 - probably require a couple of diagonals on the jig.

[Darkspeed]

Had a right old game trying to find the right size UNF bolt to finish the jig - Was almost at the point of having to order one.
Let the pictures speak - Tacked up and waiting for diagonals on the jig and the 1" leg











Checking checking checking











Cheers