Yet another project....The uncrashed spitfire

Well car is off the road again, few problems, bent a rear radius arm and buckled a wheel so taken it off the road for the winter. Set of twin 40's going on it, and some new custom made suspension, also a custom made gearbox eventually.

oh yeah and the twin exhaust is going in favour of this bad boy

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great thread Matt,

I've just read through page 4 again (the last page) and you realy are very lucky to be alive!

Is this car as much for as the last? :)
 
this car doesnt like being driven seems to spit its parts out the basket everytime, i think its cause it saw what i did to the last one.

Its built to full race regulations so i just need an injection of cash to get it on the track.
 
Been working my ass off for a while and the car hasnt moved an inch.

So what do you do, yeap take it to bits again :D

It popped a core plug during the bitter cold winter, so exhaust manifold and carbs have to come off so good time to replace both.

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Underbonnet gets a nice coat of paint first of all though, 2pk paint and some por15 for the black

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New suspension going in to add some adjustability, all custom made for me.

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And onto the exhaust.

old system was a silly noise maker so had to go,

here it is cut off.

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So the new exhaust system
first idea, clean and simple

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but hung too low so needed to re-think.

So decided to make it follow the chassis and curve round the diff to make it as low as possible, So this is what i came up with

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and here it is cut and tacked and in position, you can see how the bends flow with the chassis.

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Just plucking up the gutts to make the final cut

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i dunno what the r1 tubing is made out of but it wont weld at all, its not stainless as i have welded the other stainless section fine, i cant understand it just goes white and cracks the weld as it cools, possibly chromealloy of somesorts
 
no problem i just took a larger bit of steel tubing heated it up and pushed over the chromealloy (pretty sure it is) let it cool and i have a very tight join and some steel to weld to.
 
Jobs a good un, just needs take off and welded up, r1 seems to have its pipe made up of chromealloy, so i just made up a steel sleave heated it up and made it a really tight fit onto the chromealloy, then tacked it up.

I dont think i could get it mounted much higher, im quite pleased with it.

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and round the diff

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Strange, I emptied the midget of water over the winter as I couldn't remeber how much antifreeze if any I last put in there. Went to fill it up today and exactly the same core plug has gone. Another job I could have done without!

Will be intrested to see how yours comes out when using twin 40's. I have 2 DHLA 40's on mine and have been suffering oil leaks here there and everywhere since.
 
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This core plug is always the first one to go, its in an area which has the least amount of water.
Engine is spot on oil leaks wont be a problem, switching carbs wont affect that.

What engine is your midget? 1500? if so its the same engine as mine.
 
Doufus, bet you lost the breather system from the rocker cover to the intake at the same time? If so, just reinstate it. It maintains the slight negative crankcase pressure that's required to stop oil working its way through the seals. You may need to tap a hole or two in your intake.
 
pah re-route that oiley air out the engine, fit a catch tank and fit a breather to the block aswell at the same time.

Finally got it done, just need to clean it all up now and decide if im gonna paint or polish.

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Lashout_UK said:
Doufus, bet you lost the breather system from the rocker cover to the intake at the same time? If so, just reinstate it. It maintains the slight negative crankcase pressure that's required to stop oil working its way through the seals. You may need to tap a hole or two in your intake.
Click to expand...

I tried a couple of things relating to this. One suggestion was routing a pipe from the breather down below sump level, this didn't really have much effect.

I also tried routing the breather back to the air intake and this also didn't really help.

I was contemplating drilling a whole in the intake manifold but I have read having it feeding into just 1 of the 4 intakes can cause an imbalance. After a lot of reading and googling I have never found a definate answer on what the ideal solution is.

Currently it is being fed into a catch tank with a breather. Any suggestions are more than welcome.

P.S It is the 1500 triumph engine. I had a core plug go on the other side a couple of years back. The MGOC said you can fit them dry, unfortunatley i didn't find it to be the case and it was a PITA to get a good seal, think I ended up using a gasket seal type goop, hopefully this one might be easier.
 
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shouldnt need a breather on the intakes, i have one in each intake port but they are not breathers they feed to the megajolt unit.

To be honest im a believer in basics, leaking oil = new gaskets needed.


Taken : Yeah Oxy Torch used although with thinwalled pipe blowtorch could have been used, you only need it red hot.
 
I replaced the sump gasket, and I was still getting it. I was even getting some out of the dipstick hole. No idea. maybe there is somthing more fundamental wrong.

I haven't run it since i altered a couple of other bits, so I will find out if the problem is still there when I can get it on the road.
 
Oil out of the dipstick hole means it's overfilled, pressurising (i.e. there's a blocked breather somewhere), OR that you've got worn rings/pistons/bores and that blow-by is pressurising the crankcase and blowing it out of the dipstick.
 
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