Cosmic

I have a set of 5 Cosmic wheels for my Triumph. They are Mk2 ones apparently, or so says Lord Leon off Club Triumph forums (he's not actually a Lord, you know).

A have them a while so I decided to give one of them some attention and see what they would clean up like. Here is the before shots.



































I did this is the shed at the house, so all I had was some paint stripper, a wire brush and brillo pads (!). I gave it a go anyway. Here's what I got.




































Pity I didn't have a sand blaster. But I think I did alright with what I had. I originally planned to strip all the front, but I wanted to see what they would look like with just the spokes painted. I quite like them like that, so I may keep them that way. I don't have any wheel paint that would replace the balck, so it'll stay like that! =P




Ps - pictures are so akward on these blogs...

Yuss! Waxoyling done!

Woah, finally got that done. We had to take the chassis from an older garage and take it to a better equiped one with a compresssor to get the spraying done. So we put it on top of a Citreon Berlingo. Heh, it did the job, shame I didn't have a camera.

It's such a horrible job though, the mist of waxoyl coming out and surrounding you. We were wearing masks, but it's horibble stuff. I really don't want to be doing that too often. It's also a helluva job trying to lift a chassis above your head when it's covered in what it remarkably similar to butter in every aspect. Especially when it was just me and my dad.

I'll be able to attach the turrets now. Then I have to finish painting my wishbones to attach my suspesion then, well, everything. My halfshafts and rear brake assemblies are nearly all done. Maybe a little more paint to go. Oh, can't forget inserting polybushes.

I'll get a picture of painted parts tommorow hopeefully. It's been a long day. Hopefully nice weather tomorrow for painting...

Whats my spec going to be like?

I have a number of parts stored up for the car. Think I'll just identify these here.

I bought some Cobra bucket seats. They not a very modern seat, which is nice, because there is still comfort in them while locking you into the seat. I also got some Sabelt 4 point harnesses thrown into the deal. They were such good value, I couldn't say no.

I hope they fit alright, they have a very thin frame at the bottom and the seat has a slanted position, so height shouldn't be an issue, it would be how they fit side by side. Bah, I could sell them on easily enough if they don't.

Then the harnesss. I'm undecided if I will use thes or not. I would need to buy and bolt some eyes to the body. I don't know if normal seatbelts would fit over the seats? But Mattias and Spitfire1500 users on TriumphTourqe have both had crashes, makes me think again about using them.

Here is my suspension for the whole car - Koni adjustables. They're very prety, eh? :)

I had to wait to put them to any use though, my old springs were rubbish and I ws reluctant to use them. My spring top plates were also past it, the the threads were fubar. So I had to order new ones.

I ordered my springs and top plates from Canley Classics. I went for 440lb springs. This recommended by forumers from CT forum "TriumphTouqe", notebaly davesideways. Well he actually recommended around 480lb, but I'm just not hardcore enough (lol), plus they'd be harder to get hold of I think.

I didn't even need a spring compressor to put these together, because they're 1" shorter than normal springs. I didn't actually know how to put them together while I was looking at the parts, but then I dound the wee C shaped piece of metal and it clicked with me! All very shiney.

This is te next upgraded part - bushings. I bought Polybush branded ones. They're Red and so are the hardest type. They should keep the car pretty solid.

This is my first part for the engine. Stainless steel tubular mainfold. I also have a fast road cam for the 1500, no picture yet though. I got it secondhand, but it's in very good condition, no wear on the lobes. It's from Jigsaw though, so I have no idea how good it is, or were int he revs it would kick in or how much power it will give me. But again, it was pretty cheap and will deff sell on again if I don't want it. It would be nice to know what it can do though! Could anyone help?

I also got these. They're fiberglass arches for under the bonnet. I do not have a fiberglass bonnet. My arches are fairly rusty at this stage, so they needed replaced. I'm not sure if the orignal arches are welded on as standard? The main worry would be that they move about too much (read: wobble) due to not ebing connected to the inside of the wings. To try and avoid I plan on getting the arches tight on the bonet support bar with the brackets and bolts, then maybe add a few more than standard to stiffen them more? Then silicone a seam from the wings to the arch, then give some generous waxoyl on top of that to prevent water attacking the indside of the wing. Hopefully it will work, make the bonnet (and more importantly the front of the car ) wiegh less.


Hopefully it will turn out a good spec for a 1500. It's my first car, so I hope it turns out nice. :)

Finally updated! Story continued

It's been quite a while since I updated this, well too long, there's no excuse.

I stripped down the chassis comletely. It only needed some welding to the front box which holds the bonnet hinges and a few parts around the outriggers, nothing worrying though. Then when this was done I had it sent away for sandblasting and powdercoating. There was a lot time lost in this bit, as I had to find someone to get it blasted and powdercoat it. I also wanted to fill in the bolt holes so threads did not get filled with paint. But around school this all took unessacerily longer. But I eventually got someon to take it away and them blast it then take it on to powdercoaters (which took that pain away for me - so that was good).


Here is an image of the freshly powdercoated chassis. No a very good photo I know, but the batteries in the camera were running out and I rushed! So no close ups, but it does look nice.

I also got my turrets done along with it, after all they bolt to the chassis. I didn't get my suspension bits done such as the wisbones and rear uprights. I opted to paint these myslef. I kind of regret it now, but o well. This isn't going to be a concours car, so it wont matter, as long as the paint gives good protection for a year or so I'm happy, as I will probably try and rebuild parts of the car like the suspension etc as often as I can when it's done to keep it in good shape, and this will involve painting.

At the point of witing this I'm still waiting to get it Waxoyl inside the box sections. I've opted against just pouring it in, I'm going to wait to get a lend of a sprayer of someone so I can give good protection. Hope I don't have to wait to long! :(


Here is one of the turrets. They did not come out as good as the chassis. Don't think it's any fault of the powdercoater but of the blaster not being thorough enough. I'll not get too annoyed about it though.

This photo is taken in my bedroom, as I plan to build as much of the front suspension as I can in it wile I'm waiting on Waxoiling.

Suspension Strip Down

After the engine was taken out I could get at the suspension etc much better. It's a tough job on this car, because some of the bolts haven't moved for nearly a decade. They needed plenty of WD40. At point I really needed to put most of my body weight on them and at times stand on the ratchet. Eventually the suspension, steering rack, anti-roll bar (dodgy style links included), uprights and hubs were off.

The rear supsion was also taken apart. There were no real difficulties in this. The leaf spring came off pretty easy. And the halfshafts came of quickish too. The diff was frustrating with a mai large bolt needing to come out. I nearly completely ringed it, but I eventually got it in the end (luckily).

Sadly I've no photographic evidence of all this, but here's a random dark picture of my hardtop. Because I can...
Oh, I also took off the brakes. The calipars are looking pretty sad...
The disks look like they could be re-used. But I will probably be changing them for new, and possibly uprated ones.

This blog stuff...

Harder than I thought. Trying to find time to do will doing my A-levels is hard! If you couldn't tell I'm telling a back stoy here a bit and I got the car last June or so. I'm trying to catch up a bit. When I got the car I knew I wanted to take it all apart. It not that I didn't trust the previous owner, it's just that I wanted everything to my standard and how I would want it. Also, it would seriously beinfit me as I would learn more about the car.

It's a bit akward at the start as I was like "Where do I start?". But I just jumped in. Started to take the bonnet, front valances, bumper off. That was pretty much the front of the car off. Whent he bonnet was off I took the lights out (disconnecting them from the loom first). Also noticed a big lump of filler in the wing of the bonnet...lovely.
This is with the bonnet off. As you can see I took the dash out....see the electronics...scary! All the electronics were disconnected with the front of the car so I could take the body off. 4 people later...

the body is off!

Then only a few bolts later (and wet feet) the engine and radiator were out.

The Triumph 1500 with 1.5SU carbs. :)

Where to start?

The beginning would be good! I've preffered older cars to modern ones for a long time now, I suppose because I prefer the looks and the presence of character in them compared to the more modern mass produced ones. The engineering is a lot simplier too, which is handy since I'm only starting out.

I had to choose which one I wanted first. I scrolled around the papers and web looking for a car, even considering going to England to get one, but this always seemed akward and too expensize for what I was getting so wasn't finacially viable. I was considering an MG at times and even at one point a Herald 1200! But one day I was on the 'bay and spotted a Triumph Spitfire 1500...but I would have to go to England I bet....nope, it was rigth here in N.Ireland!

In all honesty I knew little about the car, except it was a convertable, had a 1500 engine and needed restored. Off I was to see it. Here see was, in all her....errr, beauty?When I saw it the car had the odd problem of not knowing what colour to be, red primer, BRG, yellow, black? Quickly found out it was originally Inca Yellow. I did really like the car though, it was just what I was after, it was different, as there isn't many of them here in NI. I had the feeling I was buyin gthe car that day. The list of spares was good and the man selling seemed nice and genuine - the lure of minis was too much for him to keep the Spit. After looking around long enough I put a deposit - it was mine ahaha!

Few days later went up with a recovery truck to collect the car and parts and hand the dosh over. It was nice following it down the road seeing it moving (even if it was not on the road or moving under its own power...). I couldn't wait to get started.