Spitfire Body Removal Preparation #4

Not too much happening lately. With regards to free weekend time, this time of the year is not so good. Soccer, transitioning into basketball, practice and games, Halloween and other random events have limited my available time. And, of course, just when the hectic weekend schedules start to even out, the weather crashes and it's 22F in the garage. I vow to fight it this year, though, and will invest in a space heater to try and keep my garage, or at least the area that I am occupying, warmer.

I continued to strip the body of stuff that I don't want sitting in the weather. The master cylinders and pedals are out, as wells as the wiper arm boxes, washer jets, and the attachment hardware for random firewall items.

Master cylinders. You can easily see the reservoir size difference (brake on left, clutch on right). Also the defrost nozzles and hoses on the far right.

Much smarter this time with labeling and bagging everything.

Wiper wheelbox (passengers) and end where it connects to wiper motor.

Some random firewall item attachments, recorded for posterity (and future re-attachment).

I also got a closer look at the steering coupling after a while soaking in the Purple Power. Nothing too exciting, but it definitely needs software replacement.

Clean it up and she'll be good as new. Note the lockwire...when lockwashers just aren't good enough. Very popular in the nuclear power industry!

I started to play with the dashboard a bit. I had a misunderstanding that the dashpad was removable and that I could "easily" repair it outside of the car for future reinstallment. Doesn't look like this is the case. The foam is a stiff grey stuff (you can see it in the corner that I broke off in the picture below) and there is a metal backing that defines the edge of the dash that is bolted to the dash "nose". I think I'm just going to go for it and rip it off, using a heat gun to help with the adhesive and curse myself for doing it later. It has to get repaired and that's all there is to it.

Passenger's side dash pad. You can see the metal backing where I broke off the foam.

Another shot of the dash showing where the vinyl is breaking off. Very brittle after almost 50 years. The white primer was me.

Finally, I was going to remove the doors in an effort to make the body as light as possible and I forgot to look up the fact that the metal door straps need to get removed in some way. Turns out there is a rivet that needs to be ground down a bit so that it can fit back out through the hole. However, based on the time, I decided to wait on that until the next time.

Left is the body, right is the door. The pin on the door is what needs to be ground out.

That was it. Until next time...