Triumph Spitfire Restoration - Landing the Tub

For the first time in a long time, the title doesn't have "Body Repair" in it. Of course, there still a lot of that left to do, but change is good! To the flick...

In all honesty, I did do a bit of body repair on a short visit over last weekend but it really wasn't worth a dedicated post at the time. Here's my quick video on it:

I finished up the plug welds on the rear valance (lots of other welding to do to fill in the remaining gaps)  and also fit a patch from the black car for the portion of the boot lid gutter that was rusted out. All of this was pretty straight-forward and uneventful.

Random shot of some of the plug welds already ground down.

The boot lid gutter repair. Sorry for the blurriness.

That was about 3 hours of my life, taking advantage of a gap in weekend sports.

More work, though no real corrective work, was done this week as I landed the tub (or body) on the chassis for the first time since separating them on June 8th, 2016. Yes, that's 602 days!

I didn't take a whole lot of pictures because, like I said, there wasn't a lot of technical work done here. Basically, I rigged the body up with the engine hoist and lifted it. Then I man-handled the chassis into position, and lowered the body back down.

While it was a bit painful getting everything aligned and moved  and all, it was, again, not difficult; just time consuming.

Landed.

My kingdom for a seat...and an electrical system, steering wheel...brakes...a gas pedal...

I did have some issues. For one, I broke the weld on the capture nut on the passenger's side outrigger. This pisses me off because 1) it's new and it should not break, 2) I cannot get the bolt out now since the nut just turns and I can't get to it, and 3) I'm not sure how I'm going to fix it if when I figure out how to get to it.

Second, the two holes for the driver's side radio tower bolts are off enough that I have to enlarge the holes (this is minor in my opinion) and third, the bracket for the front of the body on the driver's side that I welded on forever ago isn't quite aligned front to back, so that needs to be moved backward by about 1/2" or so. Better than it being off side to side, however, so I'm not sure if I will just "persuade" it to move back or what.

That was about it for that night. I may get a few hours over there this weekend, but I'm not counting on it with basketball and soccer commitments. Also, my Philadelphia Eagles are in their third Superbowl and this time, they are going to (better) win it! Cheers!