On Mon, 2 Nov 1998, Thomas Carney wrote:
> That car is really nice! One question though, what happened to the
> bulge? Are these the Spit6 bodies that were put on TR5 frames hence
> the engine sits lower?
Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding your reference here. But none of the
works Spitfires -- rallye or race -- had six-cylinder engines.* Therefore,
no bulge originally on any of them. And the bodies were never on the TR5
frame: a. it didn't exist until the career of the works Spitfires was
nearly over, and b: no way it would fit together. TR gearboxes were used
at times in some of the works Spitfires, though.
[*There is always an exception. AFTER the "Macau" Spitfire was run in the
Far East, it made its way to the US, where Kastner fitted a six-cylinder
engine. The car then apparently became somewhat of a test-bed for
developing the GT6's racing potential. That car has remained a
six-cylinder car ever since and has existed as a six for something over
30 years of its 33-year existence. That makes it almost "original"!]
Also, the works rallye cars and "endurance" cars had primarily the
fastback shape in common. I think it was for one event and one event only
that the rallye cars borrowed the faired-headlamp bonnets of the LeMans
cars. Most of the time, the rallye cars had "normal" headlamp position
often augmented by extra lamps grafted to the bonnet inboard of the
regular headlamps.
> What ever happened to the guy who said he had
> the machinery or knew someone that could make fiberglass replicas? He
> was US based...
He's around and is or was on the list. He and I chatted a bit about this
sometime back. This would not be an inexpensive undertaking, particularly
if the desired result would be a quality product that fitted easily and
well and maintained original features such as the inner wheel wells,
support tubes and hinge pivot brackets. After seeing some of the earlier
"replica" bonnets and hearing horrible stories about struggles to make
them half-way presentable and useful, I'd not want to go through that
sort of thing!
--Andy
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* Andrew Mace, President and *
* 10/Herald/Vitesse (Sports 6) Consultant *
* Vintage Triumph Register <www.vtr.org> *
* amace@unix2.nysed.gov *
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