Friday, harbor, eh? did my internship at UW, always wanted a piece of real
estate in the San Juans
anyway, I think Barry Schwartz put something on the VTR web site about
replacing the spring, the URL is www.vtr.org if you haven't been there-
anyway, I would either look at Barry's article if it's there or get a
Haynes or Bentley manual and see how they say to replace spring, it'll
teach you a bit about the engineering- as I understand it, the late
spitfires had a design change in mounting to the differential, this allowed
the spring center to rock a bit to reduce a tendency for the outside rear
wheel to tuck under the car in a hard turn (just like the old Corvairs)-
but the mounting hardware should be tight against the differential housing-
this needs to be inspected through the access plate behind the seats and in
front of gas tank (under carpet, roughly square, about 10-12" across as I
recall, two sheet metal screws hold it in place)
I guess I'd disconnect the lower end of both shocks and then get the rear
wheels unweighted and then make sure there's no looseness of the mounting
stuff/studs by inspecting via this access port as someone gently pulled up
and down on one wheel, then if no problem found, I'd get the car up higher
(on a hoist if possible), and carefully inspect all the outboard stuff
(inspect the bushings at the ends of the spring and make sure there's no
play at either top or bottom of the vertical links/trunnions)
if there's no play anywhere in the system and nothing's bent or modified by
a previous owner, the spring is likely the culprit
watch your fingers!
don't forget to reconnect the shocks when you're done inspecting!
if you decide to replace spring, the manuals say the spring has a front and
back, but the one I got from Moss had no marking and appeared completely
symmetric-
may be easier to just remove seats if you decide to replace the spring
also, one has to salvage the central mounting bits from the old spring and
a vice came in handy when I had to compress the center portion of the
spring to get the center pivot bolt holes to line up when I transferred
these parts
I learned a lot from Barry's mail to me when I did it in spring of '97,
he's a great resource for spitfires in general, and I'd be happy to send
some ideas about how to avoid the problem of getting the studs to thread if
you proceed- honestly, like anything you do on these cars, it can be a
little frustrating (and it has a few grunt moments), but it's not rocket
science
best wishes
Joe
The flogging will continue until morale improves
Joseph R Schneider, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Surgery, Northwestern University Medical School
100 Burch, Evanston Hospital, 2650 Ridge Ave, Evanston, IL 60201
voice: (847) 570-2565 fax: (847) 570-2899 e-mail: joe-schneider@nwu.edu
world wide web page: http://pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~jschneid/JRS.HTML
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