Where to begin?

A simple start

Work on the Spitfire began by inflating a flat tyre and wheeling the car out into the garden to hose off at least some of the accumulated grime. The car has been stored for around five years and apart from the occasional move from one garage to another it's really not been touched.

My current workshop is however much more generous than the single garage I've had to work in prior to moving house in 2016 so that should make life a lot easier for this restoration. I've even tidied up so there's a proper clear space to wield the spanners.

Having got the car into the workshop the number of tasks needed do seem rather overwhelming and knowing where to begin is still something of an issue even now.

Before I get too far into the current work though I should go back in time for a brief history of how things got to this point.

A very brief history lesson

I bought this Spitfire in 1999. It seems unbelievable now that at that time the car was only twenty years old (consider that my Smart Roadster is now fourteen). I drove it quite a lot over the next few years, during which time I tidied up a few things, fixed non-functioning accessories and generally put back bits that fell off.

By 2006 I'd added about 20,000 miles to the car and whilst it was mechanically OK the bodywork was showing its age. Actually it had some dirty great holes in it where it had rusted through entirely in places. I really wanted to do the Club Triumph Round Britain Reliability Run in it though so I patched up the worst bits, enlisted Richard King as co-driver and we successfully completed the 2000-odd miles of the event.

The day after getting back from that event I cashed in the road tax and took the car off the road to look at fixing it properly. Somewhere between then and now the car went away to have some work done professionally but I wasn't entirely happy with the results when it came back. This coincided with a time in my life when some other things weren't going so well either and the car got put to one side.

Fast forward a few more years and here we are in 2019. It's over twelve years since this car saw a road and it's not been in one piece for most of that time. The long delay hasn't been entirely unproductive though as I have done a lot of work on all the parts that are carefully stored away and the vast majority of them are in boxes, either fully refurbished or replaced with brand new parts waiting to be reassembled.

Oh, and I rebuilt the race car from the ground up in the meantime too!

So what's the plan then?

After a good look around the rolling shell it was clear that some significant body work would be required to put this car in a state I was happy with. This will never be a concours show car, I'm looking to build something I can use as I did when I first bought it almost twenty years ago, but I do want it to be good. To that end I've bought quite a number of panels and repair sections. Complete panels are not cheap but I'm hoping that they will make the job much easier, and neater than trying to weld in multiple repairs all over the place. 

Having got the car into the workshop the first job was to remove the hard top and to unbolt the doors and boot lid. They're all in pretty good condition and will be stored in my other workshop (yes, I have two!) for the time being. The bonnet is also unbolted and ready to remove but I will need assistance to lift that.

The first major job then will be to remove the body from the chassis so the chassis can be checked to ensure it's undamaged and straight. After that the body will be refitted and bolted down and box section steel welded in to brace the tub before removing the body again and starting to cut out and replace metal. So far I've removed all the body mounting bolts but again, I need to enlist some help to lift the body off the chassis.

Since I've only had one pair of hands available for the last few weeks I've got on with stripping all the suspension from the chassis so those parts can be inspected, cleaned, refurbished and where necessary, replaced. This also means there will be nothing getting in the way of a proper chassis inspection once the body is off. A big box of suspension, braking and steering components is on order although it will be a long time before I'm ready to start reassembly.

That's it for this time I think. By the next update work should have started in earnest.