A Triumph Swordfish 1500 - On The Road

[Paul L]

Goodwood Breakfast Club – Classic Car Sunday



As you know, the cars on display at these events are strictly ‘By Invitation’ only.

So, I was literally dancing with joy when I saw this arrive in my inbox today.



The fact I finally updated the photo of my car that Goodwood had on record may have helped.

From on the road in primer:



To a cropped version of this (obviously not my mews house ):



My aim while building my car was that it would look at home at The Goodwood Revival.

”Oh happy days!”

Cheers, Paul.

[peterux]

Wow, that is fantastic news, well done!!

[Paul L]

Peterux - Thanks, I still can't quite believe it.

But B&B now booked for the night before.

Unfortunately, I will either have to keep the bonnet closed...

Or finally tidy up the engine bay.

Cheers, Paul.

[Paul L]

Countdown to Goodwood – Part 1
Building inner front wheel arches has been on my ‘To Do’ list for years now.

However, recently, I was at the Ace to meet a friend attending a bike gathering.



I was allowed inside the car park and the Swordfish generated a bit of interest.



Including Mark Wilsmore, the Ace owner, who came over for a chat when I arrived.

Anyway, with the bonnet up, a Spitfire 1500 owner was singing the praises of having a radiator shroud.

I did fit the wider radiator and even in London traffic I haven’t had any over heating issues. < Touch Wood >

However, I figured this would be a way of getting back into fabrication work, so…

Radiator Shroud

Back to the CAD (Cardboard Aided Design) and Plan A went above the front chassis.



Then Plan B went under the chassis, but needed to be in two parts to fit into place.



This design failed when I opened the bonnet.



Note – Where high speed bumps meet low point of bonnet and scrape away the paint.

So, Plan C became a shape like this that would be attached to the front, rather than the back.



The sides will be held in place by the bolts holding the radiator in place.



Plan D will cut the top edge of the side panels down a fraction to avoid the closed bonnet.



The sides will be joined together by straps across the top.



I’m sure there will be some more fine tuning, but this is the basic idea I ended up with.





I dug out some of my ‘off cuts’ and it looks like I will be joining smaller pieces together.



I will also be making a joint panel for the cockpit, at the back of the gearbox cover.





Which will be cut/hammered in place to see what works best.

With a bit of luck, I’ll be making a start on the metal work this week.

End of Part 1…

[Paul L]

Countdown to Goodwood – Part 2

Lipstick
Giving my car a yellow nose band really helped it to stand out.

Unfortunately, it also highlights the grime of driving around London.
(This is after washing the car!)



I’d ordered another pot of paint from Jawel’s.



Sanded down and wiped clean the old yellow paint.



At which point, I discovered the new paint was a different shade than the old.
(Despite using the same supplier, paint colour name & RAL code.)



I abandoned any idea of just getting close to the edges and Plan B involve masking tape.



A convincing “paint added by a mechanic in the pits in a bit of a rush” look.



It looks better without the masking tape, if you ignore the runs visible from space!



With ‘zero’ chance of rain over night…



I left the front of the car like this, with the cover held in place.



A few hours later, it looked like this.



Thankfully, the paint was now touch dry, so I wiped it down and covered it up.



It is still misty outside this morning, but, at some point, I will have a close look at the finish.

Although, I will leave it until closer to Goodwood before sanding the paint runs out.
(To ensure the paint has hardened as much as possible before I do.)

Whose dumb idea was it to build a car without a garage?

Until next time, take care, Paul.

[Lucky@LeMans]

I find that designing all the sheet metal parts using CAD works best every time !

[Mitchelkitman]

What about a shroud that is made of GRP and is part of the bonnet? make using your CAD and test it to see that it just misses the rad when the bonnet is closed. Maybe I'm not anywhere close to seeing the whole picture though?

[Paul L]

Lucky -

Mitchelkitman – That could work, but I don’t want to add any extra weight to the bonnet.
(Which is already quite heavy due to the extra strengthening I did before.)

Similarly, I will design the inner wheel arches to be fixed in the engine bay.
(Even though the original Spitfire bonnet had the wheel arches attached.)

First Steps
I used a length of box section steel to hammer the edges of the side panels 90 degrees.



Each side panel will be two sections rivetted together.



Obviously, this would be easier if I had bigger sheets of aluminium to play with.

As the top panel will be made up of 7 individual pieces.
(Sorry the photo is blurred.)



I’ll try to cut out the bottom section today and do some more test fitting before assembly.

Cheers, Paul.

[Paul L]

Slow Progress

Even though I had cut out the side panels, I went back to double check the templates

Passenger side was as expected.



But the driver’s side was not.



Given that I cut that side of the bonnet off completely, the joint is thicker.

Nothing a slight trim wouldn’t take care off.
(The bottom edge was rounded off to give more clearance to the front grill.)



After trimming the aluminium panels to match, it was time to start joining them together.





The second curved line of rivets matched the shape of the panel underneath.



Panel #2.





Next up was the top panels and the first job was to put some bends on each end.



Then more drilling.



Plan A was to attached these two pieces to another three sections, like so.
(As this was the best use of the off cuts I had to play with.)





But this was going back to my old ‘over-engineering’ bad habits.

So, Plan B was to use 5 x smaller sections that will have a slight bend in them.



Joined the two sections of each top panel together.



At which point, it started to rain and I was working outside, so stopped to do other things.

Quickly clamped the four pieces I’ve made together to give the general idea.



Until next time, take care, Paul.

[Paul L]

Getting There…
Drilled the five brackets that will connect the two top panels.



Drilled holes in one side and just pushed the bolts in place to locate the top panels.



Marked up, drilled holes, filed smooth and fitted the brackets to one of the top panels.



Then drilled the holes in the other side panel, using a clamp to ensure the holes lined up on both pieces.



With all the nuts and bolts tightened on both sides I had this.



Which allowed me to mark and drill the holes in the other top panel.



Quite a few rivets later…



Next up was the bottom panel and I had enough of the extractor fan ally left over to make it in a single piece.





Some more CAD work gave me the odd shapes required to secure the bottom panel.





These will be rivetted to the ends of the bottom panel like so.



And then bolted to the side pieces like this.



Not quite at the right height, but this gives a good idea of the final shape.



I will also make a bracket to connect the bottom panel to the front chassis.

But I need to have everything fitted into place before I can do that.

Unfortunately, at this point, rain stopped play.

So, until next time, take care, Paul.

[Paul L]

Cutting it close…
Have to keep reminding myself it is July, as the weather is so crap.

Rivetted the support brackets to the bottom panel.





Pulled out an assortment of brackets and found a winner.



This will attach the bottom panel to the front of the chassis.



I then butchered one of the other pieces to re-enforce the bolt hole on the bottom bracket.



Drilled holes and bolted the side panels to the radiator support.



Painted the bracket black, as it was too visible through the front grill.



Here is the whole thing bolted in place.



Might spray the nut and bolt attached to the chassis black tomorrow morning.



But it is doing its job of pushing the bottom panel down ‘a bit’.



The back of the bottom panel clears the bottom of the bonnet, when the bonnet is open.
(And yes, the inside of the bonnet needs to be cleaned, which I also did today!)



End of Part 1…

[Paul L]

Part 2
The next job was the gearbox cover join cover.

My original plan was to make this in a single piece.

But the more I looked at it, the harder it seemed to be, given my limited skills/tools.

So, Plan B was a three piece approach…



First job was to put a couple of bends in the middle section.







The neat fold lines quickly disappeared as I tried to turn this into a curve.



But at least I was in the right ball park.



Note – This would have been a lot easier if the gearbox cover wasn’t plastic.
(As I could have simply hammered it into place.)

Next up was the passenger side bottom section.



After riveting that piece to the middle section I was two thirds of the way there.



Driver’s side bottom bracket.



Which gave me the complete cover.



It turned out a bit more ‘lumpy’ than I would have liked, but that will do for now.



Weather permitting, I will take the car for a test drive tomorrow morning.

I will then head down to a B&B near Goodwood trying to dodge any possible rain.

Will post a full report when I get back.

Cheers, Paul.

[Paul L]

Goodwood Breakfast Club – Sunday, 30/07/23

Saturday
Topped up with petrol.



Which also marked the start of my weekend’s cloud watching.



It was just starting to rain on my drive home, so I rushed to pull the covers on.
(I was parked in the street so I could check the engine oil level later on.)



But, as soon as I finished covering the car, the sun came back out.

Shoved my new car cover and a small bag in the boot, along with my tool bag.



Approximately 3 hours and 100 odd miles later the car was tucked up at the B&B.



Note – I used my leather headlight grille covers to protect the car cover from any sharp edges.



Sunday
I was packed up and ready to go by 6am and pushed the car out of the B&B before starting it.
(Which was hard to do on the gravel drive.)

Got to Goodwood and there was a holding pen before the circuit opened at 7am.



Chatted to the owners of these two Hot Rods, who were also on the ‘Rods ‘n’ Sods’ forum.





The ’32 Ford was an IVA build, so we had an interesting chat about re-body rules, etc.

As it turned out, both the rods were being displayed on the track, a bit further along from here.



Whereas, I was in the pits.



Looking back at my old photos from the 2019 Revival, this was the same pit area back then!



I was able to get a good look around before the gates opened to the public at 8am.
(I’ll post more photos another day, after I’ve gone through my GoPro video footage.)

It was a really good event and I can’t tell you how proud I was to be part of it.

Almost lost my voice by the time it ended at 12 noon, as I talked to a LOT of people.

The more people heard about the HUGE amount of work that went into it, the more they liked it.

I have a small collection of build photos in a folder that helped to illustrate that is more custom than kit.

It really was a show of two halves.

First half – Lots of people and cars in lovely sunshine.





Second half – “Not so much.”





It had stopped raining when I left and there were occasional light showers on the way home.

Unfortunately, that ended 10 miles from home, when the traffic ground to a crawl and the heavens opened.

This is what I looked like when I got in.



It hasn’t stopped raining here since, but, at some point, I will need to remove the covers and bail the car out!

Until next time, take care, Paul.

[peterux]

Sounds like a fantastic adventure!!
It must have been a great feeling parked in those historic pits.
I am struck by how 'ordinary' most cars looked compared to yours.

Great photo's , thanks for sharing, Peter

[Mick O'Malley]

10/10!

Regards, Mick

[Paul L]

Peter and Mick – Thanks chaps.

Quite a few people came over on the basis they had no idea what it was.
(R-L = E-Type, TR7, 911, WFT? )

Unfortunately, my GoPro didn’t film me driving through the tunnel, under the track, to park in the pits.
(As I didn't notice it had switched from video to camera mode when we left the holding pen.)

Having said that, I hope this video link works and gives a decent idea of the event.

Cheers, Paul.

https://youtu.be/BN_z28jg0oM

[Paul L]

Bailing Out
Apologies, thinks have been quite hectic here for me, so this is going back a bit…

1st August
The day after I got home from Goodwood in the rain.



Left the covers out to dry.



At which point a dirty black cloud appeared overhead.



Thankfully, it kept on moving and I could start mopping up the inside of the cabin.



Unfortunately, some ends of the seat belts ended up sitting in the water under the seats!



Not a very good guide to how much water was in there, but it was quite a bit!



But the truly gutting thing is I have clearly messed up the paintwork completely!
(Not a great photo of the blotches on the bonnet.)



I took the car out again a few weeks later.



And the blotches were still there, so I will have to do ‘something’ about that ‘sometime’ in the future.

No photos, but I took my brother-in-law out for a spin when he came to visit recently.

As with every journey, he couldn’t believe the positive reaction the car gets.
(Regardless of how bad the paint work is.)

Cheers, Paul.

[Paul L]

PS
Started a new work contract on Monday, so no Goodwood Revival for me this year.

[Paul L]

It’s been a while…
My new contract from September is still mainly WFH, but did involve some trips to Birmingham.



Unfortunately, after clocking up many hours travelling by train, I caught Covid for the first time!



Once I was fully recovered from that I did have the odd trip out in the car.

Trying to catch a sunset.





Still taking it to the shops.



Unfortunately, I forgot to disconnect the battery when life was getting in the way.



Got a couple of patches for my ‘racing’ overalls, but haven’t sew them on yet.



The big Shell one will go on the back and the Goodwood one on the shoulder.

But that’s all for now.

Merry Christmas!

Cheers, Paul.

[micky1mo]

Hi Paul, nice to see your still out-and-about!!