Davecymru's Miglia build :)

[Marc F]

What a great idea - the marquee. Next year when I get round to spraying I should consider something like that - maybe a bit wider, and not as long. I will ponder eBay at the time.

And don't forget to check the emmissions - we all know those VWs are not good these days...

[Paul L]

Dave - Sorry to hear that your car has been trapped in the garage for so long.

Sounds like you have made solid progress on the campervan.

Good luck, Paul.

[davecymru]

Cheers guys. VW and emissions.... As long as my exhaust smoke is on the right side of black i'm happy, if that counts?


And on that note; the marquee is down, the camper moved and I've finally managed to get the car out and sorted ready in time for the Classic car and restoration show at the Bath & West showground next weekend.

Sadly the excitement was short lived as my first run-out resulted in a weird smell which turned out to be a leaking rear gearbox seal dripping oil onto the exhaust! So a quick order was placed with Rimmers last weekend and the new seal cost about a fiver all in!


When I was building the car I left access hatches for bits I may commonly want to tinker with, but I also tried to fit the interior panels so that I could remove certain ones to get to certain whole 'areas' should the need ever arise.

Well that was the theory!
And luckily it turned out to be a good one in practice

Left-middle gearbox tunnel panel removed on the passenger side and I had direct access to the gearbox flange and coupling (whoo hoo - I love it when a plan comes together!)



A quick read of the Club Triumph forums and I found an article by a local Triumph owner about how to change the seal in situ using a locking bar and the original bolts.

With the driveshaft cable-tied out of the way, the procedure was a doddle even after a long day at work!



And the offending nearly fifty yr old bit of rubber!



And then this morning I woke up to clear skies and a lovely warm October day so I thought it was time to see if it was just that seal causing the issues, or a bigger problem (which would normally be my luck)

A quick run-out seemed to indicate all was good, so I decided to go for it and finally venture up Cheddar Gorge for the photos i'd been promising myself to take ever since I started this project.










30 miles of barrelling around the Mendips later and still no oil leak, so job well done

So now i'm all set for next weekends end-of-year show and I hope to see some of you there?

[Paul L]

Dave - Love those "glamour" shots, especially the last one, your car looks great.

Enjoy the show next week, take care, Paul.

[swifty]

Originally Posted by Paul L

Dave - Love those "glamour" shots, especially the last one, your car looks great.

Enjoy the show next week, take care, Paul.

I second that.

The car looks great, i think photos always look better away from the standard garage shots.

Enjoy matey.

[Roadster]

Cheddar gorge is great but the pics could be from the Targa Florio

[JJMCD]

It looks great! Some chrome trim around the portholes might help it look more finished. See: http://www.ebay.com/itm/1953-6-BUICK...-/111146690117

The Vignale Ferraris, which were clearly the inspiration for that styling aspect of the Miglia, had chrome trim around their portholes. See: http://www.boldride.com/ride/1952/fe...zzeria-vignale

Also, have you thought about opening up the rears of the front wheel holes, in the style of the 625 TRC Ferraris? It might help balance the design a little. See: http://www.favcars.com/photos-ferrar...957-134482.htm

[davecymru]

Cheers for all of the feedback guys, and JJMCD - thanks for the interesting ideas! There are certainly a few things there for me to ponder over


Seeing as i had the poor little thing trapped in the garage all summer I am trying to get out-n-about a bit. I know it's winter.... but I have fitted the Miglia Winter pack, i.e. a bike helmet, flying jacket and some thick gloves from Mountain Warehouse!

So Sun the 6th was the "1st Sunday of the Month Breakfast Club" at the Haynes Motor Museum and it was dry(ish), so I gave it a go!

Excuse the bad pic, but I forgot to get any pics of the Miglia and then I found this one that it photo-bombed over on the Pistonheads forum


What a great little meet-up, at a great location and with a really nice café selling a well needed cup of coffee and Bacon buttie

There were good turnouts from the TVR club, Aston owners club, Porsche owners club and a load of Hot-rods, yet despite that there was quite a bit of interest in the little Miglia especially from the Triumph boys there. And a few of the old guys were impressed to hear about the re-emergence of the 'Special' when I described what Miglia / Sammio / Tribute are doing.

The trip did raise a few things I am going to 'fettle', but more about those over the coming weeks

[Paul L]

Dave - Good to see you out and about in December.

Do you use a full face, or open faced helmet?

Cheers, Paul.

[davecymru]

I bought a full face, but a flip front one that can be driven with the front open.
Although TBH I've found that if I'm wearing the helmet, it's cold, so it's closed and if it's warm enough to be driven with the front open then I simply wear a baseball cap and sunglasses

[rattler]

Any one know how many miglias are on the road up and running merry Xmas to all rattler

[scimjim]

I almost got the GTE out to go to the Haynes meet this weekend (I lived in Ilchester 2004-2011) but spent the day working on the SS1 sprint car instead!

[davecymru]

From just looking at this forum i recon there are about a dozen Miglias that i know of. Out of those I'm only aware of a couple that are on the road, but that is just going from what is on here!

ScimJim - please come and say hi if you see me out next year as it was a great run-out and just the right sort of distance for a Sunday morning


Some of you have been asking about SWMBO's camper as that's diverting me from the Miglia mods i want to do.
Just to give you an idea of what's been tying me up over the last 9 months here it is as i bought it:



Note all of the black paint! It turned out that it was all THICK underseal / Hammerite and it was all hiding rust / cracks / bodges from over the years

But that has all now been stripped off as far as possible and while i'm not willing or able to do a a full back-to metal rebuild, all of the bodyfiller has now been replaced with actual real metal!! The roof is now once again watertight, the window seals replaced with rubber that actually stops water, the window sills are now metal rather than filler and the interior has been stripped, cleaned and no longer smells of mold!



Just need to finish refitting the interior, fix the wipers and then do a quick engine service and i can official hand it over and get back to the Miglia!!

[Mister Towed]

Nice looking Bay Dave, that colour suits it much better than lime green.

[davecymru]

I gave SWMBO complete freedom of colour choice and she picked that one, which i found funny as on the tin it's "RAF Roundel Blue"

Back to the Miglia i have it planned to line the inner front wheel arches with alloy over the winter, but seeing as it's currently very cold and handling sheets of freezing cold metal isn't exactly my idea of fun, i have put those plans on hold.

So looking for other things to do I've been having a play with my latest toy, a 3d printer.
I'm still 50/50 about putting logos on the back of the car as it's fun to keep people guessing what it is when i pull up, but i've been using this as an exercise to get up to speed with the 3d design, transform and print software as i do want to make some bits for when i start to fit the heating later in the year.

The first task was to choose a font and come up with a basic printable design.
So i managed to add some text in Segoe Script font on to a plinth for the moment (plus it took a few hours to learn how to get that far!)


Then that was translated into a printable model, which is a quite a quick and simply process now that I've got the hang of it!


That was fed to the printer and just over an hr later it was done

(Note for the teeccys amongst you, it's already been peeled off of the base plate for this photo

Then up to the garage and a bit of a tidy up and a trim and an initial coat of grey primer to show up bits i need to tidy up further. apologies for the bad focus but i was shivering when i was taking this!


By this point i was already froze, so it's time to wait for paint to dry and have a bit more of a tinker with other things i need to design.

[swifty]

Nice work on the 3D printer, they have many uses.

Santa must of been kind to you, what make is it, we have Maker bots that are running virtually 27/7 now as its easier to produce a mock concept product with a 3D printer than it is to manufacture out of metal/plastics on a cnc.

I think your idea of the guessing game on what car it is is far better, that's why i went with the generic name spyder.

[davecymru]

Cheers matey,

It's an XYZ DaVinci Jr, so I'm limited to about 6" cubed, but I've already got through one spool of PLA and trawling ThingyVerse (https://www.thingiverse.com/) absorbed a lot of my time over the festive period where i couldn't get outside !

The badge has now been sprayed silver (Chrome spray my @rse!) and as far as a prototype is concerned i like the font but i was looking at the "Spyder" badge on Switftys build and i think i'll try and just get the letters without a plinth.
Not that i'm even sure i'm going to use it yet

But.... hot off the presses....

Now that i've been playing with 3D printing, I've also started tinkering with 3D scanning using my lads old MS Kinect scanner (can you see where this is going )

So now i'm toying with the idea of trying to get a 3d scanned model of the Migla.
Over ambitious.... possibly.
Fun finding out if it's possible with the kit I've got... certainly

Fingers crossed for a dry weekend!

[garyh]

can't you do them like this, they peel off.

[swifty]

Google spyder badge image or what ever your looking for, cut and paste to local pc, transfer image into 3d printer drawing software, use a trace tool or what ever is available to plot the text outline then print off. The badge i have is 3mm black perspex and cut on a lazer profiler.

[davecymru]

Thanks Garyh - i'd printed a few things on those backing rafts over Christmas and i will most probably be using that approach for an other Miglia related bit i want to make.

I was looking at some in an autojumble a while back and remembered that a lot of the period badges simply used construction lines/channels where the letters didn't join.

So i've been having a tinker and come up with:




Swifty - cheers for the idea matey, i've already got another project started using that approach (great minds, and all that ) as i have to make something for my lads. But that's a whole other story!!