Bad Sills

[Guest]

New to the board, hello, after a Mk1, 2 or 3 Spitfire for v8 conversion, went to look at a Spitfire 4 today, the body seems solid apart from front wings that have some repairs and rust, problem is the sills look like they have been renewed with out bracing, the doors are miles from lining up.

 

Is this repairable, and if so, how hard?

 

Regards  Steve

[GT6Steve]

Hmmmm....

 

I could argue this one both ways.

 

On the one hand, a V8 conversion will be stressing every part of the car and good sills are absolutely critical to the strength of the body.

 

On the other hand, citing the above, the convertible body itself is not strong enough for a serious HP injection and you must consider strengthening with a tubular structure if not a cage.  With that in mind, who cares about the sills?

 

There's a lot of smart and skilled fabricators on this forum, they'll be better suited to expand on my shallow commentary.

 

 

[Guest]

Thanks Steve, I looked at GT6's but liked the convertible, the V8 will be Rovers finest, in standard form so not huge HP, I was asking about the sills because I don't want to have to grind out the entire floor pan on both sides, I was wondering if you could just cut the sills and reweld if possible.

 

Cheers Steve

[Nick Jones]

Welcome  

 

Others have put the RV8 in Spitfires without major structural mods.  It's not that powerful - not more than a well tweaked 2.5 6 pot.  Personally I'd prefer the 6, but each to their own.

 

Un-picking someone elses shoddy work is never much fun and if something important like that is badly done, what else are you going to find...?  Having said, in what way do the doors fit poorly?  Re-skinned doors are often "out of wind" and stick out at the bottom rear corner.  This is a door problem not a tub problem.  Sill problems usually manifest as door gaps varying significantly between top and bottom - more often very tight at the top where the tub has sagged.

 

Spitfires are not so rare that you need to buy the first you see - myself I'd rather do the sills for the first time due to honest rust than redo something done wrong.

 

Cheers

 

Nick

[Guest]

Thanks Nick, thats probably what I am thinking, the gaps are too wide on passenger side and way to tight on drivers.  Any one know of a good Spitfire with knackered engine for sale in UK?

 

Steve

[gt5r]

Steve

 

welcome - are you going to re skin the doors - if so do the doors first then jig/adjust the 'A' & 'B' apart to suit the doors - get a decent gap every time - then put the sills on - if you do it the other way round i.e. put sills on then do doors u get crap gaps - suspect thats what happened on that tub

 

I konw its a GT6 but principal is the same

[GT6Steve]

See, toldya the smart boys would chime in,,,

[gt5r]

See, toldya the smart boys would chime in,,,

 

:P :P :P   :K)

[Guest]

Thanks, the doors have a good skin on them already so pity to have to redo all the work, problem is up in Scotland you don't get much choice, especially early spits, here are a couple of pics, the doors look good in the photos but are a lot worse in real life:

 

 

[JMH]

Difficult to spot on the pics, but its all to easy to put new sills on wrong  :X

Take a look on the rest: Are rear wings original, how are inner sills, floors, dogleg (b-post) etc. If its only outer sills, its not that bad to redo. But looks like lower dogleg has some dodgy repairs, making the doors sitting higher than supposed to.

Lots of pics of this on my blog.

 

 

[JamesR]

You might feel less guilty of butchering and putting a tubular frame on a pig. If you do remove the sills on a spitfire the whole thing is precarious and absolutely ludicrous in its absolutely no structural support design. Just held together by the some of its parts and a sill strengthener. I did this recently and felt structural support would be a better idea. Nevertheless I was going the way it was meant to be.

 

If you don't have to rush, check out some other cars, but to be honest even if extra support is over the top is not a bad idea. Mine looked ok, it was double skinned/floored. Repaired ok. But one dodgy panel multiplies out with difficult seams and smaller problems.

[thebrookster]

Talking about strengthening body tubs, anyone ever considered running tubing (like roll cage kinda stuff) down the inside of the sills?? Should be easy enough to hook up to the front chassis leg thingy, really depends on the rear. Would this help rigidity at all, or am I merely barking up the wrong tree here??

 

Not something I am planning on doing I hasten to add, just Steve's comment about a V8 stressing the whole car has set a wee train of thought off!!