Full body swerve on what seems like a bit of a sows ear Nick. Time wasters. And the MOT nonsense does occasionally concern me. I always get mine tested but when you see the crap and the crappy attitude that goes with it... Meanwhile here in Weegie... A dry day with what little breeze there was blowing to the neighbours that 'don't give a f..k' about anyone. Time to make a little space and reduce the stock of BSOs (bonnet shaped objects) around the garage. First up was the old and bashed blue GRP bonnet. Chopped up with a cutting disc in the angle grinder into pieces small enough to go into a bin bag. Or actually two bin bags. Then time to tackle the now redundant - and eye wateringly heavy - pattern for the final mould. Even without things like inner wings, etc this was a much more significant task and I needed five bags to fit everything in. Mind you it was very much stiffer and more solid. First cut across the full width. Shows the balsa core and just how much filler was needed in places to get the shape resolved And then quite a bit of cleaning up required

Quite!

Mr Jones senior doesn’t need another major project just now. Also, I really didn’t fit in that TR6. Seat was all the way back on the runners, but not enough for my legs. Odd. I’ve driven a TR6 with original seats before and don’t recall it being as cramped. Possibly a result of the bodgery inflicted on the floors….

Funnily enough, when I was looking to buy a convertible back in 2014 a TR6 was first on the list. But window shopping found I much preferred the curvy styling of the early Spitfires, and vey much preferred the prices! So here I am with two roundtail Spits and no regrets.

This….. he’d like a TR6 but all the ones worth owning are well over his budget…..

Is this as an alternative to the Mk3 Spitfire or another Triumph project for Mr Jones senior? Ian

Gosh, an alarm call if there ever was.   Even more worrying, that the Guardian gets to publish it.    Can Reich find no media in the US brave enough to print his article? John

Hmmm I fear it’s not enough.  and I fear many  swing voters  have already voted  for trump too late to be swayed. 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/23/trump-and-harris-are-neck-and-neck-this-is-a-five-alarm-fire  

Roger, it in effect does. The rear 'wishbone' of the rotoflex design isn't really a wishbone, it's a lower link that happens to have a relatively wide double pivot at the outer end. The radius arms on the rotoflex design are positioned so as to form as near a lower wishbone as possible in combination with the lower link. Also with the single bush in the lower link you can have toe adjustment. Not a perfect but I imagine done to minimise chassis/body mods while ensuring that torque/braking loads from the rear end were taken by the spring/diff and heelboard in the same way as the swing axle cars do - the inner mount of the lower link/wishbone takes very little in the way of loads other than holding the wheel out on cornering. Doing so would have avoided too much re-design and re-testing of addtional chassis mounts if a full lower wishbone mounted on the chassis was required. Remember production vehicles not home-mods. And whilst they work OK as above and in Nick/Chris's mod in a Spit, the inner mounts of their rear wishbones are really a bit close. Ideally they should be a bit further apart, especially for a torquier engine in a heavier car (like a GT6). But with the existing chassis layout - curve at the front and cut off at the back - there isn't room. Incidentally I know of a quite successfull hillclimp MkIV Spit that used front lower wishbones and brackets as rear lowers. Don't know that's what Webster and his team were thinking at the time but I suspect very much along those lines. Look at the Lotus Elan. The inner lower wishbone mounts on them are wider, as are the outers and just as importantly they have the very long vertical strut to stabilise things and help with torque reaction. The rotoflex upper link - the spring - has to do a lot of work. Even more on the swing spring cars. Having experimented with making a rigid composite spring pivot like the Triumph swing spring I found that ANY slack in the spring location at the diff would lead to violent 'tramp' in the uprights on real hard acceleration with any significant tyre slip. To the point where it could be seen from outside. Accompanied by a truly daunting amount of noise and vibration. The geometry of the trunions, uprights and dampers is such that most of the dynamic loads, especially fore and aft from bumps, etc go into the lower wishbones. Having had a few shunts racing, the lower wishbones and brackets are actually pretty tough and it's the chassis that bends. And while adjustable upper wishbones make life a lot better for set-up I think that they are actually detrimental in a shunt and put crash loads into the towers, lower wishbones and chassis that would otherwise be absorbed by a relatively benign crumpling of the factory uppers. Again, practical experience.