Rear Window

Last week, the long-anticipated used rear window for my hard top showed up in the mail.  It survived the trip, and was in good shape, though a little dirty.  I cleaned it up and made ready to install it.  I had already received the rubber gasket that surrounds the window, so nothing was holding me back from putting the window in.

To Paint or Not To Paint?

Nothing, that is, except the feeling that maybe I ought to get the hard top repainted while I had the window out.  It's got a spot in the center of the leading edge where the paint has flaked off, exposing bare metal beneath.  I decided to call a few body shops and find out what it would cost to get the top painted.

It turns out that a professional repaint of the hard top would cost around $400-600.  As much as I'd like to do it, that's just not in the budget right now.  I'll have to handle the paint trouble with touch-up paint.  So, armed with that decision, some slave labor from the kids, and a nice warm day to do the work, I went out yesterday to get the window installed.

Installation: The String Method

I've never done anything like this.  I've never even read a how-to about it online.  But I did hear one reference to "the string method" for installing windows, in which the guy mentioned pulling on some piece of string from the inside while his friend pushed on the window from the outside.  That was enough to figure out what to do.

Pull the rope to the right, past the gasket flange
in the hard top, and the gasket will seat correctly.

The gasket had two slots in it.  The one intended for the glass was really deep; the other was intended for the flange in the hard top, and it was significantly shallower.  So I installed the gasket on the window, and got a piece of 1/4" nylon cord that I pressed into the other slot in the gasket, all the way around.  There were two tails left over, sticking out of the gasket in the lower corner.  Out we went to the car.

I'm pulling the string while Calvin...
persuades the gasket to cooperate.

I put the two free ends of the cord into the car, set the window in place, and instructed my biggest, strongest kid to press hard on the gasket right there at that point.  I then pulled on the cord, which peeled the lip of the gasket over the flange as the cord pulled free of the gasket.  Calvin moved his hands to provide pressure at the point where the cord was peeling free from the gasket, and around we went.

There were a couple points where the gasket was really reluctant to cooperate, and I was pulling hard enough I was worried I'd break the skin on my hands.  We took a break, lubed the recalcitrant parts of the gasket with some silicone spray, and I improvised a pulling handle out of a crescent wrench.  Work continued.... and suddenly we were done.  Elapsed time was probably less than 20 minutes.

Ta-da!

The only thing left to do was to press in the decorative silver bead that surrounds the window.  That went even more smoothly, and, for only $275 and 30 minutes of (DIY) labor, the hard top is weather-tight.  It looks pretty darned good, if you ask me.  And now I know how to do it.

Oh, and one more thing:

Never Put Duct Tape On A Car's Finish

When we had a big, windy snow storm bearing down on us, I made the decision to duct tape sheet plastic and plywood over the opening to protect the Spitfire's interior from the weather.  As I did it, I wrote:

When the window arrives, we'll pull this wart off and see what violence the duct tape does to the paint.... 

How prescient.  The duct tape pulled off a couple of large (thumbprint-sized) patches of body paint, and another strip pulled a few smaller spots off.  Once I'm able to get some #82 Carmine Red spray paint, I'll need to do some spot repairs on the paint damage.

Oh, well, it's not as if I could have left the tarp on.  The flapping in the wind caused some paint damage to the driver's side door, too.  Maybe I need two cans of #82 Carmine Red....

Winter is coming....

An earlier storm provided just a couple inches.  Closing the tarp in the doors
keeps it attached to the car so it covers the missing rear window.
But this next storm isn't kidding around; the tarp has to go.

Word on the street is that an honest-to-goodness named winter storm is bearing down on us.   In a day or two, we expect 6-10" of snow and daily high temperatures around 10 Fahrenheit.  Our salad days of November shirtsleeve driveway sessions are coming to an end.

The storm's harbinger has been 50+mph wind, which set the tarp on my poor Spitfire flapping more than I could bear to watch. And our steel roof tends to dump piles of snow onto the driveway right about where the Spit sits, so a tarp probably isn't going to cut it any longer.  

I'm still waiting for the replacement window I sourced via a fellow forum user at The Triumph Experience.  Sure would have been nice to get that glass installed before the storm hit, but that's not in the cards.  So I looked for a plan B.  

The best idea I could come up with on short notice was a piece of scrap plywood cut to sit a little outside the window opening, taped in place with duct tape and sheet plastic.  It should be weather-tight, and solid enough to withstand the snow we're expecting.  It's ugly, but not as ugly as having the back half of the car covered in a faded, flapping poly tarp.  At least now I can see the car's lines.

When the window arrives, we'll pull this wart off and see what violence the duct tape does to the paint.... 

What Have We Here?

I spent some of this morning familiarizing myself with the car.  Here's what I've found so far.

Weather-Proofing

I found the missing rubber strip for the driver's door, and it's actually in pretty good shape, so that's one less $30 tidbit to buy.  And I was able to press the passenger's side piece back into place.  The doors are fine now.

The brand new soft top in the trunk looks great, but the installation process is much more involved than I realized.  I'm missing some of the necessary fasteners, too.  I think, in the short term, my best bet is to keep the hard top on it and to rig a plywood & sheet plastic "plug" for the rear window space until I can get the glass replaced.

About the rear window: after checking with a Triumph forum for ideas, I had a couple options.  I found a place that sells replacement glass for $300+, but I also found Lexan sheeet at the local Home Depot for about $80.  And then, I checked with my local glass shop. They can fabricate a flat automotive laminate glass window for only about $90.  That's clearly the best option.  I need the rubber window seal ($120) before they can make the piece, and a little searching turned one up at Spitbits.com.  While I was there, I ordered the missing fasteners ($3.60) for the new top.

Battery & Starter

The battery is truly shot, not taking a charge at all.  I'll pull it before heading to work today, so I can get the core discount on the new one ($79 with core) at NAPA.

With the charger pumping out the 100A "start" current, I tried the starter.  It spun freely but wasn't engaging the engine.  According to my Haynes manual, it's either loose on its mounting, or the pinion is sticking on the sleeve, or it's shot.  I'll pull the starter and inspect it before I just buy a new one ($50 at AutoZone).

Miscellaneous

Aside from that, the only other progress was repositioning it with the front end on ramps, and a bit more inspection for rust.  There is a lot of surface rust in the engine bay.  I'd really like to brush it clean and paint it, just to keep it from worsening, but you can only do so much without removing things, and once you start removing things, where do you stop?  I'm really not able to take on a frame-off restoration right now.

Welcome Home, Little Spit!

I closed the deal on my new Triumph Spitfire tonight.  It's a 1974 model, red with a white factory hard top (and a black soft top too).

I paid $825 for it.  Depending on my perspective, that might seem like a smokin' deal: I've seen disassembled basket-cases posted for $750-900.  But they tended to be the rarer "soft-tail" Spitfires, which makes an apples-to-apples comparison tough.

And it's by no means certain that the car will ever fetch anything more than the purchase price plus what it takes to get it on the road.  It's got rust issues that are somewhere in that no-man's-land between trivial and terminal.  It's currently in non-running condition, with a possible bad starter and a probable need for a carburetor rebuild, and who knows what else once we get the motor turning.  The hard-top is missing its rear glass, and the interior is in very shabby shape.  I'm new to the British car hobby, but even I know that these costs can tend to balloon out of control.

So it's not a bargain, necessarily.  My dad always says "Body, interior, mechanicals - even a project car should have at least one of these things going for it."  If it weren't for the rust, or if the car were a driver, or if the interior was fresh - any one of those virtues might push it into "great deal" status.

Still, I'm pretty happy with my purchase.  I'll be even happier if I can sort a few things and get her on the road in the waning weeks of our Colorado Indian Summer.  We'll see....

So, What's the Plan?

The car's major needs are:

• Weather-Proofing.  I have no garage, so our most pressing job is to get the hard top fixed or the new soft top installed.  Otherwise, the interior and rust issues will worsen over the winter.  Also, the window seals in the doors are bad, so water can flow down the windows and pool in the doors.  They'll rust out fast if I don't fix that, pronto. 
• Brakes.  The previous owner (PO) installed a new brake master cylinder and started installing the rear drum slave cylinders, but the slave installation is incomplete and the lines haven't been hooked up yet.  E-brake is inoperable, too.
• Battery & (maybe?) Starter.  Can't very well drive it, or even test the carburetor, if the car won't start.
• Carburetor.  The ad describes it as needing carb tune or rebuild.  Once everything else is done, I'll need to figure this out to get 'er running.

The great news is that, except for the carburetor, these are not interdependent systems.  So I can run three parallel tracks:

1. sourcing and installing a glass or Lexan rear window, gasket, and door seals; 
2. jacking the rear up and getting the brakes together; and 
3. testing the battery and starter with my battery charger.

So that's where we'll start tomorrow.