78 Spitfire project

[400brian]

Today I brought the last two large pieces from the shop down to the garage where we are working on the Spitfire, the hood and the muffler.

I washed the dust off the hood so I could see what was going to have to be done to it. Overall, it isn't too bad, but it does have the typical damage on the rear edges where knees have impacted it. It looks like Galen and I have a bit of fiberglass repair in our future. The decals are in decent shape, so the plan right now is to mask them off and rattle can a fresh coat of Emerald Green on the hood.

I also grabbed the muffler while I was there. I stuck the hose of the shop vac in each end of the muffler and blew air through it. No mouse nests or anything else came out, so I brought it to the garage as well. We will wire wheel the rust off and get a coat of high temp black on it.

[400brian]

The secondary clutch was crossed off the list tonight. We sanded the rust off, soda blasted the aluminum hubs, and I smoothed up the cam and polished it. The plastic buttons were replaced, so it should be ready for install, whenever that time comes.

[400brian]

The grandson was out on Saturday, and I had some things set up for him to do.

First we reassembled the VM28 Mikuni carb. It had been through the Chem Dip, and I had blown all the passages out with carb cleaner and compressed air. As I put it back together with a new needle and seat, main, and pilot jets, I explained what the parts were called and how it all worked. Afterward I compared how the Mikuni worked compared to how the Walbro worked.

Then we went down to the garage and painted the exhaust , and took the old broken windshield off the hood.

We ended the afternoon ventilating some pop cans with the BB gun just to mix things up a bit.

[400brian]

Today's project was cutting the holes in the hood.

The hood is fiberglass, and the gauges have a 3" diameter. The instructions that came with speedo kit call out using a 2 7/8" hole saw, but my caliper measured the gauge at 3", so I got on Amazon and purchased a 3" saw. Today I grabbed a junk JDX dash and pulled the beat up gauges out and slid the hole saw in the hole to confirm it was correct.

I was getting ready to start measuring the hood to decide where I wanted to place the gauges, when I discovered that Deere put dimples in the hood to show you where to drill! That simplified that greatly. I had done a bit of research before buying the hole saw, because I was thinking a high tooth count blade would work better on fiberglass than a coarse wood blade. The other choice seemed to be a carbide grit blade. Then I happened upon a post on Google, where it was suggested that to use a hole saw in fiberglass, the trick was to turn the blade backwards. That was a bit of an "AHA!" moment. So I bought a normal Lenox brand saw.

I drilled the center dimples out to 1/4", got the bit on the hole saw started into it, then switched the drill into reverse and carefully started cutting. It had been suggested to go slow, and lubricated the blade with water. I have a squirt bottle in the shop with soapy water in it anyway, so I kept the blade wet with that which also kept the glass dust down. I couldn't use much pressure or the arbor would unscrew itself from the blade, but I kept at it at a medium rpm and I was soon through. The resulting hole was clean with a nice sharp edge. I test fit one of the old gauges, and it fit like a glove. I repeated the process for the opposite side with the same result.

I had been a bit apprehensive about doing this. I am glad I found the suggestion to cut in reverse though, the coarse blade in the normal cutting rotation probably would have caught breaking through the backside and carnage would have ensued.
All in all, it was a good day!

[400brian]

Today I finished up a small modification that I may or may not use, it remains to be seen how this will work out in the end.

But with the fragility of the direct drive track in mind, I cut the lugs off one of the old drivers, smoothed it up and paired it with a pair of steel lock collars. The intention is to install them in-between the drivers to support the center of the track.

[400brian]

Today's project was to get 45 years worth of registration stickers off the hood, and the stripe off the bumper. It took some time with the hair drier and putty knife, now to get the adhesive residue off.

We cleaned the air box up and installed a new carb boot. The clutch guard got a bath as well.

To wind things up we removed one of the pop rivets holding the bumper on, just to see what it was going to take to do this, and make a plan for going forward.

[400brian]

Sunday the grandson was out and we worked on the sled some. First we took the bumper off, we want to refinish it, and we have a new pair of hood guides to install behind it after the pan gets painted. We also re-installed the painted handle bar hoop, as it needs to go back in before a track can be installed.

I have a friend's 95 Panther Deluxe sitting in the background that we are putting driveshaft bearings in. We are waiting on some parts to finish that up.


I watched him put some holes in soda cans with the BB gun to finish up the day.

[400brian]

This Sunday we got to work on the NOS skis and the bumper. Got rid of another can of Blitz Black.

This should put us in a good position to assemble the skis, springs, and shocks.

We also stood in the shed and discussed what sled might come next

[400brian]

I finished up the skis tonight.

To review; the original skis were broken and bent. I bought these NOS skis from Don Amber years ago. They were slightly different, as one didn't have the square pad welded under the rubber bumper, so I had one welded in so that they would match.
The original springs seemed to be good, so they were cleaned and painted along with the skis, which had a bit of shelf wear. The white plastic insulators are from New Breed.

I installed new wear bars on the skis which I happened to have on hand. The ski shocks were rusty junk as per normal. I installed the SPI aftermarket shocks that New Breed sells. I cut bushings out of thin wall tubing to center the shocks in-between the mounting tabs.

The only thing left is to cut new ski pivot bushings out of tube that I keep on hand, and source the bolts that attach the ski to the spindle. One more item off the list.

[400brian]

The Spitfire has a far lower parts count compared to the 78 Liquifire I worked on last, but there are still lots of little things that have to be taken care of. The ski pivot bushings have been cut, so the skis are ready to be installed.

The tunnel of this sled has a few issues that needed to be fixed. A patch had been made under the seat where the track cleats had worn a hole through the tunnel. I assume a suspension bolt came out of the rear shaft. But the seat attach hole had never been drilled in the patch. The hole on the opposite side was pulled and corroded. The holes for the seat / tank retainer has an extra hole for some reason. And the retainers themselves had been bent, drilled, and left to rust in the bottom of the belly pan.

The last photo shows the retainers straightened and painted, with some aluminum patches that will be installed under the tunnel.

[400brian]

Here the reinforcing patches have been installed inside the tunnel to fix the hogged out holes for the tank / seat retainer bracket. So all 4 corners of the seat attach are patched now, the RH rear one I inherited.

I did a test fitting of the seat tonight. This sled came without a seat 15 years ago, and I bought a seat from a collector in NW WI who shipped to John's Upholstery, who re-covered it for me before I had ever saw it. Looked good enough for a rider to me, and the t-nuts at the rear of the seat seem to align with the holes in the tunnel.

[400brian]

Today was paint the underside of the sled day.

The grandson was just posing for a photo here, he was wearing a respirator when we were painting.

We were spraying JD Emerald Green from "Vintage Paint" who sells on ebay. This was the first time I had used the product. He recommends spraying this color over white primer. for the most part, the paint on this sled was intact but faded. There were the normal scrapes and scratches. I ran the palm sander over the entire area to be painted with 400 grit prior to painting ( no primer ), then wiped it down with paint thinner to clean it.

Just as a point of reference, I have had sleds professionally painted with primer and hardened paint and found afterwards it had very poor adhesion. So I figure I can't do any worse. I have produced decent results with rattle cans.

So this paint was quite different from the products I am used to working with: genuine JD Green, Krylon, Rustoleum, ect.
First off, the color looks dead on to me, no complaints on that.

The first thing I noticed was that it sprayed on very thinly, where we were spaying over bare aluminum spots the coverage was barely noticeable.
We shot a quick tack coat and let it set up ( which it did quite quickly ) it was in the mid 60s here today. We came back with a wet coat and were very surprised at how much paint you had to apply to get the paint to flow together and become glossy. If you didn't spray that amount the paint remained dull. The paint showed very little proclivity to run.

We wound up spraying two full cans on what you can see here, to get enough paint on to cover the bare aluminum spots ( I hope they are covered, daylight may show otherwise ). And you can see in the pic the dull spot between the ribs where we ran out before we got enough paint on that area to make it glossy. We were up to I think the fourth coat.

The run resistance we were seeing reminds me of the old Krylon lacquers. Where the paint was sprayed wet enough it is acceptably glossy.
I say all this not to complain about the product, just that it performs differently than I was used to. A buddy sprayed a Cyclone "Mean Green" with this paint, and he reported using 8 or 9 cans to paint the complete machine. I painted my 78 LF last winter over bare aluminum with 2 or 3 cans of gloss black Krylon.

Right now I expect it will take at least 3 more cans to paint the top side of the tunnel and the hood. If I am remembering correctly, the two cans we used today cost me around $75 with shipping.

Oh, and my buddy's Cyclone looks great, I am hoping to duplicate his result on the Spitfire.

[SS440-80]

[400brian]

We headed up to the Northwoods of Wisconsin on Thursday, May 21, with a plan of spending some time with friends and participating in the Classic Round Up events put on by the Snowmobile Hall of Fame.

A fellow collector who was also attending brought me up a track for the Spitfire, but it needed new cleats put on it.

Today I began the process of replacing the cleats, at the moment I have half the cleats replaced. The grandson is excited about the prospect of getting a track installed

[400brian]

280 rivets chiseled off, 28 new cleats with 280 bolts installed.

Looking to install the track in the sled soon. The day the sled comes off the horses and onto the lift is a big day and the grandson and I are both looking forward to it!