Work Day 1/22/2012

We got some of the updates for the new safety requirements started over the weekend. The kill switch needed to be moved to be within reach of a belted in driver, the seat back brace needed to be expanded and we are adding protection around the fuel cell. Most of this work was done by my dad and tacked in place as I do not know how to weld and work done on the car is not the time to learn. A friend of ours will come later and do the complete welds to make it solid.

Here is the new Killswitch location. We still need to add a cover over the back, mark the off position, and mark the area with lightning bolts.



This is the new expanded seat back brace to prevent the seat from falling back in the case of an accident. Our old one did not cover enough area.




I was wondering what year our car was as 1978 was only a guess. I found out we covered the vin/info plate when we were painting the car and we also cut it in half while cutting away the inside of the door.. But from what I can tell it was built in Oct 1979, so most likely it was sold as a 1980. What made this confusing is the way the cars radiator is mounted strait up and down and it did not have the electrical fan which I believe were added in 1979. It has the front rubber bumper so we figured it was after 1977. The previous owners could have changed the front end to have the older style large radiator with belt driven fan, or they could have added this body to the frame. I guess we will never know, but does it really matter?



I went back and took pictures of the parts cars, the first is the one we stripped down already. There is not much left but the front suspension and steering column. We already have the motor and the diff in the racecar, with the transmission and axles as spares.



Here is the third spitfire which a friend was going to try get it running as a street car but that never happened. We plan to pull the motor and use it in the race car eventually, and sell the over drive transmission to cover buying it back. Yeah he never even got it out of my dad's yard, and all we have taken from it so far is the rear rubber bumper that will go on the race car for the next race.



You can see in this car the way the radiators were mounted with an electric fan, which is why we were thrown off guessing the race car's year.



Next week we will be building the cover for the kill switch and labeling it; and getting help from our friend to finish up the fabrication and welding work. Then we will mount the ugly rubber bumper and possibly get the motor in the third car running.