Michael Stoliker's Journal

I haven't managed to do anything on the Spitfire in quite a while as life has intruded on my dreams again. The Tomato has been sitting in the back yard where it has been exiled since our kid's graduation party. It looks so sad and lonely under the maple tree. The seat of honor under our carport has been selfishly usurped by my daughter's Neon which has annoyingly decide to start randomly, and certainly not when most needed. I've been over every inch of the wiring and can't find the problem. I'm beginning to suspect that the problem is simply that the switches (including the ignition switch) on this car are too cheaply made to be reliable. I'm tempted to bypass the starter ciruit in the switch and wire a push-button start into the dash. The reason for this is that not only does the starter not crank on demand, but it sometimes will not stop cranking when the ignition switch is released.

But, this has been one huge digression, and certainly not why this has been such a tough week. The simple reason for that is that my daughter having finished college has decided that her future is with her fiancee in his native state of California and on Tuesday this week my wife and son and I drove down to Philadelphia to take them to the airport. The weather was beatifully clear, but with temperatures in the 90's and high humidity as soon as you stepped out of the air conditioning it was miserable to be outdoors.

Philadelphia airport (for those of you who've never been there) is a mile and a half long arc of four-lane roadway flanked on one side with block long terminal buildings A through F and on the other side by high-rise parking structures and commuter train stations. At the center of every terminal, cabs, shuttle buses, and the general public joust for position and sometimes pile up 3 lanes deep to unload passengers and baggage as close to the curb as possible. This chaotic dive to the curb is occasionally punctuated by some lucky survivor bursting out of the pack after successfully discharging its passengers. After managing to skirt the outer lane and passing four of these heavy-metal rave parties, we reached terminal E and like a silver shark our Caravan dove into the surf of steel and flesh. My son, daughter, and her fiancee tossed bags to the curb and my wife and I shouldered our way out of the swarm to go find the $11/day "economy" parking lot.

Another mile down the road and we had our parking spot, and ticket proudly displayed on the dash, we began the trek back to the terminal. The sun was brutal and the heat unbearable. We passed one homeless person laid out in the shade of the shrubs growing along the walkway. At least I think he was homeless, perhaps he was just some poor traveler who like us was too cheap to pay the $24 to park in the parking decks with the air conditioned walkways. Maybe he was just a poor soul who would never make it back to his waiting car. Maybe like us, he never spotted the shuttle buses that run betwen the terminals and the parking lots! No matter, we had children waiting for us and we couldn't spare the time waiting on the vagaries of parking lot shuttle buses, so with the sun beating down on those square miles of concrete and macadam we trudged back to terminal E. If I knew then what I know now, we would have only had to trudge to terminal F since there are elevated (air conditioned) walkways between the terminals, but they aren't obvious from street level so we didn't spot them until on the way back.

When we reached the terminal, we discovered our future son-in-law had been injured in the battle at the curbside when a porter had dropped a 50 pound bag on his sandaled foot. My wife produced a bandaid and my daughter showing the value of two years attending school at Temple, dressed the wound and told her boyfriend to walk it off. At this point, refreshed by the air conditioning, we proceeded up the escalators to the promised concourse in anticipation of cooling off at a farewell dinner with our loved ones. The Philadelphia Airport stymied us as we quickly found out that all the restaurants, and in fact, the concourse itself was on the other side of the gates. Only ticket-holding passengers were allowed. So we stood there, separated from the riches of fast food and touristy shops by twenty feet of steel, glass, and the sweaty bodies of travellers inching through the cattle chutes to the handful of gates at the other side. We weren't ready to deliver or children to this creeping hell without a last supper so I conplained bitterly to some poor airport employee about the stupidity of terminal designers until she offered up the Marriot hotel's restaurant to placate me.

Seemingly only another mile away with an obstacle course of three terminals, one train station, a parking garage and a skyway to navigate, carrying only two overstuffed carry-ons, we managed to make it to the Marriot's lovely Sculling themed restaurant. There we had a pleasant dinner of $14 hamburgers amoungst the ambiance and weak air conditioning. Refreshed and cooled off, with deadlines looming, we started our walk back to the terminal. Thinking to avoid the obstacle course on the way back I suggested that we go directly across to the terminals and walk along the terminals to our destination. This was not wise as it put us on the outer diameter of the arc of the airport and I was still not hip to the skywalks between terminals. Our refreshed state quickly gave way to soggy determination to reach our destination through the searing heat and occasional swarms of debarking travellers at each terminal entrance.

We reached our terminal with plenty of time for our brave flyers to experience the TSA's government mandated "Hours O' Boredom" waiting to board their flight. So with everybody saying their goodbyes through the hugs and tightness in our chests we watched our daughter and future son-in-law wade into the crowd to be quickly lost from sight.

We quickly decided that since the flight was still hours away, instead of waiting at the airport to guess which departing airplane held our loved ones, we'd get on to the business of trudging back to our waiting vehicle. Wanting to delay returning to the heat until the last moment we walked to the far end of the terminal instead of leaving by the nearest entrance. At the far end of the building I finally spotted it...a sign which simply held the words "Terminal F", and an arrow pointing to an air conditioned walk-way. Mentally kicking myself, we walked to and through the nearly deserted final terminal of the Philadelphia airport.

Back at the parking lot we noticed that our fallen traveller/homeless man had managed to gather himself and move on. Relieved that we hadn't left someone to die in the heat in our rush to get to the terminal, we moved on to playing PAC-man in the parking lot maze with the shuttle buses playing the part of the ghosts. After a short time of avoiding being run down by the omni-present omni-buses, we escaped to the next level...avoiding getting run down by everyone on the streets of center-city Philadelphia. Believe me, in Philadelphia, a GPS is less a navigation aid and more of a frustrating distraction as the signal gets lost between the high buildings and the GPS only pops back to life 30 seconds too late to tell you that you should have changed lanes 20 seconds ago.

Despite this, we managed to make it back to our daughter's now vacant apartment where my wife would spend the rest of the week cleaning and packing until I returned on Saturday with a rental truck. After a quick provisioning run, I headed home to several days of trying to build a reporting system on top of years of data entry errors and missing information, while my son returned to yet more graduation parties and a week of hanging out with friends and beautiful young ladies everywhere except home. On Saturday, my son having a pressing Streetlight Manifesto concert to attend, my 79 year old father-in-law and I found ourselves at u-haul-topia where the counter person informed us that we had to have the truck back by five because it was rented out again a six. Now feeling rushed, we jumped in the truck and scurried down to Philly where we did our best to kill ourselves loading furniture and boxes from the second floor apartment while my wife stood guard.

It was bad enough that the apartment was on the 2nd floor, but every piece had to be carted or carried down a hallway through a 90 degree turn into a stairwell to another 90 degree turn on a landing down another set of steps and out the side door into a narrow fenced in walk-way around the back of the building to the front again and across the street through Philly traffic to the waiting truck. After doing this about 50 time we finally had the truck full at 3:00 ready for the hour and a half ride back to the Lehigh Valley and Bethlehem. For anyone not doing the math, that left us a half hour to empty the truck, sweep it out, fill it with gas and return it by the appointed time.

When we got home, we literally threw everything on the front lawn and tasked our son and his friend (all freshly scrubbed and groomed for their concert) with getting everything inside before they left. reaching the U-haul store only a few minutes late, we dropped of the truck. Realizing that I hadn't eaten anything all day (and that nobody else had eaten since breakfast), we invited the in-laws out for dinner on us and returned home for showers. We returned home to a house that was barely navigable but at least have air conditioning. Ignoring the piles of stuff to be sorted, we went out for a fantastic meal at the Coopersburg Diner and then home to collapse from exhaustion.

Top bring this back to the subject of Spitfires, the highlight of my day yesterday was meeting Bill Chapman (Chappy444) from this very forum. He and his lovely wife (Anne? damn my memory for names) had driven up from Maryland to deliver a set of beautifully preserved Spitifire seats, and met us at our daughter's apartment. After some confusion about which of the many u-haul trucks, parked up and down Diamond street, belonged to us, we got together to exchange money and seats and talk briefly. Bill said that he was going back to Maryland to pick parts off a Spitfire in a junkyard in Mt. Airy. His wife confided that she finds she enjoys picking parts off cars in junkyards. I'm not sure which is rarer...a Spitfire in a junkyard, or a wife that will accompany her husband on a junkyard expedition. In either case, nice find Bill! It was great meeting both of you! And the seats are awesome!

There's not much happening with the Spitfire right now. I'm being run ragged preparing for my kids graduation party (among other things). My son Kristofer has graduated from High School and his older sister Michelle has graduated from college so there is much celebrating to do...which translates into many errands for yours truly.

See Kris, I mentioned you in my journal, so I don't love the car more than you!

So as my daughter prepares to head out to start her adult life, and my son prepares for college, I may find myself with plenty of time to work on the car...after the party (I just won't have the money!).

More pictures of the bulkhead repair to come.

I spent all Sunday morning with a spot weld drill and a dremel multi-tool picking apart the master cylinder tray I bought from Lee Seltsam via the trader forum on this site. True to his word, the panel was in excellent shape with only minor surface rust. The only dodgy part was the metal near a bracket welded to the back of the panel near the relay bracket. It looked like the metal had cracked from stress and then started to rust a bit. This piece of metal will get some extra attention when I start to reassemble the shelf.

The replacement part came from an earlier Spitfire; a 71 or 72? and I noticed some differences. For one thing, the flying buttresses that brace the panel and surround the brake cylinder are higher on the earlier spitfire. In addition, the dimple behind the brake fluid reservior is smaller and stamped right into the panel whereas on the 1978, the dimple is wider and deeper, so it is a separate stamping which is spot welded in place.

In pulling all the bits off the panel I gained some insight into how this must have been assembled when the car was being built. There are so many fiddly pieces that could only have been spot welded if the welder had access to both sides of the panel that it's obvious that this panel was assembled off the car, and then spot welded on as a finished assembly. In addition, there must have been a certain amount of stick welding done around the hood closure panels. These were certainly labor intensive cars to build.

The actual mounting brackets for the clutch and brake masters are still bolt-ons, and appear to be unchanged. Lee threw them in, so I now have an extra pair. I've cleaned and painted these parts along with the flying buttress and relay brackets that had to be drilled off the panel. If anyone needs any of these brackets let me know.

I'll add a picture later.

Edited July 31st. The extra brackets found a new home last week with another forum member out in Utah. So those brackets had to travel from Colorado to Pennsylvania to Utah to find a new home. They're more well traveled than me!

It's been bothering me that now that I have my Spitfire running that I haven't been able to get it running better. It feels and sounds like it's running on two cylinders. I had confirmed that that was the case by pulling the spark plug wires in turn and the two front cylinders were making almost no contribution to the engine.

When I pulled the wires previously, I followed up with a compression test expecting to find something horribly wrong with the two front cylinders, so I was surprised to discover that they had higher compression readings than the two back cylinders.

This time I followed up by checking for spark. I thought maybe I had two bad wires & it was just a coincidence that they were next to each other. But no, there was a nice fat spark from each wire.

Standing there scratching my head and looking across the engine at the dual carbs and manifold, it occured to me that the answer might be staring me right in the face. So, I pulled the air filter off the front carb, and after restarting the engine, I sprayed carb cleaner down the throat of the carb.

The response was immediate. The RPMs climbed, the engine smoothed out and stopped sounding like an extended death rattle and snarled like a Spitfire should.

It was pretty awesome that I could control engine speed by pressing a spray button on an aerosol can. The bad news is that I think I have some carbs to rebuild. Something to think about later...it's late and I'm tired.

Good night all.

I haven't done much work lately because of the weather. But I get some parts in from Vicky Brit and thought I'd do something about the the battery tray in the Spit. My battery tray isn't rusted out. Actually it's in decent shape because it was replaced already. It's just the manner in which it was replaced...

Normally, when you replace a battery tray in these cars, you drill out the spot welds on the braces and the old battery tray and lift the rusted remains of the old tray out before cleaning up and welding in the new tray. The person who did this job found a shortcut. They simply hammered the braces to the sides, hammered the edges of the battery tray up to a suitable angle, hammered the new tray down through the ruins of the old one, and welded all around the circumference of the tray's edge to seal the edges. Brilliant! A true time-saver. Now I only have to worry about those tetanus stalagtites hanging down under my dash. Ah well...I can probably cut those out with my dremel tool.

My immediate concern was that after welding, nothing was sealed with paint. The weld was left bare, and the rest of the battery tray was left in red primer and it was starting to surface rust. So since some of the parts that came from VB were a battery mat and a battery hold-down kit I decided it was time to do a clean up. With an abrasive pad and a shop-vac, I removed the surface rust (and most of the red oxide) and took a can of rustoleum stop rust & primer to the tray. I followed up with the closest thing Rustoleum had to British Vermilion paint...something called Lobster Red.

Using a halogen shop light to keep the paint from frosting over in the cold, I applied several coats, and when the paint was dry, cut the acid neutralizing felt mat to fit the bottom of the tray and bolted the battery down. Hopefully, this will protect things until I can come back and make it right.

The big news though is that PennDOT threw my title application back at me. I wondered what the heck the problem could be. Was the previous owner an infamous car thief who'd sold me a hot Spitfire? No, the D.O.T was just sure that somebody had copied the VIN# incorrectly because it was much too short to be a VIN#. They suggested that I make pencil tracings of the VIN and engine numbers and send them back in the self addressed (but not stamped) envelope.

They included a toll-free number in the envelope, but since it reaches an automated phone system I was deprived of being a smart ass and telling them that we have invented several improved methods of producing facsimiles of objects since the neolithic period.

In fact, the recorded message mentioned that I could submit photographs if legible tracings couldn't be produced, but I would have to get the photos notarized by a bonded notary so as to establish the legitimacy of the photographs. Oh goody, the Commonwealth of PA has found another way to share my wealth in common with me.

Well, gotta get to sleep so I can get up tomorrow and find a notary before noon.

It's alive!

Well...sorta. I had it running on carb cleaner, which I wouldn't have thought of trying except for all the people that have mentioned it on this board. Good thing it worked too, because my ancient can of starting fluid lost all pressure and just kind of dribbled ether on my shoes (maybe that's why my foot's asleep).

I won't be trying any harder to get it running on its own power until I sort out the timing (the Dizzy's in 180 degrees out) and get the exhaust hooked up to the header.

Damn was that thing loud!

I'm happy with how the plumbing turned out under the hood. The 1500 engine wanted the fuel line to go around the back of the head. The Mark III manifold and carbs wanted it to go around the front. I compromised and met in the middle. I put a rubber fuel line around the back of the head and connected it to some copper tubing that went to the front carb. A short piece of rubber hose at each float bowl fitting connected the copper at the inlet, and another piece of copper went around the front to the back carb. It looks very factory...if I just had a set of pot pie air filters to hang the tubing on. The tubing over the top of the manifold needs a support at the rear, cause at the moment it bounces quit a bit. I'll work something out.