Well, I certainly tried to do it "right" but something did not work out. While taking a test drive the car broke down and had to get flat-bedded home. When I got the car home I had zero compression in cyl 1 & 2 and only 100psi in 3 & 4. So the bad ones were clearly bad, and the "good" ones were low. I ordered a boroscope attachment for my phone to look inside before going through the effort to open it up. I could see a ring of metal I initially thought might be a valve seat,

If you've got the head off for whatever reason, you should check the guides and the seats. Even if the guides and seats look good, they...

My project management (nagging) turns into my day job working on cars. I had bought a 1974 Spitfire in the winter of 1983-84 to get me to...

One of the weak spots on the Spitfire seems to be the head gasket. This is based on my own experiences (I am doing this job for the 4th time now) and online boards. All anecdotal in the scheme of things, but it happens enough that I thought perhaps having a basic style write up would help some newcomer have a smaller heart attack. Here we are at the end of basic disassembly Symptoms Your headgasket goes in between the cylinder head and the block. This means it is not only co

Like any passenger car, there are a various compromises that were made as the Spitfire made it's way to various markets around the world, and based on market demands/expectations and regulatory requirements. For myself, I had a couple of issues I wanted to address: Brakes . Everything else on the road today has ABS. I need my brakes to be the best they can be. Engine . The EU cars had almost 2X the HP of the mid 70's US cars. I targeted 80-90 reliable HP so the car can get

The stock Delco in the '74 Spitfire was very handy with respect to finding parts - it used Chevy 6-cylinder points. I could find those practically anywhere. But the unit itself was not well supported or very serviceable. And it had the gear drive for the tachometer so it would be tricky to replace. What to do? Well, I talked to some buddies and found a TR6 distributor on eBay. I found a nice 1970-ish unit with a fine timing adjustment thumbwheel, and the mechanical tach drive

I had the stock Stromberg emissions carb when I got the car. It's hard to tune, has a terrible intake manifold and does not really work...

Our old cars would have a hard time being more different. The odd couple? I thought it would be fun to look at some of the engine design...

(This is kind of an homage to the kinds of articles the great Peter Egan wrote in Road & Track) The year was 1984. I was newly out of...