Quality of new classic parts

For what it's worth, a GF had a 73 or 74 Spitfire that the fan drive separated and punched through the radiator on the motorway. She heard the noise but kept going, and after a while she noticed that the ignition light was on and that the temperature gauge was rising. She drove it until the engine got more and more sluggish and eventually wouldn't run. At that point, she called the AA and had the car towed from the motorway shoulder to my house.

Prior to this happening, I had been trying to persuade her to trade the car in for something newer and more reliable - it was one of those Spitfires that looked really good from 20 feet away, it was a white convertible that you could wax the rust stains out of the seams and bottom of the doors and it would stay looking good for a week or two. But she just loved the car.

I persuaded her that I would fix it good enough for her to trade it in for a newer car, but only if she promised to do so. She did.

A few trips to scrappies yielded a Herald radiator that fitted the space in the Spit perfectly, but the mounting points on the car's radiator frame were wrong. I cut and bent tabs in the radiator side flanges with a hacksaw, and drilled and pop-riveted the radiator in place. I also fitted a Herald (I believe) water pump and solid (non-viscous) fan.

I refilled it with water, crossed my fingers and started it. It started and ran OK. Being wary, I drove it for a few days and my wariness was rewarded when the head gasket went a couple of days later. I put a new head gasket on, waxed the body again, closed my eyes to all other problems and traded it in on a pretty good deal for a five year old VW Jetta.

She never forgave me for the Jetta, she said it was the most boring car she had ever owned. That was in 1985 or so. We're still married, in spite of that - and many other things.

One option is to keep the old radiator tanks, but go for a more efficient core. Costs a bit more than stock, but you can get much more cooling without making it biger (other than thicker).

Standard tweak for Sodomite Sprints.

Dean Dark wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

She's a saint. ;-)

I have just sorted out a lookalike Lucas ACR15 replacement alternator. It worked ok when I got it as an exchange unit, but just occasionally it would give me maximum output. I went through all the traditional things like making sure the warning light was making a proper connection and cleaning (many, many times!) the contacts on the alternator. I even replaced the spade connectors with new clean ones. I still had an intermittent fault.

Then when I had used it for long enough that I couldn't reasonably send it back, it became a permanent fault, so I reckoned the regulator had gone. I found a replacement at a back street autoelectricians ("Show me the old one....Yeh I have got one of them here somewhere"). When I got round to fitting it, I found one of the wires of the old one was held in by a loose screw. The screw was loose because the thread in the alternator body was stripped. Not much quality control in that recon was there?

Jim

PS. I know this is an oldish thread, but I am behind in my reading.