Matthew Taylor's Journal

4-26-15

Cole has been busy polishing chrome, and wire wheeling hardware. We both really like the original luggage rack - and it cleaned up well. We fabricated gaskets for the bumperets. Neither one of us could bare bolting steel to clear coat. I could not find the elusive Lucas L847 that came on the '70 only - but the extra set of L672 that came with the car (Thanks again Larry!) are found on all the other round tails, and look nearly identical. Ebay brought us new gaskets. I chucked a .223 bore brush in a drill, and cleaned up all the wiring connections. We wired them up, and had tail and break lights.

Now it was on to badging. From the beginning, Cole loved the badging on the pre '70 Spits, and I found it hard to argue. Triumph toted a cleaner look with the elimination of the lettering, in favor of the 1 year only badge. We didn't have anything, it doesn't say "TRIUMPH" or "SPITFIRE" anywhere. Having a clean slate to work with, We stepped back a year, and went for the '69's badging on the rear. More than a little nervous about drilling all the odd placed holes to get the letters to align and be straight, we came up with an alternate plan. Cole cut all the pegs off the letters, and filled the undersides in with JB weld - leaving a nice flat surface. Next, he stuck 2 sided body molding tape across each letter, and very carefully, cut off the excess. While he was doing that, I laid out boxes for each letter on the trunk lid. When they were ready, we just pealed off the backing for the tape, and stuck the letters on the trunk. That worked very well!. Next was the "Spitfire and Mk 3. Cole did the research - the Spit was at 15 degrees, the Mk was at 7. Armed with that - the trunk has no flat or straight edges to measure from, I laid them out on a piece of paper. I taped the paper, aligning the bottom to the bottom of the trunk, and sliding it until it just touched the side. 15 and 7. I drilled them out, and they fit perfectly.