I bought this car as a replacement toy when my Wife and Daughter decided I was getting "too old" to be out on my motor cycle. At first I was just going to freshen the motor and do a cheap paint job. Just something to knock around. Well you could say things got a little out of hand. My Brother and I have built race cars(mostly drag racing and oval track stuff) for years. So with his encouragement we went to work. Although I didn't plan to race the car, we wanted to employ a lot of the stuff we used in the past in other builds. Lighten it up. Move the battery to the trunk for better weight distribution, simplify the wiring, Lower the car and improve the suspension.
Well we started with the motor. Since no one that we talked to had too much good to say about these Triumph Spitfire motors we took that as a challenge. We had custom Wisco Pistons made. Custom ground camshaft with double valve springs.Major cylinder head work. I designed intake manifolds to use 4 motorcycle carbs. Then every part in the motor was sent off to Polymer Dynamics in Houston,Texas to be coated with their race proven products. Carl Benton, the owner of Poly Dyne was a huge help in the overall design and build of the car. In fact, he did all of the coatings and the paint work.
The body work also got a little crazy as well. We removed the ugly rubber bumpers, fabricated the caps for the rear fenders, cleaned up the front pan, eliminated the side marker lights.. The interior was redone . We stripped the old dash cover and recovered and modified it to go with the race car theme. I had the seats reworked and covered in black with yellow rolled and pleated inserts.
Later we did the conversion to the 5 speed Ford T-9 transmission.
All in all I love the way the car turned out. It is great for cruising on the road. It runs cool and looks good on the road. It is great to see the smiles on people,s faces as we roll down the road..
I like to say that "We did turn a sows ear into a silk purse".