Took the plunge and started cleaning the engine etc. Not a full rebuild by any means but its suprising how a little bit of cleaning and renewing basics, can make things look better. Obviously new gaskets but also repainting , and just cleaning works wonders. Slightly worried abount the replacement head I purchased ages ago.Quite a lot was skimmed off the head and I am running with dommed top pistons, therefore the compression may be too high. We shall see! Spare parts are not particularly expensive but judging by my Bank balance recently, they soon add up.

Still making steady progress. Obtained some seats from an MX5. Wrong colour , so I have changed them from brown to black. Leather of course and also more comfortable and safer than the old GT6 items. Sold the old ones on e bay and the money I got, more than paid for the second hand leather items , the petrol to collect them and also the leather kit and spray gun. Still have change from the £150.00 I sold them for. Black certainly looks better and ties in with the black leather interior. Basic pannels are fairly straight forward and just as easy to do in leather as it would be replacing the plastic covering. Also got the chance to buy a 2.5 enging gearbox and overdrive unit. Still giving it some thought because the original engine has only done 42000 miles approx and I have already purchased an unleaded/ skimmed , reconditioned bigger valves cylinder head. However the gearbox and overdrive is very tempting. Will post some pictures shortly. Finally , playing with the idea of using the black plastic bumbers used for usa spec. Am I the only one who likes these? See Pri race site and the spitfire, looks really good to me. Now just got to find a pair.

The bodywork was in good condition , no major rust. Decided to have it painted professionaly and to its origianl colour as near as possible. A few holes in the wings where a mirror had been fitted and the usual splitting for the seat anchorage points needed welding. completly stripped the shell and remounted on the powder coated chassis. A guy called Bernie Hoare did the honours and I am very pleased with the result. He took the body off the chassis again and the costs were very reasonable. The attached picture shows it back in my garage and I mounted the wheels just temporarily.

One thing that I always seem to have a problem with when I have these cars or the Spitfire , is the bad connection for the light bulbs. No matter how meticuously I cleaned the lamp holders , there was always a bad connection and failure of the lights to work consistently. It took me a while to find an alternative. I was looking for a sealed unit that included fog and reversing lamps. I also wanted something that echoed the curves of the body and not square or completley circular. I found at last a DAF Truck combination lamp. Involved a bit of cutting to the rear bodywork but nothing too drastic if I ever want to reinstate the original units. The attached photo shows them on the car before the re spray. I think I got the balance right.

Fist of all remove the body from the chassis. No rust or twisting damage and then arranged sandblasting and powdercoat the chassis. Stuck with black, this seemed to be the original colour.

As indicated I want to restore the GT6 but improve on those things that always annoyed me when I had the Spitfire. The inspiration starting this project was my finding the Prirace site and in particular a picture of a Spitfire running 205/40 x 16" tyres and alloy wheels. This of course is obtained by fitting the new hubs. This led to the purchasing of 16" wheels, although they currently run 195/45 x 16" tyres. I was thinking of fitting MGTF alloy wheels and even purchased a set off e bay, only to find that the offset was completely wrong. Offset needed is 40-43mm and even though I tried to check the specification of the wheels on an MG Club Web site first, but even they quoted the wrong dimensions. Luckily I sold the wheels on e bay and even made a small profit. However I have found a picture on the web recently of a Spitfire Six running the MG wheels? Not sure how they got around the problem.