Boy am I pissed. Super pissed in fact (angry, not
drunk for you UK people). As you may recall, I have been
rebuilding a GT6 frame, suspension, and drivetrain to put my
spitfire body shell on. One of the things I had to do was
replace the outriggers on the frame. I made a jig from the
specifications listed in the Bentley manuals (I have an old one
covering MK III, IV and 1500 spits and a very new one covering
only 1500 spits). Well last night was to be the big night
when I placed the shell on the frame. Guess what? IT DIDN"T
FIT!!!!! The outriggers are too far forward. I checked and
rechecked my work against the frame dimensions given in the
manual. I welded them on exactly as listed. The only
conclusion I can draw is that the dimensions are wrong. I hate
to jump to conclusions, but I just can't see where I could have
made a mistake. They use a mounting point for the front
suspension as a datum and give the measurements in three
dimensions. The funny thing is that the outriggers are mounted
with the proper orientation, so there has to be a systematic
error someplace. I can either slide the bodyshell forward about
a quarter of an inch and mount it on the outriggers or slide it
back and mount it on the rest of the frame. To fix this, I need
to know exactly how far off I am. If anyone can give me further
information, I'd appreciate it. I am going to try to measure
my spitfire frame, but I don't know how well I can do it.
Also, I seem to have a problem with the parking brake.
I noticed that there are two cable guides mounted on the
spitfire frame. There are none on the GT6 frame. I assume
these are mounted on the GT6 bodyshell somewhere. Can anyone
describe this for me?
woodruff@caen.engin.umich.edu
P.S. some sympathy would help...
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