For those that are curious you CAN fit a TR4 luggage rack to a roundtail
SpitfireBUTit takes a little modification
Since new racks are not available for the Spitfire I had often wondered if
a TR4 rack would fit since they look identical - They almost are except
that the brackets are slightly different and where it bolts to the boot the
TR4 rack has small brackets welded to the tubular bar where it attaches to
the boot where as the Spitfire just has holes through the tubular part, no
welded on brackets -
Now one might get by with simply cutting off the tabs, grinding down the
welds left after this has been done, drilling a couple of holes through the
bar, then getting the whole thing re-chromed but that would be rather
expensive and I think that you would still have to make new brackets that
mount under the hinges since they are slightly different
I opted for another way. I still had to make a set of under hinge brackets
(a pretty simple affair for me). This allowed me to place the rack at the
correct distance to allow the use of the TR4 rack as shipped (had to just
tweak the boot mounting tabs to the correct angle to line up with the boot
contour, but that was it). The new brackets are identical to the Spitfire
brackets except the rack mounting holes are a half a inch further back. The
other problem with this setup is that since the bottom bar where it mounts
to the boot is now elevated (this bar would be nearly flush with the boot
on a Spitfire rack thus clearing the boot handle) the handle is now smack
in the way if you try to turn it. The solution was to use a GT6 hatch
handle this fits without modification and since it only has one leg, it
allows you to use the latch without fouling on the rack bar
Not concours, but it works and looks practically the same as a correct
Spitfire one would
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