Spitfire Engine Refurb

The last few weekends have been occupied by cleaning up and refurbishing the Spitfire’s engine. While basically sound, the engine looked very tatty and needed some work to bring it up to the high standards that the bodywork is being restored to.

So this how the engine looked when I started…

There was is no easy way of cleaning-up a filthy lump like this, caked with 40 years’ worth of oily road dirt.

I scraped off the worst, then it was down to nearly six hours of scrubbing with a toothbrush dipped in white spirit. Finally, every surface to be painted had to be degreased with a cloth soaked in brake cleaning fluid.

Fortunately, once the gunk had been removed, the original paintwork on the engine was entirely sound, so I was able to paint over it with a couple of coats of engine enamel.

Finally, I swapped the tatty the rocker cover with a shiny new alloy one, and renewed all of the hoses and hose clips.

And this is how it looks now…

My next job is to, give the engine a service and replace the spark plugs, points, leads, condenser, oil filter and air filters; then the engine will be ready to go back into the car.