Had some good pieces of luck this weekend. I've managed to acquire two sets of original white sun visors! ! set in good condition for an early Mk3 Spitfire with the correct brackets and 1 set in not quite so good condition for the Spitfire 4 MK1 & Mk2 again with the correct brackets! Been looking for these for ages then two come along at once! I paid very reasonable prices too :-)

The 3rd piece of good luck was that I've acquired some Spitfire Mk1/Mk2 hardtop brackets from a very nice chap who was willing to let me have his in exchange for my old MK3 Brackets. The reason behind this is that my MK3 has a Williams & Pritchard fastback roof (My MK3 is the Conifer Green one in the centre - pic taken at the TSSC International in 2009) and this has replaced my Works factory hardtop. So I want to fit the Factory top to FC316 and to do that I needed some MK1 brackets:-) Only problem now is that the Hardtop was only released in December 1963 and given that my Car is a 1962 build she doesn't have the fixing holes in the rear deck - not sure how I'm going to get around this as I def. do not want to drill into the rear deck - Originality is going to be the watchword for this restoration! (well as much as is feasible!).

Introductions!

Hi there and welcome to my new Blog. Lets get the basics out of the way first! My name is Jon Cronin, late 30's, married to Helen and together we have two lovely daughters Seirian Fflyr and Elys Ffion. We live in a small village near Cardiff in Wales, part of the United Kingdom.

I've been a "Triumph Man" since the early 1990's. I've owned Stags and GT6's but my real passion is for the Triumph Spitfire. After a brief flirtation with a 1978 Spitfire 1500 I moved quite quickly to the early "roundtail cars". In 1996 I bough a 1 owner 1967 Spitfire MK3. She had done 37,000 miles from new and was in very very good original condition. I still have her and she's now on 50,000 miles! Coulour has changed a bit from White/Red to Conifer Green/Black and she's been tuned to SAH Stage 1 specification with a Type 26 cam; Twin Stromberg 150CD carbs on an SAH Tuning inlet manifold; a stainless steel extractor exhaust manifold and straight through exhaust has also been added and the whole things is topped of with an SAH Alloy Rocker Cover and an "SAH Tuned" badge on the front wing.

As much as I love my 1 owner MK3 this Blog is really going to be about the restoration of My 1962 Triumph Spitfire4 - FC316. A very early car all the features in place unique to the very early cars. I'll note these in coming blogs. I've owned her for nearly a year now and managed to trace the original owner; get the original registration number re-activated. Her story is taht she was bought following a visit to the launch of the car at the Earls Court Motor show (the original owner having attended the launch!) and was used for a few years before being sold on - She ended up in Devon, England in 1975 and was never used again - so off road since then! To help with the Restoration I've bought a 1963 Donor Car FC14255, which has a rebuilt engine and gearbox as well as some bits and pieces that again are pretty hard to come by - it was a steal too! Anyway thats enough for now. I'll post photos in the coming blog entries!