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   Goblin  - 78 Spit6   

                   The Engine Compartment

   Goblin's Restoration - 1978 Spit6
Home   Engine       Rear Axles and Diff   8-Ball O/D Shift lever  00's of links
Exterior  Interior  Firewall cleanup Front Suspension Rebuild

 

   This engine is indeed indeed in good shape as the p.o. claimed.   30+ psi oil pressure when hot, 0.006" thrust washer freeplay, and 165psi compression +/- 3psi. So It looks like I'm in good shape here. So I guess I'll not be opening this one up for any reason soon. yippee!  You might have noticed It's an earlier MKI engine as is identifiable by the individual pushrod tubes between the sparkplugs.

   After a and carb rebuild, the engine starts relatively easily and idles much more smoothly. But it seemed like the idle would 'hang', or would not always settle back to the same speed. So I gutted and rebuilt the distributor and adjusted valves. MUCH better now. 

   The wiring is a mess, badly repaired, taped up and hidden under that corrugated plastic tubing. It still has a fully functional 'King Dick' style glass bowl bottom pump handled mechanical fuel pump installed.  

    It already has a GM alternator installed, so that's one conversion I won't have to do myself. 

    I ripped up the old harness, fixed all the wiring the right way, and completely re-wrapped the harness with oem style non-adhesive backed loom tape.  

  As purchased, the carbs had a nice gold-ish overtone. But in this case, it's a layer of old gas varnish. The linkage is a bit fudged up, and using a cable conversion to the mechanical linkage of the older throttle setup. These carbs also have the adjustable jet from underneath. (which leaked badly the day I went to look at this car before purchasing it)  The PVC valve works just fine as do the temperature compensators.

   After a full carb rebuild, I did get the jets to stop leaking out the bottom. I also got the manual chokes properly setup and balanced after installing a new twin cable choke cable.  The inter-connecting linkage had to be completely rebuilt to get rid of the freeplay and bent up components.

   All new heater hoses were installed.  AS the firewall still has the stock Spitfire water control valve mounted, the previous owners had simply added a 90 degree elbow to the GT6 intake manifold to route the water hose to the heater.  

   I completely stripped down and cleaned the wiper motor (while the firewall was being rebuilt). Cleaning the electrical contacts of the motor mounted switch finally got it working properly at both speeds, as well as the auto-off function.  

I always like to use a battery cut-off switch on these cars. With a couple in the driveway, sometimes one will sit for awhile, while otherss are being driven. So they make it easy to dis-connect the battery to keep them from draining. Plus the added insurance of a quick disconnect on 30+ year old wiring simply can't be a bad idea. Although not pictured, a stock style airbox was installed to replace the totally dried out and falling apart foam air filters.

 


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last edited 03/18/10

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