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Triumph Spitfire - A long way from home

Hi all,

I have a 1963 Spitfire, which has been sadly neglected for a few years while I have been working interstate. I am now in the process of fixing her up and need a few pointers.

The first is colour. At the moment, she is white, but I was thinking of maybe something darker to bring out the chrome. Anyone got a suggestion that works really well.

The second is interior. The two seats are both very dodgy, and I am not a huge fan of their "lay back" style. Is it better to just rebuild the ones I have or replace them? Someone told me I could put bucket seats from a small Mitsubishi in there? Are they for real?

Thanks.
Michael Westlake

Hello Michael,
I just found this site an dhope I'm not too late to help. I have a '73 US market Spit, but I've researched a fair bit bout all of the models. As far as paint color goes, I wanted to show off my chrome, so I chose Sapphire Blue. This exact shade is not original for the '63 model year, but I believe there is a similar dark blue color you could use that is correct. Darker colors tend to show off the chrome best because of the contrast. Maybe Black Wedgwood Blue or Connifer Green.

I believe that the Vintage Triumph Register has a link to the original range of paint chips for all Spits complete with DuPont paint codes. It is a scanned sheet of the DuPont paint code page that paint shops use to mix by formula for exact matches. See www.vtr.org and look for the link from there. Sorry, but I can't remember it right off.

I would hope that you would at least keep British seats in the car, if not the orginals. I rebuilt my seats myself and while 1500 seats are more complicated than MKI's, they were not very difficult to do.

I recommend you just get the necessary rebuild parts for your seats and pay attention as you carefully disassemble them. Have the frames welded or repaired as you find necessary and put everything back the way you found it.

I wish I could give you better details, but I'm more used to the later models. I didn't want you to think your requests had fallen on deaf ears since this page does not seem to be as frequented as one would hope.
Please don't give up on this page, but you could also try www.ohms.com for the 'Totally Triumph Garage.' They have a well-frequented discussion board with many early model Spit owners.

Good luck, and feel free to contact me if you have more questions.

Travis
Travis

This thread was discussed between 30/01/2001 and 11/03/2001

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