OK, it’s late in the season, but with the Suzuki of the road for a couple of weeks, and with the weather holding I decded to use the Spitfire to get to work at least once.

I’ve been worried about that quantity of oil in the differential, so I topped that up. It took around 1/4 of a litre, less than I expected and not enough to stop the back end rumbling and complaining.

I’ve also had a set of EBC green stuff pads sitting on the shelf for ages waiting to replace the cheap pads I put on the car when I put it back together. We’d overheated these going down a steep hill in Luxembourg, fully laden and they’d never been much cop since.

Every thing is still new, not seized and clean enough that it’s a pleasure to work on the car and the pads were on in no time.

I took it pretty easy on them on the way to work, despite the “brake-in” coating I though I’d best bed them in a bit. They seem promising, unlike the back end, which is seriously noisy and suffers quite a lot of vibration at certain speeds. I guess a diff rebuild/replacement and some balancing is on the cards during the winter.

Nothing for years and now, I’ve been to classic car meets twice in the last month.

This time it was Horten og Omegn Motor Clubs meet/show at their club house, Borre gamlesjasjon (old station). This time there was one other Triumph, a very nice TR6, which completely by chance arrived not long after me and ended up parked beside me.

Lots of very smart motors, a good few e-types and couple of MGTDs, a very pretty MGA and lots of American “stuff”! More photos here.

Ok, I’ve said to someone on the Club Triumph Forumthat I would show them how I changed the battery box on the Spitfire. So I thought, why not write a blog post and then it’s easily available for future reference.

I did this job in early August 2006, part of the over optomistic mad rush to get the car finished for a trip around England and Ireland in September…..

Anyway, here’s what I did. I started by drilling completely through the spot welds from the top, even though it’s a small panel there’s loads of them!

I tend to use around an 8mm drill bit, you can get away with smaller but I find plug welding afterwards easier with a bit more space.

You could also use a spot weld cutter, I have one of these an find it really difficult to control. The advantage here would be that you could avoid welding from underneath if you didn’t drill through the body.

Once I drilled all the welds, I bent back the two stiffening brackets and lifted out the box.

That’s where the photo’s end unfortunately, but after that it’s clean all the paint off the flange on the new battery box where you’re going to weld. Put it in place. Bend the stiifeners back.  Plug weld through the holes you’ve already drilled (from underneath all the way round and above for the stiffeners). And tidy up.

Biggest challenges are managing to squeeze the flanges tightly together (you can only get a clamp on at the front) and welding from underneath. On the 1500 access is really difficult under there. It’s not easy to get in to grind any messy welds down either, on the other hand, no one will ever see them!

Havn’t got a close up of the finished job, but you can see it here.

and here.

By chance, I happened to see Re Motor Clubs little display (in foul weather) 3 weeks ago outside the local supermarket. I got chatting and was given a schedule for their events I found out that the next event was the 1st of May drive with their friends from Høyjord and Andebu, since the Triumph is out of winter storage I decided to brave the weather and go along.

I didn’t really know what to expect but was all the same, especially considering the weather, amazed by the turn out. Just by chance I parked the Triumph up beside an old Austin when I arrived, one of only a handful of British Cars.

Not long before the 12 O’Clock set off, and to everyones surprise, a set of around 15 old lorrys turned up in convoy. All imacculately presented, quite a site in the Norwegian country side.

The convoy, which ended up as 52 Vehicles, took a 40 Km trip to Eidsfoss, on the back roads. As you can see some of then weren’t even tarmac. A 1926 Model T Ford set the pace!

I was near the front of the convoy, the view of all these classics in the mirrors was something else.

We all parked up beside the lake and enjoyed coffee and cakes in the local Cafe.

It was good to meet some other local classic car nuts, it seems that there is quite a following here, albeit mostly Volvos! I’m looking forward to the next event, a meet on the 18th may.

There’s a few more pictures on more-power.co.uk under photos (here)