Darrell and Rebas 1977 Spitfire Page.

This is one of the latest additions to my Triumph stable. A 1977 Spitfire. I am the 3rd owner of this car.

I got this one for a song. It had 67,000 miles on the odometer, but the person I bought it from thought it had a bad rear-end and a valve problem.

The rear-end problem turned out to be a worn U-joint, and the valve problem turned out to be a major ignition timing error. It seems the original owner had converted the ignition to an after market electronic unit after the original Lucas electronic unit had failed. But somewere along the line someone had forgotten that these cars are fitted with a vacum retard unit for smog purposes. So they set the sensor in the distributor to close to one end of the advance swing, and under acceleration the car would spit, sput and die. Once the sensor was moved to the correct position the car ran fine.

Yes this car came with a factor hard top. And the original window sticker (I found it under the passengers seat) says that is how it was delivered. I have the top off now, naturally, as I am normally under TDR flight rules (Top Down Regardless).

The original owner put the blue stripe down the center of the car. It is interesting in that they added three white stripes in the blue stripe. A neat touch. But now the white has started to fade. The problem is that the rest of the car is done in the original paint and I hasitate to repaint the vehicle at this point.

And whoever said that a Triumph was of little use as a daily grocery getter, or could not be used to transport anything larger than a loaf of bread, obviously had no imagination. I did, however, get more than the normal number of waves and double takes.

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E-mail me at: Triumph_TR4@hotmail.com