Spitfire TB885 Spade Grip on Ebay

Not sure if I can pick the forums brains on this….

I’ve long been looking for a Spitfire spade grip & I’m half considering making an offer on the TB855 spade grip on eBay. The provenance sounds interesting and reasonable (with Andy’s comments on the forum eBay thread as well) but I’d like to get an idea how much this grip have been restored, or messed with since it was recovered from the aircraft.

A couple of things have caught my eye though & I guess you guys may be the best people to check with.

The outer trigger casing’s obviously been repainted, but it seems slightly different from the ones in Alan’s book. It seems to have screw holes missing and in a different place etc, do you think its original to the grip, or even the correct type?

The rear of the grip covering looks to have been cut where the pipes run, was this ever an in-service modification to fit a different button / system or has someone cut it to remove the pipes (In which case i wonder why – I’d have thought to remove the grip from the plane it would have been easier to just cut the pipes at the bottom.

From the photos there’s no obvious sign of a hole in the bottom hub part of the grip for the pipes to run to the inside of the downtube. Did late Spitfire grips such as this ever have pipes running externally across the rear of the grip (like a Hurricane grip or perhaps the Lysander grip mentioned in the book) or perhaps has it been stuffed full of filler to stabilise / repair it? The corrosion in this area is pretty severe.

Can anyone spot anything else in the makeup of the grip / trigger that would indicate it may not be an original AH8086 grip or perhaps it’s been cobbled together from a bunch of parts from other grips to restore it somehow.

I’d be interested to know if this as done by the original owner, or since Andy sold it on.

Really appreciate any help you can give me. I don’t mind buying a relic grip or even a lightly restored / preserved one but I’m not too keen on a relic grip that’s been bodged up as a restoration job, somehow it would seem a bit artificial.

Thanks all…..