Looooong test drive&troubleshooting

Did first leg of RoundDenmark yesterday. Couldn't do second and third leg as I had to work.

Gearbox gave up 50 miles before home - left me with only third and fourth gear. Bit of a pain when you are stuck in stop%go trafick on most busy rpoad in copenhagen area during rush hour. At least now I know the smell of burned clutch (yuck)

Will have to examine the gearbox VERY closely now - I had hoped I could wait till end of season - but unless this is a small problem then yesterday was end of season to me (sigh)

Pictures and more ramblings will follow soon.

Cheers

Gearbox trouble

OK - just when I thought things were good. Only minor troubles, then gearbox starts acting funny. It keeps jumping out of third gear. Not good. I (naively) suspects the gear selector forks - either worn or bent. Will try to fit another top with good forks. If that does not do it - I will have to dismantle the fbox for a rebuild. Till then I just have to do without 3. gear :-(

Passed MOT

Whopeee

Passed MOT. Now next mission is to do some serious cruísing (well - that will be when I correct the minor flaws the MOT-man found)

Thing to do:

• Fit correct headlights - the ones I have is for RHD vehicles - need to be european spec.
• Do something about wiring of lights - I cannot turn the parking lights on
• Fix the oil leak from valve cover
• Find some nuts for the prop bolts that are less fat. Bolts does not engage nyloc properly.
• Fix slight leak from exhaust manifold - got an annoying whistle

Apart from that - enjoy the summer :-)

Spending time

OK, it has been a while since last blog entry. I have been extremely busy doing all kind of non triumph related stuff, and whenever I started working on the spit I just seemed to get deeper into spit-troubles. Trouble really started brewing when I bought a set of swing spring half-shafts. This was a good deal, and I got a fine pair of shafts. When I realised that these shafts had larger flanges, and would not mate up with the diff - well that were the first set-back. But it was not all bad, as I had a spare diff (a rebuild 4.11) with larger flanges. I just had to swap the two diff. That was setback two as swapping diffs is a bastard of a job!!

Well finally I got diff in and shafts on. Now I could very clearly see that the handbrake cable was to short due to the swing spring shafts being slightly longer. New cable ordered, arrived by mail a few day later. I will not tire you with how I managed to screw the cable up so it could not be used (doh!)

I have also been fighting the dual exhaust trying to fabricate some brackets. Well, lets just say I have been working through a few designs - and even though exhaust is now in place I am not entirely happy.

OK - fast forward a few weeks - had had no time for the spit, but arranged a club meeting, where we would try to start the engine. Engine had been rebuild, but had not yet been started. Everything ran more or less according to plan, and it was very revarding to hear the engine run. However - a bit of water was leaking from the water temp sender in the water pump housing. When I tightened the sensor I overtigthened and ruined the thread on the housing. (another doh!) Well - it was not entirely my mistake as the house was pretty much rusted to pieces. I should have done a better quality check before fiting it.

Well - yesterday evening I removed the rad so I could put a new (old really) waterpump housing on. Got it on, got everything put back together, and started the engine again. Succes.

Engine is running rather rough, but I blame it on the carbs which has not been tuned at all.

Has no pics, but a few from when we held the meeting

Speaking of NOS stanpart

The mad welder took another step towards completeing right hand rear wing. Something had fallen hard on the wreck ruining entire rear wing. Got hold of a NOS stanpart gutter (thing between bootlid and rearwing. Nice to work with´NOS parts. The rear wing is a heritage - not as nice as NOS, but close enough.

More on The Mad Welder and his wreck right here:

http://thetriumphanimal.blogspot.com/

Odd spring and driveshafts

Just removed the old spring yesterday as a part of the conversion to swing spring.

The old spring has caused a lot of trouble - that is positive camber trouble. Looking at the two springs next to eachother explains quite a bit.

Driveshaft will also be changed to the longer 1500 shafts. Should improve handling ( basicly - with that spring anything would improve handling ) If anybody knows what kind of sping i have, then please let me know)

Old and new spring together. New spring seeems longer and lower. Old spring axcactly same height as a GT6 roto spring, but considerable softer.

More locks, and even more problems!

Well, it took a good two hours to get the passengerside lock to work. I had to grind the lock fork through a hole in the door as I couldn't get the lock (not the door lock, but the part with the key) out. But eventually it worked. Before I fitted the other side, I shortened the fork - saved me two hours work there! But of course nothing is ease. It appears that there has been added a liberal amount of filler around the hole in the doorplate where the lock shall be. And this means that the "legs" that hold the lock cannot engage. This meant another hour of swearing and scraping knuckles before I got all done

During this process I had to remove the locking mechanism - which were to say the least looking a bit tatty. Took the chance and gave it a good clean and a layer of paint. It was very red from a previous respray (by PO). Car is green now, and it really looked YUK.

Before
After

Next week the drive shaft, spring and diff will be removed and replaced by a new parts. Hopefully! I have new AVOs ready, and somewhere in the post is a pair of new longer drive shafts. Some years ago I bought a recon diff from Jon Wolfe. It is a 4.11 but rebuild into a later diff housing (only 4 holes for studs) and with fatter input and output shafts.

New locks - and new problems!

Finally got around to fit the new WB-locks I bought for the spit. Quite nice locks actually, with nice WB-key set and FS-keynumbers. All good. And much better than other locks in the market, as I do not have to make the hole in the doorplate larger. After a bit of fiddling around, the lock went in very nicely. All very good - until........ I tried to lock the door!


The fork which is engaging the locking mechanism is to long and cannot turn as it touches the reinforcement plate on the doorshell. In the picture below you van see the culprit - it is supposed to turn counter clockwise. Crap! And there is absolutely no easy way to get these locks of the door again.

I will have to remove the locking mechanism on the door to be able to turn the lockforks downwards and gently remove some metal from the fork. Not what I really needed. Thought the lockjob was going to be easy - then again - what is easy with these cars and repro spares!!!