Fooling around with ignition coils

A few mates and members of the Danish Triumph shared my interest in finding out - what is unside an ignition coil, and is there any significant difference in power output of traditional oilfilled coils vs modern dry coils

We made a simple test bench from an old distributor and a battery. Looked like this




Next step was to test the coils: an unipart coil, a lucas sports coild and a modern dry coil

The very scientific test was to experiment with how long a spark the coil could draw, and look at color and "fatness" of the spark.

In action it looked like this



There was no doubt that the modern coil supplied the longest and warmest spark. In second came the lucas sportscoil, but only marginally better than the Unipart coil. I doubt there would be any difference in car - at least not any that would justify the extra cost!

Now to the fun part - take the coils apart (boys will be boys...)













There was no big difference between the coils. The lucas coil had more windings, but basicly same construction.

Great way to spend an afternoon with good friends :-)

Going down with 0.00000197285353535 MPH

Or in other words - I managed to install a rear lowering block on the spit. What I thought would be really simple (still that naive yes!) turned out te be a 4 hours task. The rear suspension being a swing spring does not make matter easier....

I loosened the spring - lifted it a bit and tried to place the lowering block on top of the diff. Then putting the spring back on. Fiddle with diff studs (long type). Hmmm, something was defo wrong... Toiook me about one hour to figure this out. Thought I just had the studs misaligned.

First I found out that either the spring were to wide, or the recess in the lowering block were to narrow. Either way - they didn't match :-( Fettled a bit with a file, and in some 15 minutes it was (theoretically) suitable to go on the spring.

Back to the car - try to put the #¤%#/ bock on again. Turns out that either the stud on the spring isn't properly centered - or the hole in the lowering block is to small.

Block out - find the file - enlarge hole. Another 15 minutes gone. Swear a bit. Drink a cup of coffee.

Back to car- hooray. Block fits on spring. At this time I was easily distracted, so when a mate came by I took a break.

One hour later - back to block. Now the challenge were to get the studs past the block and down into the diff housing.Not easy as the block is shorter ythan the diff, so there is really nothing to go by.

Eventually I had the spring/block and diff holes lined up. Studs went in fairly easy. Then washer and a nylock. Voila - car is now half inch lower - in just 4 hours - which makes car going down at the terrifick speed of 0,00000197285353535 MPH. ;-)

Progress

Surprisingly amount of progress last night.

Task one: fit shorter springs and adjustable shocks to drivers side - only managed passengerside last week before I ran out of time. Was easy. No complications. Undo lower shocker bolt and lower trunnion. Remove old shocker and spring. Relase spring. Steal top hat. Fit the new spring and shocker. Admire ;D

Impressed by myself I started to removed radiator for the next task: Undo pulleynyt in order to rectrieve pulley so I can put the triggerwheel on it. Radiator itself was pretty easy to bolt of. But the hoses was as glued on. After a fair amount of swearing it all came of :)
Next, the pulleynut itself. Tried turning it - no luck. Stuck on tight. Well done when engine was assembled last year.... Next move - let the starterengine free it. Worked like a charm ;D A few good wack with the starter and it spun of.

As I was obvoiusly on a lucky streak I went to the rear of the car with a lowering block in mind. I had forgot the block itself at home, but thought I could undo the spring. Usually not a funny task. But - both spring bolts came out nice and I could undo the 4 nuts on top of differential. Everything is ready for next week (where I better remember lowering block!!)

All in all a very good evening in the garage. Spring is coming - depression is taking off. Life is good (knock on wood)

I HATE MY LIFE!

But one hour later it was OK :-)

Modern rubbish

Here is a picture of the culpruit that stoppet my last season with a annoying gearbox breakdown.

A small circlip that holds the gear in place. Slipped from its place on the mainshaft allowing the gear to slide on the shaft which results in popping out of gear.

This is what happens when inferior circlips are used. Made in china from the standard iron-butter. So soft that the egdes break give in and the clip break away

Crap.

GT6 rearseat

OK - to make it up to the GT6 after years of neglect a rearseat was bought. Just really really hope the seller will find the brackets.......

OK - gearbox fixed

It's been a while. Gearbox turned out to have the stupid circlip going AWOL. A new - but NOS - circlip was kindly donated by Dave Sideways and installed in box. I am going to install box either this weekend or next (to bloody lazy ATM)

Other news include a megajolt ignition which is currently residing in the basement. Will hopefully be functional on car within a few months (lazy again....)

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!!!

New boing and bling parts

Got my new AVOs with courier the other day. Will be fitting these pretty soon. Also got a new rear swing spring setup - will probably alltogether transform handling quite a lot.

Just have to get hold of a new spring compressor, got a feeling that the old homemade wooden thing might be fine for 150 lbs standard spring but to weak for 480 lbs

Apart from admirering new shocks, I got around to fit front wing finishers and grille. Nice piece of 70's style black plastick. Looks like I might even make it for a ride in the spring. Can't wait!

RBRR2008 TEAM #3

YES, we have secured a good entry number. I have heard that 3 is a lucky number. 3 Danes going as team #3. That must be good.

Now we (well, mostly Daniel as Morten and I are buried in our spitfires) just have to fix the 2000 MK2 (aka The Ferry). Nothing is going to stop us now - well, apart from British technology!

Fuelpipes

Finally, the last fuelpipes has been routed. Was not quite straightforward, as the carb is a HS4 and fuelpump is for HS2, which means the nozle on the pump points in the wrong direction (MK3 usually routes from pump to carb in front of engine - later routes behind the engine) Not a biggie thou, got the pipe nicely along the firewall.




Basically I am ready to start the engine now. Exiting to see if the ignition works at all - bought at an autojumble. I am just waiting for my engiman Bjarne to come along. I have promised not to start the enginbe without him - healso has some special homebrewed run-in oil with a hint of Molybdenum in it which he swears to.

Carbs, ignition and waterpipes ready

Had another go at the engine yesterday. Got the carbs in their proper place - just need to hook them up to the throttlepedal. Ignition also put on, though I am a bit unsecure about it. I was bought secondhand - the old distributor was dead, and this was a great bargain. The distributor is excellent with no play - I am a bit more suspicious about the electronic ignitionmodule. Well - I will give it a try. Of it does not work I will go back to contacts.

I got the waterpipe behind the manifold fixed too.

And to Vitessesteve - thanks for the advice on the waterpumpthread - will try that next week before going up in boltsize.

Finally - managed to push the chrometrim down in the windshield rubber. Generous amount of fairy liquid needed!

Some pics.

Water pump problems

I - painfully - learned a few things today. First: put the adaptornut (the one for the water return pipe) back into the waterpump housing before you stick it on the engine and puts the radiator in front. Adaptornut cannot be moved one flat with house in situ. That sucks!

Second: check the treads on the waterpump housing before you put everything back together (again). When tightening the alloy thermostat housing the bolt kind of did not bite. and of course there is not any room for a nut under the housing. Going up in boltsize very shortly I believe.

I SEE - COMMENTS!!

Sorry - wasn't aware anybody actually was reading my ramblings and leaving comments. Keep em coming.

Here comes answers:

Thorvald - sorry - I fixed the broken pics now.

Richard - yes - sidewindows and quarterlights are a pain on the roundtails. I beleive I possibly have aquired the last set of sidewindows in the world with the rounded corner. Judging from the price I would say they are very rare. Hope deal goes through. Othervise I must resort to the modify softtop thing.

Vitessesteve: Yes - nice patches - may hold water for a while, but certainly not pretty, and a sure place for rust to start eating again. Been replaced (and a the same time I could straighten out the damages from the sideimpact by a previous owner - he must have forgot to tell me somehow - ehh???)

Yours truly doing Round Denmark - 2000 kilometers, 36 hours