Triggerwheel attached to front pulley

So - despite my cars effort to piss me off there has been some progress. Triggerwheel has been attached to the front pulley.

First - clean pulley - find out how to position triggerwheel - done a while ago


Next - engage The Mad Welder to do his thing

Finally - put nut back on and tighten it well. Rad in.

Things are brightening up

One step forward - and 10 backwards :-(

The plan:

1. Put exhaust on
2. Put front pulley on
3. Put radiator on
4. drive and enjoy the 20+ celsius weather this weekend
   

Reality:

1. Put exhaust on
2. By accicdent drop a nut down into the exhaust - I fear the unlikely event that it will be drawn into engine by bacjpressure
3. Take exhaust of
4. Remove nut
5. Refit exhaust
6. Put frontpulley on
7. Try to tighten nut to 150 lb/ft, engine turn, hhmm now what
8. Put car in gear and slam the brakes
9. Find out that something is very wrong with the clutch
10. Diagnose shows that idiot me has NOT managed to get the clutch actuator pin into the slavecylinder
11. Cry for 10 minutes
12. Undo all bolts round bellhousing
13. pull gearbox back - realise that this does not offer enough room to get pin out
14. Exhaust and prop must come of
15. call it the night - i give up

Off course batteries on camera are flat. well just enough power to get lens ut - but not in again

Lets realise - I will not enjoy a drive next sunday - it will be well into may before I get all this sorted.

Pick-up sensor and triggerwheel for MegaJolt

Last night in the workshop had one purpose - find out how to attach the triggerwheel sensor. When sensor is placed I will know where on the pulley the triggerwheel has to be, as the sensor has to point 9 tooth before the missing tooth when engineis at TDC

First I knocked up a very rough template for at bracket (no points for aesthetics!) which can be seen here






The triggerwheel had been attached with clamps, so could easily be adjusted so the sensor would point at ninth tooth.

With this position, TDC would be appr. at third tooth



Now - mark it - and leave it for the mad welder to attach to pulley while I am taking a well earned vacation under the sun waaaaay down south :-)



The bracket will be fabricated when I get home again. Initial thought had been along the lines of some angled iron. I have deserted this thought when I saw the rough mock up. I might just make the bracket from heavy gauge iron without angles on it.

This gauge should just about do it.

BUSTING BRAKES

In an attempt to improve braking I have fitted Mintex brakepads to the fronmt of the Spit. To avoid glazing of the pads I decided to bust the surface of the disc.

So caliber of, and start rubbing with rough sandpaper. The disc have a slight blueish/brownish tint which dissapperar after a little rubbing with grit150 sandpaper.

Ideally disc should be machined, but time is short, havent got the hardware for it and really didn't want to disturb the bearings.

After a while (10 minutes each side of disc) disc had got the right slightly rough surface, and all the miscoloration had gone - clear silver!

Next find pads - mintex at the left, Countys finest at the right (500 miles wear on them)

I fitted the anti squeel shims, and slammed the entire bit together.

Job done.

Daniel R. (aka SpitmkIIICPH) came by and dropped off a much needed lift. It is more rusty than rysty, but will hopefyllu clean up nice and work. A lift is defo needed. I can't get under the car anymore. I say it's because car has been lowered - some says it's because I am getting old and fat!

Anyway - here is the solution. Just needs a lot of care and grease/paint/slight repair

Round Denmark Reliability Run

Do not forget this years Round Denmark Reliability Run.

http://rdrr2009.blogspot.com/

Anyone interested can mail me direct at nikolaj.blomberg@gmail.com for more info

It's the weekend 18-20 september.

1250 miles in 36 hours.

Cheers

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!