What a shocker !

I was only on site for around 15 minutes today in between my rounds delivering and collecting stuff, and still managed to field a technical enquiry whilst scoffing my salad batch. It was from an old friend in the trade Pete Cox, formerly Cox & Buckles, latterly Moss. I was buying stuff of Pete in the late 70's when I was struggling to keep my TR5 on the road on a meager students pittance. No mail order in those days, I used to jump in the TR and head over to Fairfax St clutching some folding, mind you I never seemed to end up buying what I actually went over for! Pete always managed to sell me that months 'special deal', wire wheels always seemed to be cheap. Anyway today's technical revolved around rotoflex shock absorbers and the correct spec for a Vitesse (or in this case an Equipe) with telescopic conversion brackets fitted. The sum total of my advice was more to do with wishing him good luck than actually pointing him in the right direction. These brackets never seemed to be specified with the correct length shocks, most of them being to short, and it gives a very nasty ride, I have lost count of the number of MK11's I've driven in this condition. Every producer of these kits seemed to do it slightly differently so who knows what shock to use today, some traders have been known to sell standard Herald/Spit rears, or GT6 roto rears, all wrong. One day in an idle moment John Kipping and myself spent an hour or two with a Vitesse in the workshop looking for the ideal place to mount a rear shock, and the bracketry needed, i.e a proper kit. We came to the conclusion that to mount one in the ideal attitude would involve cutting a reshaping bodywork, and offering a turret type affair to mount it. We decided 99% of customers wouldn't be interested in major bodywork when fitting a pair of shocks, and quietly forgot about the whole idea!

Much ADU about nothing!

Only a week to go to the Midlands/North, Club Triumph Round Britain Reliability Run Drivers meeting at the Weavers Inn in Fillongley. You South East people have still got your drivers meeting at the usual venue (The Plough). I'm sure the Club Triumph officialdom won't mind if you want to come along to either meeting to soak up the atmosphere even if you are not participating this year. I guarantee you will be hooked when you see all those Triumphs in the car park's of the respective venues and all those mad keen teams collecting their roadbooks (this is the official route book, with spaces for signatures required at each control on the route).

How is the Canley entered car coming on? Well I'm sure that the other members of our team will be happy to know that I've actually started work on it at last. This week I have mainly been finding the bits I took off the car 5 years ago and put somewhere safe. It took me 2 hours today to find the gearstick for instance! I'm not working on it tomorrow as I'm out and about doing the rounds of suppliers/manufacturers, but from Thursday it should be full steam ahead.

The workshops are emptying out nicely after our self imposed ban on any further new bookings. The intention was to catch up with existing customers cars already here, and prepare some of our own cars for sale. We should be back on stream towards the middle of October with a nice spacious/tidy workshop. We have looked again at some of the workshop equipment and decided to chuck out some of the leaky old trolley jacks, engine hoists etc that clutter up the place. Decent equipment is so cheap nowadays it just aint worth trying to fix stuff anymore. There is some talk about fitting another ramp, a two poster, to sit along side the existing four poster, personnally I fancy a rolling road! Just to think I turned one down a few years back, that was available for peanuts. Mind you it was a 4 wheel, 500bhp one, the bloody thing was massive! Why 4 wheel, 500hp, well it was coming out of the old Ferguson Formula (those of the 4 wheel drive Jenson's and others) factory the other side of Coventry, when it closed down a few years back. The finally knocked the factory down last year and there's a housing estate going up on the site.

Anyway I'm rambling, nothing new there then, time to go!

44 days to go!

A little bird has just reminded me that there is only 44 days to go before the kick off to that highlight of the Triumph calender the 2004 RBRR. Other entrants seem to be in the throws of putting the finishing touches to their steeds. As usual (traditional) the Canley entry sits forlornly awaiting any attention at all! We (Team Canley; Jason Chinn, Jerry and yours truly) have entered in a real rarity, one of the 4 2600 MK111 saloon prototypes we own, Triumph's last ditch attempt to squeeze another few years out of the 2000 range pending the introduction of the SD1 6 cyl range, using the same engine, i.e the 2300/2600 Triumph developed OHC 6 cyl. Only the MK111 we are using never actually got 6 cyl running gear, as neither did the majority of the 30 + prototype shells produced, as far as we can ascertain only 4 or 5 of the cars got 2600 engines. Our cars have fitted TR7 16 valve engine and 5 speed box, 'normal' Triumph OHV 2500 running gear (the wifes everyday car), a 2600 OHC and 5 speed box, and our RBRR entry fitted with TR8 V8 and 5 speed box. Ray Henderson (Triumphs chief engineer) once explained to me on one of his visits here that very early on the whole MK111 project was soon sidelined and the spare shells were used in a variety of other projects mainly to do with the introduction of the TR7, hence the 16 valve car, and the V8. I remember as a lad (this would have been 1972-4) seeing the experimental guys tooling around locally in thinly disguised TR7's and these special saloons, distinguished by the raised centre section of the bonnet (originally there to accommodate the taller OHC 2600 engine). Even then the saloons looked, and sounded radically different to the normal 2000 family, I must admit to being quite confused as to the 4 cyl exhaust noise coming from some of them! As strange coincidences go it gets no stranger than having these cars not 50 yards away from our neihbouring business the owner of which's husband was actually one of those experimental drivers!

44 days to go, hmm, when was the last time I drove the V8? Come to think of it' it was 1998, I wonder where the keys are, and the exhaust system, and the radiator, and the ?!!!

Special visitors

Every now and again we are privileged to receive a 'special guest' from Triumphs illustrious past. Of course it helps being on the outskirts of Coventry where a good proportion of Triumph ex workers still live. Yesterday was no exception, on his second visit to us was former Triumph experimental worker David Lloyd. David was involved in some of Triumphs most exciting projects including being the actual guy who made the bucks (tooling) and the actual glassfibre deck and hump for the Macau Spitfire residing in our museum. You may know that we have decided to return the Macau to its 1965 spec which includes reshaping the hump that was put on the car in the 1980's (Kas Kastner removed the original hump in 1967). David has kindly agreed to don his overalls and help with this work, how about that! Forty years will separate David's efforts by the time this work is completed, but worth the wait!

David has also loaned the museum some of his extensive photo archive of his days at Triumph, a keen photographer and friends with Triumphs own chief photographer, his collection is interesting to say the least!

New car for the Triumph museum!

Sorry about the picture quality, but I thought I would capture the scene last night at 9.30 when the oldest Herald saloon returned to Coventry. We have been away for a couple of days driving the Chicane with car trailor down to the South coast and then back up to Frome in Somerset to collect our recent purchase courtesy of e bay. As far as we know this is the oldest Herald saloon in existance being chassis number G11, engine number G8E, and well worthy of saving for the museum. The Chicane again performed as expected with no drama's, this car never ceases to impress, it clocks up big, big miles, uses no petrol, never goes rusty, and all on a diet of neglect, cheap unleaded, and never being garaged since we have had it! Currently the mileage is at about 225,000 miles (it has kph clock so I did a quick conversion), the engine has never been apart, and it has had only 2 oil changes in the last 125,000 miles (Halfords fully synthetic). There are no signs of valve seat recession, and it starts without a rattle, but if you really cane it hard you can just get a whif of smoke out the exhaust, indicating a little wear in the valve guides. I just had a thought, that 948 Herald probably went faster on the trailor last night a couple of times than it ever managed to do under its own power, oops!

Last Stafford?

No blogs over the weekend and yesterday, sorry, been a bit busy.

Had a good time at Stafford (TSSC International) as usual, both on a trading level, but also on a social level. Same old faces in the camping area, up for the 'crack', and wanting to party!

Fewer people about this year, and the number of traders was down again, one of the larger traders was noticeably absent. At one point on the Saturday morning it threw it down with rain, so one would suppose most of the people on the site would have been in the main hall, if so numbers attending was depressingly low. Gone are the days when the top car park was full to brimming with the parking by model, a feature of Stafford that I used to enjoy a good luck around in my breaks from the stall.

Still can't complain about what we as a company achieved, managed to get two of our cars there for the displays, the Macau Spit (parked next to Bernie's lovely recreation) and the GT6 race car (thanks to John Muggleton for towing it up). We also did well on the stall, helped by the lack of competition undoubtedly, but I like to think also by our wide spread of new products and keen prices!

No something needs to be done sharpish about the dwindling numbers, and a move to a new venue seemed to be top of the agenda for most of those who expressed an opinion to me over the weekend. It's a pity because Stafford is really handy for us being just up the road, and the facilites are good, excusing the toilets on the Sunday morning!

The Saturday night 'do' didn't have the same sparkle as other years, fewer people in fancy dress, and the band? We cleared of comparatively early back to the tents for some cheese toasties done on the barbie, and some more beer.

Thanks to Jason and Zoe for their stirling work over the w/end, and to Craig and Sarah for bedecking our stand in advertising stuff.

Tech tips for today

Thought I might impart a few tech tips that spring to mind as a result of goings on in the w/shp this week. Firstly be careful when fitting or refitting your 6 cyl oil filter adapter to your block. We have a couple of instances recently of terminal and near terminal cranks and or crank shells as a result of damaged or incorrect spec inner 'O' rings that go between the adapter and block. The first was a week or two ago and the seal that had been fitted was far to small in profile and was allowing unfiltered oil to go straight to the shells/crank. Fortunately the crank survived unscathed but we had to change the shells and this on an engine that had run less than an hour, not fitted by us of course, but by a 'professional' garage never the less! The second was on a car in for an engine change this week because of a noisy crank. On taking the adapter off Karl noticed that the inner 'O' ring had been damaged when it had been fitted, again allowing unfiltered oil straight to the crank.

Second tech tip. We have a lovely PI saloon in the w/shp that was losing power and dying. All the usual culprits were blamed pre seeing the car diagnosis, fuel pump, prv, etc, etc. Poor old Lucas PI it always gets the blame and 90% of the time its something else. As it was this time, any thoughts as to what it might be? No. Try this, the car had recently been fitted with a refurbished tank with some of that miracle gunk injected that is supposed to line the tank with a bullet proof layer. Well within a couple of weeks this layer was starting to be washed off by the petrol! Sheets of the stuff were being sucked into the outlet and giving the in line filters a coronary.

We had a similar thing a year or so back with a TR6, a great big glob of silicon sealer was rolling around in the tank, the car would go great for a while and then the sealer would roll over the outlet, and then? Well you know the rest.

Talking of TR6's and silicon sealer, we have had a nice red 125bhp car in the w'shp this week. The owner was being passed between pillar and post with various traders 'having a go' at fixing the leaks from around his metering unit. Having reached the end of his tether and having shelled out for recon metering unit and loads of labour to no avail he was pointed in our direction. What did we find? Metering unit pedestal seals shagged, allowing fuel to drain from the m/unit past the first seal and exit via the tell tale hole in the pedestal. It was worse than that though, whoever had fitted the metering unit last had fitted far to small a profile 'O' ring between the m/unit and pedestal, and decided to back that up with a good application of silicon sealer! It gets better, the m/unit had been timed 180 degrees out and the distributor clamp wasn't (clamping!), allowing the dizzy to float around to its hearts content, no wonder it ran like a bag of poo! A couple of hours labour and a couple of quid for some new seals/O rings, and the thing is really sweet, lovely and smooth, and no leaks!

That's it for today, I'm orf.