Post 10CR blues.

The Wellings somewhere in Italy 2007 CT 10CR

Washed the 2,500 miles worth of CT 10CR grime off of the Stag on Saturday, and carefully pulled the event stickers off the door's. Keep thinking to myself this time last week I was high in the Alps having a wake up coffee at a picturesque cafe, or we were driving down the shoreline of lake Garda in Italy, or hammering around the Ring in Germany, or, or. Anyway one last top down in the Stag drive out with the family on Saturday night to a local eating establishment and that's about your lot this summer!

Triumph Museum closed

It is with much regret that I have to give notice that as of Wednesday this week the Triumph Museum here at Canley Classics has closed for public viewing.
Several factors have led to this decision, the most pressing one happened on Wednesday. Unbeknown to myself the wife took it on herself to buy at auction the contents of an office block locally from an International exhibition company that had recently gone into liquidation. Five transit vans full of equipment was disgorged into every nook and cranny of available space in the museum until we decide what we are going to do with it. This brings to mind the famous Monty Python sketch, 'Why did you buy a piston engine?' , 'Oh because it was a bargain!'
Another reason (excuse!) is that due to having a bumper year sales wise, and coincidently running at the lowest staffing level ever, time is very much at a premium. It's difficult enough finding time in the slower winter months to dust, polish, and generally clean the exhibits, but recently forget it, better just to throw a dust sheet over them.
Finally the take up from interested individuals, and groups who actually took the time to visit was tiny, at the Museums busiest we only ever saw maybe a couple of people a month. It's difficult to justify all the work required here to maintain the exhibits to a decent viewing standard when you might not see a punter from one month to the next.
Don't worry though the Museum will still be viewable on line at www.triumphmuseum.org and we have no intentions of reducing the collection, quite the reverse in fact! I shall do my best (as time allows) to add more of the collection to the website, as what you see presently is a tiny proportion of the total collection.
Again many appologies for this decision, and thanks to the few of you who actually visited us over the years.

The last days at Triumph

I got to remembering about Dad's last days at Triumph prompted by a post by Gareth Thomas over on the CT Forum (a great place to be! http://www.club.triumph.org.uk/). I've copied it below;


Quoted from GTEVO
'The Triumph was known for having some of the most transparent factory gates in the UK.Today you can laugh, but if you saw what they scrapped, buried, smashed up with sledgehammers in 1980'

Quoted from me

The old man was involved in the factory clear-up. After working at the Standard for nearly 20 years in broke his heart spending his last two years there destroying the place. A couple of tales I remember are;
They (Leyland) moved TR7 production (again!) to Solihull and in the process it underwent an interior trim change away from the tartan stuff. Dad was tasked with slashing hundreds of complete seats with a Stanley knife so that the scrappies couldn't flog em to Leyland dealers. At the end of that week the manager in charge asked Dad for his Stanley knife back!
When stores was being emptied hundreds, if not thousands of surplus windscreens surfaced, Dad was tasked with driving a fork lift into them, and then using a digger to put the residue into skips.
Again when stores was being emptied boxed metering units were going straight into the skip. At the time I was rebuilding the TR5 so the old man got 'a few' out on a scrap ticket for me. Why anyone ever nicked anything from the Triumph I'll never know as it was perfectly legitimate to pay a nominal sum and get stuff out on these scrap ticket's with authority from above, I recall Dad paying no more than a couple of quid apiece for them.
Warning thread drift!

TR5 owner, 30 years today?

Taken at Rousham Park STIR (Standard Triumph International Rally) in the late 70's.

At least I think it's today? I still have the receipt somewhere at home for the day I picked up my TR5 back in 1977. Bought at the tender age of sixteen for the princely sum of 650 notes with tax & test, read it and weep! Imagine a nine year old 150bhp sportscar which was still one of the fastest things on the road in 1977 and approaching your seventeenth birthday (and your driving test). My first years insurance which was third party only (no fire & theft) cost me the same as the car. How I didn't kill myself in that first years motoring I'll never know!

Silverstone and aluminium tackle

We don't get many, if any, but yesterday we did. I am referring to one of those corporate hospitality day things courtesy of our insurance company a fine bunch of people called Towergate. Practice day for the Silverstone GP was the draw, well OK then count me in! Although I have been a lifelong fan of most things motorsport GP stuff has mostly passed me by. Indeed I seem to have a regular at Silverstone recently for everything other than GP. A particular highlight last year was the UK round of the Le Man 24 hour series. As a guest of a prominent Le Man pilot of yesteryear, and a prominent member of the BRDC to boot we spent most of the event sat in the BRDC pavilion scoffing superb buffet whilst hob knobing with the president of the BRDC himself a very pleasant chap. Unfortunately I just missed sharing a rolled salmon sarnie with Jackie Stewart, maybe next time. Anyways up, back to yesterday, did all the usual, walk up and down the pit lane in the lunch break. Sauntered through the paddock, catching Davina Coulthard moving faster than he ever does in a car to avoid the autograph hunters staking out his camper thing. The rest of the time was spent in the pit lane hospitality suite eating and drinking free stuff whilst flicking coctail sticks at the Ferrari drivers as they came back into the pits underneath us no more than 6 foot away. All in all an excellent day, specially as it only cost us the price of the petrol in the wifes 2.5 to get there and back.
Looks like things might be moving on the aluminium front again with several projects moving closer to the top of the pile of things to do. I hear a rumour that we might be blowing some cores next week for those elusive 6 cylinder heads in preperation for another couple of test castings, oh well we can but hope.

It still keeps coming out of the woodwork

Many thanks to Onne Van Der Spoel for donating some more original Triumph engineering drawings to the Canley Triumph Archive. Covering such diverse parts as the rear hub on a Herald, to the copper spherical shim in the 2000 differential. The total drawing collection is now into the hundreds, all saved by concerned individuals who thought they deserved a better fait than would normally have befallen the like. Onne for instance had offered his drawings to other collecting institutions with mixed results, one even told him that they would accept them only if he delivered them (personally) at his own expense, and that he must hand over some Morris drawings (that he wanted to keep for the time being) because they weren't 'rightfully' his to own!

How long before this steady stream of 'finds' drys up, it never fails to amaze us how much important stuff is still coming out of the woodwork 30, 40, and 50 years after the event.

I gone done it again

Thanks to Jason Chinn (I think!) and his eagle e-bay eye yet another Atlas has found it's way into our possession. It's a camper this time complete with pop up roof, cooker, sink, and rust. What has come over me? I could virtually have the pick of any of Triumph's finest but I've come over all silly for these ugly, useless, remnants of Triumph's (really Standard's) darkest hour?