The largest gathering of works Triumphs in one place ever?

I'm not sure even the Triumph competition department had this many cars in one place at one time? I have certainly never seen this many at any show (including the Abingdon celebration at Silverstone a few years back), race track, museum, or any other venue come to that. It's certainly making our insurers a bit jumpy. Chances are it's never going to happen again either, I certainly wouldn't like to try and organise it. Some of the cars here may never be seen in public again for all I know. In the next week or so the bulk of the cars will disperse ready for the new season (some of them still get used in anger) and my worries will be over (nice worries all the same). Mean while if the last car in the jigsaw turns up as promised in the next few days there will be ten works built competition Triumphs on the premises, eleven if you count our Vitesse 6003VC (OK I know it's the John Wooley version), or twelve if you count a car built by 'works' mechanics, from 'works' parts (in Coventry, but not at the 'works'). I'm sure some anorak may come along and point out that there were thirteen competition Triumph's at such, and such an event in the 60's, but I doubt it.

Courier stuff

Apologies for the rubbish photo. We are getting close to paint on one of our Couriers, and I thought I would take a snap of it in primer, and guide coat. This car like many Couriers was originally painted in economy spec grey. As much as it bugs me to paint one of our cars a none original colour I just couldn't face seeing yet another Slate Grey example, so this one is turning Wedgewood. This actual car was one of JK's (John Kippings) very first 'company car' Heralds, and as such had already had a very hard life in the hands of the workforce before I came on the scene. Relegated to one of the storage sheds here many years ago it was replaced by a succession of other Couriers that one day might find their way into the restoration queue. Whilst I am on the subject has anyone out there got a spare Courier grille? Four Couriers about the place and every grille has 'walked', If I cant track one down then I'll stick a 12/50 one on temporarily.

Arc eye!

I thought I had become immune to this phenomenon, but a mild dose of it earlier this week brought home how irritating it can be. A spell of concentrated welding on a couple of reconditioned Herald/Vitesse chassis for customers was the cause. We had wheeled out the chassis jig from the back of the workshop last week in preparation and gave the old girl a dusting. That piece of kit has done more jigging than Michael Flattery! Back in the day when the restoration trade was still flourishing it was being used on average 2 to 3 times a month. On a busy month I might do 4 chassis for JK (this was the early 90's) . Now we sell that many in a year! In retrospect it's probably a good thing as we couldn't sustain that throughput by finding suitable core chassis. A couple of containers full of units from New Zealand helped back then, plus JK was still breaking the odd Herald or Vitesse for spares. Having said that I'm still not sure how we managed to find enough as I am sure I have done over 100 chassis in my time. I used to keep records of each one, and numbered every one by welding that number on the front face of the chassis leg that runs under the engine sump. That stopped when I lost the book containing the records.
It's funny how the trade is changing, and what isn't selling now that used to do 15-20 years ago, still I'm not sure I miss all that welding, I know my eyes might last a little longer as a result.

Stoneleigh postscript

What a great show! Weather certainly helped, what a cracking weekend. Nearly talked myself horse to mates from both sides of the trading fence so to speak. Lots of familiar faces, and some new. It's always nice to put a name to a face after only previously talking to people via telephone/e-mail.
It was great to be finally relieved of the need to actually trade at Stoneleigh and spend more time on the other side of the counter. Over 20 years doing the rounds of the shows as a trader was starting to take it's toll, it's time now to ferkle amongst the other traders stuff.
Spent an enjoyable hour or so on the CT stand chatting to fellow enthusiasts, and mates from previous CT endurance driving events.
Got button holed by Bernie from the TSSC, we promised to get together soon and talk 'works' Spitfires and other things Triumph.
Hero of the show as always was Chic Doig (and Ian, and the other helpers) fancy coming all that way year, after year for a one day show what a star!
I went along armed with a bundle of cash hoping to find some tasty bits for several of my own projects, but in the end I only came away with 16 wheel nuts, a roll of cleaning cloth, and a Continental Touring Kit (cheers Doug). In that respect I found the show a little disappointing, it seems to be the same old stuff year after year in the autojumble, and the rest of it in the main hall is shiny stuff you can get easily (and some times far cheaper!) on the tinternet.
In conclusion as a social event I think Stoneleigh is one of the best, and if it needs traders there as a focal point to draw in the punters then fair enough, but I know which side of the table I shall be from now on.

Messing with motors

Had a busy day Saturday playing with some of the fleet. First off was the daughters 13/60. She had complained of a horrible noise when cornering, and a friends boyfriend had suggested to her that a wheel bearing was shot, and a wheel was about to drop off! Needless to say that put the fear of God into her so I brought it into work to check it over. It only made the noise once for me and that was when I reversed off the drive at home. All was revealed once I had opened the bonnet in the workshop. One of the valance brackets had managed to come loose and was fowling the tyre on full lock. While it was in the workshop I filled the trunnions with EP90, and gave the car a quick once over, no other problems to report.
Next on the agenda was the daughters other car, her 'pimped my ride' 948 saloon that you may remember me working on from this time last year. It had gone on the back burner after getting 90% completed when we found her 'Harry' the 13/60 above. Well now the space the 948 occupies is needed by several other exciting projects that have recently come into the workshop. I spent a couple of hours re-fitting some of the internal trim, before deciding to put the wife's PI on the Sun tuner to try and find that rogue miss-fire mentioned in my previous blog.
Half an hour later and I was none the wiser. Indeed the PI performed faultlessly on the 'scope' with everything to book, and near identical patterns on the screen, nice vacuum, and no clues as to it's tantrums. I'm wondering now if this is a recurrence of a previous problem we suffered for many years of some foreign body floating around in the petrol tank. Of course it wasn't so critical when it was a carb car, as it only manifested itself at speeds above 70mph, of on inclines on the motorway, and it never left us stranded. PI's however need a constant flow of high pressure/volume fuel and will not tolerate temporary interruption of fuel. About a year ago I noticed something odd looking in the filter before the pump. I dissected the filter with a stanley blade only to find what looked like the remnants of a plastic bag, or a latex glove. I thought that was the end of it, maybe not!
Anyway I couldn't hang about as we had been invited out for the evening to the Gaydon Heritage Museum for the British Racing Mechanic Club's annual dinner, and presentation do. After a pleasant evening in some superb company we managed to top the night off by coming out of the Heritage Centre and turning the wrong way on the M40! Fortunately as it was gone midnight the road was empty so a quick blast down to Oxford and back at an impressive rate of knots in the Chicane ensured we weren't to late home for bed.

PI is loosening up nicely!

The wife's newly converted PI is loosening up nicely after it's recent monster mechanical rebuild, it's a proper flying machine! I used a TR5 engine I had built many years ago for a stalled TR5 restoration that probably wont happen now until I retire. Save having the thing sitting around any longer and possibly deteriorating I slung it in Clares motor along with a new gearbox, up-rated J type overdrive, radiator, propshaft, and that conversion to PI. The PI conversion parts I just rebuilt from old units we had lying around. I had been selling the odd s/h set of PI over the years to those who asked, but it looks like it's time to put a stop to that. A quick count up of the fleet and I should probably be putting 6 of those sets aside for our own cars for the future. I am constantly surprised how good a well built TR5 engine (on PI) can be, Clares car now makes my Chicane feel positively pedestrian (if I had the time that would get PI'd as well!). One thing on the snag list though is a miss-fire that develops after about 15 miles, my immediate thoughts were coil, condensor, or rotor arm (yes I'm paranoid about rotor arms as well, even though Iv'e never had one let me down!). I'll drag the Sun tuner out when I get 5 mins and nail the sucker.

Old school vs New blood?

I have a thing for old machinery, I guess we all do otherwise we wouldn't be messing with Triumph's. In this particular case it's engineering machine tools I'm waffling about. This time of year I have a little bit of time available to get out and chase stuff, and sort problems with suppliers. Recently I seem to be spending a fair amount of time in machine shops shouting over the incessant background noise that accompanies any busy engineering shop. As you might guess from our particular product specialities we call upon several of Coventy's/Nuneaton's finest engineering establishments. Fortunately the city is still awash with such places despite successive governments/councils attempts to knock them down and turn them into retail parks.
The diversity in what you will find when you open the door to a particular shop beggars belief. From ultra modern clinically clean places with machinery that has cost the proprietor many hundreds of thousands of pounds, to 'old school' places that posses 50 + year old machinery from the great names in Midlands machine tool manufacturers of yesteryear. I was in one such place this week marvelling at the proprietors latest acquisitions, some lovely old stuff he was as proud as punch of.
One thing that is always common amongst this community is how enthusiastic these people always seem to be, and how proud they are of a job well done, long may it continue.