MOT!

The Canley entry for the Club Triumph RBBR is a runner! A fully legit, kosher, all above board, genuine, paid for, MOT was gained at the local MOT station yesterday. The only comment raised by our examiner was a slight imbalance in the handbrake, and a exhaust leak where the tubular manifolds bolt to the head. The V8 was also in need of a bit of remedial tuning as it struggled to get back up Fillongley hill on its way back from the test. Exhaust leak was cured within 20 minutes (after letting the headers cool!) with a new set of flange gaskets. The brake imbalance had sorted itself out on the way back from the MOT, the automatic adjusters having adjusted on the new shoes/cylinders etc on the 2 mile trip. The 'to do' list has now shrunk to 23 items, and we still have a whole morning to work on it! To be fair, the 'to do' list is more of a wish list, none of it being super important. It would be nice to swap the rear springs as the back end is sitting a little high, but that's only a 15 minute job on a 2000/2.5/3.5! This is the most prepared I've ever been for a Round Britain, I even had an early night last night after the obligatory curry shared with team member Jason Chinn who stayed over last night.

See all you fellow RBRR's later today at the Plough.

Buried treasure?

Revealed during the recent car park excavations at Canley Classics. Has anyone visited us in the past and forgotten their yellow Del Lines saloon? If so would the owner please contact us as it now needs to be moved!

Calm B 4 the storm!

Well I know the idea was to have the engine in the V8 by now but I just couldn't resist prepping and painting the tatty looking engine bay whilst it was out. I know, I know, a couple of days to go and I'm messing about with paint. There was no way I was ever going to take the engine out again to do it, so it was now or never. Anyway its done now, and very nice it looks to. So engine in today, or that's the plan anyway. We did have one problem with the engine yesterday, a broken bolt in the cylinder head where the inlet manifold attaches. We decided to change the manifold complete for the earlier simpler carb set up that was already on the car, unfortunately a bolt broke in the process. Digging that out took up some of our valuable RBRR preperation time.

Pictures; painted engine bay and 'new' V8 ready to go in

V8 blues!

A week before the Club Triumph RBRR and I finally got around to finding out why the engine in the car we have entered was a little bit tight (OK very very tight!). stripped it yesterday and found it seized on three pots. Seized to the point where I had to hammer the pistons out of the bores with a drift and steel hammer! Lesson learnt, you can't store a car or engine for 6 years without use, or at the very least regular inhibiting and turning over and expect all to be well. Options were investigated, including boreing and a set of pistons (3.9 liners and pistons were nearly as cheap as a straightforward overbore and pistons). But next Fridays RBRR start date was to close to get it all organised along with the mountain of other jobs that still needed doing to the car. So a quick call to my mate Lee the guy who collects our scrap (and banger races 2000/2.5's for his sins) and a deal was done over the phone for a replacement V8. It arrived this morning, and very nice it looks to,£175 and guaranteed a nice runner, I'm just off to steam clean it now, should be back in and up and running on Monday, keep you posted.

Photo; Stripped V8 sits in shame!

ADUlation to Tim in 4Big days!

Hats off to Tim Bancroft and the mountain of work he and his helpers have put into this years RBRR (Club Triumph Round Britain Reliability Run) . The Midlands drivers meeting is due to take place in 4 days (Tuesday 21st September) at The Weavers Arms just up the road in Fillongley. Spoke to Tim today about the Run, apparently the numbers of entries has settled at 81 cars, with a few teams dropping out for one reason or another, but these have mostly been replaced with reserve teams. The American team entered in the GT6 have contacted Tim to tell him that their car is on its way and the container should be here in a couple of weeks. Our American team mate Jerry is flying in a day or two before the event, hope he doesn't suffer from jet lag! We (Jason Chinn and myself) spent a whole day on our car yesterday, and it is looking more like it might be ready for the event, mind you we still haven't started it yet! It would be nice to go to the drivers meeting in the V8 on Tuesday, but that might just be a little optimistic. Either way the sooner its finished the better so that we can put a few miles on it before the big day.



Got the word this week from the contractors who are going to do our car park, that D day is this coming Thursday. So if you are planning to visit us soon it might pay you to put it off for a couple of weeks until we are sorted. We shall still be open and mail order will be unaffected, but a little disruption is inevitable.



Clearing the car park of dead cars ready for the big day is going to plan, the scrap man is due to make his last visit on Tuesday. Karl and Russell finished off stripping a 2.5Pi estate yesterday, already partially stripped before we got it and a little rusty, its still a shame to see another one go. Unfortunately they have to do the same thing on Monday to another PI estate, again very rusty from having been stored outside for many years before it came here. Darren stripped the sad remains of a MK1 Vitesse saloon and a GT6 MK111 earlier in the week, again both cars had been partially stripped before we got them, and they were rusty, so we are not feeling to guilty. That leaves a 2500 mk11 saloon, that has been acting as a Christmas tree for other cars we are putting back together. A real shame to take this one apart as it isn't a bad car, we have tried shifting it on for not a lot of money, but no one was interested so it has to go. A 13/60 convertible that had been stored on the car park for a customer for a month or so went today to a new owner, hope he didn't stall it, the battery was as dead as a Dodo! The workshop to is emptying out nicely, obviously with no car park for a few weeks we can't afford to have to many cars in there so that we don't have enough room to work on them.

It might be that when things have settled down again in a month or so, it might be time to have another of our autojumbles/open days/special offer day's. We really need to be creating space and clearing some more of our storage of major s/h bodypanels etc. This might be your last chance of some really cheap s/h doors, bootlids, bulkheads, etc. We haven't had one of our famous open days for some time, mostly because of the car park issue, some of you must remember the swamp like state it got into on the last special offer weekend!



Pictures of a couple of the last long term car park residents prior to and after scrapping.

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!