Wot no trunnions?

I have been following an interesting thread on the CT Forum regarding the age old problems of the dreaded Triumph vertical link and trunnion assembly. Nearly everyone has seen, or heard of a Spitfire, Herald, etc breaking a vertical link, we get to see the results of such more than most here at the Canley workshops. Fortunately in most instances the fatigue breaks happen in low speed manoeuvers such as parking. I have never heard of one letting go whilst driving in a straight line on a motorway for instance?
Well it's not a very closely guarded secret that we had been working on a complete replacement. Several customers/freinds had pondered over the box of CNC machined rose joint carriers sat prominantly on one of my workshop benches for the last several months. The bulk of the work on the kit was done last year in conjuction with the OE (original equipment) suspension supplier to Caterham, who also happens to be a good friend of mine. So why have we not begun to market it I hear you ask? Easy, cost! The major part of the conversion, the Caterham vertical link, is still relatively expensive at nearly £70 a pop, the same price as the 'normal' Triumph link because they come from the same source, our friend who also happens to be OE supplier to Unipart for the Triumph links. Together we had been working towards a better price on the link (all links, Triumph included), so did not want to jump in with the conversion kit until this was settled. Everything else is done and on the shelf, the carriers were machined back in February for instance.
The kit dosn't end there however, we have worked on multiple up-grades, and add ons to the kit to include beefier stub axles, larger sealed bearings, new alloy hubs for those bearings/stub axles, and an economical bolt on brake up-grade, all specified and ready to go.
As I say all of this was done last year, this year we have gone back to the rear end to try and nail that CV conversion, and the bolt on disc brake conversion, and, and..........

Le Mans Spitfire laid bare

Ever wondered what the inner workings of genuine Le Mans Spitfire looks like? Well here's a one off opportunity to see one in a dismantled state. I have started to empty my garage at home of the complete project (all be it in a very dismantled state!) we had aquired over the past few years from a local source with impeccable provenance. Having been in the same ownership since it's factory racing days, it hasn't moved out of it's Midlands home for over 35 years. Complete less some of the more fragile components, the remaining bodywork is however in a parlous state. Disassembled after a major off, every panel now displays some form of damage. Worse still at some point many years ago the fragile aluminium panelwork was either shot blasted, or paint stripped, and has spent many years corroding as a result. The chassis is badly bent, and everything forward of the engine turrets has been hacked off and discarded.

For the uninitiated the factory circuit cars were unique both by the method of their construction, and the materials used in that construction. It would be next to impossible to replicate today given that virtually every part was handcrafted, or used factory tooling now long gone. Being all aluminium (apart from the fibre roof and front wings), means that to construct an all aluminium tub today would probably cost the same as a new Ferrari! Mark Field had a good go, but took the sensible/economic route and used a steel GT6 tub as the basis of his replica.

We aren't sure exactly how far we can progress the restoration of our car, it's simply a huge task being that it's been stripped down to every last nut & bolt, and every rivot has been drilled out of that precious aluminium panelwork? In the short term be aim to stabalize any corrosion and repair any damage that occurred in in it's 1960's accident so that we can carefully reassemble as much of the bodywork as possible. To that end once we have itemised, catalogued, and photograped every last component, the bulkhead/tub panels are going into our ace aluminium guys workshop for conservation, and reassembly. So take a good look this is the last time you might see this car for some time! If in the meantime you want to get up close and personnel with a part of this car then the TSSC have it's petrol tank in their museum, I'm sure they wouldn't mind you popping over for a look.

So what were they?

Sorry I forgot, here is the Stag cam timing figures;

Inlet opens 16 degree's BTDC, closes 56 degree's ABDC
Exhaust opens 56 degree's BBDC, closes 16 degree's ATDC

Fairly tame then! Similar to the late PI/TR6 18/58 cam, that was also not known for it's 'sportyness'.
However it makes the Stag's output look quite impressive given it's tame cams. More power and torque than the 150bhp TR6 (really 142, rounded up for good PR), from less sporting cams than the late strangulated 125 bhp PI/TR6. The Stag was quoted straight out of the box at 145bhp, and 170 lb ft. It makes you wonder what a decent set of cams alone might make to a Stag motor? I have always liked the 25/65 cams fitted across the board to late 60's early 70's Triumph's, the Vitesse, GT6, Spitfire MKIII, 2.5PI MK1 and early MKII, etc. That to me seemed to be the best compromise between power/torque/ecomomy/driveabilty, of any standard Triumph camshaft. I'm just about to start building up a Stag motor (no not a 32 valve, not yet anyway!) for our RBRR entry this year, I wonder if I can get someone to grind me up a set of cams to something with a little more 'sparkle'? I know Tony Hart got Piper to grind him a set for his modsports car a few years ago, and that and a set of quad Webers reputedly kicked out 250 horse power. I'm not after that sort of increase, after all once the RBRR is done the car will go back to the school run as the wife's plaything. It might be worth fabricating a set of headers as well, difficult to do a nice job given the constraints of the Stag engine bay, but I can't do any worse than some of the shocking efforts Iv'e seen from other specialists. We bought another Triumph V8 saloon (Rover V8) recently, and the 'performance' tubular headers under that are a sight to behold, bloody terrible!
One other thing to come to light with all of this Stag research, is that a Stag is a full 100lb heavier than a 2.5 saloon, fat b$%@£*d!

The bloke that designed/specified 6 cyl cams works here!

In an idle moment recently Tony Luxton (he works here part time) and I were discussing Triumph cam specifications, as you do. I mentioned that I had never found out what the Stag's cam timing, lift, etc was despite having poured over every bit of factory literature I could over the years. Just like that, Tony spouted it all out, verbatum, without even thinking! It knocked be back a bit I must admit. He then went on to say that had been one of his pet subjects whilst working in Triumph experimental, he had even had a hand in designing/specifing most of the later 6 cyl cam's. Just to hammer home the point he brought along a load of original specification sheets a week later. Now that's what you call having experts to hand!

Birthday boy gets injected!

Firstly a belated happy 40th birthday to the Chinnmeister, or as we call him here the Reading Bugle (AKA Jason Chinn, TSSC, CT, and bar). Fourty eh Jase, time to start slowing down then mate, put your feet up, that sort of thing. So why then am I booked to PI your Vitesse next Monday!? Jason has decided to PI his Vitesse (a long term ambition I am told) and to this end he has dropped off boxes of redundant Lucas PI gear for me to 'sort out' when I 'have a minute'! It looks like typical ebay pickings, garden shed finds, right down to some stuff found on a beach at high tide! It's been fun sifting through it all trying to put some sort of workable kit together. Stripping the metering units found a likely candidate in the form of a blue spring MK1/early MK11 PI, a good specification unit to start with. The other units were a mixture of later 3 spring (square section), and green top late units. After swapping some diaphrams around, and lubeing some of the links, all is well with the blue springer. The rest of it I shall do as we install it to the Reading dragster. If I get time this week though it might be nice to overall a couple of pumps an re O ring a set of injectors. Apparently I am being paid with a healthy ration of curry and lager, that won't put shoes on the kids feet! This should take me back to the good old days in the 80/90's when i was doing a steady stream of PI conversions to anything that crossed my path. I used to collect redundant PI gear myself for just such conversions, and took a trip down memory lane when I checked some of the stillages where it is stored now.
There's no problem with space in the workshop either for Jason's Vitesse as we have had a bit of a purge and finished off several customers cars recently that have now been collected. We have done more MOT's in the past month than we did over the preceeding 2 years, and we are going great guns fitting those special offer clutch's we are currently shifting. All in all busy times, and its great to be back into the swing of things in the workshop. We even have a record number of the Canley fleet on the road at the moment with 5 Triumphs in use, soon to be followed by two more, seven Triumph's on the road, I'm living the dream!

5 seconds of fame!

The only bit you might see of the V8 on Life on Mars, if you are quick!

Yet More LOM!

Apologies over the lack of output recently, I have an excuse. As well as being about as busy as we ever want to be here anyway I had another invitation to provide a car for the filming of the new series of the BBC drama Life On Mars sprung on me at short notice. You might remember that my mate Brummie Dave and his wife Julie kindly took along our 2.5 a few weeks ago whilst we were on holiday. Dave took his own TR6 up to Manchester last Sunday for a days filming, so that's another Triumph in the new series! The guy who arranges the cars for the BBC needed a cream coloured car at very short notice, could we help? A quick look around the fleet revealed one of our V8 saloons resplendant in just the right shade of 1970's beige! Only trouble was it had come off the road 8 months before needing a water pump, and having starting problems, and a serious missfire. Problems all sorted I volunteered to take the V8 up to Manchester on Tuesday as the wife had other pressing things to do here, besides she had been up several times with her own 2.5, it's a about time I had a day off. After a pleasant trip up the M6 dicing with the BMW's I pulled into BBC Manchester's car park just in time to join the queue at the catering van for breakfast. Whilst despatching my bacon rolls I had time to look around at the motors used previously in the series. One of the Allegro Panda cars bore the scars of a recent accident and was in need of some bodywork. There was a very nice white Rover P6S in the compound, and a Lotus Elan Sprint. The Lotus was slated to be the 'star' of that days shooting but was playing up. Robert (the car arranger) had asked me to bring some spark plugs up with me to try and sort its missbehaviour out, so we set to tinkering. Then the call came to move everything lock stock and barrel out to the set for that day some cordened off streets in central Manchester. There we spent most of the day watching the filming, and fixing the bloody Lotus as one thing after another went wrong with it! Had chance to confer with the other two car providers there that day, a chap from the Granada owners club who had brought his MK1 estate along, and a Imp owners club chap with a nice early example. Our V8 was used along with the Granny and the Imp as street dressing whilst the Elan was thrashed around by the stunt driver. I managed to look over the directors shoulder at his monitor whilst they were filming the bit with the V8 in, it should appear for a few seconds only looking as it does in my picture composed later on the car park here. Oh well at least that's another Triumph on the box!