New Product 2

More new stuff!

http://www.canleyclassics.com/products.asp?article=HRFOAM.xml

No excuse now not to do our own 2.5 saloon head rest's as they are currently that limp I might as well have an Asda bag full of polystyrene loose packing material sellotaped to the top of the seats!

New Product

Strange time of year to be launching new product I know but here go's. We have copied the massively heavy cast iron GT6 specific alternator mounting bracket. On my scales the cast iron original is 1045 grammes, and our alloy copy is 398 grammes, a useful saving! Steve Phillips produced a short run of something similar many years ago, but he sold his last one a few years back. Not bad value at £34.95 inc VAT considering some fairly hefty pattern prices that we have to cover (it's cast and machined this time, not CNC'd from solid, that's getting expensive as aluminium get's pricey). To be honest we are not predicting huge potential sales for this one, but it had to be done. Oh well it's a good job I love my Triumph's, they ain't never going to make me a millionaire! Nearly forgot the all important part number, it's 214268A.

Warp drive!

Or at least that's what it feels like to drive a good TR5 after a month or two driving the works diesel Transit. I had sort of gotten into a rut of driving the Transit because it was 'convenient', big mistake. A couple of days ago I went home in a customers TR5 (all in the interests of science you will understand), what a revelation! It's been a year or two since I last drove one (even though we own a small fleet of TR5's ourselves), I shouldn't leave it as long next time. By the time I had pulled up on my drive at home I was really buzzing, fantastic. What superb cars Triumph made. Make mental note, I need more regular Triumph 'fixs'.

Ewan McGregor (Long Way Down), lightweight!

Two blokes on motorbikes, two 4X4's, an on-board medic, a film crew, and a 'mission control' back in Blighty handling all the paperwork etc. Very cosy. Worse still its taking them nearly two months to get from JOG to Cape Town! What's that all about, call that progress.
I recall back in early nineties being involved in a failed attempt (not our fault, just something to do with a war in the area) to drive a Herald, and a Morris 1800 to Cape Town. Just two cars, no service crew, medical back-up, mobile phones (or Satellite phones!), and no minders to get us across any borders. We got as far as the Western Sahara (pictured above), which is right in the middle of the west side of Africa before our progress was halted. We waited a full week in some god forsaken hole called Dakhla for a UN guarded convoy to take us through one of the Worlds longest running disputed areas. It had only taken us just over a week to get to this place from the UK, and we were fairly confident that if we had got across that border the whole trip could have been done and dusted in under three weeks. As it happens we turned around and headed home. After dropping John Kipping off at Casablanca airport on the way back I drove the whole way back to Blighty including the two ferry crossings in three days of virtually none stop driving.
Ewan, and Charlie need to invest in some faster motorbikes!

Countdown is progressing

2007 will be seen in the future as a watershed in the availability (or otherwise) of Triumph core (old mechanical units) . These units are the basis of future major mechanical unit supply.
In the space of a few months I have had two major Triumph specialists, and a few smaller outfits offering me large amounts of engines, gearboxes, brake calipers, differentials, etc. Most have come to the conclusion that the projected market will not support storing many tons of oily, greasy, rusty tat for year after year ad infinitum. Factor in the rising costs of storing this stuff, rent, and rates etc, and it's not surprising that it's been given the critical eye. In every case we have had to decline adding to our own pile as it was already larger than most as a result of a certain Mr J Kippings veracious collecting strategy throughout the 80's, and 90's. Indeed a few years back when we tidied up our engine core (removed heads and sumps so they would stack) we counted very nearly a 1,000 units of various types. I have tried where possible to point traders in the direction of others who might still be in the market, but it seems that every case they had been there, done that. So with the spiraling cost of scrap metals the inevitable is happening, a lot of it is getting weighed in. We ourselves have been guilty this year of much the same, indeed we bought a snotty Transit solely for the purpose of doing the scrap yard run once a week or so. At least we have looked critically at our pile and worked our way systematically through it only removing stuff that is either damaged beyond economical repair, or vastly over stocked (try 1300/1500 FWD short engines).
So will 2007 be remembered as the year the Triumph trade foreshortened future parts availability, or are we doing the right thing? Is this a critical re-examination of future needs based on current sales? Or is it a short sighted clear out to avoid spiraling rates bill's, and to benefit from a out of control scrap price hike with some nice rollin foldin in the sky rocket?

The perils of offering technical advice

In the old days it used to be pretty straight cut most Triumph specialist's/suppliers were Triumph enthusiasts turned parts purveyors so brought with them a grounding in technical knowledge. These days it's more difficult, when was the last time you saw your preferred specialist turn up for work, or attend an event in a Triumph? Factor in the all invading spectre of public liability worries (and it's associated insurance implications) and it's not to difficult to understand why some are reluctant to help in your hour of need. Indeed I have been in competitors shops and noticed the proliferation of signs stating something like 'due to insurance company guidelines we are unable to offer any technical advice' or words to that effect.
We (John Kipping's/Canley Classics) have always been known for our freely given technical advice based on our own usage of a fleet of dissimilar Triumph's that have been used (and abused!) for 30 odd years. That enthusiasm however is waining as others loose interest for whatever reason and the burden is shifted to the few of us that still care to proffer an opinion. It's not helped by the increasing numbers of waif and stray customers of other specialists who cast around for advice in the absence of any from the people they normally buy their stuff from. A good example of which we shall call Mr X. Mr X had been a regular caller, so regular in fact that the sales people here got to recognise his voice over the period of 18 months or so he had been calling on average once or twice a month. In the end they would know without him asking to put him straight through to someone with a bit of technical nonce. Then someone thought to ask him his name/customer account number, to which he replied 'oh I don't buy anything from you, I get my parts from supplier XYZ, but they never help with technical advice'. He should have thought through his answer more carefully! Now the sales people here filter technical enquires as a matter of course, and do you know an interesting statistic that has come to light as a result? Well it's not exact by any means, but I'm being told only about 20% of these enquirees are coming from our own customers.
Harping back to the 'old days' even more, back then if a punter asked an opinion of a specialist it was taken as semi gospel based on the fact that punter respected that opinion because of the specialists experience. These days it's all changed, it seems most are now canvasing opinion, and with the help of the tinternet that opinion can come from almost anywhere. One gets a little disenchanted when you have just spent 20 minutes on the phone to someone advising him how to do a job you have done a thousand times before only to find later that same person asking the same question on the World Wide Web through various club forums, or newsgroups! Time is precious, and never more so as staffing levels reduce, and workload increases, please remember that before calling anyone still willing to spend a little time helping.
You might think miserable old bugger (only the wife is allowed to call me that) but sometimes I dread Friday afternoons when everybody else and his dog have finished work early and feels the need to speak to me about seized trunnions, or Monday mornings when punter X of supplier Z has wrestled all weekend with, and failed to, remove his rear hub with three legged pullers, oxy/acetylene, and a BBH (Bloody Big Hammer). Sometimes it starts to feel like groundhog day, can I hear Sonny and Cher playing on the radio?

The love affair is dented!

You may or may not know that we (the wife and I) use 2500 saloons as our every day cars, always have, always will. There might be the odd dalliance with other cars in the collection, we have just used the Stag on the CT 10CR for instance, and it's not unusual to drag a Vitesse, or a TR out for a blast in the summer, or a CT track day. By and large though you will see us as happy as Larry tooling around in a 2.5. This love affair with the big saloon's received a minor blow last week when both the current cars decided to throw their teddies out of the pram.
The wife had been moaning about erratic clutch release issues for some time (read months), oh thought I, no problem its just that conical spring in the master cylinder broke again. As we are due a break in Devon shortly, and we always take the wife's car, I thought I would muscle it into the workshop schedule and give it the once over, and sort that master cylinder out at the same time. Part way through the service I drained the sump only to find a crank thrust washer attached to the magnetic sump plug, but no sign of the other one. A quick tug on the crank revealed 1/4" of end float, that's it game over, engine required.
While I pondered my options the wife took over driving the Chicane demoting yours truly to the works Transit (the Stag has gone into hibernation, and the rest of the fleet are out of MOT/tax). Only the day after this things got worse! The wife popped into the village to get some milk and upon her return mentioned that there had been a large bang, and then the steering felt 'funny'. A quick look under the car and all was obvious, the passenger side radius arm (drag strut some call it) had ripped itself out of the chassis, bushes, washers and all, and was dangling in mid air. Where it is normally attached through the chassis was now a hole at least as big as the washer that is supposed to hold it in place. Ive never seen that before says I, or words to that effect!
The Chicane was fixed pronto, I had to fix it to get home that night as the wife had taken the Transit. The wife's 2.5 is nearly fixed, but it got a bit more complicated than a simple engine change as I thought a gearbox swap, a new prop, and a re-cored radiator should happen as well. Oh and while I was under it there was the rest of that pre holiday service, including a steering rack gaiter, a steering column rubber u/j, yet another front bottom ball joint, and the odd drive-shaft u/j. It's been in the workshop for nearly a week, better hurry up it's got 300 miles to do next week!

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?

Bull Week!

Bull week (old Midlands industry term for making your money up prior to holiday)

It's no holds barred in the Canleys workshops presently in an attempt to clear the decks prior to the Easter holiday. Two cars MOT'd last week, and one a Spitfire 1500 collected by its owner this morning. Needing wiper motor, wiper wheel box's, and other bits and bobs prior to MOT it was otherwise a superb car and I enjoyed my trip down to see Sid at our preferred MOT station. The other a TR6 was in for a list of things as long as my arm including a tune up, after timing the metering unit correctly it ran like a dream. Some rear suspension work, a new track rod end, and a top ball joint, and that to sailed through it's MOT last night. I would have enjoyed the drive back from the MOT roof down more if it hadn't have been so cold last night, must be getting old! The TR6 is being collected until Tuesday so we still have a space issue.

I am going to book a further three MOT slots for next week for other cars in the queue, a little optimistic but you never know. One of them is for a GT6 that's been here for a while with a job sheet that reads like War and Peace. Top of the list has been a complete re-wire, what a nightmare! Everything that was connected to the old loom, switch's, light units, you name it seemed to be clinging to life just long enough to give me grief when I started working my way through it. I need to finish it just retain my sanity and have pencilled it's MOT in for Wednesday, fingers crossed! The other two cars slated for MOT's this coming week (a Stag, and a Herald) might just be wishful thinking on my part but you never know.

On top of that I have two complete Vitesse chassis refurbs on the go, they are all cleaned of rusty riggers and the bare bones need to go down to the blasters some time in the week. When they come back I can sling them on the rig and jig up a full set of new riggers etc.

I can't believe how many customers Triumph's are coming out of the woodwork recently, and the calls to the workshop we are recieving booking work in bear testament to an excellent years Triumphing ahead!

Never a lender or borrower be!

Frustrating times in the Canley workshops. It seems like every job I have done in the past week or so has been made all that much more difficult by the lack of specialist tools. It's not like I didn't own each and every one of these special tools in the first place, it's more like some kind soul or other has borrowed them and is taking their (no names no pack drill!) time to return them. In no particular order I have missed my multimeter needed several times during a GT6 re-wire, my fancy stud extractor needed most days, and yesterday a tool I made up years ago to make one handed hood popper fitment easy. There have been several other incidences recently of needing a missing tool borrowed by someone or other, it's driving me mad!
I think I might start to impose the message on the sticker on my Snap On box 'I make my living from my tools, please don't ask to borrow'!

NOS Stanpart Caveat Emptor

I have been reminded this week about the fragility of NOS (New Old Stock) Stanpart (the spares division of the Standard Triumph company) parts. A couple of things focused my mind on a growing miss-trust on using/selling by definition on average 40 year old so called new parts. Last Saturday I amongst other things had to change (again!) one of the lower front ball joints on the wifes 2.5. I had always kept a stock of NOS Stanpart joints ready for our own cars and had been working my way through them at an accelerating rate. I had come to accept over the past five or six years that because of their age the clear plastic gaiters would have deteriorated and needing changing for a modern rubber alternative, and that any grease would have long ago dried out and needed cleaning out and re-packing. If that's not bad enough there's a sneaking suspicion that they are not lasting as long in service as I seem to remember them doing in the past as my pile of standby spares has all but disappeared at an alarming rate over the past couple of years. So as I stood looking at my shelf of sorry looking (but 'new') Stanpart joints with bare track control arm in my grubby mit I took the decision to go repro (reproduction) and try one of the latest incarnations of a pattern part with a notorious history. Great, job done in half the time it normally takes because I didn't have to go searching for gaiters, and spend precious time refurbing 'new' parts.
The other incident involved a gearbox brought in by well known CT member for the attachment of one of our up-rated J type overdrives (Transit clutch/annulus, 28% ,etc). The gearbox was one of the fabled 'Police Spec' saloon units which is basically a Stag type beefed up layshaft/cluster with a saloon input, nice! This also was a NOS Stanpart box still displaying thick black wax on the protruding mainshaft, and input shaft, and still bearing the remains of its Stanpart labels. It was apparent that it had been standing upright in storage for some time allowing dirt and debris to collect on the back of the case and more importantly inside the rear main bearing. Obviously the owner was worried about this and instructed a strip down and check, and at the least a new main bearing. He needn't have worried as further dirt ingress into the gearbox was negligible, but however other things found during the course of the strip had made the exercise very worthwhile. Firstly there was some light rusting to a couple of the speed gears, and the layshaft gears that would have quickly made a mess of the otherwise lovely new gearset if it had been used without checking. The other worrying thing found was that the assembly grease used originally was far to thick (a black lithium type I think) to have broken down rapidly enough to allow oil to lubricate those special layshaft needle bearings, and mainshaft tip bearing. We use petroleum jelly these days to hold bearings in position in assembly because it quickly breaks down when warm gearbox oil circulates through it. All in all it was the right choice to have made to strip and check as I suspect it wouldn't have lasted more than a few hundred miles in service otherwise.
So I think the moral of these stories (and the many others I could relate) is please bear in mind that as attractive as that Stanpart packaging might be on that e-Bay find, are you still expecting that 30, 40, or 50 year old component to be in a usable condition? Rubber, leather, plastic, degrades in a few years, steel rusts (sometimes in places you can't see). Take for instance the instruments on your dash board, someone from a company that specialises in there refurbishment once told me that the shelf life of the lubricant in a speedo, or tacho is no more than a couple of years, so at 30 plus years what chance do you stand? Or would you risk a 40 year old 'new' brake master cylinder? I have seen enough rubber deteriorate in half that time to know I wouldn't.

No Pressure

We currently have five Triumph's all legal and ready to use, although we have only been using three of them as daily drivers through the worst of the winter. The maintenance burden falls as ever on yours truly, and it's just about manageable what with everything else going on. With the first hint of decent weather last week thoughts turn to what we might next add to the potentially roadworthy fleet.
We acquired an old Transit last week that from the beginning of next month (to tight to tax it for a week or two of this month!) sole purpose will be to go back and forth into Coventry on the scrap yard run. With scrap prices as they are at the moment it would be silly not to capitalise on this bonanza whist sitting on many hundreds of tons of valuable aluminium, copper, brass, bronze, etc. So that will be six vehicles on the road and needing maintenance.
I have had a yearning to get back on a bike after four or five years away from two wheeled transport, so in the next couple of weeks I'll dig the XS750 out and see what's fell off, or seized up whilst its been slumbering. If that MOT's OK then we are up to number seven.
I am obliged to finish off and MOT another Herald for one of the females of the household, so that's eight.
Isn't that enough for one bloke to cope with on his own? The next time someone says why don't you have XYZ Triumph on the road/racing circuit without thought to the above workload (bearing in mind I still have to fix other peoples Triumphs for a living as a day job) I shall poke them in the eye!

Ramps broke, again!

I think our 4 poster is reaching the end of it's life if recent experience is anything to go by. The internal chains broke on Friday leaving a Stag high and dry at the top of it's travel. Bearing in mind it was only fixed and serviced a few weeks ago following some bright spark dropping it down on a V8 saloon exhaust system and wrecking one of the corner post bearings (not exactly the ramps fault!). I wouldn't mind but the workshop is fit to burst with a fresh influx of customers cars all requiring the services of a ramp. We have 5 customer cars in at the moment needing servicing, pre MOT, and suspension work. I even had to do the wife's 2.5 saloon front suspension on Saturday with the aid of a trolley jack. All the usual stuff needed attention including a bottom ball joint, a track rod end, and a new set of pads. I seem to be changing ball joints every couple of years on our own cars these days, and Ive had the luxury of new old stock Stanpart items, Ive tried a repro one this time to see if it fairs any better. Oh well seems like I'll have to give the ramp specialists a bell this morning, we are on first name terms now!

Tony comes up trumps again!

Our old friend Tony Luxton (ex Triumph experimental dept) comes up trumps yet again! Tony regularly finds us little gems from Triumph's experimental/racing past, but this time he has excelled. What we have here is a complete set of new in a box (all be it 40+ years old new) Lucas 6 cylinder racing petrol injection. With his many contacts amongst ex-Triumph guys Tony manages to track down the obscure, and ultra rare. Tony thinks this set dates from around 1966, and having sat around in experimental for a couple of years it went in a clearout to one of his colleagues who has stored it in its box for all these years. Even the box is interesting having a printed label from Lucas on it, and 'Racing Stores' on the top, and the name of the guy from Lucas experimental written on it who signed it off. We know this guy very well so I shall pop over and reaquaint him with something he last touched over 40 years ago.
For those of you unfamiliar with the racing injection then look closely at that metering unit and notice no vacume unit, these were cam operated. Also the units are a four bolt fixing onto the pedestal as against the more normal three bolt. Those racing injectors are smaller phisically than production ones, and made to much higher standard. Remember similar injection was used on most of the successful Formula 1 team cars of the 60-70's.
I can think of only one car around at Triumph in 1966 that would have had need of a racing 6 cylinder injection set and that was Bill Bradleys 1966 2000 injection saloon circuit racer built by Triumph to take on the Lotus Cortina's.

What happened?

You may remember a certain Herald coming up for sale on eBay a couple of months ago, the 4 door prototype. Due to the new eBay rules in force bidders are now hidden from general view so there was conjecture at the time as to who was bidding, more on that later. We of course had been fully aware of the 4 doors existence for many years (JK had the car/owner details on our system) as had other traders. It was always one of those that we meant to chase up and add to the prototype collection here. As is the way sometimes if you leave them long enough the owner decided to sell publicly. The jungle drums in the prototype community fired up almost instantly and we were deluged with mail, and calls from all around the world pointing us in the right direction. The serious players in this group of researchers, owners, enthusiasts of all things Triumph prototype are small in number and all very well known to each other. We share a pashion not very well understood outside our own group. For some it's fishing, or stamp collecting, for us it's Triumph prototypes. It's a strange yet very mutually beneficial relationship, if something interesting comes along that isn't in the collecting policy of a particular individual then he/they tend to pass that info on to those who would be interested. The mail traffic between us flows back and forth almost daily, and an unrivalled database of information is being assembled with the added bonus of having several guys from the experimental dept itself in the loop to put us right. Hence when the 4 door came along the machine swung into action only with the addition of a new player who previously had shown no interest in preserving important one off survivors, but instead had concentrated on good examples of production cars for their collection. It was a representative of that organisation that opened the bidding on eBay. So the scene was set for a public demonstration of the 'real' value of the previously un-loved unusual. The yardstick for the value of Triumph one-offs is hard to quantify but recently several other important survivors have sold publicly so give us some sort of clue. Most recent was the TR Zest at auction, a beautiful totally unique one off, and in near concours condition, making a fairly modest £20K. Or how about a couple of years ago the oldest Herald saloon in existence, in excellent original condition needing only minor fetling for an MOT, going trough eBay for 600 quid, we got that! A rough guide I know but it gives you some idea, and it always follows the same pattern, £20K+ for a concours TR proto, £1K give or take for a shabby small chassis alternative. So it was for the 4 door, things were moving on and values were slowly creeping up, so it wasn't a surprise to hear amongst our community that anything up to £2,500 might be possible! Second eBay bidder was well known (and made no secret of his bid declaring it on one of the newsgroups!), and the third is sitting not a million miles from this keyboard. Then it went quite, very quite. Worryingly reserve hadn't been met (at bang on the nail £2,450) and time was creeping on. The seller was contacted and made aware of bidding intentions. He let slip that a couple of interested parties had shown interest including a 'National Museum', as you do when you are flogging something! A quick call around our friends in the 'National Museum' collecting fraternity told us what we expected they were un-aware that it was even for sale, and not in the habit of buying resto project fringe interest Triumph's, or they were simply skint. So where to go from here? The eBay auction had stalled, reserve not met, no new bidders were forthcoming, but it was worth a little more. Step forward friends of bidder 3, bidder 4 a good mate but wouldn't have a Herald if you gave it to him, and bidder 5 who is bidder 4's brother and prefers VW's! Throw in bidder 6 who was just in because he overheard us talking about it and fancied the crack and there you have the 'genuine' interest in the 'real' value of Triumph Herald prototypes. Between us we pushed the bidding to where we thought the real value lay, or just shy of £3K. Reserve still not met so seller contacted again, to start talking about what it might be worth at end of auction when it failed to sell, only to be told he was going to pull it because he had been offered £10K unconditional! It took another 12 hours for the seller to actually pull the car from sale, enabling bidders, 3, 5, and 6 to play in the safe knowledge that it had already gone. Big difference between £2,800, and £10,000, and nobody has come forward subsequently to put their cards on the table to say they were prepared to pay anymore than £2,400 (bidder number 1's top bid). The plot thickens, and all of a sudden the value of unusual Triumph's has increased 10 fold, or has it? Better call the insurance man!

Seems our collecting days are over, and we will have to settle for what we have got, with that much money washing around the old guard custodians of the faith will have to play second fiddle to the new money! I suspect with that much money to play with they will amass a superb collection with no real competition from any other quarter.

Bidder 2
Cancelled: £2,050.00Explanation:The seller ended the listing early and cancelled all bids.
Bid:06-Jan-07 23:39:44 GMTCancelled: 15-Jan-07 20:48:39 GMT

Bidder 5
Cancelled: £2,850.00Explanation:The seller ended the listing early and cancelled all bids.
Bid:11-Jan-07 08:42:42 GMTCancelled: 15-Jan-07 20:48:38 GMT

Bidder 4
Cancelled: £2,650.00Explanation:The seller ended the listing early and cancelled all bids.
Bid:10-Jan-07 09:04:05 GMTCancelled: 15-Jan-07 20:48:39 GMT

Bidder 3
Cancelled: £5,950.00Explanation:The seller ended the listing early and cancelled all bids.
Bid:15-Jan-07 10:08:09 GMTCancelled: 15-Jan-07 20:48:38 GMT

Bidder 1
Cancelled: £2,400.00Explanation:The seller ended the listing early and cancelled all bids.
Bid:06-Jan-07 23:53:25 GMTCancelled: 15-Jan-07 20:48:39 GMT

Bidder 6
Cancelled: £5,999.00Explanation:The seller ended the listing early and cancelled all bids.
Bid:15-Jan-07 09:59:31 GMTCancelled: 15-Jan-07 20:48:37 GMT

Oldest original extent GT6, it's official!

Museum page up-dated

http://www.canleyclassics.com/triumphmuseum.asp?article=oldestgt6.xml

Did you see it?

Last night Life On Mars? Clares 2600 MKIII appeared in both episode one and two (back to back on BBC4). Nice shots of a GT6 MKIII being thrashed around as well.

Thanks for the comment Ken but the Minilites on the wifes car are exactly the same size as the 1970 World Cup PI's had. In other words exactly in keeping with something set 3 years later in 1973!

Are you going to brave the weather?

Driving your Triumph up to Stoneleigh (why do we say that? Northeners will be coming down!) or wimping out and coming in the 'other' car? I wonder why it is that there is always a buzz around in the Triumph community at or around Stoneleigh time, and the numbers attending seem to go up every year when other shows seem to be on the downturn? Maybe it's something to do with choice? This time of year there's not a lot on, and there hasn't been a lot on for a few months! Come summer time there's so much choice these days, it seems every summer weekend is booked up before you know it. As a season opener Stoneleigh can't be beat, with the onset of cabin fever every one feels the need to get out regardless of the weather. Most people will be going for the early season bargains, or to buy those last few bits and bobs required to finish off that winter rebuild. The one marque clubs will also be there putting on a valiant effort to attract your potential membership. Club Triumph will be there in numbers punting the 'club that does' ethos, and pushing home the point with the HCR (Historic Counties Run), and later in the year the 10CR (10 Countries Run), and a whole host of track days in between. The TSSC are making a bit of a splash this year with their recently acquired Herald 4 door prototype, reputedly acquired for £10,000. That should be worth a look, the grand unveiling is due to take place at 11am on their stand. I will try and find time to get about myself this time and see what the other clubs are doing. I maintain an interest in most if not all Triumph models as our collection proves, but year by year my club memberships decrease, I shall wonder around and see who might tempt me back. There is one other very important thing I have promised not to do this year though (Jason!) and that's not to spill the contents of my early morning egg and bacon roll down my front. This has become a tradition I really dont want to keep up!

Sad loss

Harry Webster

News has reached me of the sad loss of Harry Webster ex director of engineering at Triumph during the halcyon days of the 1960's. Harry needs no introduction to those that know their Triumph history but just to say that without him we wouldn't have been blessed with half the Triumph model range we know today. Quite simply he was the prime mover throughout Triumph's heyday that got things done. RIP Harry, another link in Triumph's glorious past gone.