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