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.

Gone but not forgotten

On my travels into Coventry recently I have been witnessing the demolition of John Kippings, and our previous shop 421 Aldermans Green Road. You might remember it as the one opposite the pub, behind the conifers, next door to the gas bottle rental place. We last closed the door on the place on the August bank holiday 2000 having seen out the remainder of the lease taken out by JK previously. It has remained empty ever since, falling victim to the vandals and time. This was just as the landlord had planned! He had planned to sell it on for housing development when we (and other tenants) vacated but was thwarted by planners, and it's green belt status. After 8 years and with a little help from the vandals it looks like he finally got his way.
It was I who first spotted the 'For Rent' board outside the shop all those years ago that led to JK moving from the old CO-OP further down Aldermans Green Road. John then moved lock stock & spark plug half a mile out of town towards Bulkington about 10 years previously (I might be wrong 1990 ish?). The old CO-OP was bursting at the seams, there was barely enough room to swing a cat in that place by the time the move came.
I don't know if I miss 421, it was damp, cold, leaky, and a drain on resources. I lost count of the number of times I got called out of bed at some god forsaken hour by the boys in blue to switch the Redcare alarm system off after yet another false alarm caused by a rat, or mouse jumping in front of one of the sensors. It got so bad the police threatened to pull the plug, and all the alarm engineer could do was turn the sensitivity of the sensors down until a rugby team could of run amok in there without the bloody thing going off (the rats always managed it though).
There were plenty of good memories though like the time one of the guys had a day off, and another (who shall remain nameless) decided to microwave his cassette tape that he insisted on playing over, and over again when he was in work. Don't try this at home, it cost us a new microwave, thanks Paul (damn I mentioned his name, now Marc will find out!).
The good old, bad old days, gone but not forgotten.

Back up to full strength.

Touch wood! We had a run of bad luck towards the end of last year with the vehicle fleet. Looking back it was inevitable. Prior to this we had enjoyed unparalleled reliability with our day-to-dayers, which led to complacency, and I suppose a little neglect. First to go was the daughters Herald. No-body's fault this other than the hit and run toerag who shunted her into a parked car effectively totalling Harold, (as she's called him). That is if I wasn't a Triumph specialist who can see beyond insurance values. Chalk up one major rebuild, and Harold is better than he ever was. Next to go was the previously ultimately reliable Chicane. A catalogue of maladies was building up leading to a moaning quill shaft extension bearing, and a list as long as my arm of lesser ills. Couldn't put it off any longer, and just about to put it right in the workshop when the wife's 2.5 decides to drop it's crank thrusts. Obviously that takes priority and comes off the road for major work just in time for our Transit to break a leaf spring. At one point just prior to Christmas we were down to one vehicle. To cut a long story short the Chicane jumped the queue and got fixed pronto, a secondhand spring was sourced for the Transit as the local motor factor wanted over £200 for a new one, and £20 seemed better from the local scrap yard. The wife's 2.5 rebuild got complicated as I thought I would attend to several other minor niggles whilst it was off the road. As well as the engine change (a pukka TR5 engine I had rebuilt years ago for a TR5 that is still years away from being restored), I decided to replace the worn A type gearbox with a rebuilt J type box (and add another inhibitor so that it operates on 2nd). A new prop was added to the list, a re-cored radiator replaced the moth eaten example fitted that had worried me for some years. Oh and a conversion to PI from the HS6's looked like a good idea. We haven't had a PI on the road for a couple of years and I had missed it (a lot!), I love fiddling with PI's so now was the time to convert. The wife's car is a strange one, registered as a PI, but never having been fitted with it, it started life as a painted and trimmed shell sitting outside Triumph experimental waiting to go into the Rover (read Triumph) 2.6 ohc engine development programme. It was never used as such, and eventually got purchased by a experimental chap for the princely sum of £250. He built it up around a PI identity, only it never got PI, well now it has. The only thing that I struggled with was a 6 into 3 into 1 manifold that I had kicking around for the past 15 odd years. One of the mild steel originals I just couldn't get it to fit without it blowing from the 4 foot long secondries that run alongside the gearbox until they join into one at the back of the box. In the end I took the whole lot off and went back to a cast iron manifold pending a serious look at re-welding the whole affair.
So there you have it back up to full strength vehicle wise, and the reason I have been a bit quite of late.

Fancy an aluminium Spitfire or GT6?

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/CanleyClassics