Chicane Gets New Front Wings Part III

OK so I know I'm only supposed to be replacing the front wings, but it seemed a shame not to re-fresh the engine whilst it was out.

I have barely layed a spanner on the engine in all the time we have had the car. When it came to us it was showing nearly 100,000 miles (kms?) on the clock, and we have added a further 200,000 miles (kms?) to it. At one time it was our chief towing car hauling our twin axle tilt car trailor up and down the motoways with various Triumphs in transit.

When it came off the road a couple of years ago it was still pulling strong, with no undue rattles on start up, and minimal oil consumption. The only signs of age was a slight puff of smoke between gear changes  from the exhaust when it was being thrashed. However I didn't want to push my luck so it was time to investigate.

The crank was still on standard bearings, but it was at its upper wear limit so got ground to 10/10 and a nice set of lead copper bearings. Surprisingly it had been previously bored to  +20, but we bored it again to +60, and fitted a nice set of County pistons.

There was some valve seat recession on the exhaust's, but there again it had been thrashed mercilously on a diet of supermarket unleaded for over 15 years, and at least a couple of hundred thousand miles. New unleaded seats, guides, and valves, and a quick face of the head, and all was good.

The cam had seen better days with a couple of lobes showing quite bad wear. Chicanes came fitted as standard with 18/58 cams, but as I was replacing it anyway I have fitted a 25/65.

After a coat of black paint, and a new set of core plugs it was nailed back together to await it's next 300,000 miles of service!

I get bullied into 'choosing' Vitesse for RBRR

Well I suppose I had put off a decision on what Triumph to do the RBRR in this year long enough.

Last Saturday Tim Bancroft turned up and removed a cheque from me for the entry fee for CT's RBRR.

The ink had barely dried on the cheque when James removed the Vitesse from its slumbers, and promtly ripped its entire back end out.

Its last time out was the CT Autosolo at Bovington a couple of years ago. During the day it was thrashed by eldest daughter, her mate, and myself, I don't recall the engine being switched off all day!

A couple of days later on the way to work I detected the whine of death, meaning terminal crown wheel, and pinion wear. A couple of other things needed addressing including a saggy rear spring, seized adjusters on the radius arms. Also something I had wanted to do for a while go back to short halfshafts, as I had never been happy with the look of it with long shafts fitted (and its abilty to break them).

 

I stripped the diff yesterday, and sure enough the 4.11 gearset had seen better days. The Quaife LSD centre was fine (it has now survived two gearsets!), and we are not short of factory  4.11 gearsets so a new one was fitted. While I'm waiting for some Timkin bearings to come into stock for it I set about pulling those long shafts out of the rear bearing housings.

To be continued.

Chicane Gets New Front Wings Part II

Stanpart wing fitted, paint removed from sill and etched

As seems to be the case with most of these 'little' jobs I start on cars in the fleet the jobs list on the Chicane grew from simply putting on a couple of new front wings, to something more akin to a mini restoration.

Bare metalling engine bay

The engine bay had always looked a tad tatty so I took the opportunity to remove the engine, and bare metal the complete engine bay.

Etch Primer

A coat of etch primer, and a couple of coats of high build 2K primer, followed by some more prep.

Nice shiny Aqua Blue, is the old girl really worth all this?

Oldest Herald Saloon gets some TLC

Although the plan was never to restore our 948 prefering to preserve its originality where ever possible, we really needed to do something about the front end.
The front valance had taken a few knocks in it's 55 years, and with large areas of surface rust, and a previous owner having 'up-dated' by drilling holes to rivet on rubber bumper retainers it was time to save it before it crumbled away.
After removal it was shotblasted, and repaired as neccessary. At the same time the grill surround was also shotblasted as it too was heavily surface rusty. Whilst the grills were out they were polished up, along with the badge.
The front overriders barely had any chrome left on them, and were probably past saving in normal circumstances, but our chromers worked miracles, and now they look as good as they did back in March 1959 when the car was built.
Everything was bolted back together with as many of the original fixings as possible (a surprisingly high percentage), and copius amounts of copper grease.

It seemed a shame not to take the opportunity to drive the car whilst it was out of storage so for the past week I have been going to home, and back in it, very nice!