Stag Suspension

I had some free time last weekend, so in-between bouts of gardening (well, weed clearing to be more precise), I decided to fit the new struts to the Stag that I'd ordered from Chris Witor last month. 

I've never been entirely happy with the Stag's handling since I got it. Despite fitting lowered springs to the existing shocks early on, it always had a slight tendency to wander on uneven road surfaces. So to try and fix it once and for all I decided to go for all new parts. 

Rebuilt struts with 1" lower 205-400lb progressive springs and KYB shocks. Here's old vs new. (Not much visual difference other than cleanliness)

New tie-bar bushes, 80 shore. These are the blue ones in the photo. Looking at what was on the car before, I hoped this would be the cause of the wandering. Although poly-bushes, the centre holes of the old ones had a bit of wear to them.

Old strut off. Looking at these inner panels and the strut tower reminds me why I bought this car back in 2010, it really is rock solid. 

After taking a couple of hours per side, the new struts and tie-bar bushes were on. A test drive round my usual route, which is about 6 miles of country roads and an A14 blast, showed an improvement in the tightness of the handling. Because it had the same springs as before, it's always cornered with very little body roll, but that tendency to wander definitely seems reduced. Hopefully it will last. 

I'm really pleased with the stance of this car. People have always said the Rover engine ruins the handling of a Stag, but with the set-up I have now you can really throw it around without much drama, and those springs certainly alleviate any of the nose-up look you can get with the lighter engine. 

So, to re-cap, my suspension set-up is ...

Front : Chris Witor 205-400lb progressive springs with KYB shocks. 

Rear : Chris Witor PFLR575 Springs, with +5mm insulators. GAZ adjustable shocks (on the car when I bought it). 

... and I can thoroughly recommend it. 

Back from Hols - US Rental Car Heaven

No Triumph news at the moment, but I have just got back from a 10 day break in Texas. First 5 days were spent in Austin enjoying Austin Psychfest 2013 and it's build up.

The next 5 days was a whistle stop road trip. Austin - Dallas/FortWorth - Jefferson - Houston - Austin. This was made all the more enjoyable by our choice of Hire Car, a Chevrolet Camaro SS, pictured here outside an abandoned Drive-In Theatre we found on Highway 59, outside Lufkin.

1100 miles with 400bhp on tap, we were certainly sad to hand the keys back to Budget Rentals yesterday morning.

Stoneleigh - A lesson learnt

Sunday saw the annual visit to the first show of the season at Stoneleigh. 5 of us from Suffolk made the 150mile trip and I decided to take the Stag to give it the first decent run of the year.

However, on returning to the car for the trip home, it started for about a minute, then stopped. It does have a habit of flooding easily from cold if you use maximum choke, as the Holley shuts off all the air, then proceeds to dump was seems like litres of fuel into the manifold.

So, we left it for a bit, then re-tried, nothing. The Suffolk posse then pushed me from the grass to the road in the car park for a bump start. Several attempts in 1st/2nd/3rd gear - nothing. Removing a plug showed it to be a good colour and dry. Hmmm, not flooded then.

It was then we noticed the fuel filter was almost empty. So I investigated blockages, blew through fuel lines ... before we noticed the pump wasn't pumping. Once up to pressure, these QH replacement pumps don't make much noise, so the 5 tired Suffolk travellers failed to realise.

My battery is in the boot, so after fidding with fuses and realising it wasn't those, it didn't take long to find a spare piece of wire and make a permanent connection. 

 

This quick bodge saw us out for the return journey, where I dumped the car on the drive, disconnected the wire, emptied it of purchases and left it well alone.

The lesson learnt? Well the next day at work, I had a sudden thought "INERTIA SWITCH!!". Got home and sure enough it had popped, only about 1mm, but enough to break the connection.
Grrrrr, not sure what caused it as it survived the Stoneleigh speed humps with no problem.

Thanks to Chris, Lindsey, Simon and Brian for the fault finding help and words of encouragement.

Back to the show and I had a good time. Met up with a few old friends and bought a few things I needed.

• TR6 rear brake shoes and drums from TR Shop
• Headrest Foams from TR Shop
• 13" Moto-lita steering wheel and Boss from Rimmer Brothers

The headrest foams were for the seats I now have in the GT6. These were in my Spitfire, and I had them refurbed 22 years ago, but I didn't bother with the headrests as they were fine. Not anymore. After 40 years, they had turned to bags of sand. Monday night, I opened them up to find this crumbling mess inside.

 New foam in place and old cover stapled back on gave me this.

 

Much better!

One final bit of good news, the 300 mile round trip showed the Stag returning around 27MPG and I seem to have cured it's excessive oil thirst (max to min in 200miles). This was down to the rear block breather being fed into a vacuum port under the carb, which seemed to suck oil in through the engine.

The picture below shows my new set-up. 

Block Breather - Pipe - Fuel Filter - Pipe Into Wing.

 

In the 300 miles, the level on the dipstick hardly moved. Success!

GT6 Interior Refit : All Done + MoT

The last couple of weeks has consisted of spending odd minutes when I can, finishing off the tunnel area, adding a 12v power socket and a radio.

Halfords had DAB headunits on offer, so I went for their Pioneer DEH-X6500DAB offering for 129.99 which came with a free magnetic aerial. It's a bit glitzy, but with the display set to orange it blends in with the brown ok.

So here it is finished.

The black disc on the dash is a SatNav mount. Just personal preference, as the screens in Triumphs are narrow enough without cluttering them up with technology.

The magnetic aerial is living on the roll bar for the time being ...

 ... and the reception is ok. 

I agonised for ages about the speakers as I didn't want to chop up the door or boot cards. I thought about putting them in boxes behind the seats and making them removable, but in the end hid them away in the gloveboxes facing down into the footwells. This meant making an extra panel to cover the front, reducing usable space, but at least they are mostly invisible as the picture below shows. :-)

Finally, it went for MoT and passed, just need to get some miles on it now.

GT6 Interior Refit - Part 3, Driveable Again

I'd got the bit between my teeth and decided to get the car driveable again today, so it was another morning spent in the garage to finish the last major parts, while listening to Andy Murray lose the tennis.

First job, refit the central armrest and tunnel cover. This involved drilling new mounting holes, then fudging around with the self tapping screws through the carpet until they located, just a bit fiddly really.

Next was to fit the Roll-Centre rollbar I'd taken out of my MKIV Spitfire before selling it. This was the other reason I had to remove the Britax inertia reel belts. As well as them hitting the seat, they were mounted exactly where the lower legs of the rollbar would sit.

10mm bolts hold the bar in place, so once I'd got over the apprehension of drilling 12 holes in the bodywork, it was done.

Finally, fit the seats to the frames, only 2 bolts per seat, but not a job for the fat fingered. The seats also came from my Spitfire as I wanted some headrests in this car. I had them refurbished 22 years ago and although the covers are still in very good condition, the foams have turned to breadcrumbs again, leaving them looking a little deflated.

When Chris sold me the car, he gave me the original MK2 tan seats which also need refurbishing. Having looked at the cost of covers, foams, and professional fitting now, I think they'll stay in my shed a little longer.

Once the seats were in, the last job was to re-route the seatbelts through the rollbar as the route I originally picked forced them down too low.

And that's pretty much it. Although the seats should be Tan, I like the Brown and Black contrast. There's just the H dashboard support frame to fit now, but I'll leave that for another time.

The weather's been glorious today and the snow has gone, so to celebrate, I took the car for a blast to my parents and back. A very productive weekend's work.

GT6 Interior Refit - Part 2, Carpet Complete.

Spent the day in the garage today finishing off the carpet. Order of fitment was : 

• Central Tunnel Cover - and fit seat belt receptacles to hold in place.
• Passenger Sill Cover.
• Passenger footwell side panel.
• Transmission Tunnel Cover.
• Passenger Box Section cover.
• Passenger Seat base section
• Passenger footwell carpet.

After that lot and fitting the new static belt, this was the result.

Then repeat the whole process again on the drivers side. Here is my patented method of holding the carpet in place, until the glue dries enough to re-fit the door seal.

Must buy better pegs, those cheap ones have pathetic springs. Once complete, I refitted the seat runnners.

I'm quite pleased with the result, despite the crispy nature of the carpet backing. 
However, now it's all in place, I feel I need to call the car 'Bungle'. Can't think why :-)

Only a couple of real issues, the drivers side footwell carpet went to the same height as the passenger side, which meant it fouled all the pedals. 6 inches lopped off with the scissors fixed that, which gave me some spare to fix this ...

 

 ... grrrr, why can't they cut that sill panel to the right length. The drivers side is fine.

GT6 Interior Refit - Part 1, The Rear.

It seems that when I acquire any new car, no matter how good it is, there are always things that need doing to personalise it to my tastes.

Even with the little use I've given it so far, a couple of things in the GT6 were starting to annoy me. The carpets were fairly loose and rucked up in places and the bulky Britax inertia seatbelts were hitting the back of the seat.

So, I'll start with the carpets and ordering a brown tufted set from Rimmer's as part of their sale was also a chance to change them all to one colour, as the boot and rear wheel-arches were black.

When they arrived, I was a little disappointed. The colour and shape is good, but the backing is very stiff and cracks quite easily when flexing. This is the 5th car I've fitted carpets in, I've always bought budget carpet from a number of suppliers (including Rimmer's), but this is the first set I've had like this.

Anyhow, I thought I'd persevere with it. First job was to stitch the rubber trim for the rear deck to the front seam. Took about an hour and I only punctured my thumb with the blunt end of the needle about 4 times.

Start in the middle and work out ....

... and it's done.

I'd already stripped most of the interior out, so here is the (almost) blank canvas.

Once the boot floor, the cross beam between the rear wheel arches and the rear trim panels had been removed, I could get to work with the evostick. The order of assembly was : 

• Wheel Arch panels
• Thin vertical panel in front of rear deck.
• Rear Deck Panel

Put back all the rear panels and cross beam and lay in the new boot carpet. Here is progress so far.

A couple of wrinkles on the arches, but I should be able to smooth those out. The boot carpet doesn't have the press-studs on yet, that's why it sticks up in the corners.

So far so good and very 'cosy'. All my other cars have black carpet, so this is going to be like sitting in a teddy bear!

First post for new blog

I've got so much useful information from other people's blogs over the years, I felt I should start my own. This post is just a test for me to get the formatting right. Whether anyone will want to read my tales of hammering and swearing remains to be seen, but with 4 Triumphs and an old Ford theres always something I'm tinkering with.

To kick things off here's a picture of my latest purchase, a Mk2 GT6, bought in November 2012 from local TSSC member Chris Downs. It's in lovely condition, as Chris performed a complete ground up restoration on it in the early 2000s.

More on what I'm doing to it will follow later, but the only work so far has been replacing the 'noname' black coil, with a Lucas DLB105 to cure an ever worsening misfire. It runs a treat now.