Winter Project

See the picture below. This really is the same Stag that sits looking rather smart a little further down this blog. 

It's been off the road for over a year now, thanks to house fires and other projects (workshop re-roofing and a 2.5pi Estate). But now they are all behind me, it's time to tidy it up and get it MoTed again and that includes trying to sort the exhaust once and for all. 

Earlier in the year, in trying to remove the tubular manifolds, I sheared the heads off 4 bolts on one side. These, along with one already sheared on the other side meant pulling the engine to get it sorted. This would at least allow me to sort a few other things while it was out. (Crumbling engine mounts, dicky starter motor, mummified engine bay wiring). 

Having had no luck with drills and 'EZout's, I entrusted the drilling and helicoiling to AFM Racing http://www.afmracing.co.uk in Ipswich. Once back and mounted on my engine stand, I'm taking the opportunity to clean up the old Rover P6 lump. Nothing too mad, but de-greasing, stripping and cleaning the rocker boxes, and removing, painting and re-sealing the sump are on the list. 

The Stag's alloys ended up on the 2.5pi Estate, but I have acquired another 15x6 set exactly the same, so the PI will be keeping hold of these. 

Rotten week, but getting better.

In the last 7 days I have discovered the power of Mother Nature. A storm over Ipswich last Thursday scored a direct lightning strike on our house, setting fire to the TV in our bedroom and taking the chest of drawers underneath with it. 

Although the fire was confined to one room, the smoke damage is extensive. We've lost almost all our possessions that were on the first floor and looks like we'll be out of the house for at least 3 months. 

Thankfully nothing too sentimental was destroyed, except for some hard earned Club Triumph T-Shirts which were in those drawers. Thought I'd take these poinient pics of them before they got binned. 

On a more positive note, my estate has had it's frilly extremities replaced by Andy Dann. New front valence, lower front wing corners and lower rear wing corners. Top job! Some before and after pics below. 

It's the simple things ...

Got back from the Le Mans classic last weekend, my 5th time attending with the TSSC and it never ceases to entertain me, it really is a fantastic event. 

There was three of us going so took the 2000 estate so we could get all the gear in. Travelling Wednesday night meant we were first on the site and chance of a couple of uncluttered photos in the early morning. 

Now we're back, today I had a chance to fix the disintegrating steering bush that led to a wobbly column through most if the trip through France. 

Pic below shows the remains of the old one, with a new Superflex one from Chris Witor. 

What made me smile was when rummaging under the dashboard to loosen the column I found this attached to the wiring loom. 

Always nice to find a little bit of originality still with the car. 

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.