My GT6, the story so far.. (part 1)

Back in February 2006 I purchased a 1972 Triumph GT6 with a view to getting it back onto the road in three months. The car was a abandoned resoration, it having had quite a number of new panels fitted and then a full re-spray in dark rover British racing green.
Along with the car came a set of four spoke revolution alloy wheels, a reconditioned MkIII GT6 engine, a three rail overdrive gearbox and a pair of fixed back bucket seats.

Having trailered it out of the previous owners garage and back to the farm where I am working on it, the first problem I noticed was that one of the rear wheels was rubbing on its shock absorber. Taking off the wheel revealed somebodies attempt at repairing the upper shock absorber mounting, while the repair might be strong it was in the wrong place, pushing the shock absorber too close to the wheel, so there was one of the fist jobs on the list. Fortunately by turning the shock absorber upside-down there was enough clearance to move the car around the workshop, but it would be no good to drive it like that.


A few days later I recieved a new pair of rotoflex drive couplings from T.D. Fitchett, as the ones on the car were well cracked and ready for replacement. These were soon fitted, the hardest part being the refitting of the transverse spring and rods onto the upright. For about a month after this other jobs around the farm, busy (paid) work and other projects I have running prevented me from working on the GT6.

Getting back to the GT6 after this break I moved it around the workshop, only to notice that my new rotoflex couplings had already started to crack, I could tell these were not going to last long. Around this time I had been following the Club Triumph Forum and developments made by Josh Bowler and Nick Jones, their set-up uses constant velocity (CV) joints instead of universal joints and the rotoflex coupling, this had to be the way forward. The CV rotoflex conversion uses a Volvo 340 CV joint in place of the universal joint, a metro driveshaft and a MGF hub and outer CV joint in place of the rotoflex joint. To enable use of the MGF hubs, the rear uprights were machined out to accept MGF bearings by Ariel Machine Products in Caerleon.