Paint & fuel line fitting

A few days ago my seam sealer arrived from Innotec so all of the seams as recommenced in the Triumph workshop manual and any other places which have been welded have had a coating. With the Adheseal it is best painted within four hours of laying the stuff down, so on the same night I made a start on painting the interior panels of the GT6. A couple coats have gone down now and once it has had another coat and has cured the sound deadening will go down of top.

Meanwhile, the fuel system install has been moving on with the Pressure Release Valve (PRV) being mounted on the rear tunnel and the pipework from it to the metering unit also being almost finished. I ended up getting a copper fuel pipe from Rimmer Bros. to go from the PRV to the plastic fuel line, as I thought this would be easier to keep routed through the tunnel and away from any moving parts.

Fortunately the plastic fuel lines I have came with the remains of their chassis mounting clips, so with new inner retaining pieces they could be used again, not that drilling the holes for them were particularly easy as ideally you want to be at right angles to the piece you are drilling, but at the body tub is now securely on, access to the side of the chassis rails is somewhat limited.

I will also put some extra clips in the rear tunnel, just to make sure that the fuel lines are kept clear of any moving parts.

So far I have concentrated on the high pressure fuel system, there is another fuel pipe which runs from the front to the rear of the car, this is a lower pressure line, which carries excess fuel from the metering unit back to the fuel tank and runs parallel to the high pressure system along the chassis. As it comes to the back of the car and over the rear spring, the idea at present is to run this last section in copper, so it can be securely held to the panels and turn tighter corners than the plastic fuel line.

Prep for paint and sealing

Some years ago, before I bought it, the GT6 has had new floor panels, sills, rear valance and various other small repair panels put in, unfortunately none of these were ever painted properly after fitting. They had however received a generous coating of over spray and the results of exterior polishing. In addition to this, a substance, possibly waxoyl, had been spilt down the drivers side bulkhead, getting into the drivers footwell via the cutouts for the clutch and brake.
Now, because I want to give all of the new panels a good coat of paint I need to remove any loose paint or dirt before painting, but because of the spill in the drivers footwell I have had to lay sheets down in the car and lower myself head first into the footwell to attack the spilt substance with wire brush, glass paper and thinners. Once cleaned, the plan is to re-seal any seams, paint the panels and once the paint has cured, lay down some sound deadening.

In the meantime, I have been busy on good'ol eBay and have been able to pick-up a window washer bottle. This one has come from a Triumph Acclaim, so at least I am trying to keep it Triumph. The bottle looks to fit quite well in the side of the passenger footwell, so before the MOT I will need to make some bracket to hold it in place. Also on the bottle is an electric pump, so as time allows, this will be used in place of the original old manual push pump.

I have put another foot on the combined fuel pump and filter holder I made up last week. As it was it was not freestanding, which meant if bolted down it would be pulling excessively on the two mounting bolts, with the extra limb it is now freestanding and should sit better.
A hole has been cut in the boot floor for the fuel hose to pass from the bottom of the fuel tank to the fuel filter in the car, quite a large hole had to be cut for this so a rubber grommet could be used to protect the edges.

Cool me pump

With an hour spare this evening I knocked up a cooling ring for the fuel pump. Apparently these old Lucas high pressure fuel pumps are prone to overheating. To overcome this the excess fuel from the pressure release valve is pushed round a coil of pipe around the motor part of the fuel pump.
You can buy these cooling coils, but seeing as I had an appropriately sized length of copper pipe I decided to make my own. It could do with an olive on each end to help locate the flexible fuel pipe and will probably be painted, perhaps matt black on the inside to absorb the heat?

The pump in the image is a spare, could be useful as a service exchange in the future though.

Bit of progress

With the steering rack firmly in place, half an inch over, some time was spent re-equalising the wheel travel so that the wheels turn equally each way. This was done by winding the trackrod out on one side and winding the other side in a similar amount, once on the road the tracking will need to be re-done anyway, so it should not matter too much if it is a little out.

It was then time to move back over to the chassis work to get the exhaust manifold through. After a bit more cutting and fitting a reasonable gap is now to be found between the secondaries on the manifold and the chassis rail. The final welding was not the easiest as the engine was still in place and the sump made for difficult access.

It has been tipping it down for most the day, so I have had a bit more time to work on the car, seeing as its not too clever to go fetching or cutting wood on the hills in the rain. Because of this I have finally got round to mounting the fuel pump and filter. I started off having the fuel pump arranged vertically such that the pump was above the motor until it was pointed out that should the pump leak at all it could send petrol down into the motor. With this in mind the pump was inverted, which actually has made for easier connection of fuel pipes.
The pump and filter have not been fitted into the car yet as I want to wait until I have a fuel shut off valve so I can decide best where everything will fit.

Ordered last week from Canada is a roll of sound deadening and heat reflecting material in my attempt to cut down the noise and heat of the engine so close to the driver. We shall see how that works out eh?
I decided to buy from Canada as it worked out cheaper, despite carriage, to buy from there instead of the UK.