My GT6 project and life with a BMW E21

Getting ready for the MOT

2012-02-13T17:08:00.000Z

Over the past month I've been quite busy recommissioning the GT6. The latest iteration of my fuel system is all together and has been pressurised successfully. The major components are the same as before, but I am gradually doing away with the basic rubber hoses held on with jubilee clips, in preference of braided hoses and JIC fittings.
You may be able to see in the pic below the two fuel return pipes in the fuel tank, these 1/4" pipes were welded in, once I has happy there was no vapours left in the tank.

To keep the fittings low profile and ensure good flow, the connection to the outlet of the fuel tank is now on a banjo fitting.

The main power cables are back in, this time the cables have been run through the sills where possible to keep them hidden away and away from the seat. The cables have been covered in spiral wrap as it passes through the sill to prevent chafing, before heading into the boot area, where the battery will be sited.

I had a couple of issues recently during the rebuild, first off was the master cylinder bracket. I could see while bleeding the systems that the bracket was flexing slightly more than I would have hoped, so I have added some extra strengthening pieces to it, which seems to have solved the problem.

The other issue I had was when I went to fit the silencer, for some reason the brackets on the underside of the boot floor pushed it too far over to the passenger side, this could be due to the brackets being in a different place on this body or that the body is in a slightly different position on the chassis.
To get around this, I cut a couple of spacers to keep the silencer in the right place. The plan is to do away with these when the new silencer is fitted.

Some time later, after lots of small jobs had been ticked off over, I was been able to start run and move the GT6 under it's own power. The list of jobs is starting to get smaller, but the trouble is that I keep having to add to it as I notice other things that need doing before the MOT.

Not the best of pics, but here you can see the new gearbox tunnel which follows the lines of the original one much more.

I know for sure that the tracking needs to be done as I can feel it crabbing as I went along the drive.
A couple more problems made themselves known though, the speedo was not working, this turned out to be the pick-up sensor position and once it was wound in a bit it was working fine. The other issue was that it was a little tighter than I would like to get in gear. Since it was last used on the road, the car has had a new gearbox, clutch and the gear linkage has been re-bushed also, but driving up and down the drive through the gears has loosened-up the gear linkage nicely.

Before the MOT I have to get some new wiper blades, replace the brake light switch, stop a blow on the silencer join and replace one bulb. With this in mind, I have booked it in for a MOT towards the end of the week.

And here it is out in the sun, a bit dusty and dirty, but it is getting there.

A new tunnel and parts back from the welders

2012-01-09T18:48:00.000Z

Work has been a bit slow on this car in the recent months due to other commitments, but I have been able to chip away at a few jobs. One thing I was not looking forward to was making another gearbox tunnel as it takes a lot of fitting and re-fitting to make sure the fit is right, which involves a fair bit of time on my knees.

Just to complicate things, I wanted to make the new tunnel look more like the factory version, which means I should be able to fit the radio/dash support.

I started off by fabricating the rear-most section first, which needed relatively small diameters and a quick step up between them to give space for your hand to use the handbrake.

Than I moved forward to cut the piece which will hold the tunnel onto the bulkhead and welded a section onto this, along the inner profile and then carried on fabricating back along the passenger side.

And here it is in place for yet another trial fit.

With all the welding on the gearbox tunnel I set to painting it, here you can see the back piece is separate to allow removal of the tunnel without having to disconnect the hand brake.

This was finished over the course of a number of weekends, finally being painted and the inside covered with my perfered sound deadening and heat reflective material.

Eleswhere on the car, the surge pot has returned from the welders with the bosses I turned-up to allow me to use banjo bolts in the end of the pot, instead of the JB welded in 90degree fittings. The banjo bolts should be a lot easier to work with and seal better also.

Also coming back from the welders was the airbox, which I had cut the previous 50mm inlets off from and had them tack on one of the new 75mm inlets. It's only tacked on for now to let me work out where the second inlet, which goes further back, should be positioned.

Glass, loom and dash in

2011-09-15T17:10:00.001+01:00

Between taking the Bank holiday weekend off to play engines at the Cambridge Museum of Technology and preparation for the external audit, I have been able to get a bit more done on the GT6. Both the front and rear screens are now in, making it almost waterproof. In the end I decided to have my (relatively new) clear windscreen moved over from the old body and fitted in the new body, as none of the windscreen fitters I contacted could supply the tinted glass.

The wiring loom was carefully removed from the old body an transferred over with minimal fuss, which meant I could also fit the dash and steering column.

The loom has been altered again slightly to tidy it up and to allow the EDIS unit for the megajolt ignition system to stay within the car, behind the passenger glove box.

Getting brave, I decided to confirm the position of the header tank and coil pack on the bulkhead, drilling into the fresh paint. Extra length fasteners will be used here, so the EDIS unit and megajolt unit can be mounted on a plate underneath. Now I've fixed the position of the coil pack I can measure-up the length of the plug leads and consider getting a set of Magnecore ordered.

I had to move the car out of the workshop for a couple of day, so it gave me a good chance to get a shot of the rear, with the refurbed lights and new number plate. It really does look quite funny to me with the skinny tyres and the rear wheels hiding far within those arches.

In other news, the BMW E21 has passed it's MOT again first time, with only a couple of advisories, which I shall see to in the next week or so.

GT6 rebuild continues

2011-08-26T17:11:00.000+01:00

Over the last week I've been able to crack on with the GT6 rebuild fairly well, getting the driveshaft assemblies put back together and fitted on the car, the adjustable rear radius arms serviced and fitted. This means the car could go back down on it's wheels to make it easier to move around.

The rear bumper was removed from the old body, mounting threads cleaned up and re-fitted to the new body and the number plate light serviced.

The number plate light was a case in point of how a simple job can take quite a while if you are trying to do thing right. The hole where the number plate light wires go into the body is smaller in the new body, so I needed to fit a smaller grommet, simple eh? It should be, but someone had put some nasty replacement bullet connects on the light fitting, which did not mate well with the rest of the loom. So I ended up carefully removing the wires from another light fitting to make one good part, which all of course took time.

Armed with a tin of strong adhesive I made a start on the headligning, with the strips of sound deadening going in first, followed by the headligning. There are a few ripples in the fabric, but not much worse than it was before I removed it.

Meanwhile, the bonnet was refitted, along with the door glass, fuel filler, door handles and some smaller fittings.

I'd like to get the windscreen fitted soon, so I can start moving over the dash and wiring loom, but at the moment I'm having a bit of a job trying to find someone to supply and fit a Sundym (green tinted) windscreen. I know they are available as I have seen them listed by three Triumph parts suppliers, but none of the fitters seem able to find one.

Start of the rebuild

2011-08-18T17:10:00.000+01:00

Last week after the paint had cured on the chassis, I made a start re-assembling the GT6. The front suspension has been removed as complete units, so ten bolts later and both sides were back on the chassis, closely followed by the steering rack and differential.

In-between work on the chassis, the main body of the gearbox was swapped out for one I had rebuilt some years ago and fitted with a new old stock AP Borg-Beck clutch and then re-united with the engine before being refitted to the chassis as one unit.

Next up was the body, as before, it was carefully moved into place using trolley jacks, axle stands and lumps of wood until it was in position. Thankfully it all lined-up and all the bulkhead modifications were in the right place, giving the appropriate amount of space all around.

Then last weekend I started fitting some of the smaller parts back on the front end of the car, such as the front quarter valances, bumper, spoiler and inlet manifolds.

When I removed the driveshafts, upright and lower wishbone from the rear of the car I noticed the wishbones seemed a bit tight against the uprights, not letting them rotate very easily, so I wanted to check these over before fitted them back on the car. An hour later and one side was separated, but I had destroyed the bushes and cut the bolt in order to do so. The problem here was that the metal bush had seized onto the long trunnion bolt.

After getting psyched up ready to tackle the other side, it came apart quite easily, just as it should have, though I will replace the bushes for good measure.

It was suggested to me that for awkward parts like this, which have a habit of seizing up, there is something better that the usual Copaslip type anti-seize compounds, which is Chesterton 785. I have ordered a can of this, though I probably won't know for some time now how effective it really is as I don't plan on stripping these parts down again for quite some time.

While they were out, the rear uprights, wishbones and brake back plates were all given a couple of coats of Rust Bullet Black shell and the CV joints were cleaned out and re-packed with molybdenum grease for good measure.

Chassis time

2011-08-10T10:15:00.000+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I made a start on the chassis by chopping off the outriggers, there was plenty of strong metal in them, but they were somewhat home-made looking and they would not have lined-up properly with the replacement body.

Cutting them off revealed the remain of the previous ones and a couple of holes in the chassis to be delt with.

The old and thinned metal was cut out and replaced with fresh 2mm plate, butt welded in. It's a shame I had to grind the welds back so much, but as the outriggers fit over this, it needs to be quite flat.

The replacement outriggers went on quite easily, with only a couple of milimeters needing to be removed from each outriger for them to fit in the right position on the chassis rail. Because I was fitting the outriggers without the body in place, quite some time was taken to make sure they were to be welded in the correct position, mainly by taking lots of measurements from the chassis I had borrowed to move the body to the paint shop.

I'd spent quite a bit of time stripping off the old paint, but I realised I could not get into all of the area to clean it as well as I wanted, so I decided to get it shot blasted. Luckily for me, I'd found someone fairly local, who could do the job while I waited.

With the chassis back, there was a little more welding to be done, the shot basting having revealed some thin metal in the bonnet mounts and the front crossmember. The chassis was then painted using Rust Bullet Black shell for added protection.

Start of the strip down

2011-07-19T13:31:00.000+01:00

It was the Wye Dean Triumph meet near Coleford last week and on the way back I decided it was time to make a start on the body swap. Work started on Saturday with only as much interiour removed as required, so it can be stored in the body for now, fuel and brake lines disconnected and the inlet manifolds removed to give enough space fot the body to be lifted pass the engine. A set of steel wheels were also fitted to keep the alloy wheels in good condition and make the car easier to roll around.

My method was to lift the body up and roll the chassis from underneath it, complete with the bonnet and running gear. Doing it this way means it is easier to disconnect the running gear as you hae much better access to it.

By the end of Sunday the body was completely free and the chassis almost stripped bare.

The plan is to replace the outriggers on the chassis that the front of the body mounts on as they look somewhat home made and then repaint the complete chassis with something a bit better than last time as it has not faired so well. While I have the good access, the gearbox will be changed for one I had re-built a few years ago, which has a large tip mainshaft and better synchro rings. Then it's just a matter of re-assembly, easy eh?

Keeping the rust at bay

2011-07-15T17:12:00.000+01:00

Having put so much effort into the replacement bodytub, I really wanted to make sure I was not going to have any bodywork issues for some time. Waxoyl is a commonly know make of cavity wax, but while looking around for the costs of it, I found things have moved on and there are other products, which perform much better. Based on cost, availability, and reviews, I went for Dynax S50 from Bilt Hamber. Along with a five litre can I ordered a injection lance, which is a length of tube with a diffuser on the end to make sure the 'wax' is thrown out 360degrees to coat all surfaces.

I didn't take any pictures while using the Dynax S50 as there isn't a lot to see really, but all the usual areas, such as around the wheel arches, in the sills and in the windscreen surround (especially over the top where GT6's like to rot out) were suitably coated.

With the inside and top side of the body all protected, there was just the underside to do, the job I was least looking forward to. As before, I wanted to coat the underside in something which would last, but all of the products I considered using required a clean and preferably bare metal surface. The headache I had here was that the underside had been coated with some form black Schultz underseal, which has a nasty habit of trapping water underneath it, but remains sticky, making it a pain to remove.

The process of stripping the underside took me quite a few evenings and weekends, it can be hard to motivate yourself to go and lie on a concrete floor to scrape off underseal and paint. The process I found most effective in the end was to scrape as much off by hand as possible, then use a bevel twisted knot wire brush on a angle grinder to get into the nooks and crannies to remove any last underseal. After that, it was a mix of strip & clean discs and flap discs to get the underside stripped.

After a bit more research, I had whittled it down to POR15 and Rust Bullet for the new underbody paint. I chose Rust Bullet this time as the overcoating did not need a primer, this paint is also UV resistant, unlike POR15, but I wanted to paint the underside in body colour anyway.

Rust Bullet needs two coats within four hours of each other, so the whole area I wanted to paint had to be accessible at once, this meant supporting the body from the extremities, not something I would recommend if you have any doubts about the strength of your body.

Screwfix sell single use paint brushes, which were just the job as I doubt it would have been worth using good quality brushes when there was little chance of cleaning them properly again. Eye protection and rubber gloves were also used, I did get a bit of paint on me and that took ages to remove, so I just hope it sticks to the car just as well.

24 hours after the second coat of Rust Bullet was applied I gave it a coat of green so it stands out less. The body has now been put aside while I prepare the car to remove the old body and carry out a few changes.

Back to the GT6, more paint

2011-07-04T18:53:00.000+01:00

With the replacement GT6 body safely back on it's stand in the barn, I set about painting the interior. I've done this to of course protect the steel, but also to put all of the interior in one solid colour, to make any modifications and previous less obvious. It's been painted using sythetic paint as it was readily available and could be brush painted, I really did not want to have to mask-up the car to spray paint or risk over-spray on the good paintwork.

While working on the body, I've been servicing some of the smaller parts and I turned my attention to the rear lights. Compared to modern vehicles, Triumph lights can look a little dull, not helped by the condition of the reflectors. Mine were looking particully dull as the majority of the relective coating had fallen off over the past 40 years or so, so the reflectors were carefully pushed out of their holders and first given a coat of primer.

And then 'Chrome' paint, which doesn't seem to have the same shine as the stuff I have used before, but should be a vast improvement of what was there.

Once the paint was cured, the reflectors were fitted back into the light unit and I set about re-assembly, with a new gasket between the unit and the lenses. Unfortunately, the curretly available gaskets from one supplier are too small in both length and height, it seems as if it has shrunk.

I'll try a few more parts suppliers to see if anyone has lamp gaskets that fit, but I fear they are all being made in the same place, so I may have to find some suitable material and cut some out myself.

Ecurie Cymraeg Historic Rally

2011-05-15T12:51:00.000+01:00

Yesterday Ecurie Cymraeg's Historic rally passed by our front gate, so I thought I'd go and have a look. There were quite a few interesting cars, including three TR4's, a Vitesse and a MkI 2000, though I only managed to get pictures of a few of them.

New '43' Camshaft

2011-04-04T18:28:00.000+01:00

While the bonnet was at the bodyshop, GT delivered and fitted one of his '43' profile camshafts. We went through a few duplex camwheels to time it in best, including a re-pro one, which was completely useless, but ended up using the same one as before. Once re-assembled, using the old ignition map it had lost in the bottom end a bit, but after some tweaks of the ignition map it have really come to life, with it coming on cam at around 4k rpm. As the was bonnet at the bodyshop we not been able to take it out onto the main road, but it does seem to pull quite cleanly upto atleast 7k rpm.

While doing the camshaft change I was able to change the engine front plate again, back to a GT6 one, which should give me more space to fit the hoses between the airbox on the engine and the filter box (below the radiator)

Once the parts were back from the bodyshop I was able to take it back over to the rolling road at Maynards to fine tune the ignition map, see what it is doing now and work out what needs to be done next. What we quickly worked out was that the standard silenced I had fitted, 51mm outlet, was only now restricting the engine to about 150bhp. The silencer was soon removed and the remainder of the runs done with out it, this was not a surprise to me as it had always been the plan to go for a larger silencer. So onto the results from the runs;

Power

Torque

The top line of each is the current setup less silencer and the one below with silencer. This makes the best figures so far of 175bhp at 6409rpm and 149lb ft at 5653rpm.
After the silencer there should be more power to be found with a bit more valve lift and a higher compression ratio, but I really need to look at the suspension setup and brakes first.

Fresh paint

2011-04-02T21:09:00.000+01:00

I'm a bit out of date again, sorry. A few weeks ago I had a message to tell me the parts I took over a few weeks ago were painted, finished and ready for collection. A few days later I went over with the trailer again to make the collection.

The following day the body, bonnet and chassis was lifted from the trailer, with the bonnet going back onto the car it came from. To make it easier to work around in the workshop, the body was then taken from the chassis and put back onto a wooden frame and to prevent the doors getting damaged, they were also re-hung on the body.
The next job on this body will be to stone chip the wheel arches and fill it up with cavity wax, probably Bilt Hamber's Dynax S50. Not 100% sure what to do with the underside, at the moment it is undersealed, but I'm not keen on the stiff personally. I'd like to paint the inside the new colour before the wax goes in, so there is a bit of paint prep to be done first.

Stripping and welding

2011-02-03T17:04:00.000Z

Since getting the bodytub back a few weeks ago, I've been working fairly hard to get it ready to go back over to the bodyshop for paint by the end of the month.
Paint stripping has been a bit laborious at times, making sure the old paint is out of every nook and cranny. This has mainly be done using Nitromoors to release the top layers, which can then be scraped off, just leaving the base coats, which were removed using a strip and clean disc on the angle grinder.

It was just as well that I decided to check every joint I could find on the body as it turned out that the majority of the welds along the bottom of the outer sills where not attached to anything else. This meant I could slip a scraper between the outer and inner sills, not good. I have now carefully seam welded the sills together.

Both sides of the windscreen frame needed repairs the the rear, the left hand side being easy, just needing a small patch at the bottom. However, the drivers side had rusted through the rain channel and the back of the pillar. Having removed the remains of the rain channel, I drilled and cut out part of the pillar as there was a lot of pitting by the angle.

Up front, the remains of cover strip over the roof lip was carefully cut at each end and peeled off. There was not much holding it on, so it came off without any further cutting. The surface below is a bit pitted in places and had gone through it a couple of places, but that was soon remedied with a bit of weld and ground back again. I'd already bought a replacement for this lip, which was over length, not a problem, but also the wrong 'U' profile, so I had to carefully cut a couple of milimeters off the entire length to allow it to sit back over the lip correctly. I'll ask the bodyshop to seal and spot-weld this in place when it goes back for paint.

One of the last jobs I did before sending it off to the bodyshop was repairs to the heelboards, both sides needed repairs around the outer mounting points. Rather than trying to make small patches, I decided to replace larger sections, which gave me a chance to check and paint the condition of the panel beneath.

The stripped body is now is now at the bodyshop, along with the bonnet, for preparation and paint, I hope to be able to collect it in the next month or so. Once back home I can start thinking about the re-fit, though it may be delayed a bit as I want to paint the inside and the weather is not really suitable for that at the moment.

Back home again

2011-01-07T19:57:00.001Z

I'd hoped to collect the body before Christmas, but with the bit of snow we had, we decided it could wait until the new year. So earlier this week I trailered it back to the workshop.

I'm aiming to get it back to the bodyshop in the second half of February, but before that there will be quite a bit of finishing to be done. The original plan was to try and get it seam sealed and painted internally before it went for paint, but considering the amount of other welding I need to do and how cold the weather is at the moment, it may have to wait until afterwards.
Think I'll resume by finishing off the radius arm brackets then work my way forward from the rear light panel, checking every joint and seam I can find.
In the meantime I am looking for a chassis to borrow, as I could do with finding an easy and safe way to transport both the body and bonnet back to the bodyshop for paint.

GT6 Bulkhead reconstruction part 2

2010-12-16T18:04:00.000Z

With the recent cold weather we have been having I've not been so keen to work on the car recently, but I had agreed to move the body over to a bodyshop this week, so I wanted to get the bulkhead finished off if possible.
I don't have and in progress pictures this time, but once again the floorpan has been remodelled and the new bulkhead section welded in place, though this time the piece was fabricated.

Back inside the car, one of the radius arm strengthening brackets has been moved across, this is because the body was swing spring and will be going to Jones/Bowler CV.

I've made a start on the other side, unfortunately this bracket has had plates welded over it, but I found a decent one on my other spare GT6 body.

The body is now over at the bodyshop to have the rear light panel, rear wing and outer arch fitted, which they reckon they may have done by the end of the week, then it's back to me to finish the bracket on the heel board, repair both toe boards where it bolts down through to the chassis, patch a couple of holes on the back of the screen frame, put a new lip on the leading edge of the roof and if there is time, seem seal and paint the inside, all ready from paint in February, at least that's the idea

GT6 rear wing preparation

2010-11-30T19:48:00.001Z

After pulling out some dubious repairs from the rear wheel arch I worked out that the left hand rear wing had already had three repair panel welded on. The trouble with this is that the panels were not very good and had a thick layer of filler over them to cover it up, so I decided to get a new wing.
The complication here is that the fuel filler cap is in this wing and the company that produces this wing do not do the pressing for the fuel filler, but one of their suppliers could do the pressing, so I ordered an appropriate wing from them. Unfortunately it was not quite as I had hoped, the red one below is an original and the black a re-pro pressing.

I asked the company if they could do better and they said no, so the wing was exchanged at their cost for one without a filler hole and I set about moving a filler hole across. I started by marking up all the parts with masking tape to give me reference points of where the filler hole should be.

Then the filler panel was trimmed down and a hole cut in the new wing to allow me to drop the piece in before doing the final cut around, just in case I had it in the wrong place.

Once happy with this, the proper size hole was cut in the new wing before welding the hole in place.

It's going to need a bit more finishing and possibly a skim of filler before paint, but I'm fairly happy with the result and glad that I should have something that looks right when fitted.

GT6 Bulkhead reconstruction

2010-11-24T21:23:00.000Z

A bit more fabricating and welding done this weekend. The vertical closer panel on the passenger side of the bulkhead was cut and folded.

The problem with this is that the new bottom corner of this panel reaches out over the floorpan. Having some spare floorpan parts, I decided to change the shape to make it all fit and look better.
Replacement section in place prior to cutting and welding.

Replacement piece welded in with the top hole filled in and the old corner of the floorpan cut out so not to create a redundant cavity.

And this is how it soon looked, with the bulkhead started to be welded in and some of the holes in the bulkhead being filled in. There is still quite a bit of grinding back to be done and pseudo spot welding between the bulkhead top and the vertical panels, then it's onto the drivers side, which will be more complicated again as the panels have to give room for the starter and clutch slave cylinder.

Later on, the top of the drivers side bulkhead finally buzzed in, which meant I could decide on the final position of the master cylinders, which have also been modified and welded together.

GT6 Bulkhead mods

2010-11-11T18:01:00.000Z

With a few other jobs out of the way I've started back on the replacement GT6 body with a bit more choppy chop around the bulkhead.

As you can see from the pics below, I had already started on the drivers side before I remembered to take any pictures. The sides of the area around the pedal box have been boxed in and a new piece put in beside it to give more space for the air box.

As it was a few days ago

Remaining redundant top of bulkhead and front of tunnel cut off

New top of bulkhead positioned for the camera

While I am doing the welding around here I'll fill up the hole for the fuse box and all of the redundant holes also. At the same time I am thinking of re-positioning the wiper motor, as I have seen done before. This should make for a slightly less cluttered bulkhead and while I'm at it, I'll see if I can fit a more modern wiper motor, you know, one of those which actually go fast when you put it on the second speed, unlike some of the Triumph offerings.

Master cylinder mods

2010-10-25T22:01:00.000+01:00

I've been able to make a bit more progress on the replacement body over the last few days, the replacement rear light panel is now fully trimmed back and I've made a start on trimming back the area it has to go into.
Meanwhile at the front I've been looking into the bulkhead mods again, with the benefit of hindsight and more time I'm going to try and make a neater job of it and try to make it look as factory spec as possible. This will mean putting the lip back on the top of the bulkhead shelf, keeping the factory size radii on the corners of the new parts of the bulkhead and replicating the detail of how the bulkhead finishes to join onto the tunnel. So far there has been a fair bit of head scratching and wandering between car bodies to work out how best to do it, but hopefully it should be worth it.

The area I looked at next was been the master cylinders, last time I just put the two master cylinder brackets next to each other and cut a new hole in the bulkhead, but that looks somewhat scruffy. This time I plan to do something like Dave has with his K series and fabricate a new bracket for the master cylinders, with a repositioned reservoir for the brake, then cut out and re-weld the pressing for the hole in the bulkhead.

I'm hoping I can find an appropriately size brake fluid reservoir to be able to keep it somewhere on the bulkhead and at the same time put the support/brace/bracket next to the master cylinders on the bulkhead.

A few days later I received a new master cylinder reservoir, the good thing about this one is that the outlet of the reservoir is offset, so it gives me enough space to open both master cylinder caps.

The problem I had is that it still sat a bit too high. The height can be reduced a bit by cutting down the thread, but that's not going to be enough. As I will have to fabricate a new bracket for the master cylinders I will change the angle of the bake master cylinder, making them more horizontal and giving me more space.

So this is what it looks like now with a mocked-up brake master cylinder, the reservoir should go down a bit lower again.

GT6 rear end damage &starter heat shield

2010-10-12T17:55:00.000+01:00

I spent a bit of time having a look at the dent in the rear of the new GT6 body, making a start by removing the lights and other trim. The rear deck, valance and light panel are all damaged, so at present I plan to replace just the light panel and try to straighten out the other panels.

I've also been out to the long term storage area to retrieve a few parts from a mostly rotten bodyshell. Much easier to carefully remove the light panel in the workshop in the dry and on the bench. It'll also give me a at hand reference of how the rear deck should sit.

Decided the first job was to remove the old light panel, I was going to carefully drill out all the spot welds, but soon gave-up on that idea and just cut the whole panel out. I've been able to make a start on smoothing it all out again, but I'm all too aware of my lack of experience and the risk of making things worse if I spend too long hammering in the same place, so I'll leave it for now and concentrate on panel preparation before getting some professional advise.

A problem I had with the GT6 last time it was out was that when hot, the starter would refuse to go and just blow a fuse. I've since been told that this is quite common with the modern type starter motors as they really don't like getting too hot. So rather than fit a heat reflective type blanket over it I decided to make-up a heat shield.
The CAD (cardboard aided design) was cranked into action before transferring to aluminium to produce a heat shield, which to pleasantly surprise me, fitted first time and was still easy to get into and out of position. While doing the job, I decided to replace the pozi-drive screws with allen-head screws to make for easier servicing of the starter as it is a pair to remove the whole unit, though I hope I won't need to again for a while now.

It has survived a quick run to the shops and seems to be doing it's job so far, so I can't complain at that really.

A new body

2010-10-06T19:18:00.000+01:00

Since getting all despondent about the condition of the GT6 body I'd been on the look-out for another one, so I put a few feelers out, contacted some of the Triumph traders/breakers and eventually found something which was reasonably close, solid and had not been bodged too much by a previous owner. Unfortunately there were a couple of obvious issues with the one I found, it came with the rest of a almost complete vehicle, so I would have to separate it and find a home for the running gear and the body had sustained some rear end damage, but again this was not too much of an issue as I already had a second hand light panel which could be fitted.

A deal was soon done and a couple of days later it was in the workshop

It took a couple of hours to prepare it for removal of the body and another hour to lift it off , not too bad as I was doing it by myself with jacks and blocks of wood.

With the body removed I gave the running gear a quick wash, took some pictures and put it up for sale on a few websites and within 24 hours I'd received a deposit for the running gear, at least that went quickly and smoothly.

GT6 bodywork decisions

2010-09-28T20:35:00.000+01:00

In the eighteen months or so the car has been on the road the bodywork has deteriorated quite badly, with signs of rust coming up along the top of the windscreen frame, along the rear wing repair sections and numerous spots of corrosion looking like they might push through the paint. In addition to this, the drivers side sill was not put on correctly, giving poor gaps all around. Oh how I wish I knew more back then when I bought it.

In a bit more detail, the front of the roof has obviously had a fair bit of rust in it, meaning that it has been repaired, but not very neatly with varying thickness's of filler and was not sealed off properly, hence the rust starting to come through again.
Both inner rear wheel arches need replacing and there are dubious quantities in the outer arches.
The top of the windscreen surround looks to have been re-modelled as the curvature has been lost, probably replaced with flat sheet.
Both sills have been fitted too far back, not so much of a problem, but one side was also fitted way out of line of the door, see pic above.
It seems that when the sills and floor was replaced on the drivers side they did not bother to check the door gap, so that side will always be too small.
In addition to this there are numerous small patches of rust starting to bubble up through the paint
If it was just one or two of the above problems I would not have been so concerned, but I am not sure if it would still be economic to try and repair this body. It's not going to fall apart or fail an MOT in the next year or two, but I rather be prepared and catch it before it catches me.

All this makes me want to get one of Graham's T6 bodyshells, but at the moment it would cost too much. So that leaves me with a couple of other options, get another shell, with the risk of finding equally shoddy repairs already carried out on it or get mine repaired. I'm warming to the idea of finding a less molested body to restore and modify myself gradually over the next year or so in readiness to swap over as this will give me the opportunity to do some of my modifications a bit more neatly.

New Airbox

2010-09-20T08:53:00.000+01:00

I've picked up the air box for the GT6 as they had finished the TIG welding. Seems they spent quite some time on it with the two long seam welds required and there was very little distortion. The box is held in place with dzus fasteners and seal with a closed foam single sided adhesive strip.

It was a concern that the air inlets might not be big enough, they certainly did not look quite right. The long drag up my favourite hill seemed to confirm my suspicion and it is down on power, so I need to go for larger inlets. I'd really like to go for a pair of 3" (76mm) inlets, but the issue then becomes how to route the two large pipes to the front of the car, a bit more head scratching required here I think.

Castle Combe trackday

2010-09-17T17:38:00.000+01:00

So quite a few months ago, June actually, was the Castle Combe trackday, my first time out on track. On the first session time seemed to pass exceeding fast, unlike my driving, but I survived. Through out the day my ability to keep up with the other traffic improved and the car only gave me one problem, a leaky rocker cover gasket, which was soon solved with liberal amount of silicone sealant.
A couple of observations from the day, my 'temporary' throttle cable mount could do with stiffening-up or replacing as despite having little slack in the cable, the mount would bend, giving a delay between pressing on the pedal and the butterflies moving. The standard brakes seem perfectly adequate for my driving on that circuit, so no need to worry there, if anything I needed to brake less into corners and carry more speed through.

The front left tyre seems to have come off the worst, not sure if this is my driving style or just due to the rotation of the circuit.

Other pics nicked from over the internets with appologies to Smithy and RoyBoy

There are more pictures to be seen in my Photobucket account and if you are a Club Triumph member, a better write-up of the event in the latest magazine.

More updates, airbox thoughts

2010-08-19T22:04:00.000+01:00

Work continues on the airbox and I've had a couple of quotes for aluminium cut to size for a backplate and sealing ring, £40 + VAT and delivery for the pair, so I doubt it's worth trying to make one myself or buying and cutting a ITG one.

So the plan at the moment is to have the aluminium backplate and ring supplied, that's the yellow and the blue parts in the cad image below, and then form the rest of the airbox from fibreglass or carbon fibre.

I'm not sure at this stage whether to bond the sealing ring into the airbox or just have it on top to spread the weight.

The best quote I had for the backplate was £30 plus delivery and VAT from LaserMaster, so I confirmed the drawing and paid them yesterday morning and this morning the parts were delivered.

Next job is to finish off the grommets, the ITG ones had a very large OD, meaning they would overlap, so instead I have managed to find some wiring grommets, though these need slight alteration to fit.

I was pleasantly surprised with the service after another company, who quoted £40+ also would only start work after the cheque cleared, LaserMaster took payment over the phone.

The first trial fit looks OK, I'm going to have to fettle one or two of the holes though to make it fit better (my measuring inaccuracies) and then add a mounting point or two back to the inlets to hold it steady.

Then I thought I'd make a start on the airbox, first step was to find something I could mould into the shape of the airbox to lay the fibreglass onto. First thought was to use that green flower arranging foam, oasis, but I couldn't find a large enough piece locally, so I got creative with a cardboard box, some plastic and a can of expanding foam to make this:

Which was roughed out to this, using a jack saw and rasp:

Before adding radii, covering in tape and trial fitting one of the air inlet pipes, which will be moulded in with the fibreglass:

Overdue updates

2010-08-18T13:45:00.000+01:00

Right, so this blog has gone from being a bit out of date to being very out of date, so it's time to get things back on track.

Following my last missive, the inlet manifolds now all match-up with the head a lot better now after a bit of fettling and I've managed to get most of the butterflies to seat a lot better, one is still a lot worse than the others, so that manifold will have to come out again. The trouble is that the manifolds and butterflies are all clean and I have heard people say that they are a pain to seal up again when clean.

Engine mounts,

This is the new design, it uses the original bracket with heavy box section and a tube welded on the end for the bolt to pass through to the new rubber (Jaguar E-type)

The pic below shows how much the rubber has sagged and the new bracket behind it prior to being tacked in.

I fitted the newly modified engine brackets and I am pleased to say that so far there is no noticeable increase in vibrations or noise from the engine.

All the butterflies in the inlet manifolds fit a lot a better now and other air leaks from the top of the manifolds have been sealed off, so I can have the engine tick over at 600rpm again if I wanted.
Driving around, I can sometimes hear a knock from the back and some of the blue Polybushes fitted do not look as good as they should, so I will probably end up replacing those with Superflex ones.

The next area I feel I should concentrate on is air delivery to the inlet manifolds. All of the components for this need a good bit of thinking through, the basic plan though is to have a box over the manifolds, fed by colder air from the front of the car.
Considerations to be made;

Air box backplate buy or make? - Both ITG and Pipercross sell them for around £30, but they are only pieces of alloy sheet with fasteners
How to secure the backplate to the ram pipes? - Again ITG sell these, but £8 for a grommet
How to seal the backplate to the air box? - Adhesive foam? rubber?
Where to route the pipe/s to the air box
Where/how to induct air into the pipe? - Under the radiator, but not so low that it picks up water?
What size pipe/s to the air box? - I'd like to have two feeds so not to starve one end of the engine

I've seen Pipercross and others sell air boxes of a suitable length, but at over £200, I'd rather make my own from fibreglass or Carbon Fibre and have something that is exactly what I want.

I've been going through some more of those finishing off jobs. The Facet low pressure primer has now been replaced with the pump from George, fortunately it has the same mounting centres as the previous pump, so it made for easy fastening down and I now have two quieter rotary fuel pumps.

The search for the elusive speed vibrations have led me to reduce the gap between the bonnet and sill on the passenger side, so the bonnet assembly no longer vibrates as much at speed. In addition to this, the rear tyres have now been replaced with Conti Eco Contacts and doing these two things have really made the car much more steady.

Had the Bank Holiday over in East Anglia, which meant doing a bit over 400 miles in the GT6, the miles just flew by and it was a pleasure to drive, much changed from 18 months ago.

Unfortunately my camera did not get any video from the last rolling road session, but I have put together a video from footage collected by Alex at Maynards. GT6 PI on the rolling road

Rolling road time again

2010-06-25T18:20:00.000+01:00

So we had a long afternoon at the rolling road, where we did runs with the GT supplied head and again after changing the later CR type inlet manifolds for the earlier CP manifolds, which have be machined out to enable the CR throttle spindles to be fitted. Ram pipes have also been fitted to the new manifolds to increase the inlet length.

Torque

Power

Blue run is prior to the head change, but still injection and CR inlets.

Green run is with the new head, but still injection and CR inlets.

Black run is new head and CP inlets and ram pipes.

It is clear to see the improvements with the new higher compression cylinder head, giving more power and for longer and the CP inlets giving an extra eight or nine BHP. The engine is still fitted with the relatively mild stock MkII camshaft.

Surprisingly the fuelling is still alright everywhere apart from idle, giving figures, if I remember right, of 3.8 to 4 over the rev range.

I've still a bit of fettling to do to get the inlets to match the ports properly as we were running out of time and I also need to consider making a cold air feed as it does seem to be quite sensitive to temperature.

I'm pretty chuffed with the results, it's all taken a fair bit of time to get this far and I'm sure there is plenty more to be done, but it has given me the ability to see the improvements and gains by fitting the right parts. Also interesting to see how much can be done with a stock camshaft, goes to show that some of them aren't all that bad.

I'll probably end up fabricating a custom air box to give plenty of space around the trumpets and have a couple of cold air feeds. There are air filter baseplates approximately 500mm long, which would be perfect for this, but the filters that fit onto these are around £125, so I may buy an un-drilled baseplate and fit my own box onto this and have filters in-line or at the end of the cold air feeds.

New towers and head fitted

2010-06-13T09:47:00.000+01:00

Got the modified suspension towers fitted in the week, though I still have to fit the wiring and coolant pipes back around them and I'll leave the steering column out until I have changed the head. Not the easiest of jobs to do with the engine in place as you of course have to have the chassis on stands and then support the engine as you swap the towers over. Having the single multi-way plug on the steering column made it a doddle to remove.
Next job is to check torques, fit the wiring and coolant hose back in before checking the starter and swapping the head, then I could thing about finishing off the new engine mounts.

Then it was time for the head change, the old head was removed quite easily before cleaning off the block and a new Payen head gasket fitted before re-fitting the starter and water pump.

So I got the GT6 running again on Saturday with the new head on. Took me a while to get it started as the injectors needed priming and then I must have flooded it in a bad way, so I took the plugs out to clean them up and re-gap (should have done this when I went over to Megajolt ) and left them out while I went for lunch. On returning I wanged the plugs back in and it started up straight away.
With the new head it seems to rev much more freely, being all to easy to spin up to 6,500rpm, where before it was a bit of a struggle to get up to 6,300rpm. There is still a bit of a dip in the torque around 2,800rpm, but it soon picks up again, perhaps this could be ironed out on the rolling road.

Covered an easy 200miles in the afternoon on a drive over to Builth and found some good roads to drive once you get past the people pottering along at 45mph I'm not sure whether it's the car, me or both, but I feel a lot more confident driving the car now than when I did when it first went back on the road, just learning how to drive it?
One thing I did see from the run yesterday was that, despite the reasonably warm weather yesterday, the engine temperature was pretty well pegged at just over half way and the fan never came on, even in the slower moving traffic. Not too bad for a second hand pug radiator, but I may well change it for a new one as some of the cooling fins are looking a bit flaky.

It did reward me this morning by leaving a pool of brake fluid on the floor, a leak from the master cylinder. Fortunately I had a spare master cylinder, but the lid will not unscrew, so I exchanged the piston with seals and re-bled the system and it has been fine since. Makes me wonder if I ought to get in a spare set of cylinder seals just in case.

The next job to do is to finish off the new engine mounts, really don't like the look of the existing ones and how they are cracking.

Head, pipes and towers

2010-06-07T13:52:00.000+01:00

I did not buy much at the Triumph show at Stoneleigh earlier this year, but I did collect this:

It's the replacement head re-worked by GT, complete with a set of his valves, a job which he managed to turn around in quite a short time before heading back home. It has been buretted and it looks like the compression ratio is 10:1. My plan is to have another go on the rolling road after fitting this to see what effect it has had, then fit different inlet manifolds while at the rolling road and adjust the Megajolt as required.

My attempt to fit the better hose clamps hit a problem last week, the home-made take-off on the bottom hose was not wide enough to get a proper seal with the wider clamps, so it started leaking. To get round this, I bought a ready made tee piece from Car Builder Solutions, hopefully it should seal better with this.

Over the weekend I finished modifying the other suspension tower to take the alternative engine mount and then gave them a clean off and paint, ready for fitting soon.

I've decided to crack on with these towers again as to fit them requires the cooling system to be drained as a hose passes through the one on the passenger side and it needed to be partially drained to change the head anyway.

PI fuel system, again, and coolant clamps

2010-05-29T21:45:00.000+01:00

Bit more progress over the week, which I have been able to finish off this weekend, the fuel swirl pot is now fitted.

At the same time, a bracket has been found for the large fuel filter, it turned out that a wiper motor bracket is just about the right size for my filter. So what we have is the low pressure Facet pump supplying fuel to the bottom of the swirl pot, fuel exiting the bottom of the pot to go to the filter and high pressure pump, a return from the pressure release valve (PRV) going to the top of the pot and a outlet from the very top of the pot to the fuel tank, through which air and excess fuel is bled out.

I've been out for a run since fitting all this up and it works fine, but the only issue I have had is the lack of pressure for the Facet pump to work against. The problem is that these solid state pumps get very noisy when they do not have a sufficient pressure to work against, so I have clamped in a piece brake pipe in the return to the fuel tank to restrict the flow. This has quietened it down a bit, but I don't want to restrict it so much that it won't be able to clear the air fast enough when it really needs to.

With this recent talk of cooling systems and leaks it reminded me that I had some misgivings about one or two or the hose connections and it had been my plan to change the hose clamps. So today a set of eight Mikalor clamps turned up in the post, should get them fitted tonight.

They should hopefully provide a better seal than the thinner jubilee clips and actually work out cheaper than stainless jubilee clips from Car Builder solutions, these were £1.17 each

I've been using Mikalor clamps on exhaust systems for a few years now, but they do seem to have got a lot cheaper and easier to find now, no need to spend over £5 each now.

I did think about the potential for warmer fuel from the PRV getting back to the pump before going to the tank, but seeing as it enters towards the top of the swirl pot, is warmer (so more likely to rise than sink to the bottom of the tank) and that the low pressure pump is at the same time pushing an excess of fuel up though the swirl pot outlet, it should push that warmer fuel back into the main tank. I guess I will have to wait until we get one of those hot days to see how it copes.

Smaller jobs and settling down

2010-05-26T10:18:00.000+01:00

So I got a few more jobs done in the week, rear brakes re-assembled and hopefully setup right this time and a bit more sound deadening has gone down on the gearbox tunnel before the carpet, which of course has to be modified. I've been trying to go round and finish off some of those jobs I started a while ago or have bought parts for, but never got round to fitting to this end, the car now has a Spitfire front spoiler.

At the same time I have been working on the fuel system, again , and have been looking at fitting a fuel swirl pot I bought some months ago. To give me some extra freedom of where to position it, the outlet and bleed-off tails were cut off before being re-tapped to take a 90 degree fuel union and sealed with JB weld for good measure. This means I can run the swirl pot much higher, giving a greater head of fuel to the high pressure Lucas pump.

I then had a chance to take the car out for a run and I am pleased to say that the majority of the speed related vibrations have gone. There is still some vibrations coming through the steering column, but at the same time the whole of the dash is vibrating, so this could be related. At the moment the 'H' bracket is not in place between the dash and the floor/gearbox tunnel, so I might have a go at modifying a bracket to fit. It's been good just to get some miles in on the car and try to get the feel for it, after driving Spitfires and the 2000 driving the GT6 is so different with the increased power and the ability to corner, though I have not found the limits yet, probably more down to the driver.

The car seems to have bags of torque, just driving around choosing the quieter road, I was sat behind a car doing 50mph till he jumped on the brakes for an even slower car in front, a MG BGT complete with wire wheels and spinners, once the road was clear it accelerated beautifully in forth from 40mph all the way up to legal. I know I am never going to have it setup as well as some of the faster Spitfires, but it is still a hoot to drive and so much easier to do so with many of the vibrations done away with. Feel a lot happier about going out for a blast without tools now and would be happy to drive all over Europe in it, not something I would have wanted to do twelve months ago.

Propshaft changing

2010-05-20T10:42:00.000+01:00

As I'm still not happy about the vibrations in my car, I had a new propshaft delivered from Dave Mac. The company where I had bought the first one from wanted another £75 to re-balance it, plus three days to do the job, whereas Dave Mac delivered a new one for £95, which meant the car would not have to be left disabled for long. Oh, it's 29" long just in case anyone is interested.

In-between working on the Lightweight Land Rover I managed to find time to do a few jobs on the GT6. First off was the propshaft, but to do that I had to remove the centre section of exhaust, not that hard to do really and it gave me a chance to have a proper look at it.
Below are the two propshafts, the newer one being at the bottom, having a smaller tube diameter and having far fewer balance weights stuck on.

In the week I also received a pair of brake drum centring rings for the CV converted cars, which are fortunately a nice and tight fit, so they should hold in place nicely with a bit of bearing lock. Part of the idea of fitting these rings is to try to reduce the problem I had with peculiar brake shoe ware, where the bottom part of one of the shoes was heavily worn. Though I am starting to wonder if that was more down the brake shoe not moving up as it should after to was tightened up on the brake adjuster.

I've still to reassemble the drum brake on one side before I can go out for a trial run, but I am hoping I have managed to do away with the vibrations I was getting at speed.

Ramblings and engine mounts

2010-05-15T11:09:00.000+01:00

Got a couple of tyres fitted this weekend, I've been wanted to fit something half decent this time, so I went for Continental Pro Contact 3's, as I had fitted on the 2000. Was going to get them mail order, but it worked out cheaper to order them online, supplied and fitted through Kwik-Fit.

The vibrations, coming through at over 70mph, are still present. This is despite new front vertical links, trunnions and bearings, so I'm pretty sure it is not coming from the front. So what else could it be? the propshaft has only done 3.5k miles, the CV joints and driveshafts are second hand though, perhaps one of these is the root of the problem?

While the car is in the barn I've decided to reduce the camber up front by taking out one of the thin shims. It was about 2.5deg negative each side, a bit too much I thought for normal driving.

While I wait for my new propshaft I thought I'd have another crack at sorting out my engine mounts as the original type repro ones are not looking too good. The plan is to use the original GT6 block mounting point, but extend the bracket to sit on the back part of the suspension tower and use Jaguar engine mounts.

It's only tacked in at the moment, so it'll need welding fully before cleaning up and fitting

Anti roll bar drop links

2010-05-11T22:12:00.000+01:00

I need to go about setting up the chassis on my GT6, so I've been looking at the few remaining dodgy looking suspension parts on my car. The anti roll bar drop links from Wolfitt Racing look pretty good, but are out of stock, so I thought about sourcing the parts myself.

I went through McGill Motorsports to order the parts, slightly more expensive per piece than eBay, but no delivery costs.

So ordered:
3/8" UNF Male-Female Studded Rose Joint Track Rod End
3/8" x 3/8" UNF Right Hand Male Economy Rose Joint
3/8" UNF Rose Joint Misalignment Spacers PACK OF 4
3/8" UNF Half Nuts Right Hand Thread

The parts were delivered from McGill Motorsports the next day (Saturday) all the way down from Fife, so I've sourced some fasteners and have welded in a spacer on top of the lower wishbone arm for the bolt to pass through. Started off with just having an extra plate on the back of the spacer to support it, but then decided to box it all the way in as it looks a bit neater.
While I was there, the brace bar on the arm was welded around to stiffen it up, which it has done a surprising amount.

Here are before and after shots:

Before

After

Not surprisingly the anti-roll bar was not flat as it should have been, so this has now been corrected for using the rod ended drop links. One thing I had forgotten about previously was that the anti-roll bar is not as free to move as it should be due to the bushes being too far along the bar and restricting it. With this in mind, I have bought some solid anti-roll bar blocks from Merlin Motorsport, unfortunately they don't sell them with 11/16" ID, so I shall have to bore them to suit.

Fuel pump mods

2010-04-24T20:44:00.004+01:00

While doing the core plugs I also replaced the uprights, stub axles and trunnions. Having checked why I could not set the front wheel bearings properly I found that the stub axles were worn, so that was stripped down where I found the trunnions were also knackered, with pitting on the top of the threads of the uprights. So it's all new now, so it 'should' be a lot safer and better now.

The problem I was chasing next was fuel related, for some reason the Facet primer pump was running dry. It was suggested that the old CAV type fuel filter does not like having petrol forced into it, so along with a repositioned high pressure fuel pump I fitted a filter from a Volvo 240, though I needed to get some more fittings for that.
The re-positioned pump was achieved by using a Lucas fuel pump cradle, but unfortunately I soon found it was not what I needed as the pump cooling ring could not be used in conjunction with the cradle.

I set about measuring up the cradle, adding on dimensions as required to suit, which soon resulted in a template and then a sheet to bend up.

After bending to shape and a few holes cut for the pump body and fixings it was ready to be put together, it has since had a quick coat of paint to protect it.

New pipes

2010-04-15T21:31:00.004+01:00

Following the results from the rolling road and after a brief sojourn to the secret workshop, the GT6 came back home with new under car exhaust pipes. The outlet of the 3-1 collector has been made to a larger diameter for a short length before splitting into two pipes for most of the exhaust run and then joining up again to go into the silencer.

Unfortunately I couldn't go out and test it straight away as we noticed another core plug has started leaking and I didn't have any spares to hand. I soon knocked out all four core plugs along the side of the block and as there was a bit of black residue left in the bottom of the block. I flushed the system through and once again after refitting the plugs to make sure I had water flushing through the whole system. Still not quite sure what has caused the core plugs to fail.
The plastic bags are there to try and reduce the amount of water getting poured into the starter motor and exhaust pipes as they were going to be too much of a pain to remove from the car.

Tightening-up the steering and front camber

2010-03-20T20:58:00.001Z

After a week of doing not much, I set to trying to reduce the vibrations I believe are coming through the front end as the situation is improved after cleaning off the wheels, but should be better. I started off with the steering column and seeing as I have not had much luck the replacement bushes you can buy I decided to copy Dave and make up some PTFE bushes, which are almost three times longer than the originals, so much better now.

Further down the steering shaft the joint was replaced with one from Bill at Rarebits.

The only problem was that the new one was 10mm longer, not usually a problem for a standard car, but I had moved the steering rack over to the right as far as possible to give more space for the exhaust. This meant there was not enough space between the suspension tower and the upper pinch bolt of the steering joint. I tried for a time to work out how I could reduce the diameter of the joint to make it clear, but in the end I decided to weld it on to the lower steering shaft. The assembly can still be removed from the car without destroying anything.

The front end vibrations have now reduced, but I have now tracked down slackness in the steering rack, so one of the next jobs will be to try and remove some of that slack by removing a shim or two, otherwise I shall pick up another rack and re-build that in readiness to drop in the GT6.

Following Johns suggestion I bought some 1/2" aluminium bar, cut it down to length and drilled it to suit the lower wishbone arms.

It does look a lot better now as there is a greater surface area contact between the wishbone bracket and the chassis.

Wheels and shocker mounts

2010-03-15T20:37:00.003Z

For a while the car had been suffering from vibrations around motorway speeds, I thought it was something up front as I could feel it through the steering wheel, but after watching the rear wheels on the rolling road it was possible to see that the wheels are nut running true. Some time this morning was spent first checking the hubs for run-out and then the wheels. Spinning the wheel over by hand you can the the wheel and tyre more in and out, at worst according to a dial gauge, 2mm.
To prove the point, the standard steel wheels were fitted, they run much more true and do not give vibrations at motorway speed. I reckon when the alloy wheels were re-furbished they did not take into account the thickness of the paint on the area where the wheel mates to the hub, so one side of the wheel is further out than the other. You can see on the inside of the wheel that it has not been contacting across the whole surface area. I removed all of that paint so it will sit flat again. They were fine before they went in, but the new paint is much thicker and having done this the car felt a lot smoother.

Following suggestions on how to make the car drive and feel better, wheel shims have been added to the rear. I started with 25mm spacers, but the studs supplied with them did not leave enough spare thread as I wanted, so the spacers were reduced down to 17mm. This means the car has a slightly wider track width than the later Spitfires with their long driveshafts, filling out the rear arches much better and noticeably improving the handling in corners.

Image on left with spacer fitted

Then a couple of weeks ago I noticed that the shock absorber top rubber was trying to escape, correctly diagnosed by charlieb as being due to the way the springs are now supported, meaning that these rubbers are now taking the weight from the spring also.

To get round this I have for now at least, fitted some re-enforced rubber washers cut using hole punches. Hopefully these should hold up better until I do something like copying Daves top mount idea incorporating rod ends.

GT6 update, rolling road.

2010-03-08T19:26:00.004Z

Hmm, news on the GT6 is getting a bit out of date, having got the PI system working as it should on the GT6, I wanted to go and do a rolling road run to help further tune the megajolt ignition map, see what sort of power/torque it is producing and get an idea of what further improvements could be made. So we went over to Maynard Ltd in Stroud to have a run up, the results of which are below

Power

Torque

The red run is with the complete exhaust system (GT supplied 6-3-1 onto standard centre pipe and back box), grey is with the rear silencer removed and black is with the middle pipe (from 3-1 collector back) removed. All figures are corrected back to the flywheel.

It seems to suggest at the moment that the back box has minimal effect, but the relatively small 48mm ID middle pipe is holding it back. So one of the next jobs is to get the constricted (48mm) output from the 3-1 collector opened out to 52mm ID

It was a good afternoon out and was interesting to record what the engine is pumping out on what is basically a standard MkII GT6 engine, but with Lucas injection and a proper exhaust manifold. I'm not that bothered about the absolute power figures (though they are a good improvement on the factory figures), more interesting to me is the shape of the torque curve, which is relatively flat compared to other GT6 engines I have seen, with bags of torque from lower engine revs. I'm pleased with the results and that's what matters to me ;)

Tractor time

2009-12-08T18:07:00.003Z

There has not been much time spent on my cars recently due to work on the Lightweight (more on which another time) and work on my tractor. I've owned this for the past five years or so and has come in really handy when moving engines around or fetching wood for the farm, but the hydraulics, which provide power to lift the front loader or rear implement, have over the years grown weak.
A gear driven pump provides the hydraulic power, but this is hidden away in the back of the tractor behind the gearbox and below the axle. The combined gearbox and rear axle oil was drained and while this was happening, I set about removing any parts which would get in the way.

With all the parts out of the way the rear case came off without any problems, using the two jack-off bolts to separate it and the Massey 35 to hold the weight.

It doesn't look too bad in the rear housing, though there is a bit of silt in the bottom of the case, not too surprising to me for a farm tractor of this age. I shall clean all this out as best I can, then put new oil back in, all 12 gallons of it.

I moved the rear case, with the hydraulic pump, into the workshop to make it easier to work on. Unfortunately there are no obvious signs of failure yet, so I guess a hydraulic pump rebuild could be on the cards.

Up for sale again

2009-11-21T22:23:00.002Z

After my last post I have been told my old 2000 is back up for sale again after a re-spray. It looks a bit pink to me after the re-spray and I'm not too sure about the plastic hub caps, but it does look better for being in one solid colour again. You can see the full advert here

A departure and some new arrivals

2009-11-17T17:47:00.002Z

Long time no update again. With the 2000 through it's MOT and a new nose cone fitted I decided it was time to move it on. I've had some good times with this car, the 2008 RBRR being one of the highlights, but it came to a point where it was being used increasingly for daily driving only and I was not getting so much fun out of it, that and the fact that with it's Witor exhaust system it is quite noisy for daily driving. So after the nose cone of the 2000 had a few top coats of paint it went up on a few car for sale websites. The next day I had a call to arrange a viewing and a couple of days later a deposit was put down. The 2000 is now a few more miles West along the M4 with it's new owner, who plans to re-spray it before too long, something I never felt up to.

The GT6 is reliable, but I did not want to have to make it a daily driver, so instead I set about finding a replacement for the 2000. My mind was fairly open about what to get, but my preference was for something rear wheel drive, comfortable, reliable and a bit more modern, without being overladen with electronics.
In the end I decided to plump for a 1983 BMW E21, it has a 1800cc slant-four engine, with a carburettor and a distributor, but fortunately no points. So far I have covered over 1000 trouble-free miles after replacing the fourteen year old tyre and knackered wiper blade it somehow managed to pass a MOT with.

Oh, and the other new arrivals, the farm dog had a litter of puppies about six weeks ago, so we now have seven Welsh Border Collie puppies, all of which, bar one or two, have found homes already.

At a week old

and five weeks

Time for that nose job

2009-09-29T19:49:00.003+01:00

I have decided to continue sorting out some of the bodywork on my MkI 2000 and I am part way through a fairly major job, replacing the front nose cone panel. In 2006 the previous owner hit a deer during the CT RBRR, resulting in this.

but when it arrived, the car looked something like this

so I wanged in some metal from a Dolomite door skin to get it roadworthy.

Fortunately when I bought the car, it came with a spares front end, which has already donated parts of it's wings to this car and now has donated the complete nose cone panel

After much deliberation and wielding of the angle grinder, the old nose cane was removed, you can see from the pic below the blue of the old Dolomite door.

After a few hours spent cleaning off both the replacement panel and the car, it was ready for tacking on after a coat of zinc rich primer where I would not be able to paint after welding

And this is where we are tonight, blending in the new panel, removing dents and preparing for paint, which I hope to have done by the weekend

Some shed time

2009-09-27T19:53:00.002+01:00

With the MOT out of the way again I set about a few tidying up jobs on the 2000. Around the rear wheel arches, the old underseal has been knocked/peeled off, next job is to get it in primer before giving it a coat of stone chip and a top coat of red to match. The original paint is in surprisingly good condition, but is quite thin.

While waiting for that paint to cure, work has re-started on the front passenger wing. I pulled some dents out and removed some rotten metal from the arches a couple of years ago, but never got round to giving it a top coat.

Up in the wheel arch I could see a bit of rust bubling up

Which cleaned up to look a bit like this

So there's going to be a bit more cutting before some fresh metal goes in.
After the new metal went in it was finished with seam sealant and a few coats of paint, yes I know it is not the right colour, but it is under the carpet.

PI tuning

2009-08-15T20:21:00.002+01:00

My initial elation at getting the GT6 running on Pi was dampened somewhat when I realised that the rough running was accompanied by the exhaust from number two cylinder was glowing red. Something was obviously not right, so I gave the supplier of the exhaust manifold and metering unit (Gareth Thomas) a call and described the symptoms to him. He reckoned the timing was out and offered to pop over as he was in the area and check it out.
Later GT turned up and after much checking and re-checking of the camshaft, we had proved that the camshaft was approximately 10deg. too advanced. With the timing cover off, the marks on the cam wheel lined up correctly, but the cam opening were not correct. The cam wheel was a second hand duplex version, bought from eBay some months ago, which I had no reason to think was machined incorrectly, but it turned out that it has never been right when we compared it to another cam wheel I had found.

Eventually, after much checking, the cam wheel was re-fitted rotated round from where it was, along with a second hand chain to give the most accurate timing possible.

So a few hours after starting on the car we had it running something more like properly. No.1 injector needed bleeding, but was soon done and then it was on to the finer settings, once a throttle return spring had been fitted it was much easier to set the idle and then on to balancing the manifolds. A quick run out that evening showed a massive increase in torque and power, with some beautiful sounds coming from the exhaust and a wonderful howl when working hard.

The next day the air box log was fitted, it was much to my surprise that it fitted at all as I had not modified the bulkhead with that in mind. Then it was onto the ignition map, which we made surprising short work of, modified quickly in the shed before going out for a run. The new map cured the un-even idle, a stutter around 2000rpm and having increased the highest rev range, it no longer failed to go over 5500rpm. Out on the run the map was changed while in the petrol station, amid strange looks from other people, further refining it.

I then took to the passenger seat to let GT have a feel of the car, really worthwhile as I had been having some issues with how the car felt, but my lack of experience made it harder to define what the problem is.
One problem, which I knew of, is down to the lack of negative camber on the front, something which I would like to remedy with a pair of top arms from GT6Mike, but for now I shall see if I can get a few more shims in. Another suggestion is to increase the rear track width to make it more stable under braking, as at the moment the front does feel a bit too light and fidgety under heavy breaking.

All of this now gives me a further list of jobs to do, get some more camber on the front, fit a cold air feed to the inlet and seal up the gearbox tunnel.

Oh, and these a the plugs after a good run out.

On with the GT6 PI install

2009-08-03T19:00:00.003+01:00

It took a bit longer than I had hoped but I soon got the inlet and exhaust manifolds on. It took longer as I needed to try different fixings for the manifold to enable me to both get the bolt in and tighten it up, so there is both nuts and cap head bolts holding it to the head

Next it was on to bracket for the throttle cable, temporary at first to check the movement before welding it together.

With the manifolds all on I could connect up all the hoses, but no fuel was getting through to the injectors and the battery soon ran down, so that had to go on charge. I was not sure if the injectors needed to be bled, the PRV was set too low or just that the battery is too low.

After a quick call I soon found out that the fuel system needed to be bled through the injectors by turning over the engine with the spark plugs out, excess fuel on full and the injectors out of the manifolds, which all makes good sense really, so to reduce the load on the starter. Such are the problems of trying to undertake a job such as this on your own with no previous experience on the Lucas PI system.

With the system properly bled through I did manage to get the engine to run on the Lucas PI system, albeit somewhat roughly as the throttle bodies had not been balanced and the tick over not set, but at least it ran, so I was happy enough for that days work.

Making space for the PI & starting of system install

2009-07-08T22:10:00.003+01:00

Another job was to make space around the engine to allow the new exhaust manifold and PI inlets to fit properly. This meant the heater control cable was shortened, the under manifold heater pipe changed and a new clutch hose made.

For some reason I had a core plug that was failing, not around the edge/join, but leaking through it. Fortunately I had another one in my spares, so that was changed quickly enough.

The following day the fuel lines were all made up and complete to the metering unit, so the carb. dissy drive had been removed along with the fuel pump, which has been blanked off. It's all a bit tight round there, but fortunately does still fit in.

Around the other side the exhaust manifold is part on there for a trial fit, I needed to wind out the studs from the head to replace them with cap head bolts to fit the manifolds as the space looked tight for getting a spanner on and the inlet manifolds also required a longer fixing to mount them.

In the boot, the fuel pumps are piped-up and wired in, via relays. I want to get a fuel swirl pot in there eventually, but this should do for a start.

More PI preparations

2009-07-07T22:15:00.002+01:00

Another job was to get the main fuel lines for the PI system fitted. I decided to use proper braided hoses instead of the original spec push-on plastic hoses One added complication was how to support and run the hoses. In the end I chose to make up some clamps to run down the outside of the chassis rail, which meant a bit of this X10.
and then a bit of lathe work with two pieces of alloy clamped together and drilled through to accept the hoses and through a different side for a mounting/clamping bolt. Ideally I would have drilled the chassis and used rivnuts, but due to lack of space (can't get the drill in straight) nuts were welded on the chassis rail and recesses made in the underside of the clamp to make it sit flush.

A good day was then spent fitting the clamps to the chassis, each one having to be fettled slightly to sit over the weld and also support the brake line.

The un-supported copper pipe is the existing fuel supply to the carbs. fitted up just to keep the car mobile as work proceeds.

Then up front, just before the toe board outrigger, a couple of supports have been welded on for the right angle hose fittings, which take the fuel to/from the metering unit.

PI preparations

2009-05-30T20:18:00.002+01:00

Some progress has been made towards the PI conversion for the GT6 with new seals fitted to the metering unit pedestal and new O rings and seal for the Lucas fuel pump, which was then run-in on the bench under no load, watching the current drawn go down from around 2 to 1.35amp.

Meanwhile I had another trial fit of the exhaust manifold and inlets to check for any obstructions. The last time this was done the car was not complete and on the road, so things such as the clutch and heater return hose are now in place and will need to be moved. This should be no great problem as I had intended to replace both items anyway.

New wheels, well almost.

2009-04-02T17:50:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I picked up my alloy wheels from the re-conditioners, the wheels having been shot blasted, any repairs required made and then sealed and painted.
Prior to this the wheels were looking quite grotty, were a pain to keep clear and had a propensity to leak air. It has been my plan for a while to fit better tyres, but I felt it was not worth it until the wheels could hold air better. It took them a few goes to get the colour powder coat to lay on the spokes right, as when I first went to pick them up there was a bit of a overhang on the spokes, but they offered straight away to re-do them free of charge.
I'll be keen to see how they look once back on the car as we did spend a bit of time with colour charts to try and get a colour which did not stand out too much or look boy racer'ish. Well recommended. http://www.thewheelspecialist.co.uk

Perhaps they need some centre caps still though? will have to look into what is available and might fit.

Meanwhile back on the car I've been doing a bit of tin bashing or to be correct aluminium bashing. This has been to make up a shroud for the radiator to divert air from the grille to the radiator core. Quite some time was spent with various cardboard templates before committing to aluminium, but I am quite pleased with the results and hope that come the warmer weather it all ought to help. The next job will be to get some etch primer and then top coat, not sure which colour to go for at the moment, same yellow as the engine? too bright perhaps? or a light grey to blend in?

After this first five months or so of having the GT6 back on the road I have been quite happy with it and it has been great to be able to appreciate every improvement I have made since then. Getting the Megajolt working, fitting the better suspension and getting the car tracked has probably made the most significant improvements to the drive so far.

I've got quite a list of minor jobs to finish off, such as fitting the foot rest to the gearbox tunnel and putting in a six-way connector for the speedo, but the next area to look at again should be the braking system. The braking system has bee quite adequate so far, but with plans to tune the engine further, I feel more improvements could be made yet, probably with Mintex pads, braided hoses and better brake fluid.

The art of suspen...sion

2009-02-20T16:19:00.003Z

With the GT6 running something like right, I decided to turn my attention to the suspension; the car was sitting too high for my liking, felt a bit too wobbly and did not corner as ell as it should have. Part of the problem was down to there being positive camber on the front wheels and what looked to be a new rear spring, fitted by a previous owner, causing the rear to sit quite high. These two problems were solved quite quickly, with the addition of three extra wishbone shims to each front suspension mounting point and a one-inch spacer block fitted between the rear spring and differential.
While I was there, the rear spring mounting studs were also replaced, with Spitfire cylinder head studs, not the suppliers recommended plated studs, why fit weakened plated studs on important suspension components?

Last year I managed to pick up a pair of older design AVO coil over shock absorbers for the GT6, I'm particularly glad that I managed to get a pair of the old design considering the issues some people have been having with AVO bushes recently with them disintegrating after only a few thousand miles. Avo-bushes & boing-boing-zebedy

The shock absorbers are supplied to accept 2.5inch diameter springs, with the intention that on Triumphs the original top spring seat is used. I decided to copy Mr Sideways though, by using the AVO supplied top spring seats and fitting 2.25inch diameter springs. The advantage of doing this is to help keep weight down and reduce the cost of the springs, as now the free length of the spring only needs to be six inches.
The spring seats needed some machining to fit the new springs, but being alloy, it didn't take long on the lathe to take them down to size.

The difference was instantly noticeable, with the car cornering so much more flatly and not trying to dive into the ground under braking, but going to a spring rating of 600Lbs you would expect to feel some improvement, but fortunately the road noise and effect of poor road surfaces has not effected it too much.

Meanwhile at the back, a pair of Koni shock absorbers have been fitted, this time courtesy of Rimmer Bros, not somewhere I often buy from, but with their 20% off last month, it made them the cheapest for the Koni's.

One of the next jobs will be to check the adjusters on the rear radius arms still move, then arrange to get the whole car tracked, as it does feel as if the suspension is trying to fight itself.

Lightweight progress

2009-01-12T17:19:00.001Z

Hmm.. 'bout time I updated this again. This have been relatively quiet car-wise up to Christmas, with me just going out for drives in the GT6, learning how the car behaves, identifying things that need to be done and running-in the new engine. Thoroughly enjoyable so far.
Christmas found me back in East Anglia with the MkI saloon, much more space inside and more comfortable with it. In between family socials I made time to go out visiting when ever possible, with a trip down to Preston Steam services for their Christmas get-together and a chance to see again I used to help crew on. Other days saw me take trips out to near Burton-upon-Trent for The Clay Mills Pumping Station, The Great Central Railway and into Kew for the Kew Bridge Steam Museum, with all distance covered by the old saloon without any complaint from it.

By the time I had got back to Wales, the new parabolic springs for the Lightweight had been delivered and work started on fitting them. Therefore, with signs of things going onto the new chassis, it was time to resume pulling parts from the old chassis. The rear axle was removed quite quickly once the U-bolts holding it to the springs had been cut off and it was soon up on the bench ready for cleaning and checking over.
The diff pan had gone a bit thin in places due to pitting, so a bit of time was spent building it up again prior to painting.

The weekend also saw the arrival of the (new) 2.5TDi engine for the Lightweight, which had come from a low'ish mileage 200 series Discovery, which was purchased just over six months ago. This has been mated up to a freshly re-built Series 2a Landrover gearbox, complete with Bearmach (Toro) overdrive.
My next job will be to remove, strip and clean the front axle, ready for when the diffs come back with new crown wheel and pinions, then we should be ready to get the chassis rolling and perhaps get the engine and gearbox dropped in.

Mostly good.

2008-12-05T12:13:00.000Z

On Monday, the water pump I ordered last week was eventually delivered and the Triumph part company involved apologised for the delay and offered a goodwill gesture, more about this later. So the water pump was soon fitted, helped by the brilliant engine access on these small chassis Triumphs and the fact that the radiator on the GT6 is a reasonable distance forward of the engine, so there is no clearance issues when changing the pumps.
The old water pump had not leaked that_much, but it was certainly on its way out, with a notable increase in end float of the pump and quite noisy bearing. Certainly much better now with the new pump.

Over the weekend, I sent through the stores shed and picked through my collection of Lucas distributors to decide which one to fit. I decided to go for a Lucas 45D6 distributor, as while it doesn't have a vernier adjuster for the vacuum advance, I do happen to have a supply of good rotor arms from Rarebits, as they are the same as those used on the 2000 saloon.
As the chosen distributor had been sat in a box for some months, it was stripped down, cleaned up and lubricated as necessary before re-assembly and while I was in there, the wire from the coil to the points was re-soldered for good measure and the points cleaned up.

Although I should have done it some time ago, before starting the engine, the end float of the distributor drive has been set. This is done using thin shims between the distributor pedestal and the block, at only 4thou each they hardly seem thick enough to do anything.

A tax disc was also brought earlier on in the week; I've had to pay for it this time, as although the car was first registered before 1973, the taxation class of it has not been changed to historic vehicle yet. It seems that to change the taxation class of a vehicle now, you have to go to your 'Local DVLA office', which for me is in Bristol or Cardiff, though they are only open 9-5 during the week, which means finding a suitable time to go and see them could take a while and as I was keen to get out on the road. I decided to get a six month tax disc and then get a refund at the 'Local office' when I change the taxation class.

So that means I am fully legal on the road, so I have been out on the road for the past few evenings to see how it drives. It has been over a year since I have driven a small chassis Triumph for any distance and the fist time in a GT6, so it has been interesting to get used to the driving style.

The only problem I have had so far has been when after my fist evening out driving, the spherical bush which is used to locate the gear stick disintegrated, fortunately this finally gave way only when I got home. Luckily, for me, I had a useable second hand one, which was fitted later that evening.
This has planted a seed of doubt as to how long these bushes can last, so I contacted the company who offered to refund the cost of postage of the water pump as a goodwill gesture and asked if instead they could put another of these bushes in the post to me, which they agreed to do. After all, the bush was going to be more useful and it gets them off from having to back charge a payment to my credit card, so it all worked out for the best.

Upwardly mobile

2008-11-29T16:35:00.003Z

After almost three years of ownership I finally got my GT6 out for a MOT and even better, it passed first time with no advisories, just positive comments from the tester about the CV conversion on the rear and the condition of the underside.

Though to put a bit of a damper on it, I did have to pull over on the way back as the car mis-fired and refused to start again, so it was up with the bonnet. As I lifted the distributor cap off, the rotor arm was not in it's proper place, so I am guessing it may have jumped out?
I shall see if I can fit a Lucas dizzy for possibly increased reliability over the old Delco unit, but the next major job for me will be getting the Megajolt system built up and fitted.

It's great to have it almost on the road, though I still need to get the tax applied for, but there is not too much of a rush as I had been hoping to fit a new water pump before the MOT, unfortunately it has still not been delivered. Apparently the address or telephone number on the package was not correct or clear enough, so the courier could not deliver it or contact me, should have gone to Fitchetts really as I know they always get parts out to me next day, oh well, we live and learn. The plan now is to try and get it to run something like right as the carbs still need balancing & adjusting and then go out and put some miles on it.

It is a bit of a shock to the system as I had not driven a small chassis Triumph in anger for over a year, it does feel a lot more steady now on the 175 tyres compared to the 155's I had on it before I went off for the MOT.

New Arrivals

2008-11-26T11:29:00.002Z

Last week the new chassis for the Lightweight was delivered, ready modified to take the 200tdi engine and fully galvanised, so it ought to last a few years. Unfortunately, work on the Land Rover will be slow for a bit as we wait for some reasonable weather to get the remaining bodywork cleaned off and painted. Added to this the replacement springs, new parabolic ones, are not expected to be delivered until Christmas, so we cannot start building up the new chassis until we get those.

Later on in the week, a couple of guys came out to fit a new windscreen in the GT6. Seeing as a new screen from Moss would be close on £110, I thought that the deal I got was not too bad as two guys came out to fit it, taking 45 minutes to do the job, only cost me £100. I can't help but think they did not make much of a profit on that job.

Meanwhile, many of the smaller jobs required to get the GT6 through a MOT have been completed, with the screen wash system plumbed in and lined up and a exhaust system sealed up and clamped down.
A slightly more long-winded job was in the making of an air box. When I did the bulkhead modifications many months ago it was my intention to fit a modified Spitfire air box, not ideal I know, but it is a starting point.

Instead of trying to fill in the old holes in the Spitfire back plate and to make alignment of the new holes much easier I decided to pull apart an old GT6 air box and weld that to the back of the Spitfire one. It all looks a bit agricultural at the moment but it should at least see me onto the road. I just need to find some suitable filters to go over the end of the tubes and then it should be good to go until I get round to making something better.

Steps forward

2008-11-18T16:32:00.003Z

I’ve been having another bash at the GT6, with a view to getting it MOT’d and on the road before the end of the year. Most of the big jobs that needed to be done before it had any chance of passing a MOT had already been completed, so now it has come to working through the long list of minor jobs.

One job that did cause a bit of a headache for a time was trying to get all of the lights working. With a bit of vigorous wobbling around of the bulb holder I was able to get the bulb to work for a time, but not to a point I would trust it for any length of time.
I decided to take the holder apart to clean it up and see where the weak link was. They seem to be failing where the negative contact for the bulb should mate with the larger which holds the assembly to the light unit. I have tried cleaning it all up and re-assembling it again, but that does not seemed to have improved it much.
To work around this, I ended up drilling through the two negative contacts and with the addition of a small screw, it holds the two contacts together so much better.
After getting a few other jobs out of the way, I have returned to fitting the new speedo, spending some time fabricating a bracket to hold the pick-up sensor on the diff. The bracket was built-up on the bench using a spare diff to make sure it all fitted properly before transferring it to the car. As the suppliers suggested, the propshaft bolts have been replaced with cap head ones to aid the pick up sensor.
Over the next few evening I hope to get the speedo wired up, just need to run power lines to the pick-up sensor and speedo head from the fuse box, connect the data line from pick-up sensor to the speedo and wire in the warning lights.

For the MOT, the car will just have the one seat fitted for a couple of reasons, I have not round to fitting the second seat to it's runner yet and as I have not been able to enguage the overdrive at speed yet, I would like to know it works before fitting the seat and hence making removal of the gearbox tunnel much harder.

I should have someone coming in later this week to fit a new windscreen, the current one might pass the MOT but it has so many minor scratches that it would annoy me all too quickly. Then that just leaves the screen wash system, front chassis over riders and front number plate to be fitted up before I consider booking in for a MOT.

Lightweight bulkhead repairs

2008-10-21T09:52:00.004+01:00

With the Lightweight back in the barn I have been able to crack on with some remedial work on the lower bulkhead and it's mounting. On the passenger side, close to where it mounts to the chassis, the main bulkhead rail had suffered quite badly to corrosion. Initial thought were on how best to repair it, but the more I poked away at it, the less savable it became.

Wanting to get it done right and not have to come back to it again in a few years time, I took the decision to fabricate a new lower section to replace the heavily corroded part. Although the final piece is to be a channel section, I started off with a length of 2" box section as this was what was to hand and could ofcourse be cut down to size. Using the lathe a hole was soon bored close to the bottom to accept the lower mounting point/spreader tube, which was then welded in.

In an attempt to make sure every thing lined up, a basic jig was made up from a piece of Dexian, which seemed to work quite well as it already had all the holes in it I required.

Old and new bulkhead sections side by side

Old piece removed

New piece in, welded and painted

Outer panel also fitted.

RBRR 2008

2008-10-15T10:24:00.002+01:00

Woops, a bit of updating needed here.

The RBRR has been and gone, but I'll back track a bit first. As mentioned in my last post, I got myself and fitted a pair of re-conditioned control arms. The effect of fitting these was to tighten up the front end, but unfortunately at the same time it knocked the tracking out of alignment as it had put the suspension geometry back in the right place after having dropped partly through the old rubber bushes.

With the tracking re-done there was not much else to do in preparation for the RBRR other than put a basic tool kit together, grab a few spares, then give the car a polish and add the car stickers.
Joining me on the run was Bruce Sellers, aka GT6Boy, aka MotherTheressa and Nikolaj Blomberg, aka Nick B, who flew in from Copenhagen to do the run, whom I met for the first time at the start of the run a few hours before the start.

I've not that much to report from the run, we drove on some good and at times challenging roads, oh, and it rained a few times. The car generally behaved itself, with us only having to stop once to fix a wire up to the overdrive switch, which had failed close to a crimp joint and that was made good again using a inline connector I had in the spares.

With the run and travelling to the start from South Wales, the car covered about 2,300 miles, returning about 32mpg, not too bad for a 42 year old car I thought.

Since getting back from the run the car has been de-stickered, washed and waxed again, but that's about it for now. The Lightweight Land Rover has returned, so I can see a few hours going into that again soon.

Thanks to Nick Jackson for this last picture and there are more pictures from the run, taken by Nick B here

This and that.

2008-09-21T13:34:00.002+01:00

Time for an update me thinks, a couple of weeks ago I took the 2000 saloon off for it's MOT and it passed with only one advisory, a nail in one rear tyre, so that'll have to get changed before the RBRR. Another re-con propshaft has also been fitted, as the one on there was starting to rumble at around 70mph. Leaving the only other job I would like to do before the run, being a front suspension control arm as I think there must be some slack in it as there is still some steering shake when braking hard or hard cornering at speed.
With the GT6 gearbox tunnel almost finished, I turned my attention back to the Lightweight for another bash at it. The main chassis rails have now been welded up and a start made on the bulkhead repairs. Meanwhile the old series engine and gearbox has been lifted out so we can clean up the bulkhead in preparation for painting and removal of the old redundant military wiring.
Th remains of the Lightweight have now gone off to a local garage to have the front axle re-built and the differential crown wheel and pinions taken from a Landrover Discovery, which is also to donate it's engine.
Once it gets back there will still be some welding required to fit new outriggers for the bulkhead and a fuel tank outrigger.

Woof!

Bit more tunneling and brakes

2008-08-28T10:35:00.003+01:00

With the new CV boots on the GT6 it was time to set up the rear brakes, with the manual brake adjusters taken up to just before the brake shoes bit. Wishing I had done it when the body was separated, I set to replacing both handbrake cables, the rear one having stretched two inches, removing any scope for adjustment.
I replaced the rear brake cable on my old Spitfire a few years ago and find that to be a right pig of a job, but the GT6, having the cable guides on the body instead of the chassis, was a lot easier to do as you can get your hand through the opening in the body for the top of the differential to help guide the cable through. After threading it through the rest of the guides, it was covered in grease and worked back and forth a few times to help spread it along the guides.

Further forward, I bit the bullet and got to completing the gearbox tunnel. It was a job I was dreading, as I knew it would involve a lot of fitting and re-fitting if I was going to have any chance of it fitting properly.

First fit:

Clamped down ready for first welding:

Partially welded:

Copleted-ish and painted:

Inside coved with reflective sound deadening:

Meanwhile the 2000 saloon has been receiving a bit of attention as a few weeks ago I noticed a bit of slack in the steering of my MkI 2000, but recently it got worse and instead of it being a track rod end, as I thought it might be, it turned out that the slack is due to the coupling adaptor at the bottom of the top steering column.
So I striped out the steering columns, after removing the upper pinch bolt, the upper column sipped round in the joint all too easily. I thought the column was going to be a pain to get out, having had to remove the one in my GT6 a few times, but the saloon was a lot easier, once I had the indicator unit out.
The evidence was clear to see:

Fortunately, I had a spare steering column from the spares front end, which came with the car, so that was fitted in place, along with the intermediate shaft. The whole lot is much better and tighter now, just as well as the MOT is due in a few weeks and then after that, 2000 miles of the RBRR.

A few more steps forward

2008-08-11T10:58:00.003+01:00

After last weeks run, a few more issues with the GT6 identified themselves, no surprise really as I have never had this car running even semi-properly before.
The rear brake cylinders have now been replaced and bled through again. At the same time I had a look at the brake adjusters, just as well as both were seized, one had to be replaced, but the other was still serviceable, so these were reassembled, with a light smear of coppaslip on the moving adjuster faces and plenty on the main adjuster screw.

Looking back, I notice it was back in September 2006 when I first assembled the Jones/Bowler CV conversion on the GT6. Back then I was considering the clearance between the inner CV boot and the chassis and was hoping that when the rear spring settled it would give more clearance. Not surprisingly to me now, there was no great increase in clearance as the inner boot is not going to move that much as it's position is mainly fixed by the diff, which doesn't tend to move around that much either. To get round this, I ordered and fitted a pair of 'fast CV boots', much neater now.

I am finding it very useful at the moment to keep a note book with me whilst working on the GT6, this way I can make a note of problems or issues as they come up, with the moral boosting activity of being able to cross off jobs as they get done, though the list seems to be growing faster than I can cross them off at the moment.

It lives

2008-08-05T14:45:00.003+01:00

I brought a can of petrol after work yesterday evening and got my GT6 started for it's first run after switching from domed to flat top pistons and having all the running gear semi useable.

At the moment the engine feels quite tight, hope this is just down to the new rings bedding in.

Although the braking system is all as new, one of the rear brakes is dragging quite a bit, must be something to do with not being used for at least three years, despite the fluid going in only last week

There are a few minor water leaks also, so I will need to sort those before going too wild.

But for the first time in my ownership, I have been able to drive it, well chuffed

The sound is really poor on my little camera, but it is proof it has run, idle is way to high at the moment.

Coming together

2008-08-03T18:36:00.000+01:00

It's been another quite bust weekend, with the decision to finish building up the engine in the GT6. For now I am using a cylinder head I had reconditioned ready for the 2000 saloon, when I had the time, inclination and parts to do it.

One part which was always going to be a pain was the main exhaust pipe, the engine having been moved back six inches making extra problems of preventing it from hitting the chassis rails. When I brought this GT6 a couple of years or so ago, I was given a exhaust downpipe, believing it was for a GT6, but now in cutting it around to make it fit my car, I found it had a part number on it, TH125, which turns out to tell me it is for a MkII Vitesse, so it was never going to fit my car without modification anyway.

I have managed, I hope, to solve the problem with the errant flashing lights. This was traced down to two wires being soldered in the wrong position when I added the more modern combined hazard light switch and repeater.Most of the electrics, which I have connected so far, seem to work, but many of the exterior facing lights, indicators, side lights etc.. required a bit of wiggling around of the bulbs to get them to work, indicating poor electrical conducts, so I will need to go round and check them all out.

The fuel system has also been re-fitted, this time a mechanical pump being used, one which I had picked up on eBay a couple of weeks ago, the advantage being that it will also fit the saloon in a emergency should I need it.

If all goes to plan, I hope to get the GT6 started in the next few days, should be a good moral boost eh?

Fault finding & fluid fill.

2008-07-30T10:20:00.002+01:00

Fortunately one of the electrical faults was easy to find, identifiable by the cracking noise of wires shorting. This came from the column dip/main beam light switch, it looks like a mixture of hot wires and abrasion has damaged the wires up by the switch. To remedy this, I have cut the wires, soldered them back together and sealed it off with heat shrink, though I shall keep an eye out for a replacement one for the future.

In preparation for getting the car drivable, the clutch and brake system has been filled and bled. As both systems are new or have had new seals fitted, eg. brake calipers, there should not be a problem with leaks or seals going, though for some reason I did have to replace one of the rear slave cylinders as it refused to pass fluid through it, not quite sure what was going on there.

GT6 tidy & hook up

2008-07-27T18:15:00.002+01:00

Spent a fairly busy weekend on the GT6, cutting and fixing down to length the water lines going to the header tank. At the moment all the lines are in flexible pipe, giving me the option to re position as necessary, in the future I would like to replace much of it with aluminium tube for added protection, but it should do for now.
Much of the wiring around the engine bay has been chopped to length where required and connected up, meaning I should be able to leave a lot of that alone for now until the next round of improvements.

With the number of smaller jobs running down, I decided to try connecting the battery, not something which has been done since the re-wire. I hoped everything would work straight out of the box, but it seems I will have some fault finding to do.
The first and most noticeable problem is something to do with the one of the flasher units, at a guess it would be the hazard, as I have changed the switch and relocated the unit. With the battery connected, the flasher unit is causing the ignition and oil warning light to flash, but no sign of the proper light flashing, though this might be due to blown bulbs or bad contacts, I have not checked this yet.
Also noticeable is the variable nature of some of the light switches, needing a bit of working back and forth to get them to operate, hope I do not have to replace too many switches.

Looks like I might have quite a bit of fault finding to do yet and try to work out where I have gone wrong with my re-wiring.

Project lightweight

2008-06-30T10:53:00.003+01:00

Down on the farm where I live/work, my boss has a series III lightweight Land Rover, which he plans to get back on the road after a number of years sat on one of the barns, but re-engining it with a slightly more modern 200 series 2.5tdi engine. Over the years the chassis has been patched and had parts replaced, but one of the reasons it has been laid up recently is due to chassis rot again, this time on the main chassis rail on the topside, under the floor panels.
There are at least two ways of gaining access to this area, removal of the rear body tub and, more simply, removal of the rear floor. Since we are not keen on making too much work for ourselves and the floor is corroding through in places, it was decided to lift the floor panel. This was done in an hour or so after drilling out all of the rivets and carefully prising the panel up. With this panel up the chassis can be cleaned up and decisions made on how much to repair it, just need to wait for some steel to be delivered before I start the welding.

Meanwhile, the GT6 has been receiving a bit of attention, with some of the smaller jobs being finished off and tidied up. The wiring under the dash is now, hopefully, complete having added a momentary switch for the screen wash pump and connected the inertia switch to the two fuel pump switches.
In the engine bay, the coolant header tank has been sited in what was the battery box, the two lower connections going through holes cut in the bulkhead support panel and the whole lot given extra support with a small bracket underneath the tank.

Polished rocker

2008-06-18T16:40:00.002+01:00

Been doing a bit of maintenance for the saloon and preparation for the GT6 by servicing up a couple of sets of rockers for the six cylinder engines. A problem I had been having with the saloon was accurately setting the valve clearances; this was in part due to a slightly worn rocker shaft, but largely due to the worn faces of the rockers.

New rockers are available, but seeing as I had the time and inclination, I decided to service the ones I had. First off the shaft was stripped down and the components left to soak on paraffin for a couple of hours before being scrubbed clean using a wire brush on a drill and any oil ways cleaned through. The ware face was then carefully polished using WD40 on 600 grade glass paper, taking good are to alter the polishing angle as I went along, to maintain the radius on the face.
The rocker assembly was then re-assembled with copious amounts oil on a new rocker shaft.

Back on the saloon after the clearances were set, the valve train sounds a lot quieter now, so a successful job then, which was then proven with a trip over to Carmarthen to have a look at a MkI GT6, the new owner of which has also started a blog.

An Update

2008-05-27T18:32:00.003+01:00

There has been a bit of a lull in work on my GT6, partly due to a lack of enthusiasm and partly due to being busy around the farm.
In the meantime, after a bit of deliberation with other people on the DS Forum, I decided to invest in a rivnut tool. This tool allows you to fit a threaded tube into any panel where there is sufficient clearance behind it. The main reason for this purchase was to allow me to neatly route the battery cables from the battery box behind the driver, past the drivers seat and on through the bulkhead to the starter.
One alternative to rivnut was to use self-tapping screws through the panels, but I thought that a bit scruffy to have screws pointing out underneath the car, with a propensity to rust. So instead, aluminium rivnuts with stainless cap head bolts are being used, much better in my opinion.
The battery box needed to be modified to fit in the boot area and still allow the panels to be fitted over it. In order to do this, the box needed to be shortened by six inches, this was simply done by accurately cutting the box in half, sliding one half in the other, decide the correct height, then fix the two pieces back together again using pop rivets and Adhesal.

The more I have been working with the GT6 and it's fuel system, the less happy I have been with the original fuel hose and fittings, these being a mix of mild steel and plastic, especially as it has to carry in excess of 100psi petrol. To improve matters, I have decided to use modern braided fuel hoses to run to and from the metering unit in the engine bay.
The system uses 9/16" (-6 JIC) hose for the feed to the metering unit, requiring an adaptor at the metering unit end to convert from BSP to 9/16" (-6 JIC) and a 30° swept joint to clear the bulkhead.
For the spill back, 7/16" (-4 JIC) is being used, again with a BSP to JIC converter at the metering unit end. I am waiting on this smaller BSP to JIC converter at the moment, seems it is a bit of an unusual size, but once I get it, work can start on laying out the fittings, to decide where best to route the fuel hoses and the lengths required.

Hard at it

2008-04-21T21:31:00.002+01:00

After quite a bit of planning, re-planning and swearing, I think I have broken the back of my wiring. The original fuse box has gone, replaced with a multi fuse and relay box. Looks a lot neater now, though I can still see myself re-wiring it again when I change the dash.

In progress

Almost done

Plodding on

2008-04-09T10:17:00.003+01:00

The rear half of the wiring loom, from the fuse box back, has been re-covered with the original specification tape after any redundant wires had been removed and any poor quality joints had been re-made. So this section has now been re-threaded into the car and a new twelve way connector has been fitted at the fuse box end to aid quick and easy connection to the rest of the system.
The front interior section of the wiring loom has now been fitted back in the car to check for fit and give me some idea of what length the wire to the additional switches needed to be.

Some thought has gone into the location of the combined fuse and relay box, originally it was going to be fitted in approximately the same place as the original, in the battery box. I have gone off this idea as it puts the relays, fuses and connections in a more harsh environment and would male removal harder. Instead, the box will be mounted on the side of the passenger tray, still perhaps not ideal, but it ought to make routing of wire easier.

As the fuse and relay holders are modular in a carrier, a hole was cut in the side of the parcel tray to accept the holder, with a strengthening plate also fitted around the cutout as the tray is somewhat flimsy even before cutting chunks out of it.

There was a added and unwanted job that appeared over the weekend was that I was longer able to shut the rear hatch.
It had been a bit of a pain to shut and made some grinding noises when moving it, I guessed it was just down to lack of lubrication, so I ended up leaving it down but not latched into position overnight, but it seemed to have moved, with the latch being approx 1/2" out of alignment.
After trying to get it to lign up by slackening off the mounting bolts, I replaced the spring and hinge unit from that side and now is shuts much better than it ever has done before in my ownership. Will have to find some more paint now as I now have one green hinge and one magenta.

As long as no other jobs come up on the car, the next step will be to wire in the fuse and relay box, then see about getting power from the battery to the box, via the starter.

The re-wire - part 2

2008-03-31T15:18:00.002+01:00

Another few hours spent on the wiring loom has the majority of the modifications made to the wiring loom. The original layout of the loom used the ignition barrel to switch and pass power to the many circuits in the car, it has now been altered such that the ignition barrel will now only switch power, via a relay, to the rest of the fuse box and switch the stater solenoid when required. This way the ignition barrel does not have to switch and pass through such a high current as before with the added advantage that by removing the main relay the car will be a lot harder to start, an added anti-theft device.

Additional wires have been put in the loom for switching the fuel pump relays, tacho and screen washer pump, the new bottle had one included so I may as well use it. While many other wires have been re-routed to take power and switch from the central fuse and relay box.
To give myself a bit more space on the dash area, the old rocker style hazard light switch with separate dash warning light has been replaced with a combined switch and repeater taken from my long rotted away Dolomite - at least the spares are sill coming in handy.

Upon the suggestion of others, the loom will go back in with extra multiway inline connectors to make removal of the loom or assemblies such as the steering column much easier, as at the moment there is nine connections to be made when re-fitting the steering column, not always an easy job to get right in such a cramped and at times dark area.

Just got to wait on the next delivery from VWP, sure I can find something else to get on with though.

The re-wire - part 1

2008-03-30T13:34:00.001+01:00

Part 1, yes I do think it is going to take a bit to get right. Earlier on in the week I had my delivery from VWP, including a stack of different coloured and rating wires and the combined fuse and relay box. Just as I thought would happen, I forgot to order a length of spiral wrap when I placed the order, but managed to pick some up locally.
Having removed much of the original self amalgamating tape, which the loom was covered in, I had planned to replace it only with the afore mentioned spiral wrap, but seeing how it goes on, I have decided in my next order to VWP to get a few rolls of tape to cover it again.
At present, the GT6 wiring loom is in two parts, joined together behind the existing fuse box, the second half supplying switching and power to lights, etc.. in the rear of the car. Both half of the loom are out of my car now, to make it easier to trace, replace and add wires as necessary.

I was a bit daunted by the whole thing when I first contemplated all of these wiring modifications, but now I am getting into it I am quite enjoying it.
The next thing will be to work out what I need in my next order to VWP, self amalgamating tape, switches, inline connectors and anything else I can think of.

Just planning

2008-03-22T21:13:00.001Z

Have not done that_much since getting the GT6 back, appart from re-fitting some components to get them out of the way and give me some idea of how to fit and link every thing together.

There are three main areas I want to concentrate on, the cooling system, fuel system and electrical systems. I believe the best place for the header tank for the cooling system would be in the battery tray, which of course means the battery will have to be re-located. The logical new site for the battery is in the boot area either behind the driver or next to the fuel tank, both sites will require the battery to be securely mounted and sealed.

As power is also required to get the fuel system fully functional, I have decided to concentrate on the electrical system first.

The current system uses only three fuses and two solenoids, the new system, which I have been musing over for a few hours now, will have space for 26 fuses and nine relays. The reasoning behind this is to make the electrical system safer, any faults easier to find, capable of supplying the extra power now required and up to modern standards.

The big bulkhead mounted solenoid will be redundant, replaced by the solenoid on the Nippon Denso starter and the horn relay and flasher units will be replaced with modern type electronic units all fitted in a combined fuse and relay box.

A bigger stud

2008-03-14T11:46:00.001Z

After having a couple of wheel studs fail on my old Dolomite and then seeing the condition of the wheel nuts that came with my Revolutions wheels, I have not been too happy with the original 3/8" wheel studs. Fortunately this issue has come up in discussion forums in the past and a suitable alternative has already been identified. The upgrade is to use M12 X 1.5 wheel studs from a Land Rover Freelander, these just happen to have the same diameter of splinded area, so the hubs do not have to be altered to accept these new ones. The advantage of these is the much larger diameter and length of studs and the availability of alternative wheel nuts, as it looked at one time I was going to have great difficulty in finding replacement wheel nuts for my Revolution wheels.

I seem to have amassed a collection of Lucas electric high pressure fuel pumps for the PI system, so I decided to go through them and check the condition of the pump units and the electric motors. The pump which I had put aside with the intention of using in my car had one of the best pump units, showing very little ware on the pump body from the gears. The electric motor part was blown out to remove dust and the armature was cleaned off, removing any high spots. Should at least get me started I hope.

GT6 fuel injection pump musings.

2008-02-27T16:55:00.001Z

One of the complaints of the Lucas mechanical fuel injection system is the high pressure fuel pump. These pumps are directly driven via a electric motor sat on top of the pump. The main problem with this pump is it's habit of overheating and causing cavitation in the fuel pump. A common conversion is to replace the Lucas pump with a Bosch version.

In a search of another alternative, I have managed to get hold of a belt driven version of the Lucas fuel pump. These were supplied by Cosworth to work with the injection system used on BDG, DFV or YBB based engines.
With these pumps the engine is started using the old electric fuel pump, but once started, the electric pump is turned off and the belt driven pump takes over, delivering fuel at a rate proportional to the the engine revs and hence requirements. The system is designed such that excess fuel is always being fed to the metering unit and returned to the fuel tank, so it does not matter if too much fuel, up to a point, is sent to the metering unit.

For now this pump will be put aside until the GT6 is on the road, though I have started considering how to integrate it into the existing system. Once the car is running, fuel will have to bypass the electric pump to the belt pump, so this could be done by taking a second fuel line from the fuel tank to the belt pump or by having some sort of bypass for the electric pump with a one way valve.
Another alternative idea I had this afternoon was to replace the original electric pump with the new belt driven pump, driven from a different electric pump instead on the engine. The advantage of this setup would be that the electric motor is distanced from the pump, keeping the temperature down and it would cut out the need for extra fuel lines around the engine bay.

Back to the GT6 - fuel system

2008-01-18T19:31:00.000Z

After Christmas in East Anglia and a few days spent volunteering at the Cambridge Museum of Technology, it was all too quickly back to Wales and work.
The 2000 saloon is keeping up it's steady good work, though it could do with a bit more body work being tidied up, though that is not gone to happen until the weather dries up a bit.

Once the GT6 comes back one of the first jobs that will need to be done is to plumb in the fuel system. I have already done the main fuel line from the fuel tank to the metering unit via the fuel filter and pump, but the part which needs some careful consideration is how to return excess fuel back into the fuel tank.
Obviously I am not keen on the idea of welding anywhere near the tank, so instead I have machined up a couple of plates to sandwich the fuel tank. The lower plate will be passed into the fuel tank, via the hole cut for the pipes, having been drilled and tapped to accept four securing bolts. While the upper plate will have clearance holes cut for the mounting bolts and two holes cut for the returning pipes.
I am not quite sure at the moment how best to run the pipes back into the tank, ideally there would be a quite tight 90 degree elbow on the top, as there is not much height clearance between the top of the tank and the cover boards.
The tank will not be cut until the car is back though, having spent time sealing this tank I don't want to destroy it through rushing.

Decided a couple of weeks to give the TSSC a go, I have known of them since I brought my Spitfire eleven years ago, but never felt I had the inclination or the spare cash to join in the past. Fortunately they have a meeting local to me, just 25 miles up the A40 and seem to be quite active, with a number of activities planned for this year.

GT6 gearchange shortening

2007-12-17T18:40:00.000Z

Work on the GT6 is progressing, albeit slowly at the moment. Since I have moved the engine back in the chassis of the GT6, a number of components need to be relocated or modified in some way. One of these parts is the gearchange mechanism, a fairly straightforward job of reducing its total length by six inches.
So, the first job was to dismantle the mechanism, to separate the cast aluminium housing from the other components. To do this a small roll pin (1/8th inch) had to be drifted out to release the overdrive inhibitor block and then the selector arm released by removing a bolt.

With that out of the way a six inch section was carefully cut out of the housing and then sent off to J&J Engineering near Swindon to be joined back together at the new length. Meanwhile, a control rod from inside the housing has also been reduced in length by six inches, although it was not quite as easy as just cutting it down.

The end of this rod has to mate up with the gearstick, so has a long slot down the centre and a hole through it for the bolt. Originally this would have been cut using a milling machine, but as I do not have one here, the piece was carefully marked out, then cut by hand using a hacksaw and finally finished off by file. It's not perfect, but should do the job.
For good measure, new "O" rings have also been fitted to the aluminium housing around selector shaft.

The saloon has been putting up good service again, taking me to Leicester to meet-up with Jony5 from the Club Triumph forum and see my mate Simon to get some php programming done for the Cambridge Museum of Technology website.

My entry for the Club Triumph 2008 Round Britain Reliability Run (RBRR) has been accepted, coming in as entry number 31. As before, the run takes place in October over 48 hours, starting from Enfield in London on a Friday Evening, to John O Groats for Saturday Breakfast, down to Lands End for Sunday Breakfast and then back to Enfield for Sunday evening, should be fun.

More dents be gone

2007-11-28T17:23:00.001Z

After a few days of being depressed with the weather and inactive on the Triumph front, I finally had a fit of enthusiasm and decided to start pulling out the remaining large dents in the 2000. At some point, the car has had a powerful smack in the rear end, pushing the rear bumper forward and in the process denting the rear valance and deforming the rear quarter bumpers.

After removing the rear bumper, I resumed using my favourite dent removal method, viz. a ratchet strap and a heavy object, this time the heavy object being a barn, hopefully not much chance of that moving.
With the car in gear and the hand brake on hard, the dent was eased out by pulling on a bolt through the rear bumper mounting point, whist at the same time it was given a few sharp blows with a hammer to help shock the dent out.

Once again, this method seems to have worked out quite well, the only panel issue remaining being a crease on the left hand side above the bumper. This crease did not come out when pulling on the mounting hole, so will have to be pulled out a bit more by welding a nail to it and then pull on that again, a job for another day.

Popped over to see Dave (sideways) Powell last night to see about a bit of work on my spare gearbox and a natter. Is always fun going to see Dave, as the road between Ross-on-Wye, M50 roundabout to Much Marcle can be a big ball of fun to drive, with a mix of good gradients, slow and fast corners, giving me a chance to see how the 2000 handles.

A sound improvement

2007-11-17T17:41:00.000Z

Have been looking into the reasons for the whistling noise inside the 2000 when I noticed a steady stream of cold air coming into the car around the passenger door. A few weeks ago I bought a length of door seal to replace the section on the drivers side door, but noticing the air coming in, I chose to fit it onto the passenger door instead, now this was not as quite as simple as you might hope.
Looking at the seals on the passenger side doors, the seal was one way around, but on the drivers side, they were the other way, so which way to fit the new seal? After looking through my workshop manual, to find no useful information, I decided to copy the drivers side and success. On my next trip out that annoying whistling noise had disappeared.

Work continues on the passenger side front wing, removing the final traces on the dent, it's getting better now, I just need to find the right day to set about spraying it, which could be a bit of a job in itself given the colder and wetter weather at the moment.

For a change I have been going a bit of work on a GT6, not mine unfortunately, but one belonging to a guy from the Club Triumph forum. He told me he thought the brakes were not very good, well we found out why today, the front passenger side caliper was siezed, as was the rear drivers side slave cylinder, no wonder it did not stop very well.
While I was there, I also checked the trunnions and wheel bearings. The trunnions were full of grease and the wheel bearings did not have enough, so that was soon rectified with fresh gear oil in the trunnions and some more grease for the bearings. Should be alright for a MOT soon after it has battery clamp fitted and a new seal put on the filler cap.

A few more little jobs

2007-11-05T17:33:00.000Z

Have been working around the 2000 again, catching up on some of those small but never the less annoying little jobs.
For a while now the car has not had a drivers side parcel tray, which fits under the steering column and can be very useful for holding bits like mobile phones or cash. Trouble is that these trays are not to easy to get hold of, second hand ones normally water damaged from leaking windscreens. I did however manage to find a Triumph parts breaker who wanted £30 for one, which I guess is a fair price, but they would only accept payment by cheque and I would be buying it unseen with no guarantee of the quality of it.

At this point I remembered I still had the front parcel tray from the Dolomite 1500 I scrapped a couple of years ago. So after a bit of cutting and a new outer bracket made up the tray was soon fitted, saving me £30 and having it fitted a week sooner than if I bought the second hand one.
I will probably still keep an eye out for a proper MkI parcel tray, but for now this ought to do for now and might even fit the radio in.

One of the rear light clusters had a cracked lense, so I managed to pick-up one cheap on eBay and give it a through clean before fitting, you can really see the difference between the two in the picture. Unfortunately the other side was not so keen to be removed for cleaning, needing one of the securing bolts to be cut out. It seems the gasket for the lense had been leaking, corroding the fixing bolt. Luckily I had another backing piece, so this was not a problem, but it will need a new gasket to prevent water getting back in.

Meanwhile I have finished stripping parts from the MkI spare front end. There was not much left worth having after the two wings and the nose cone, but I did remove steering column and the pedals, as they are useful for anybody who is converting a MkI 2000/2500 from auto to manual. If you want those pedals or the column, please contact me through blogger or PM me (SpitBang) on the Club Triumph forum

Door hanging and a bit more bodywork

2007-10-23T20:22:00.000+01:00

After what seemed like the whole day, I have managed to re-fit the drivers door of the 2000. It turned out to be a right swine of a job, having to drill out all three parts of the hinge pin. The longest part of the pin was easier to drill out, as this could be done on the bench. The other two parts were not quite as easy, having to be done on the car, with limited clearance between the hinge body and the wing.
Not being able to fit a electric drill or even a Dremel in the space, I ended up using a old hand drill with the top removed to let me get a straight line between the two parts of the hinge. It is still not perfect, but at least now the door shuts a bit better and can not open so far that it hits the wing.

Decided while I am waiting for the GT6 to return that some more of the bodywork on the 2000 should be seen to. The car has had a dent in the passenger side front wing for at least two years, when the previous owner acquired it, so it was about time something was done about it. Now, the car came with a complete front wing when I bought it, but I did not want to get into a lengthy bodywork job of replacing the whole wing.
Instead I went for the cheaper option and decided to have a go at pulling the dent out, the proper way of doing this is to drill a hole in the panel, fit a screw and then pull out the dent with a slide hammer.
Not having a slide hammer or the inclination to buy one I chose a different method, which involves welding a nail to the dented area and then pulling it out with a pair of mole grips. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on which way you look at it, the panel would not budge by pulling on the mole grips, so something a bit heavier was needed. This came in the form of a ratchet strap anchored to a nearby milling machine, that got some of the dent out.
Another nail was welded on about a foot lower and more of the dent was pulled out without assistance of the ratchet strap.

Further forward on the passenger wing, part of the wheel arch had rotted away quite severely, so once again the rot was cut out and a new piece from the spares front end was let in. A layer of filler has gone in to cover the join and has also had a coat of undercoat to slow down the rust, just need to wait for some better weather to spray over it.

Having done repairs to both front wings, it seems that a previous owner has already repaired both wings, but the rust has come through again, which really strengthens my resolve to make sure that the car is throughly waxoiled as soon as possible.

A few more miles & those annoying little jobs.

2007-10-12T14:56:00.000+01:00

Been out again doing some reasonable miles in the 2000, taking a trip over to Cambridge to see my folks and catch-up with friends at The Cambridge Museum of Technology. It really is a pleasure to be out driving in the old 2000, with it's better road presence and more comfortable interior, quite a shock to the system after a Spitfire.
On my way to Cambridge I stopped in at Northampton to meet up with Tim Bancroft to pick-up a tow bar for the MkI, it will not go on straight away but is part of my future plans for the car.

I now have the reconditioned propshaft fitted, getting rid of that annoying vibration when accelerating up to 60mph, but my current headache is the clutch master cylinder, it needs new seals, but due to the postal strike I do not know when I shall get the parts from TD Fitchetts.
So for now the car is laid-up in the barn having a few other jobs seen to on it.
First off, last night the indicator ring, which also holds the indicator stick, was replaced, as the old one seems to have broken many years ago and caused the indicator stick to be somewhat limp in your hand. Luckily there was a spare ring on the parts front end, which I got when I bought the car.
Next was the drivers door, I had thought for a while that the bottom hinge pin was just worn, but as I removed the door it became all to evident that the pin had actually sheared off. So some time today has been spent first of all trying to punch out the old pin and then drill it out, made more difficult with less than brilliant access for straight drilling through the pin on the car and a case hardened hinge pin.

Another run out with the 2000 & Spitfire be gone.

2007-10-02T13:38:00.000+01:00

Over the weekend the 2000 has been out for a bit more of a shake-down, covering an easy 300 miles. After driving the Spitfire for so many miles around the country and on the motorways it has been a great pleasure to drive a Triumph with reduced road noise and better road presence. Unfortunately the reconditioned propshaft has not arrived yet, but the old one did not seem to give any more problems.
Although I already knew about it, I need to make some serious investigations as to the cause of a whistling wind noise from the passenger side door. Above about 55mph the noise gets quite noticeable and once up to motorway driving speeds it can get somewhat loud and annoying. One way to reduce the problem is to open the window slightly, but then with the weather we have been getting recently it is not so preferable.
Another part which needs attention sooner than later is the fuel filler cap, as I have been filling the car up with more petrol for these longer journeys and have also been pushing the car a bit harder round corners it soon became evident that when cornering hard right, petrol has been sloshing out through the filler cap, not good.

While on my journey out to Leicester I popped in to see GT6Jim to have a chat, a nose around his MkI GT6 and give him a quick ride out in my 2000. Afterwards I drove up into Birmingham to pick-up my latest eBay purchase, another Triumph 6 cylinder head. Not absolutely sure what I shall do with it just yet, though it might be used on the 2000 as part of an engine upgrade in the future.

Yesterday (Monday) the Spitfire was driven back by it's new owner all the way back to the Lake District. I have not heard any complaints yet so I can only hope that he has got back safely.
It's a shame to see it go, but it was getting to a point where I was not enjoying driving it as much as I used to and it was also going to need some attention to the bodywork, a job I felt I did not want to get into.
Still hoping to have the GT6 on the road before the end of the year, so the small chassis Triumph fun can start again.

MOT success & Spitfire for sale

2007-09-23T17:11:00.000+01:00

Yesterday (Saturday) the Triumph 2000 went through it's MOT without any advisories and by the time I had returned from the test station, the package from the Triumph parts supplier had turned up. Being half day opening at the Post Office, a quick trip into the local town was made to pick-up the required tax disc, free of course. Back at the farm again I made a start on checking my new parts and fitting them, starting with the speedo drive gear, which meant draining the gearbox oil again.

Since getting the MOT I have covered a few miles, partially to get myself used to the car, but also to workout what needs to be done. Luckily over the 130 or so miles I have covered so far nothing too major has come up. Though one of the things I do want to get sorted fairly soon is the propshaft, the sliding joint in it is getting worn and causing vibrations in the car between 55 and 65 mph, which at the moment just means I need to go faster or slower than that.

During my drive around on Saturday afternoon we popped over to New Tredegar to see a guy I know, who has just got his Fowler A7 ploughing engine back on the road. We met up with him, as you can often find them, outside a pub about five miles from their yard. Although not a great distance to travel by modern standards, it was still quite momentous to get out this far, as the engine is still running in as they work through any problems as they occur.

With the 2000 on the road and appearing to go quite well I am starting to make positive moves to selling the Spitfire, so if you or anybody you know is looking for a tax exempt Triumph Spitfire 1500, why not have a look at the Club Triumph Classified section?

Progress, of a sort...

2007-09-20T15:40:00.000+01:00

After a couple of evenings trying to blend in the new piece of wing arch on the Shed, I have decided to take a break from that as every time I put on some filler to get rid of one ridge, another came up. I really want to take a break from bodywork for a while and come back to it afreash with ideas on how to banish my ridged filler work, so for now it has received a couple of coat of primer to prevent any water or dirt getting in.
The drivers side headlight bowls have been re-fitted albeit bolted instead of riveted, as to rivet them in you need to remove a special circlip type ring to get enough space, which was most likely to break as you try to remove it. Also the remaining front lights and bumpers have been fitted.

A date has been booked for the MOT, this coming Saturday, so some time has been spent chasing parts suppliers to find out where the parts I had ordered are, only to find that they have not sent them yet. It is a real pain that I have not had the parts yet, despite asking for them to be sent out on Tuesday, two days later they have not left the supplier. With that in mind I have set about using my contingency plan to try to get the car through the forthcoming MOT.
The two things I really wanted for the MOT were the halogen headlight, as all the other lights are halogens and a new rear exhaust mounting rubber. So far I have been lucky enough to find a spare sealed beam headlight and have glued the slightly dodgy exhaust mounting rubber, lets just hope both will be sufficient to get through the MOT.

Shed repair panels

2007-09-16T18:32:00.000+01:00

The promised repair panels for the Shed were delivered on Tuesday, by a 18ton curtain side lorry, made all the more interesting when the tail lift on it failed, being able to lower itself, but not back up again. With a bit of man handling it was soon off the lorry and into a trailer for the short trip, through tight lanes, down to the farm.
There is a fair bit more of it than I had initially expected, it still having the steering column, pedals, and dash fitted. Fortunately for me it appears that the car, a few years prior to being cut-up, had received new front wings, so they were still in near mint condition.

If I was a better person, I should have carefully removed the whole wing and fitted it complete on my car, I'm not that good though. So a repair section was cut from the recovered wing instead.

The hardest part of the job so far has been to re-constitute the inner wing, as this required a judicious amount of bending and forming to get the inner wing to meet up with the outer wing in something akin to the original form. After welding the inside, all the welds and joins have had a coat of my favorite seal sealer, Adheseal, then a coat of primer.
I expect now to spend some of the next few evenings applying filler to cover and blend in the wing, before spray painting it.

The Shed, a week on...

2007-09-09T20:01:00.000+01:00

It's been a fairly busy week on the shed, working my way through it finding what needs to be done for the MOT. When I bought the car I already knew about some of the jobs that needed to be done, including replacing the speedo as the original one had failed. Unfortunately when the speedo failed, it also stripped the threads from it's drive in the gearbox, so that will have to be replaced in the week.
Fitted new in the week was a ignition switch and luckily for me I was able to use the original ignition switch and barrel in the new switch, keeping the same key for most locks in the car. Also fitted was a reconditioned steering rack, as the old was was showing excessive ware at the tube end, I believe this had been picked up at the last MOT, but had been wrongly diagnosed as slack in both track rod ends.

Quite a bit of time was spent on the nose cone again, this time adding filler where required in a attempt to make it look right. After a few nights on it I came to the conclusion that it was never going to look perfect, so I have taken it to a point where it looks fairly presentable, with the intention to replace the whole nose at a later point.

I hate to say it but, I seem to have become a bit of a polisher, as I have been slowly making my way around the car, cutting the very faded paint back, polishing and then waxing it. Hopefully once the paintwork is up again it should not need that much work.

The Shed gets a nose job

2007-09-02T20:02:00.000+01:00

As mentioned previously, repairs to the bodywork of The Shed had been started after it hit a Deer almost a year ago. The first job of the day was to re-connect completely the electrics which ran from one side of the car to the other behind the nose piece, having been partially cut when the old material was removed.

With the electrics re-connected and tied up out of the way, work started started with cleaning the area round the hole ready for welding and then welding in a couple of pieces of steel close to the headlights to give the shape of the nose, against which the main part could be formed. A piece of sheet steel was then held at the bottom, using three pair of mole grips, and carefully bent round to the shape of the remaining part of the nose and the new piece by the headlights. The steel was just tacked in place at first to allow me to get the shape of the nose and determine how much needed to be cut off. Once roughly trimmed down the weak welds were broken, followed by final trimming of the nose, then the piece was fully welded back in place.

It will need some filler put in to hide some of the welds and remove other imperfections, but for now it should do the job. Not too bad for an afternoons work, the leading edge of the nose is not as sharp as it should be, but it should do for now.

Next major job will be to re-constitute the drivers side wing, a few choices here. Either I replace the whole wing, get a arch repair panel or try to patch it together with numerous pieces of steel. At the moment my preferred plan is to get a repair panel, as it would be a lot easier to fit than a whole wing and would look better than anything I could make with bits of steel.

Spitfire MOT and The Shed

2007-08-31T21:33:00.000+01:00

Been quite a successful day today as the Spitfire managed to sail it's way through another MOT, this time without any advisory notices. While this evening my next Triumph was delivered, in the form of a MkI 2000 saloon.

Affectionately know as "The Shed" the completed the Round Britain Reliability Run (RBRR) in 2006 and the 10 countries run in 2005. Unfortunately during the last RBRR the car had a run-in with a Deer, making a bit of a mess of the front end. The previous owner, Andy, had started work on the bodywork, but had not had time to complete replacement of panels.
The car comes with a spare complete front end, so the plan is to exchange panels as required to getting the car looking right again.
My plan for the next few days is to spend a bit of time going through the car deciding on what I will have to do to get it through a MOT, it may end up with me bodging panels for the short-term so I can get it on the road and replace panels as time allows me, allowing me to sell the Spitfire. Should be a couple of weeks?

For more history of The Shed why not have a look round Andy's website

Spitfire MOT prep.

2007-08-29T10:16:00.000+01:00

With the MOT due on my Spitfire in just over a weeks time and the Bank Holiday upon us, I decided it was time to start getting the car ready.
Fortunately as I have been using the car quite regularly, the car is in quite good condition as any problems noted were normally sorted relatively quickly.
Work that I have had to do included fitting a new exhaust back-box, bought from Paddocks a few weeks ago, checking the screen wash and fitting new wiper blades – apart from that the car was pretty much ready for the MOT.

Since I plan to sell the Spitfire a few weeks after the MOT, once I have another car on the road, a fair bit of time was spent over the weekend on the rear bodywork. Fibreglass was removed from the inner rear wheel arch and wing bottom of the Spitfire to be replaced with some fresh steel, while making a repair to the boot floor and rear valance. A previous owner had repaired both inner rear wheel arches and lower rear wing sections with a mix of fibreglass and aluminium matting at some point, but the rust was starting to get under some of it and lift it up.
I repaired the passenger side fibreglass sections about a year ago, so it was about time I got the drivers side done.

Spitfire - an update

2007-08-22T09:36:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago I got my NOS propshaft from Paddocks, only problem was that on standing it next to the one I had just removed from my car I noticed the new one was 1/4" longer when both were fully compressed. Undeterred by this I was just able to squeeze it in place, but was unhappy with it being so tight in-between the gearbox and differential, so a quick call to Paddocks to explain the situation was made and assurances given to me that there should be no problem with it.
So with the gearbox tunnel back in place, I took the car out for a run, a pleasure to drive now the vibrations had gone, well for at least two miles, when a new vibration and noise started. I quick inspection of the propshaft showed that the sliding CV joint was running very hot, so it was time to turn around and head back for home to remove this new propshaft.
After further discussions with Paddocks it was decided that I would return the NOS propshaft and replace it with a slightly more expensive, but more extendable, propshaft. A day or so later it had arrived, been fitted and run in with no further problems.

With the car running quieter and vibrations reduced I was able again to get up to good speed and really get the engine warmed up. Only trouble was that the car was overheating and pushing all of the coolant out of the engine through the radiator expansion pot. This went on for a few days with me continually having to refill the system, despite having flushed the cooling system through numerous times.
I finally worked out what the problem was when plumes of white smoke issued from the exhaust after a spirited run - the head gasket had failed. Just what I did not want as I was due to drive down to Cornwall in 36 hours time. So that evening the head was stripped down to reveal the fire ring on number 4 cylinder had failed, letting a weep through. Fortunately my local motor factors was able to get me a brand new head gasket on same day delivery, so I managed to get a lift to his shop, pick up all the required parts and set to getting it all back together again.
24 hours after the head gasket had gone the car was up and running again, would have been quicker if I had kept a spare gasket in stock. Since then the car has done me trouble free mileage to and from Cornwall and then down to Exeter and back, totalling 600 mile in the past fours days. I reckon the car is going the best it has since I brought it, shame I am thinking about selling it now.
Know anybody who was to but a tax exempt Triumph Spitfire 1500?? contact SpitBang through the Club Triumph forum or leave me a comment (will not be published)

The current state of play

2007-07-28T19:03:00.000+01:00

I have a had a few developments with my GT6 since it went up to Birmingham, the guy who is modifying the exhaust manifold now understands how much of a headache it is to get the exhaust manifold past the back of the engine. This is due to me moving the engine back six inches in the car and consequently not having as much space between the engine and chassis as there was with the engine in the standard position. The upshot of all of this is that instead of modifying the manifold you may have seen in previous postings, the decision has been made to start afresh, though this is going to take longer to get finished.

This delay in having the exhaust system done has a couple of knock on effects, firstly means there is no chance of the GT6 being on the road when my current daily driver, Spitfire 1500, runs out of MOT, secondly it means I would be left with little or no time to get it finished and run in before the 10CR.

For quite a while now my Spitfire has just been used, with few improvements and this fact has been catching up with me. After excessive rumbling and vibration started from under the car from about 45mph, I thought it was about time to have a look at what was going on. Last time I replaced the universal joints on the drive shafts I noticed the rear wheel bearings were starting to get loose and the bearing cups turning in their housings, so having worked out how much it would have cost me to replace the necessary parts I decided to go for a pair of fully reconditioned drive shafts from TD Fitchetts (they had them in stock)
Unfortunately after also replacing the middle section of the exhaust, the bad vibrations are still there, so a NOS propshaft from James Paddock has been ordered along with a exhaust back box.

The aim now is to get the Spitfire in a MOTable state, while doing any other prep jobs for the GT6. Then once the GT6 is on the road think about my long term intentions for the Spitfire, perhaps move it on and get a 2000 saloon or even a modern?

Out with the GT6

2007-07-08T18:42:00.000+01:00

Had a morning out with the GT6 on Saturday, unfortunately it was on a trailer at the time. I drove up to a workshop outside Birmingham to have the remaining sections of the exhaust system finished off. The car will be up there for a few weeks now, as while it is up there it is being used as a jig for a few other exhaust manifolds.
The journey up to Birmingham was quite uneventful, only seeing a couple of classics on the road, but no Triumphs. Thought I might see one or two going up to Stafford for the weekend, but no such luck.

While the car is away I will be spending some time finishing off some other jobs for the car, such as the fuel returns into the fuel tank. I might even find some time to do a bit of bodywork on the Spitfire in anticipation of the next MOT. The sill increasing look like they need replacing, I might just plate them as required for now and replace them once I have the GT6 on the road.

Hopefully once the exhaust system has been finished, the rest of the car will be ready to come together, then a week or two of hard work to get it ready for the MOT?

Cooling bits

2007-06-25T20:01:00.000+01:00

Made a bit more progress on the cooling system, the idea as taken from Dave Powells Crazy Spitfire Blog, where a swirl pot is used after the coolant leaves the water pump, the excess from the top going to the radiator expansion tank along with water from the bleed off on the radiator. The coolant is then drawn back into the main system to a point just before the water pump, to get it to rejoin here has been a bit of a pain as most readily available "T" pieces only have 1" outlets, which is too big for what I want. So instead I have made my own "T" piece from two joiners by cutting a 5/8" one in half and sticking into the side of the other. It was a nice tight fit between the two and then chemically bonded together with JB weld, should be interesting to see how it holds up.

Been struggling for a while to find a fan for the 205 radiator, but struck lucky when I won a fan from a Nissan Micra and it is even a "pull" type, so it can be mounted behind the radiator, reducing the restriction to the flow of air.
I have been able to cut off the excess mounting lugs, it had three but only two roughly lined up, the third would not line up with anything I could bolt it down to. However it does all sit well on the rad, will just have to wait and see now.

Back in the car I have been laying a bit more of the sound deadening down again, trouble with that stuff is if you start putting it down in one position there is no chance of being able to lift and reposition it, guess that is probably a good thing though.

Bonnet struts

2007-06-19T17:23:00.000+01:00

It's been a few weeks since my last update, so I best fill you in on what has been done recently.
The radiator I am using is from a Peugeot 205, a common upgrade for the Triumph Spitfire. While it fits nicely due to it being quite short and very wide, one problem incurred is how to fit in the bonnet support. The original support folds away forward when the bonnet is down, however with the new radiator there is not enough space for it to fold away. To get round this I am using a pair of gas struts from the boot door of a Rover 214.
I made sure that when I got the gas struts from a breakers that they came with the ball joints used to attach them to the car, these ball joints have a M8 thread on them, which I used with a locknut and washers to hold them onto the inner wheel arch of the bonnet. The other end of the strut is attached to one of the front quarter valance mounting plates, via a right angle bracket made from an old number plate bracket.
The whole bonnet is a lot easier to lift up now as, past a point, the gas struts assist the lift and once up holds the bonnet quite firmly, well worth it I reckon.

I have had to move the GT6 around the barn recently, so the steering column was fitted again and much to my annoyance, I found that the steering shaft was touching the exhaust manifold. Fortunately, this problem is easily overcome by moving the steering rack over again, this did require though a little extra clearance for the steering knuckle joint as it passes through the suspension turret.

Around the car, some of the smaller jobs have been completed, with the clutch slave cylinder serviced and connected and the brake hydraulic system also connected although neither have been filled or bled yet.

In the footwells, the sound deadening has been laid down, with the rest of the car yet to do. One thing I do not want to do is to cover the rest of the inside of the car and find there is not enough material left to cover both sides of the gearbox tunnel, that area being a major source of heat.

Brakes and bits

2007-06-05T19:56:00.000+01:00

As the GT6 gets nearer to completion I keep on finding yet more little jobs to finish off, having a note book beside me most of the time helps as I can jot it down and make sure I tick it off later once done.
Over the weekend I fitted up the remaining brake hoses on the rear of the car and checked over all the hose connections, just as well as I also found some loose.
Seeing as I had the back end up in the air again to do the brakes, I found time the free up one of the adjustable rear radius arms. It obviously had not been adjusted for some time and will probably need altering once the car is on the road and I get a chance to have all of the wheels aligned.

Inside the car all of the painting I plan to do has been completed and now needs to be left to cure for a week or so.

Been going great guns with the Adheseal, putting together the quarterlight latch, which was broken when I bought the car.

Also made a start on laying down some of the sound deadening, just a few pieces in the engine bay that would be easier to put down while there was good access. The inside of the gearbox tunnel will be lined out, but I rather not do that until the rest of the tunnel has been made. The deadening material came from Canada, as despite import charges and shipping costs, it still worked out cheaper to buy direct from the supplier. It is only 1.6mm thick, but is super sticky and had a reflective layer on the outside, so it should be good at preventing some of the engine heat from getting inside the car.

Paint & fuel line fitting

2007-05-28T17:11:00.000+01:00

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

2007-05-24T17:08:00.000+01:00

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

2007-05-14T22:09:00.000+01:00

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

2007-05-13T18:55:00.000+01:00

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.