More dents be gone

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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?