Lightweight progress

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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