A bigger stud

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.

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

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

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

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