Forums

Ah….. I’m missing it right now….. There’s no “green-with-envy” emoji that I can find, but consider it deployed!  😀 and your shorts are pretty red! Someone (J?) did a fine job with that action shot. Enjoy!     Meanwhile, I’ve spent the day wrangling kitchen worktop and routers in not-so-sunny Newton Abbott. Was a balmy 6C on the English Riviera under dark grey skies. Yesterday we went to Beer (Devon) and had a walk along the cliffs to Branscombe. The sun was out, but icy easterly breeze.

Happy New Year, Craig and Mrs.Craig! And of course to all Sidewaysers!  May your Triumphs be complete! John

Gas looks good. Boiler will be fine like that. For a variety of reasons my boiler is at the opposite end of the house to tje meter and one floor up so must be 20+ m from the meter. Fair do's on the beam, sounds like you have a good plan. And I like your radiator solution 

Glad to see you are getting out and about still - and with your carer too !! 😉 enjoy the break and stay safe. 

A couple of quite different versions of tenosynovitis in my wrists have kept me off pushbikes for about 11 months it’s our annual holiday to Bright this week, and I can’t not ride up here. 30km’s yesterday, 60km today. I’ve missed this happy place.   When the trail stretches all the way to the horizon. Senior management pretending it doesn’t hurt  50 kms in. Pit stop with 6 klicks to go. Final destination.  My Irish convict heritage means I’m quite possibly the whitest man in Australia, but I after 90km in the last 2 days, the shorts are slightly less red than my ass.

To update a bit, Finished the work to get the gas supply moved, got told my trench was "perfect". Had the pipe to the boiler done in 22mm, total run after the meter is about 7m so much better than before. Time will tell if the boiler is happy with it. Haven't managed to fill the eyesore of a trench in yet as I want to run an earth bonding wire and a conduit for fibre optic internet at the same time and I'm still waiting for a few bits to be delivered. Neighbours haven't complained yet... Decided on a course of action for the beam, I have bought some dense 7.3N/mm2 concrete blocks, I intend to rebuild underneath the beam on both sides in them, probably around 2 blocks deep, and then build the bearing area up in engineering bricks for the final few courses. I will keep the beam as is due to the logistics of removing it and that would really need new calculations, but I will rent a beam lifter once the walls are ready (one side at a time) and move it so it actually touches the joists and is centred on the internal wall, because from this angle, it looks not great. However, as my bricklaying experience is almost zero, I decided I'll start on something less important, so I've been preparing to rebuild the picture window wall that's been built on top of parquet. Will just do this in thermalite blocks but will actually tooth it into the existing wall. To this end I needed to remove a gigantic radiator (2.4x0.4m), and with a cold snap around the corner, just disconnecting it wasn't an option. So to this end I've built a ridiculous radiator stand with some wood I salvaged back when I turned the "bar" back into a garage. I've also put all the downstairs radiators on isolation valves (for now), so I can easily remove them when we get the screed poured and replace while the screed cures (apparently you should wait up to a month before introducing heat into the UFH). The old radiator that was in the garage bar also has made an appearance, with the hope of getting a bit more heat output as it's hard to keep upstairs warm when downstairs is freezing. Probably should have considered doing this last winter...

@SpitfireSam I don't suppose you could share that CAD diagram of the Triumph engine plate bolt locations? Or the name of the company that did it for you? I've picked up a couple of Mazda gearboxes to have a play around with (MX5 and non-turbo FB RX7 for the super-low 5th gear). I've found bellhousing bolt patterns for both of those online, but nothing for the Triumph side. My idea was to try and use the whole Mazda clutch assembly by designing a new flywheel to bolt to the Triumph crank, and a reversed release fork that I can poke through the top of the bellhousing so it clears the chassis rail.

I have an Isuzu starter on my Vitesse 6 which I intend to MJ at some time after I get the car back on the road. When I first spun it up on the new starter I thought I had lost compression as it is that fast compared to the 60 year old Lucas one. I even pulled the rocker cover to make sure all valves were opening and closing as they should.   Adrian

Beware the "non stepped" side. I was sold a pair of driveshafts. I couldn't get both CVs into the diff, one would pop out when I fully pushed teh other one in. Turned out the non-stepped side was a couple of mm too long (specifically the chamfer at the end) and it took a while to get the correct version.  Saying all that, I lent a spare CV to a local, I really ought to see if he is still around as I should probably get it back. I have brand new genuine Rover puter CVs I got from Rimmers for not much cash when they were on clearance, but it seems the innner CVs wear more for some reason.

That’s good then. Must be the earlier VLSD I think? The one I have does not take the stepped splined type…. Which was annoying having gone to the trouble of finding a pair (though only one side has the twin spline IIRC?). You might well find that provided the outer  casing with stepped spline isn’t too worn in the ball tracks you can swap the guts with those from a compatible non-stepped version.