zetecspit

Had a frustrating afternoon. Last job of the day was strimming a student house garden. Chucked teh cheapy Einhell strimmer in the car and off I went. When I got there I filled the tank with mixed petrol/2stroke oil, and started pressing the primer bulb. Odd, it didn't seem to be working. Faffed a bit and it did. Started 2nd pull, as I went to strap it around my neck, it died. I repeated the start process, and again it died. Eventually I got it to run, but only if the strimmer was tilted sideways slightly (this is important) Got about halfway through, it dies again. Will it restart? No chance. I faffed and fiddled, all to no avail. Only when I was knackered and frustrated did I speak to teh inhabitants and explain I would be back on Wednesday. Home, a cuppa and into the garage. I was fearing a carb rebuild would be in order, when I remembered the tilting thing. Emptied the tank and pilled teh fuel feed and retrn grommet out. The feed pipe had rotted and fallen apart. I extraccted the remains, and it seems the issue was where the pipe e]went through the grommet. So I cut a 3incg length of brake pipe and used that to join the pipe to the end/filter. Popped it back together, and off it went, good as gold. Which I reckon is a result. I will be ordering a new length of hose. It all looks rather cheap and nasty, certainly not labelled up as ethanol resistant or anything at all. But if it lasts another 4 years that'll be just dandy. Downside, it will probably rain on wednesday.

I am rather taken by the 1600 engine. It really is smooth and seems unburstable. Still more to do at the thinner end of the needles though.... it feels like it is holding back.

I fitted a 3.89 as I had 2 good ones in the garage, and the weak 1/4 shafts on the 1600 diffs worry me.... Plus it seemed sensible when I fitted a 4 synchro box from a GT6. It seems "well balanced" and handles pretty well with a homebrew swingspring made from a couple to make it a tad stronger. I recently fitted some KYB front shocks to replace some ancient OE ones. They are "about" 20% "stiffer" by feel, and certainly control the front better now. Still std front springs. I feel a bit bad about changing stuff as I am merely the custodian, but then again Jon will be looking down and appreciating the fact it is getting used, and not too abused. It was good to have a few people ask if it was Jons car when we were at Le Mans, a well known Vitesse.

An update after the first proper outing (to Me Mans for the Classic) Car seemed to drive pretty well, one incident of leakage from the front carb overflowing. Solved by a gentle wack with a small hammer. The fast idle screw also kept unwinding itself, but a blob of hermatite blue has solved that issue until I do a proper fix. I need to do a proper tank fill tomorrow to get an MPG figure for the last 220mile tankful, the previous one included a few acts of heavy-footedness on the Mulsanne Straight, plus many trips in traffic to shop for 10 people. (That was 25mpg overall) Re performance, and this is quite anecdotal. We had a decent but std mk2 vitesse in our group. on the Mulsanne bits, he seemed to initially pull away a smidge better than out of the chicane roundabouts, after that he couldn't make any further gains. We only got up to about 75mph as it is public road and other traffic got in the way a bit. So the little (the pistons really are little) 1600 is only a smidge off a mk2 2 litre. And I still need to sort the needles to work better at higher RPM where it is leaning out a bit. The mk2 cam and compression suit the engine nicely. Apart from the carb leak and fast idle screw, it just required a top up of gearbox oil (not checked since I installed the box 2 years ago) and it took almost 1/2 litre, fixing the overdrive enagaing very slowly dropping out on Saturday evening. Otherwise all good. Which is always nice.

Beware part numbers! My 1600 has the seperate header tank, and all the Triumph specialists say the OE type cap is not stocked, but is by Mini specialists. The difference? 2.5mm height. On a 7psi cap thatcould be significant, and I need to order 2 (one spare!)

I need to check mine on the Spit. !0 years, 50k 0dd miles. It will have to wait a couple of weeks as I am off to Le Mans. When I build my car, I was going to fit new uprights as a matter of course. The price difference between tunionless and std type was minimal, so a no brainer for me.

The bearings are available as a seperate part part no ABWT10 (https://www.canleyclassics.com/?product=trunnionless-front-suspension-kit) and seems to be widely available. Merlin sell them....

I have a load of "oddball" taps and dies, some high quality, some less so. Mostly acquired very cheap or given. I did recently by an imperial set off fleabay that does the common unf/unc and a couple of BSP and it was about £20. Very handy, been used to clean up threads and tap some mild steel and ali, no issues. When I upgraded my 1600 head studs I bought a presto (or was it dormer?) set of taps, and same quality drill bits. couldn't risk that going wrong!

This stuff? https://www.oxerarepair.co.uk/rebuild-epoxy-woodfiller

looks like a bit of "repair-care" being used. Good stuff that, so much better than car body filler many decs use. I had new sahes made up in a lightweight hardwood for one of my places, all treated with good old cuprinol 5 star before fitting. The old ones werer a mere 160 years old, but had taken a bashing over the years. The actual frames were nowhere near as bad as the ones you are working on. I guess the old victorian pitch pine was rather better than most stuff used since.

There was a lady with "special" dress sense who drove a pinking one of those things. I guess it suited her "style". And another on route to where my parents used to live, in a that shade of green. They are referred to as Willys in our household, which sems reasonable. The Nissan Figaro was at least "cute". Those things have a whiff of 2Cv and various other influences. Anglia rear window?

We will never know. Something odd to be sure, th eterminal has lots of corrosion, and it appears to have killed a couple of plug leads now. What I really don't understand is why any of that would cause the lead to lift off the plug. Maybe it is haunted?

New coilpack now fitted, along with new connector plug as that had to be different. Fired it up and it was still on 3. Brain whirred into action. Yep, I hadn't reconnected teh injector. No 4 came to life, all is well. My thoughts exactly. It was just one terminal on the coilpack is blackened. Apparently one going down is not unheard of (according to a garage-owning friend) but is a bit unusual. I guess something starts to fail, and it gets worse until it stops working. Difficult to take a coilpack apart to investigate.

No hazard at all in having a relay that is rated at a higher current. It is not a protective device. Relays can suffer with poor contacts/burning etc, so it may be a simple fix. As to the pump running for 2secs then off, that is normal of EFI cars. If the engine isn't running, the pump doesn't either, just a 2sec prime.

Space is tricky, but now the coilpak is mounted at th erear of the engine on the std bracket. In the OE car, it would have been to one side, probably a bit cooler. But I have covered 60K like this, so it is not (I hope) a major issue. Some other cars using this engine mount the coilpack under the inlet manifold, and one supplier can provide a "kit" with a bracket and leads. The trouble is aftermarket leads are notorious for failing. If this coilpack fails, I will look into alternatives, and then try magnecor for a set of bespoke leads, or see if using a number of the longer leads from sets is viable. There is an irritation. It seems the coilpack connector is different to my one. I guess there have been changes over the model life or whatever. New correct plug ordered for 24hr delivery, which I hope means tomorrow!

Just got home from a trip to the Alps with some other Triumph abusers drivers. When we were down there, we had a missfire, and a pluglead seemed to have lifted off no4 plug, and wouldn't push back. I had a similar issue a year ago. So I rummaged in the boot, and fitted another lead. All good. That evening I swapped the plugs for the new set I carry, belt and braces. Then on the way home, an hour from Dieppe, it started missfiring again. We pulled over at a supermarket so Gill could get supplies of snacks and drinks, while I investigated. This time the suspect lead disintegrated as I pulled it from the coilpack. Rather ominous. I got the remains from the coilpack, to see the terminal looked rather black. Another lead tried, no beans. Swapped no1+4 on the coilpack, and now no1 missfiring, so it was just the single coilpack terminal. Stikes me as odd, as both terminals run on the same coil. Anyway, as we wanted to catch our ferry, I leaft the leads etc as is, pulled the connector from no1 injector (avoiding bore wash), and we carried on on 3 cylinders. Got to the port, sat and ordered a new Motorcraft coilpack for the princely sum of £46. (I could have bought one for about £15, but didn't fancy my chances) I then started thinking. The coilpack came with my spitfire I bought circa 2006, and was probably 10 years old and goodness knows how many miles it had covered. It did about 10K in that car until the "Stirling incident" and another 50k in the current spit. Maybe I am expecting too much from things. After all, it is only 30ish years old. As an aside, the Alps were fantastic. We travelled Calais-Metz (yawn) Metz-Lons le Saunier (some nice roads) and then based in Embrun for 3 nights which was a delightful town to stay in. Did a day of some Monte routes, almost deserted, and another day looping over to Isola, again fabulous roads but a few camper vans needed dispatching. Headed home with just one other car in a more relaxed, but very hot (we saw 40 degress displayed on one place) manner. I will report back once teh new coilpack is fitted, which will entail me working out how I fitted it initially. I have a feeling it was done before the engine was fitted, and space is "tight" in that area.

I saw that, excellent news. See you at the start and finish (only!)

I like that Musk has learnt from Trumps playbook. Specifically the way he has chucked the Epstein petrol bomb into the spat. Despite no evidence.... This could get VERY difficult for Trump, Musk is on a parallel level of "genius" and has effectively unlimited funds. The benefit for the rest of the world is that Trump will commit all his efforts to this, so won't have time to cause chaos. Only the odd game of golf. (at least I hope so)

Update. I bought a new pair or red SU springs (MGB hive being the cheapest supplier, came in SU bags so as genuine as you can buy) These gave 130g compressed to 60mm, an improvement over the 50odd year old ones I borrowed. A slight improvement in AFR at steady 70mph, still a little lean. I will take a file to them, taking care to keep it even. I have a thought on spring tension v piston weight. Piston weight is constant, but the spring gets stronger the higher the piston rises. All subtle differences. And largely irrelevent! (New wideband sensors have arrived too, handy as off to the alps in the Spitfire on Sunday to do some passes and Monte Carlo routes. Also handy is that a call to teh ECU manufacturer resulted in them taking over my lappy and deleting some hidden file that wa sclashing with the latest software updates. No mention on their website, the lappy just stopped communicating with the ecu. When I asked, the helpful tech chap said they had done the same for probably every owner on their ECUs.... what a cockup on their part, not debugging the update before release)

When we set the new CT site, some people said we shouldn't have a members only area. In the end we did, it made a lot of sense for occasional stuff (show codes etc etc) but it is not heavily used. I joined the TRR to do the last trackday as they introduced a penalty equal to the cost of membership. Might as well get some benefit from my then £50. Gill and I both watched the video of the TRR chap appealing for the increase in rates. As CT had just increase their fees by 20%, we were interested for the reasons why TRR wanted a 40%ish increase. There was a fair bit of threatening/blackmail involved, ie we might not do any more big shows etc. Which I assumed wre self-funding? Or should be. I doubt I will renew at £70, then again I don't have a TR! As for pensioners, don't get me started...... I had a grandmother who was genuinely poor, lived in a little bedsit as that is all she could afford having been widowed when she was about 30. Very proud woman. Today some moan about no winter fuel payment yet are higher rate taxpayers. Talk about not realising how lucky they are....

I will go a little off-piste here, but the CT Scotland rep is not a CT member, but we he is happy to be a contact for all things Triumph (I spoke with him to confirm) and seems to have many conbtacts up there, and knows of s afew local Triumph groups. Probably worth taking his details. I will pm them over to you

Current crop of Lucas coils is crap. Just a visual inspections shows they are poorly made, and I know of one that failed out of the box. I bought bosch a few months ago, seems to work well but made in Brasil so hoping it will last. As a spare I just bought a used one that is about 50 years old (cost me £2) and I would use that in preference to most new ones. Be careful if you have EI, as many don't like coils that pull too much current.

I had a google about, and some stuff from gt, on this forum, came up. He was bereating the rear diff bushes, they are very close together and so suffer tremendous leverage, which is what I think my car struggles with. I guess I ought to drive it more carefully? He suggested using solod bushes, but I suspect that may have a knock-on effect causing more substantial failure. I do have a pair of genuine metalastic diff bushes that I will be trying when the current ones fail.

Braking is always going to involve much greater forces. Just think about the time/distance to accelerate from 0-60 compared to the time to brake 60-0 That page has 3 pics, shows a nice short top arm, and a VERY wide lower arm. Spring looks like it could be "quite" stiff too

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