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Happy New Year to you all! The litte grreen beastie has generally been performing fine with little needing doing other than replacing a couple of tyres and yet another wheel trim! MOTs passed with nothing more than a note regarding surface rust on the subframe. They all do that sir! Don't tend to drive it all that much myself so the finer points tend to accumulate. Some low speed hesitancy a few months back was sorted by replacing the plugs. The originals were original, best part of 110k so can't complain. Then I had the car through to Edinburgh a few weeks ago. Quiet but noticeable singing coming from the front drivers side. Especially at speed and once everything had warmed up. My initial assumption was wheel bearing, as there was no noticeable change of sound on lock. Further inspection turned out to be the outer CV joint. New one fitted and new boots on the passenger side as one had a spit and the other didn't look too clever. Most recently I noticed a 'hot oil' smell one still morning after I got back from the velodrome. A hunt under the bonnet identified a split around one of the securing bolts of the plastic rocker cover with plenty of oil in evidence above the exhaust manifold. Bugger. Ebay provided me with a good s/h cover which I finally got round to fitting this morning.  Pretty straightforward job, took less than an hour which was good as there's a bloody cold wind out there this morning. The old cover had split due to corrosion swelling of the spacer sleeve in the bolt hole. Gasket well squashed and past it's best too which won't have helped. Took the opportunity to clean up the face of the head and also cleaned out a bit of oil that had leaked into the plug valley. Job done, and then when I came to clip the bonnet stay back down that the clip that was there when I opened the bonnet wasn't any longer. FFS! So a new one ordered. £4.95. Second one of these things that have needed replacing. Mind you that was almost 10 years ago 

I’ll ask my friend if he’s still got access to the file he made, if he has I’d be happy to share - keep in mind that the bolt holes on the triumph side are for a 2500 tr6 engine and a few of the holes need to be redrilled to fit the 1500 engine I ended up using it on. But it will still work. The engine plate I had made does not have locating dowels for the gearbox and relies on the input shaft in the crank spigot bearing to keep everything concentric. I have heard great things about the rx7 gearbox though I have never driven one myself.  A new flywheel from scratch would certainly make life easier though was definitely not in my budget. Modifying the gt6 one to fit was a fairly simple and cost effective solution, the Mazda friction disc fits happily onto the FW  If you use the Mazda clutch release assy without shortening the bellhousing the input shaft of the gearbox doesn’t reach the flywheel, though if you have provisions to make a custom flywheel a custom input shaft wouldn’t be such a challenge  Clearance for the fork only required some fairly minor fettling, may be worth trying to get it to work? Might save some time and effort.

Good stuff there John.

I must have lucked out then, mine fit perfectly and have done a few hundred miles with no issues 

I believe it was from a 2004 sti wrx, I would certainly like to upgrade to not need the silly double spline type. The eventual plan is to infact swap the guts for a proper lsd as the vlsd almost does nothing - but is far stronger than the factory triumph diff so I shall not complain

Day  1 of 2026 A slow and gentle ride with my Dad to the next town down the river and back   dinner with family and friends, then Jenga wars… Take no prisoners,   Happy New Year all.   C.

Hi Folks this is the latest events list for the TRIUMPH speed championship  2026 Calendar final.pdf

I have been given the race it was in by the kind Josef on another site!    https://six2025.mtsweb.be/Print.asp?t=1&idpl=10 And it appears that the owner is Philipe Vermast, of Luxembourg, and the race was combined from members of the CSCC (that I race in! Bugger!) and the HTGT, the historic racing series of the TR-Register Germany.   I knew of a race Vitesses run by a  P. Hermast, so I am glad to be corrected, and I will ask TR Geermany if they will give him my details with a contact request.      The list of still racing Vitesses slowly grows!   In Europe and the US it stands at four, with possibly one or two in New Zealand. John  

Fair point. The clutch slave on my Suzuki car failed at a mere 50k (which is disappointing) but was accompanied by a nearly worn out plate. I reckon the car belonged to somebody with poor driving abilities when new, from a few things I have found. Saying that, proper CSCs tend to last very very well. I have had a few cars well over 100k on original clutch kits. Repro items not worth the savings. As to flywheel, I forgot the MX5 is a tad smaller than the Triumph item. The "slightly serious" investigation I have done were for Zetec stuff where he simply used a MX5 plate. (hilariously the chap initially cut a larger diameter plate down using a dummy input shaft, a drill and a grinder, before somebody sent him a message about teh correct size plate being an off the shelf item) Another thought, can you not get the backplate scanned? I am pretty clueless on most of this stuff, but a mates son has a scanner that appears to be very accurate. He suppliments his income by scanning bits of car and 3d printing them. Latest bit is cosworth wheel centres as originals are so valuable now people won't leave them on their car when out at shows, so are buying his and keeping the originals at home. But his are very accurate reproductions. Should be good enough for an adaptor plate?

Sounds good!  like a high revving 2litre.