Wednesday 23 December 2009

The Penultimate Weld before Christmas

Firstly, went and recovered the servo and brake master cylinder from the Reconditioners - Past Parts in Bury St Edmunds, here they are, in fantastic condition, so the car should stop. The work was a little pricey, but these aren't Stanpart Parts, and not that common £373 inc vat.





Back to the welding, front outrigger seam welded in



Floor pan, plug and seam welded and complete on driver's side

 

Floor pan to front bulkhead, with the plug welds ground off.

 

Transmission tunnel repairs finished and welds ground back

 

This reveals the Ferguson new gearbox mount, in front of the 2 old holes which I have now welded and filled.

 

Driver's side sill seam welded, and weld ground flat.

 

So apart from the rear wing the driver's side of the car is nearly complete, so I cannot put it off any longer, and need to do the front wheel arch repairs. Refit the front wing, and I am so pleased with the sill to wing gap and general alignment.

 

Its really good to find it all fits correctly, and that the panels look good when fitted.

I finally got too cold to do any more, but I am hoping to spend a few hours on the car tomorrow, hence this was the penultimate welding day.

Hours worked - 377 - 5 hours today

Money spent -  7561 - 373 on servo and master cylinder

Thursday 17 December 2009

Rear Suspension off

This was the easiest rear suspension removal I have ever done. All nuts and bolts easily accessible, and no dirt falling in your eyes.

The bolts on the drive shafts were seized so I cut them off, but the rest still showed signs of lubrication from assembly by Triumph - look at the middle set of bolts in the next picture, these are from the trailing arm bushes, came straight out - what joy.




The pile of removed parts,  and while I think of it, I will document the shims here, so I can replace the same number on rebuild. There were 3 fitted to the driver's side outer trailing arm mount and 4 to the passenger side.



I then wired brushed the underside, it really does appear to be surface rust only. Here is the modified transmission tunnel showing the relocated chassis leg, and the cut outs for the drive shaft and transfer box.

 

rear spring mount driverside - no holes and nothing you can poke a screwdriver through.

 

Rear spring mount and diff mounting pin driverside, again surface rust, and I know from when I removed the boot floor that the diff mount box section is good, despite the apparent surface rust.

 

Passenger rear floor pan, you can still see lots of white paint, again the rust just looks bad.

 

I was thinking of having the underside blasted, to check its condition, using soda so there is no panel damage, but the quotes that I am getting are crazy money - about 25% of the cost of the surface treatment process, so I am rethinking this strategy. Someone on the TR Forum made a DIY soda blaster, so I am going to investigate this.

Parts below are going for powder coating, although I think I will send the box sections with the car to surface treatments, and then paint then with POR15, as this will protect the cavities, which powder coating won't achieve.

 

The diff has very little backlash, and has a good feel to the bearings on the drive shafts, but the propshaft flange / quillshaft has a "notchy" feel, so a strip down will be called for to inspect, and certainly to replace the oil seal, as the quillshaft seal is leaking.

I then started to complete the welding on the floor pans, but got called back to work, so thats all for now.

Next time underside welding, and I hope the rebuilt servo as that is now ready for collection.

Hours worked 372 - 6 hours assembling spit and rotating car, 4 hours removing rear suspension.

Monday 14 December 2009

Estate on a spit

I went and fetched my new spit today, assembled it and bolted it to the car, after fabricating brackets and further reinforcing the rear bumper mounts to the bird cage, rear view


 and front



Now the nervous bit, will it lift the car, and will the car survive the lift ?

 

So far so good, car off the ground, no nasty noises, and no signs of bending, breaking mounts, or failing bumper mounts. Next job is to balance the car so it will rotate. This was a difficult job, as without the roof the top of the car was too light, eventually after winding all the adjustment out, I could get the car to rotate, with a large amount of effort. Here we are on its side, nice and stable, and as a bonus more room to work in.

 

The only nasty rust I have found is the passenger side drag stut mount which I knew was rusty anyway. The rest looks surface only, so next its a good wire brush and a poke about.

 

I shall also remove the diff and rear suspension.

Then I will attend to the rest of the underneath, welding the repairs that I need to complete, this will be far nicer with the car on its side, and not dropping rubbish and weld spatter on top of me.

Saturday 5 December 2009

Full Circle

This is 2 days work, with the blog report condensed into one. Neither day was a full day because Christmas intervened, and I had to get and errect our Christmas trees, still at least I got to play with my chainsaw!

Firstly some nice shiney powder coating collected, bumper mounts, engine mounts, various other brackets and the sump..



Next job cut the rear wing off



 This shows some rust above the inner wing that needs a new flange making up, and the cleaned up C post ready for the wing.
 


Under the car, you can see it was fitted with Stag rear suspension cross members as it has the exhaust pipe hole in them both, driverside

 

 and passenger side.

 

Other repair areas in the wheel arch to be attended to rear

 

and front



all flanges now cleaned up

 

and trial fit of rear wing - perfect, just the repairs to be done then the wing can go on.

 

Thats the repairs Full Circle, the whole way round the car. Hopefully I will finish these wing area repairs in another days work - then its on to the roof.

Thanks also to Chris Allen, for his visit and encouragement today, and the donation of the new rear shock absorbers.

I have been having some misgivings about the spit I built and the size and weight of the car.At this point it would be a disaster if the spit caused the car to get damaged, so I aquired this off ebay this week, its new and about one third of new price, so I can sell this on at the end and recoup my costs.



Hours worked now 362--12 hours in 2 days - 2hours on the servo
Money £7188 - £35 powder coating

Wednesday 2 December 2009

Brake Servo and ABS

As the garage is too cold at present, and I had found a company who said that they could recondition the brake servo, I made a trip to see Past Parts in Bury St Edmunds today. They listened to the story of the car, took a look at the servo, and apart from saying they couldn't help with the electronic part confirmed that they had the parts required for the servo and master cylinder. Apparently these have been used on some Jaguars and Jensens, and they saw no problem in a rebuild to as new - they are going to fit a stainless steel liner to the master cylinder - that will stop it corroding in the future.

That left me with the strange parts on the side of the servo.



A gentle strip down commenced. Interestingly neither AF nor Metric spanners fit the nuts and bolts which is very strange, so I resorted to an adjustable spanner (sorry). Must be whitworth or bsf.

First off was this cover, which revealed a mesh filter, with a decomposed fine plastic (sponge like) filter sat in front of it.

 

Then I removed what I had thought to be a motor from the top of it, leaving this


 

The silver rod is a plunger, connected inside to a valve block, here is the "motor" which is actually a solenoid

 

This has some contacts (a bit like an SU fuel pump) which I cleaned

 

At the other end (which I didn't remove) is a cover over a rubber diaphragm. The plunger moved freely, so I did not want to risk damage to the diaphragm.

 

How it Operates.

After sucking and blowing on the various pipes and emulating movement of the valves via the plunger and solenoid, this is how I think it works.

In normal brake operation the plunger is kept pulled in, by vacuum applied to the rear of the diaphragm, by the clear yellow tube. This allows full vacuum in the servo.

However when an ABS operation is signalled by the speed differential sensor and Mullard black box, power is applied to the solenoid. This pulls on the plunger, which moves out and then allows normal air via the filter to reduce pressure in the servo, either turning the brakes off, or at least significantly reducing pressure allowing the wheels to rotate again.

As the solenoid stays active, the plunger travels further up, and via an insulated rod breaks the supply to the solenoid, via the contacts. Vacuum on the rubber diaphragm then pulls the plunger back, which cuts the air supply from outside and restores full vacuum, applying the brakes fully again.

If the abs is still active, the cycle repeats, again and again, until the speed sensor does not indicate a lock condition (actually speed differential between front and rear wheels)

I imagine, and hope to find out that this gives a pulsing pedal like modern systems.

I am now going to content myself with cleaning and repainting this unit and replacing the hoses and clips, if it aint broke dont mend it, is the motto here.

Today we take ABS for granted, but if you consider the great British companies (Mullard and Ferguson Formula) that designed and made this work in 1972 it was one huge achievement, and so far ahead of its time.

2 hours work, 5 hours driving!

Sunday 29 November 2009

Sills Finished

Had a good day on the car today, the work progressed really swiftly and I have completed a great deal.

Firstly, inner sill in place, together with a small patch in the bottom of the A pillar.



Front outrigger now present and correct.

 

And floor pan installed.

 

Welding completed on floor pan

 

As usual there are some welds to be ground back, but I shall have a session on this when the car is complete and the bird cage removed, as its really uncomfortable to lie on bits of the cage as you need to get access to parts of the car.

I am also bulding up a list of outstanding jobs that must be completed before certain panels go on. For instance I realised the other day that there is no mounting for the battery clamp on the inner wing side of the car. This must be fabricated and installed before the outer wing goes on the car, or I won't be able to secure the battery correctly. This would be a real nuisance to discover after the car is painted and I am fitting it up.

I am still leaving the wheel arch for now, because I want to do the rear wing next (and it was a pig at my first attempt!). Once the wing is done I can then have a go at the roof, as I have promised Anne that the donor estate will be gone by Christmas, so I really need to work hard at this.

I have formulated a cunning plan for the roof work, reliant on the new roof being in such good condition, but more of that when its time to do the work.

Hours worked 348   7 hours today.

Saturday 28 November 2009

A Tale of Two Estates.

I went and collected the other estate today and towed it back on an A frame.
As you can see the roof, and screen surround is in A1 condition



And the tailgate aperture also perfect no rust, and when I inspected the internal pillar sections at the back, and the lamp housings also no rust. What a car! 

 

I have however been concerned about ending the life of a Triumph Estate, and wanted to inspect the rest.
The rear wheel arches, inner arches, floor pan, spring mounts, shock absorber mounts are gone! The floor and sills are like this everywhere, so added to 4 rotten doors, and rusted out front wheel arches, I don't feel so bad about parting it out. At least it will live on in some other cars.

 

Back to the other estate, got the outer sill on today and welded in. Been playing with these cleco temporary fastners, they are a great help and so simple to use, beats self tappers anyday for temporary clamps.

 

Front of the sill and more clecos visible

 

Inside front of the innersill - sorry the picture is upside down - shows the jacking point and the plate I had to make up to replace some disappeared metal.

 

Should get the rest of the inner sill in tomorrow and the outrigger and floor pan back in

Hours worked now 341 - 8 hours today

Money £7153 - £350 on the donor estate, £50 on the steel for the spit

Tuesday 24 November 2009

Ran out of Gas!

Got the inner sill continuously seam welded in tonight, and the jacking point in, but ran out of Argonshield, so a quick trip to BOC tomorrow. You can see the penetration of the seam weld here, because it was all welded from the other side.



I received a nice present at work today, 8 of them and all shiny



They are the low compression version without the lump in the middle, but the +40 oversize gives an increase in capacity, and the heads need a light skim so the overall compression ratio will remain approximately as standard - which is good without the availability of 4 star fuel.

They are Hepolite, so they have the correct weight for the crank counter weights, and were original fitment.

3 hours work

Monday 23 November 2009

Built a Spit tonight

I built a Spit tonight and here it is



I am slightly concerned about the centre of gravity of the car, if its top heavy, it will just flip upside down when attached to the spit, so when I fit it to the car I am also going to attach 2 ropes and pulleys to the garage roof timbers and to each side of the car, so I can control its rotation. It should be a good game! But it will have to wait a few weeks yet.

Also got the driverside doors back on, no trace of bending, so it will be time to finish welding the sills next.

 

I have also found a company who specialise in restoring old brake parts and servos, who are confident they can service and inspect the ABS servo without causing damage, so I am hoping to go and see them with the servo later this week.

Costs £50 for steel to be added to the total.

Where am I?