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

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.

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.

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

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!