Triumph Therapy

It was Anne's turn to visit our girl in hospital tonight, so I got some Triumph therapy in !

Especially as the new hub bearing carrier had arrived from Moss !

All built up and ready to fit - the carrier is a repro part, and very similar to the original but must be made from billet not a casting as its machined all over.

Next fitment to the car - this involves replacement BUT you need to shim the endfloat to a maximum of 4 to 6 thou, by using shims like this behind the brake backplate

Needless to say its a little long winded as you need to do up the 6 housing bolts before checking endloat, and if you are unlucky - like me, there's no float to start with, so its remove halfsahft add shim, check, and repeat the process a few times. I needed  to add 14 thou of shims to this side and got 3.5 thou endfloat in the end - 4 to 6 thou is the maximum allowed so I am happy with this.

I still need to torque the castle nuts up, but I need at least one of the wheels on the ground as its 90 to 120 ft lb.

I have filled the diff with oil too before I forget.

As it was still daylight I started on the Trackerjack disc conversion, by stripping the hubs and replacing the bearings - good job I did, there were no felt grease seals fitted - another bodge ! at the same time I have fitted the Shacktune stub axle stiffener

which also needed shim adjustment, but only the castle nut and the outer bearing race to remove to achieve this so a lot easier. I had to replace the D washers in the bearing assemblies too - they were both like this (on both sides of both D washers ! The groove was several mm deep

So after dooing the bearings I fitted the new vented disks and checked disc run out - my dial gauge got a workout today 

The first disc was a pig to get right, and it turned out the the disc mounting holes in the original Triumph hub weren't quite at even spacing so the disc was sitting at an angle on the hub - a littlle work with a file on the disc holes resolved this and one disc has 2 thou run out, the other 3.5 thou which should be satisfactory

I then proceeded to fit the brake caliper carriers and the caliper - although the original caliper bolts were too short - even fitted without lock washers !! only about 4 threads were in the hub carrier as you can see from the dirty threaded end on the short bolt - you can see the difference between the original bolts ( which must have been replaced by the PO as they were shiny ) and the correct length ones here - very very glad I found this - who the hell fits bolts in a safety critical component like this at about half the required thread depth

and here we are, just brake pipe plumbing and a brake system to bleed to finish

Taper Roller Bearing failure

I haven't had much time to attend to the cars recently, because one of our twin girls has had to go into hospital, and she is likely to be there for another 2 months or so, before she can come home, so most of my spare time has been taken up with hospital visits, and this will continue, so no Auto Eccosse and other similar events for me for this year,

However I did have a few hours to spare today, and a very nice man from Coventry had kindly lent me a hub puller so it was drive shaft repair time. Incidentally for those with Sprints who may want to do this job, don't buy the spitfire hub pullers - they are not deep enough - the original Churchill tool that fits Sprints and Spitfires is far deeper so fits both models, you do need to search out the proper tool.

Anyway with the correct tool and a few very hard taps on the hub flange using a steel drift and a lump hammer apart they came. The side that "felt" Ok was good and would have undoubtedly gone on for thousands of more miles, but this is what I found on the other side

The big bang that I heard from the back was obviously the bearing fracturing. There's no sign of blueing on the shaft or housing so I must have caught it in time - or so I thought.

I had been to see Mick Dolphin and had managed to get a set of NOS seals and bearings from him - the seals are very different from the ones currently supplied and it was good to get original good quality bearings although I could have bought some new SKF.

Anyway I pressed the new bearings on and assembled the "good" side first. However when I came to press the bearing into the housing from the side that failed - there was no need, the bearing simply dropped in ! I had inspected the housing and there were no wear marks, but using a vernier I found that the bearing housing was over .5mm oversize on the diameter - loctight bearing fix isn't going to give a reliable result. Its as if the entire housing has expanded - I cannot believe Triumph built it like this, as it should have failed ages ago.

If I cannot find a good second hand housing, I can buy new, as Moss stock them for the TR4 - which uses the same axle, although the method of mounting the axle is different. The new housing is sadly subject to the TR tax as its about £150

I had though of having the housing machined and fitting a sleeve, but the housing isn't very thick and it must carry a lot of cornering loads , so I think it will have to be replaced.

While I await parts I am going to fit the Trackerjack brake conversion to the front.

Nick's theory IS wrong

I've been using the Sprint as a daily driver this week, and  put a fair few miles on it - about 350, and its been getting better and better to drive, more responsive, more willing to rev higher, and generally behaving like a Sprint should.

Admittedly I have been giving it plenty of full throttle.

But the car had a lot of care and attention lavished on it last weekend so it should be grateful, but it wasn't

1/2 mile from home, just after a tight right hand turn at a T junction, where there was a little bit of wheel spin - due to the wet road, a large bang and a funny noise from the rear of the car.

I nursed it home, jacked up the rear, and ....





the diffs gone ! :(

so much so that one drive shaft was turning freely, a little bit more rotation of the drive shafts and propshafts to try and see if it was just a half shaft, and both drive shafts turn freely, so its the diff, a fairly bad failure I think. I'll leave rear axle removal for another time - I want to take the cover plate off as well to peer inside and see what has failed, but its obviously bad!

There's still oil in the diff, but one of the half shaft wheel bearings is noisy too - and looks like it has got hot, so its a full axle rebuild I guess. Maybe its rust from condensation (during its long storage) thats caused some of the case hardning to fail on the teeth ? But there were no nasty noises prior to failure

So its the white FF estate for Wales this weekend, which is probably a good choice with the forecast weather!

Rewards

I think Nick has a theory that you should reward your Triumph if it has been behaving itself, so I decided to fit some new shiny bits to the Sprint today, as apart from a little incontinence from the rear of the engine (due to the PO stripping the threads in the rear alloy engine seal block) as there are two bolts missing from the rear of the sump, it seems, touching wood, to be behaving itself.

So as a result of some recent ebay purchases I had a NOS front bumper to fit

 some NOS rear lamps and number plate lights

and thanks to a Rimmer's sale I also replaced these

pitted and worn door handles with these new ones

It also got a NOS seal on the front passenger door.

If this works and the car stays working I have some new weatherstrip window seals to fit - actually cut down TR ones as they are the correct profile, and the straight bit is plenty long enough to do a Sprint door

Pollybushes in Blue

Not a great deal to report really, just spent a day replacing all the suspension bushes with nice new Blue Pollybush.

Straightforward, but a little time consuming, and without a 10 ton press I would certainly not have been able to remove the metalastic bush from the lower track Control Arm.

Anyway although the car is a little noisier now, it goes where its pointed and there's no rear axle steer - Result!

Retorqued the head down and fettled a few other items, took it for a drive and surprised a few moderns on a local derestricted dual carriage way nearby - all the high speed vibration has gone :)

In fact I am so pleased with it, that after the Welsh Tour is going to get a Trackerjack front disk brake conversion - here are all the bits