Grrrrrr ..... I knew I should have taken the Stag on the HCR

Lets see now what has been bodged ? or badly assembled on the Sprint before I got it

Front Wheel Bearings

Servo Mounts

Rear Suspension

Water pump

Steering Coupling

Rack Mounts

Engine Mounts

Carb Mounts

Air Filter

Wiper Stalk

Carburettors 

Thermostat Housing

etc etc

Its a long list

Whats Missing ??
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Yep Gearbox.

More specifically Overdrive Solenoid, which wasn't tight enough, so on a long run it empties all the gearbox oil out.

Fortunately, I had EP90, axle stand, gearbox oil filler spanner, and managed to replenish the oil, but what I didn't have is the special 3mm thick spanner to tighten the overdrive solenoid enough to fix the leak. I did use a drift and a heavy wrench to try and knock the solenoid round to cure the leak, but not enough.

When an overdrive box looses oil, the OD stops working first, because its input is a couple of cm above the gearbox casing, which means the rest of the gears are still lubricated for a time.

We had just done the first 4 Counties, with the interesting bits to come along the seaside, when the overdrive stopped working. It had to be electrical or oil level, so I stopped, checked the electrics, they were fine, so then spotted the EP90 under the car.  So jacked up the car, filled the oil up, tried to fix the solenoid and set off again.

We had just got to the coast, when the OD started playing up again, so choosing a nearby Tesco Car park inspected the car. It was really game over at this point as we had another 150 miles left to the halfway point, and all the Service Stations I had dropped in at, had flowers, food and alcohol, but nothing useful for a car apart from screenwash. I still had another bottle of EP 90 but that wasn't going to get us home, and I didn't want to risk wrecking the gearbox.

So I called recovery (for the second time in a month with the Sprint) they turned up in 30 minutes loaded the car up, and off we went for Beaconsfield Services for the hand over to the next recovery driver. Just short of Beaconsfield the recovery vehicle's engine gave up the ghost (it must be Dolly Sprint effect!), so the truck, and our car had to be recovered back to the Recovery Vehicle Depot at the Seaside!!! - the engine failure meant they couldn't off load the Sprint and get it on to another vehicle. They finally gave us a loan car to get home in. Breakdown 10pm south coast, arrived home 6am !!!

Not our best night out !

Still thanks to Ellis and the organisers, the Helms for the food and the autosolo. The bits we did were great, and we will be back. The Sprint will be fixed on its return, its a quick fix really, drop gearbox tail a few inches, apply spanner, tighten, put gearbox back on mount. 1 hour start to finish.

I then await the next breakdown of this badly behaved Triumph