Carburettor linkage woes

After a rather enjoyable test drive almost two weeks ago I could only conclude that the throttle linkage was a bit to long. This resulted in a slightly higher idle as normal. As the link was set to its shortest length when I put it in, there was only one way to get this sorted properly. Remove the linkage assembly, shorten the linkage rod a few millimetres and put it all back in ...

In the picture above you can see the original linkage on the right, my own creation using the old and by now rather worn Weber linkage in the middle and the new linkage on the left. Clearly visible is the difference in length. Easy to rectify with a small cutting disc, resulting in a bit more adjustment. Spot the difference ...

Sadly refitting it wasn't as easy as that. For those who have performed this task will know that room to manoeuvre is restricted to say the least. And in my case it resulted in lots of dropped spanners, small bolts and washers. And I made the mistake to assemble the linkage without locking the ends in position. I thought it would be easier to get a proper fit this way. It wasn't. In the end I had to remove the throttle mounting bracket (UKC7156) from the car in order to get the linkage in place.

And while refitting the bracket I found out that the threads in one of the two bolt holes in the manifold had stripped out. This is temporarily fixed by removing the washers from under the bolt heads. Wondering what best to do, fit some thread-repair-inserts or fit a brand new manifold I found between my spares recently ...

Cool Air And Noise Reduction, part 2

With the alloy carburettor mounts fitted it was time for the last of my winter projects. Fitting the slightly altered air box and the new air filters. Al rather straight forward, save for some small problems. The first being the alloy ram pipes that have been hiding inside the open K&N filters. They only came with two mounting holes and I really wanted to use three bolts per carburettor to fit the air box's base plate. Easy but time consuming to sort when you only have light grinding tools (Dremel and good old file). And some dent removal ...

Next was fitting the lid. As I don't have a filter element inside the lid was a bit loose. First Idea was to fit the steel base plate of a discarded filter element with a small cross section rubber profile. But that didn't fit to well so in the end I opted for the easy and cheap solution, closed cell foam rubber, glued to the lid.

Remained the last two missing pieces, the filter's base plate plus new K&N filters and two lengths of 44mm air hose. The base-plate put up a bit of a fight. Because the area behind and in front of the headlamp mounting panel is not accessible at the same time by one person, I had made a small mounting plate with the nuts welded onto it (this plate is visible in the CAD picture I posted two months ago). I taped this to the front of the headlamp panel, after which bolting the filters' base-plate should be easy. At least that was the plan, but it didn't work. Instead I inserted a long 5 mm bolt backward through the top nut of the mounting plate and screwed that in a few centimetres. With that taped in place I was able to hang the base-plate over this bolt and tighten it up with a nut. After that aligning the lower bolt hole and fitting the two correct bolts was easy. Remained the air hose, cut to the correct length and fit in place. This really was as easy as it sounds ...

Quite pleased how everything fits. But the big question remained; does it work properly? Or is this set up more restrictive in comparison to the open filters? Only one way to find out, go for a drive. As the weather was rather fine today I enjoyed a few hours of open top motoring this afternoon.

But there were some doubts. The main one being a small coolant leak (well more weeping) from the head gasket. I noticed this while removing the carburettors from the car. As the car has sat idle in the shed for almost 10 months I decided not to panic immediately. So I put it down to lack of use for the time being. But while driving over some of the lovely country lanes in our area I sometimes smelled a whiff of coolant. Or at least I imagined smelling it!. As the temperature gauge behaved as if nothing was wrong I tried not to think to much about it. To cut a long story short, it was a rather enjoyable drive and when I returned home there was no sign of any coolant loss. Will see tomorrow morning when everything has cooled down ...

And there is another small issue, the new carburettor linkage needs shortening a bit as it opens up the throttle a bit, resulting in a slightly higher idle.

Fitting alloy carburettor mounts

It's been a while since I last posted on this item. This was mainly due to the fact that 't Kreng was occupying the drive and I didn't fancy carrying my tools to the shed for several evenings. But with 't Kreng tucked away for the time being and the weather not being that brilliant yesterday, I took the opportunity to start work on the DHC.

First items that I wanted to replace where the rubber carburettor mounts. As you can see in the pictures below the rubber is starting to crack. From the outside it looked like they probably should have some life left in them, but with Club Triumphs 10 Countries Run coming up in September, I thought it would be better not to take any risks here. Glad I did, not only were there the visible cracks appearing on the outside, but the inside also showed some cracks. And the sealing lips were starting to fall apart.

Removing the carburettors was straightforward. Only problem I encountered was the choke cable, which was starting to fray at the end. But that could wait till the carburettors were back on. First there were the new mounts to fit. I have to admit I was a bit anxious here, but I needn't have worried there. They fitted perfectly to the manifold ...

After which it was a matter of refitting in reverse order. But getting all mounting nuts for the carburettors on the studs was a bit of a pain. Access and serviceability clearly wasn't high on the priority list when the carburettor lay-out was designed for these cars. And nearly ran into a problem. When I designed the mounts I used 45mm long bolts to fit the two parts together and to act as mounting studs for the carburettors. As this was only marginally longer compared to the original mounts, I didn't think much of it. Until I fitted the carburettors that is. Let's say the remaining room between carburettor  and stud is marginal !

With the carburettors in place there remained all connections to be restored. All straight forward, except the choke cable. As mentioned earlier it was starting to fray at the end with some strand being broken just above the mounting pin. I first wanted to replace the inner cable with a new one. But I first tried to solder the fraying together. Usually this doesn't work to well, but this time I was lucky. The cable slid into its designated holes without any problems.

During the restoration of the car I tried some old discarded ball joints from 't Kreng's Webers in an attempt to smoothen the accelerator-pedal-action a bit. This worked so well that I forgot the ball joints were rather worn. As the linkage was accessible now I decided to fit a new linkage rod I purchased from Webcon. Even with the linkage rod being as accessible as can be, with the engine in the car, it still was a bit of a fiddle to get it fitted properly. Some very fine open ended 8mm spanners certainly came in handy here (for comparison's sake the original linkage alongside the up rated one ...

Next on the to do list for this car is fitting the air box and filters. At least the base plate for the air filter  is ready now ...

A change of plans?

Five months ago I thought it was time for a full rebuild of 't Kreng's engine. Luckily a friend managed to convince me that it would be better to refurbish the Weber's first and see how that influenced the engine's behaviour. Well last week I was able to do a first short test drive with the car. And that turned out to be rather positive. So over the Easter weekend  I used the car for our traditional Poasjrit (or Eastern Tour). A tour through our lovely area with some like minded (mostly Triumph) friends. It would have been nice if I could post some nice pictures here, but I was so engrossed with how the car behaved (and enjoying the driving) that I forgot to take any pictures, sorry 😔. The good news is that she behaved rather well. Actually so well that for the time being I can't see a proper reason to do any mayor work to the engine. Looks like she only needs a proper fine tuning of the Weber's to be back to her proper ageing self.

Pretty pleased with that, so I promptly put her away in the shed to make room on the drive for the DHC. Which means fine tuning has to wait for the time being, till I have some more spare time. This is because I first want to get some miles on the DHC, as she's again the car of choice for this year's 10CR. And it will be interesting to see how she behaves after an almost 10 month long hibernation.  But there are also some small alterations on the induction side of the engine waiting to be fitted. More on that soon.

Flying Legends Duxford 2014

Not so Triumph related this time ...

The second weekend of July last year I went over to the Duxford with some friends for this marvellous air show. It was so brilliant I returned home with some 1500 pictures on my cameras. And they took some time to get sorted properly. A small selection of photographs that capture the atmosphere quite nicely ...