FHC resto nr. 50; Parts sorting

Over the past month or so I have resumed work on the FHC. With the bulk of the work being done consisting of trawling through all the boxes with assorted parts I have acquired over the years, and select the best ones for use on the FHC. So far it has turned out to be rather time consuming, especially with the parts scattered over three different locations! But getting there slowly but surely.

The parts that will be powder coated are sorted now. Although I am still missing the exhaust bracket that fits to the rear of the gearbox (UKC2499). Also the early (Sprint) air box first needs a little bit of TLC before it's ready for its new finish ...

Remains the biggest lot, the parts that will be galvanised. Here I have still not decided what to do, go for the more original approach and have them (gloss zinc) galvanised in yellow or have them passivated in black like I used on the DHC ...

Luckily there's still some time to go before I have to make that decision, and in the meantime I can continue busying myself with the making of a stock list of all the parts that need galvanising ...

... and carefully capturing all sorted parts on camera. Not only for record's sake, but also to help me with matching all parts together afterwards ...

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 ...

Cool Air And Noise Reduction

My last winter project, this time for the DHC. I have actually been toying with this idea for a few years now, especially after a few longer trips abroad ... So with the preparations for this year's edition of Club Triumph's 10 Countries Run about to start, I thought it a good idea to give it a go. The plan is to get rid of the open K&N filters currently fitted to the engine and replace them with an original air filter box. Well sort of !

The outlines for this little project are to fit a more or less standard air box, but instead of an air filter it will have ram pipes inside. Actually the box is only fitted to reduce noise levels on longer trips, and to help get cool air from the front of the car to the carburettors. 

Here I encountered a few small problems, because I wanted an early box with the two round funnels, as these make fitting the air hoses so much easier. But I also wanted the later type lid with the alignment tabs, instead of the earlier design, as it works much better in aligning the cover and keeping it in place. Here's a picture of the lower edge of the early box ...

Luckily both variants have the same dimensions and have a strip spot welded to their lower edge that acts as locating strip. And this was rather straight forward to swap with a decent drill and a welder. The finished box looks like this, with the alignment tabs clearly visible ...

Also took the opportunity to remove the sensor from the base plate and blank of the hole. Looks much cleaner and the sensor won't be used anyway.

With the air box sorted it was time to focus on the most important part of the exercise, filtering the air and routing it to the air box. I based the design on the original cardboard blanking plates that are mounted to both sides of the radiator. The RH one will be replaced with a steel one. I choose steel as this enables me to weld in two tubes from an old filter box. To the front of these tubes I will fit two universal K&N filters. This way they will sit in front of the radiator and above the oil cooler. This should give them plenty of nice cool air. And to get that air to the carburettors the rear of the two tubes will be connected to the air-box using universal ø44mm air hose. Sadly still waiting for the base plate to be cut, so I can only show how it should look ...

DHC report nr. 94; Two steps backwards

In the past week it was mostly sorting various problems. The first problem I tackled were the two faulty brake pipes on the back axle. These were supplied with incorrect end fittings ...

As the fittings were too short they not only were very difficult to fit (and remove ...), they also didn’t seal properly. So after a phone call a new set was collected from C&C Parts earlier in the week, after which it was again time to get the little brake-pipe-bending tool out and bent them in the correct shape.

With the pipes in the correct shape fitting them to the axle turned out to be a much easier exercise with the correct fittings.

The other problem, and a serious one, was the central dashboard vent. One side of which didn’t seat properly, as a result of which the upper right hand corner stuck out some 5 millimetres. Not very worrying if you don’t notice it, but I did. And every time I looked at the dashboard it irritated me. So this one needed to get sorted properly. After two unsuccessful attempts over the past week I decided to go for a little bodge job, but for that I had to dismantle part of the dashboard. Also loosened all mounting screws and bolts to give me as much freedom of movement as possible without having to remove the complete dashboard ...

With all necessary parts removed I found out that there was no room for the bodge repair I had in mind. But I also found out what caused the problem. It was actually a combination of several alignment problems (heater, instrument panel and dashboard) combined with the new rubber seals. To cut a long story short, I removed the vents completely, removed the seals and replaced these with thinner ones. And after reshuffling everything were possible the vents clicked in place as they were meant to do. Will probably sleep much better tonight! 

Next job was fitting the oil cooler and connecting it to the engine. I wanted to re-use the old oil cooler but with new hoses, as the old braided ones were looking rather frayed and scruffy. But while trying to remove the hoses from the old oil cooler, to measure the fittings, the spanner, supporting the fitting on the oil cooler, slipped off. As a result of which the full force of the 24mm spanner I was using to undo the hose fitting, was released on the alloy cooler, which it didn’t survive. So a new one was ordered together with new hose and hose fittings ...

Making up the new hoses went pretty quickly once I worked out how best to tackle it. And fitting everything to the car was rather easy. Although I was glad when everything was connected without shearing of one off the cooler’s fittings ...

And with the hoses connected to the engine I could at last put the air filters back on the carburettors.

Only the smaller coolant hoses remain to be fitted, together with the exhaust clamps and the bonnet lock. After that filling her up with all the necessary fluids, bleed the clutch and brakes, check all systems, bond in a new wind screen, fit wipers and ...

DHC report nr. 30; More coating ...

After returning from Scotland I gently started again with work on the DHC. Picked up the last of the parts that needed coating. Especially the cam cover, header tank and air-filter-end-plates look rather nice in their wrinkle finish.

Also busied myself with cleaning up the indicator/side lights. On top the finished LH lens, bottom the RH lens as it came of the car.

I used some silver plastic paint on the inside rim of the lenses to brighten them up a bit. And I started with the cleaning and coating of all the parts for the dashboard. As I personally don’t like the grey dashboard color of the later TR7’s I decided to paint everything black. For this I am (again) using Vinylkote from Kolorbond. I used this on the interior of ‘t Kreng 13 years ago and it still looks very nice today, so the choice was easy. Only not so easy to get hold of, as it isn’t sold in the Netherlands anymore. Had to order it through their French agent, which went very well indeed (bearing in mind that my French is rather basic).

The parts I coated yesterday;

And some attention to detail, cleaning the heater control lighting lenses;

Last thing I did so far was reassembling the door mirrors. Forgot to take some pictures before I wrapped them up. Most important thing I did was to put some new rubber foam strips to the back of the mirror glass to prevent them from rattling.

Oops (or second trip with the DHC)

As the weather was rather nice today, and I had nothing better to do this afternoon, I decided to enjoy some topless motoring . Whilst driving some of my favourite country lanes in the area I noticed that the temperature gauge did go up and down quite clearly. But as the temperature didn't rise to alarming levels I didn't think much about it. I was more concerned with the gearbox which was rather notchy so now and then;

On my return home I decided to change the gearbox oil and to bleed the clutch just to be safe. But whilst jacking up the car I found a puddle under the steering rack. First thoughts was that the water-pump-seal had packed up, but there was also coolant higher on the block. A closer inspection revealed that the top radiator hose had a small tear, which was very easily enlarged;

Hopefully it's now ready for it's first longer trip !

The short story of 't Kreng

After my short introduction I'll give some details on the work that has been done on ‘t Kreng so far. The car started life as a Solihull built (Pharaoh Gold) TR7 FHC, and was first registered in the NL in April 1982. In 1994 and after some 70.000 km the previous (and second owner) decided to attack a Ford Scorpio with it. The TR7 did win but the car was said to be a total write-off. So I bought it as a spares donor for my DHC, only to find out that it was to good to scrap. So around Christmas 1994 the restoration started, and by the summer of 1996 the body was ready for reassembly to start;

Halfway through the restoration I got the chance to buy a cheap and brand new Sprint head. So my plans were changed slightly. Instead off the original 8 valve engine I would put a Sprint engine in. So as the car became more powerful I thought it a good idea to upgrade the suspension and front brakes. The car was lowered using the 200 lbs "Sprint" springs from Triumph Tune. The original (and rather useless) front brakes were ditched for a set off Princess callipers with larger (non-vented) discs. All suspension bushes were replaced by polyurethane ones from SuperFlex.

Then came the choice for the fuelling, first thoughts were SU's on a stock Sprint engine. But then you always want more power. And after having discussed this with Hans ten Broeke from BCCP Fuelsystems it was decided to put a Group 2 rally cam in the head together with stainless steel valves and bronze alloy valve guides. As Hans had an inlet manifold available for a set off twin Weber DCOE 45's the choice wasn't that hard. In all other aspects the rest of the engine is completely stock, so no porting or blue printing.

Finally in the summer off 1997 the car was at last ready for it's MOT which she passed without a problem. And after bedding in the engine for around 1500 km it was time to get it fine tuned on a rolling road. For this I choose BCCP Fuelsystems. Main reason for this was that they already knew the setup off my car and as they race Dolly Sprints have quite a lot off expertise with the engine. Despite blowing the rear gearbox seal out (due to what turned out to be a bend main shaft ...) the engine in the end produced between 152,5 and 165 BHP @ 5800 rpm at the rear wheels. The torque was above 180 Nm between 4200 and 6000 rpm with a maximum of 198 Nm @ 5400 rpm. So the fun could begin!

After the fuel pump got jammed, Milton Keynes

(1998-09-22)

Going up the Stilfserjoch from the north

(2002-07-03)

Holiday by the sea, Les Sables d'Olonne

(2002-07-28)

During a local tour, Vijlen

(2006-03-19)