New Clutch

I've now completed my clutch change, ready for a couple of runs up the hill climb course at Prescott in 10 days time.

The old clutch was worn down to the rivets on the pressure plate side and had worn a tell tale groove on the pressure plate surface..

There was still a little bit of friction material above the rivets on the flywheel side so luckily there was no damage there. The new clutch is much lighter in operation than the old one and is biting much lower on the pedal travel, another sign that the old one was past it's sell by date! While the gearbox was out I took the opportunity to clean out the overdrive filter and the overdrive engagement is now much quicker with a clean filter and a change of gearbox oil.

One little tip for all you overdrive Triumph owners out there. The fixings for the overdrive gearbox mount are really difficult to do up or undo without the aid of an assistant unless you've got 4ft long arms like a Gorilla as you can't reach the bolt head inside the car and the nut under the car at the same time. I've got around this on my car by putting a nut between the overdrive mounting and the mounting platform, this only raises the gearbox by about 1/4 inch so causes no problems and it locks the bolt in place inside the car so you only have to worry about doing up or undoing the nuts under the car. 

To finish off here's a couple of pictures from SEM at Leatherhead last weekend, I managed to get along to this but not in the Triumph as it was still in pieces!

The show

Turbocharged Sprint Engined Spitfire, this used to be seen regularly at Triumph shows  a few years ago and was back out again being used in anger.

Nicely prepared TR7 racer

Over on the Isle of Wight

Just returned from a great weekend again at the annual Isle of Wight Triumph Camping Weekend at Appuldurcombe camping and caravan park. As usual Graham and Angela organised a brilliant event, with runs out to Amazon World Zoo, Calborne Water Mill and lunch at the Wight Mouse Pub. Evening Entertainment on the Saturday included the excellent Darek Sandy (Reggae) and a Magician. On the Sunday our area did well again in the quiz, coming 2nd (although we had won it the previous 2 years).

Only one little problem for me, the clutch on the GT6 started slipping intermittently on the drive down to the Island and then on the various runs. So it looks  like I need to do a clutch change sometime in the next couple of weeks as I'll need a decent clutch for the Triumph Marque Day at Prescott. I fitted the last clutch back in 1988 and it's done a good 75,000 miles so has lasted pretty well. It was a genuine Borg & Beck one though so I'll certainly be looking to see if I can find another genuine one to install as the extra cost more than outweighs the hassle of changing out a cheap one that may not last anywhere near as long.

It's Spring Time!

2 years ago I picked up a bargain at Stafford, a pair of brand new Koni front shocks for £65. At long last I’ve got around to fitting them, together with a pair of Triumphtune lowered and uprated springs and poly bushed. Also replaced the top ball joints and trunnion bushes while I was at it, although they didn’t actually need replacing but it’s well over 15 years since I last changed them so thought it would be a good idea.

The nearside lower trunnion was a bit of a bugger, the bolt had seized to the steel sleeve within the bush despite assembling it with copper ease last time around.  Ended up drilling the head off and hacksawing through the bolt.

One side completed, other just needs re-assembly, all ready for the Isle of Wight camping weekend, SEM, our area treasure hunt and Prescott Standard Triumph Marque day next month.

GT6 Cake!

I've just managed to complete my half century, or 5 decades.....


Had a bit of a party with family and freinds on a narrow boat last night which I enjoyed immensely. The surprise birthday cake had a Nappy Cack Yellow GT6 iced on to the top, accompanied by cup cakes decorated with gear knob, speedo and headlamp symbols and also some little choccy cars!

A Fish n Chip Supper and a Keg of Hogsback Brewery T.E.A. ensured all were suitably fed and watered.

 

Christmas came at last!

We had our postponed TSSC area Christmas meal last night which I had organised, a little delayed after snow stopped play last time around! A good time was had by all though at the Hoggett Pub Restuarant. We spent some of the money we have raised at the raffles at our monthly meetings on some Christmas Gifts for all that attended, and had a raffle with decent rather than naff prizes for a change. Many Thanks to Carl and Beckie for organising the shopping! a few Triumph's in the car park as well, I opted for a lift from my wife Julia though, I had intended to travel in the GT6 but she was feeling a little under the weather and offered to drive which meant I could have a few beers. As it is the week of St David's Day I opted for some Welsh stuff that they had on tap !! Picture below from the meal.

One step forward two steps back !

Part way through putting the GT6 back together I decided to start it up as it hadn’t been run for a week or so but found the battery was KO’d. I thought that the battery was only a couple of years old and it was a high quality Bosch one so thought I’d dig out the receipt and take it back under warranty. When I found the receipt it turned out it was actually just under 4 years since I bought it. I wasn’t sure whether it had a 3, 4 or 5 year warranty and couldn’t find any paper work or signs on the battery to give any clues. So I went back to Costco the cash & carry where I bought it, the good news was it had a 4 year warranty, the bad news was they wouldn’t do an exchange but were happy to give a refund so having been refunded off I went to their tyre and battery dept to get a new one. Battery’s have gone up a lot in the last 4 years, the last one cost me £32 from Costco, the new one was £56 but having checked out Halfords the same Bosch battery is £104 so I’m reasonably happy.


I got home put the new battery in and started the car up no problems. I then finished putting it back together and bled the brakes etc. Then went to start the car out to take it for a test run and found that the starter was KO’d! So now I need a new starter, maybe it was on the way out and that killed the old battery. Ideally I’d change it for a high torque starter conversion but I’m in a hurry and can get a good old reconditioned Lucas LR101 locally tomorrow
All being well the car will be back in one price by tomorrow night ready to take back to the MOT centre for some welding and a re-test….

MOT Issues :-(

It's been a long time since my GT6 had any problems passing the MOT, 2001 was the last time I had a MOT failure so I was probably about due for another one!



One of the rear wheel bearings had excess play, the brake pipe across the rear of the chassis had signs of corrosion and there were 3 areas of corrosion underneath. The most serious being a hole about 1 inch x 1/2 inch that the tester managed to poke in a front out rigger. The other two are pretty minor a very small split in the passenger floor pan near a seat mounting and a small split at the edge of the boot floor. The last two are not in a particularly structural position but were within 30cm of a load bearing area so are a failure under the MOT regulations.

I'll get the corrosion plated by the MOT place just to get a quick pass.

I took the halfshaft out last night and rebuilt it tonight with a new bearing and a new genuine metalastik rotoflex coupling that I was lucky to pick up cheap on ebay. It's been a long time since I've done a wheel bearing on the GT6, I did have a stock of shims and spacers for setting up the end float but I can't find them anywhere in my Aladdin’s Cave of a Garage. Luckily though the existing spacer was the right size to give about 1 thou of end float which is within tolerance. I remember last time I replaced a bearing I had trouble getting the outer bearing off the hub as it disintegrated leaving the inner race in place. So this time around I treated myself to a bearing splitter tool, that certainly makes the job nice and easy.

So just need to change the brake pipe and put the halfshaft back in, I can then book the car in to get the corrosion plated and the car retested. I always take my car to a place that does free retests on principle, however they have now reduced their free retest time limit from 14 to 7 days and I'll probably miss the 7 day cut off which means I'll have to pay for the retest which is a pain....