A busy few weeks and a set back for the "Flying Log"

The Blog has been a bit quiet lately, that's because I've been too busy actually using the Triumphs.

May Bank Holiday weekend was the Isle of Wight Camping weekend, had my usual pilgrmage over there with the Kids in the Flying Log. As usual a really great weekender.

On the Road in convoy in the "Log", pretty close to that Van!

Triumphs arriving at Black Gang Chine

Triumphs at Areton Barns craft centre

More convoy action, Alice hitches a lift with Alan in his Spitfire

The following weekend was the SEM (South of England Meet) weekend at Leatherhead. I went along to this in the GT6 as I had a kid free weekend. It was the first of the GT6 50th anniversary celebration meets this year as well.

Celebrating 50 years of the GT6

GT6s at SEM

GT6s at SEM

Over the Bank Holiday weekend at the end of May I visited Crystal Palace for the "Motorsport at the Palace event" Crystal Palace is actually a historic race venue and used to be a Grand Prix circuit back in the day. Once a year there is an annual sprint held there. Lots of various cars taking part from old historic single seaters, through classics to modern day cars such as Imprezza's etc and even a BMR i8.

One competitor well known in TSSC and Club Triumph Circles was John Davies in his Vitesse (known as "Son of Silverback"). There were a few other Triumphs racing too.

In good company in the car park

Nice TR3

This TR4 was competing

TR6 approaching the chicane

John Davies in Son of Silverback leaving the start

John negotiates the Chicane testing the suspension!

TR4 at the Chicane

The following weekend I went to a regular general classic car meet near me for the first time. The Crotch Cooler Classic Car Sunday meet at the Departure Lounge Cafe Alton. A very well turned out meet and I'm sure I'll be back.

Arriving at the Crotch Cooler in the GT6 (Picture courtesy of Chris Knowles)

Tidy TR6

Nice TR4

Very well turned out MK3 Spitfire

Dolly Sprint

A good turn out

Then this weekend it was another of my favourite events, the annual Ace Cafe Triumph Day. Managed to get along to this in the GT6.

Ace Cafe

Marks's lovely MK3 at the Ace

Arty Shot at the Ace

A great historic venue for a car meet.

Saturday wasn't all good though. It was time for the "Flying Log's" MOT and it failed this year. A few issues with brake inbalance and the handbrake should be easily fixed. However there is a bit of tin worm underneath. The "Chassis leg" type box sections where the rear of the front subframe attach are corroded and will need some welding, I'll get Jim down at Moonface to do this bit as I'm not much of a welder....

Vibrating Propshaft and replacement woes

My GT6 has had a bit of a vibration that comes in at about 65mph for some time now, not severe but annoying. After investigating a while back I found that the propshaft had some wear in the sliding splined joint which would need a new prop to cure, as the vibration wasn't that bad I've lived with it for a few years now!

However, a couple of weeks ago driving to a local club meet the vibration got much worse and pretty unbearable. I investigated and found I had wear in a propsaft UJ, so I bit the bullet and purchased a brand new propshaft.

Fitting a new prop is fairly straight forward, the only pain is having to remove the dashboard support and gear box tunnel. One bit of poor triumph design is that there is a small extension hatch behind the gearbox tunnel to allow for the overdrive, If this had been made a bit longer so that it encroached on the gerabox cover rear this would make the job much easier as the propshaft flange bolts would be accessible without removing the tunnel. However Triumph weren't that sensible! I think this is my old mechanical designer and production engineering background from the late 70s/ early 80s coming out. I like to think that I always tried to make my designs consider future maintenance!

If Triumph designers had been sensible they would have made this access hole longer going forward to allow access to the propshaft bolts without removal of the tunnel...

Anyway I removed the tunnel to provide better access. dropped the exhaust down and unbolted the prop.

Inspection once removed confirmed a worn out UJ at the front along with the worn sliding joint, this would seem to be the reason behind the vibration.

The new prop supplied by Canley Classics is of a slightly different design to the original, firstly the prop tube is a smaller diameter, secondly the flanges are a different design to the originals, more about this later in the blog!

Old and new props, note the thinner tube on the new one. 

The other point I noted was that the new prop had grease nipples fitted in place. Normally the grease nipple holes have blanking plugs and nipples are only screwed into place during maintenance. However I suspected the prop would have been balanced with the nipples in place and replacing them with plugs may have upset the balance. I checked with Canley Classics and they advised me to fit with the nipples in place.

Original prop with blanking plus in place

New Prop with grease nipples in place.

I then went to fit the new prop. The diff end was bolted up with no issues.

However, the overdrive end had a problem the joint between the overdrive output flange and the propshaft front flange won't quite locate fully home.

I took some careful measurements with my digital caliper and I  determined that there was a clearance issue. The new prop has a different design of flange than the OEM prop. There is a clearance hole in the centre of the new prop flange that measures 28.5mm diameter. The OEM prop had a flange with a much larger diameter bowl shaped recess to provide more clearance.

Old prop flange has a bowl shaped recess for clearance in the centre

New prop flange has a smaller hole for clearance

The overdrive flange has a large castellated nut that sits proud of the overdrive output flange by approx 2.9mm. The nut is 31.4mm across corners and therefore fouls on the clearance hole on the propshaft flange. Taking into account the recess of 1.6 mm , the flanges sit proud by approx 1.3mm.

Measurements

As a solution to the issue I filed chamfers on the corners of the castellated nut, this provided enough clearance to be able to allow the flanges to fully engage. I've emailed Canleys to advise the issue, they really need their supplier to ensure that new orders are fitted with flanges with larger clearance holes or OEM flanges so they are fit for purpose going forward.

Anyway, prop is now bolted up. I'll spend another evening later in the week rehanging the exhaust and replacing the tunnel, carpet, dash support, radio and trim .

Holey Dolly

The paintwork at the front end of the Flying Log has been crying out for some attention for a while. There was some corrosion bubbling through above the headlamps and the paint on the bonnet and front wings was very patchy.

Patchy front end 

Corrosion above the headlamps, similar both sides

The issue with the Log is that it's not really worth enough money to be worthwhile having professional body repairs, added to that the front eyebrow panel is only available in fibreglass nowadays which to me is not a proper repair. If it was a Sprint in similar condition then  I'd be getting some bodywork and a respray done but for the log it's a question of going back to the 70s and using filler and spray cans like everyone used to back in the day!

ex owner Darren Sharp had let me know that there was already some filler above the headlights, so I though I knew what to expect. However, the amount of filler was a bit more than I expected.

Worse than I though!

Anyway, I ground out the filler, treated what was left with Kurust, followed by Finegans No 1 Rust treating and protector paint. Cut some thin sheet steel to use as strengtheners for the larger holes and then filled.

Treated with Kurust

Other side treated

Painted with Finnegans No 1

Filled

Filled

There was also some surface rust just be,ow the windscreen that I also treated and skimmed with filler.

Surface Rust below Windscreen treated and filled.

Then it was time to mask up and prime, I used some aerosol No1 on the ex rusty bits followed by some red oxide primer.

Masked anmd primed

Masked and primed

I then sprayed the whole front end in top coat, I don't have any proper spraying facilities so it was aerosols, I used 5  x 400ml cans. Needs cutting back after a few weeks of hardening but at least it's all one colour now!

Not a bad job, will be even better when cut back after hardening.

More work than was needed

I took the time to strip down the Dolomite today to fix the water leak. The leak was apparently under the manifold, I wasn't sure but suspected either a leaky core plug or water pump pipe.

So I spent a few hours removing the carbs and manifold.

After stripping the core plugs and waterpump pipe all looked ok.

Core Plugs all look OK

I left the core plugs un-replaced (if it aint broke don't fix it)  but replaced the waterpump pipe anyway as I had purchased a nice new stainless one to replace the steel version. The only thing I found that was probably causing the link is that one of the heater pipes broke as I removed it so I think it was split. However this wasn't where the dripping was from! I suspect the water was leaking from the hose and running along the heater pipe making it look like the leak was under the manifold!

Heater hose which broke broke when I removed it.

Only hassle I had was with the stainless heater pipe, the hole in the fixing bracket was only 8mm and it is supposed to fit on a manifold stud which is 3/8 inch unf. Not too much of a problem as I have a good pillar drill so easily fixed but a bit of a quality issue which I have flagged to the Triumph specialist I bought it from so they can take this up with their supplier.

Hole was too small

Anyway, having put everything back together I now have a leak free cooling system. I did put some bars leaks in the system just in case of any future leaks, rumour has it that Triumph used to do this at the factory, don't know if this is true or not but sound sensible.

Leaky Log

The "Flying Log" sprung a coolant leak last weekend. Had a quick look and it seemed to be coming from a hose that runs between the inlet manifold and a steel pipe that runs to the waterpump. As luck would have it I had a spare so fitted it this morning.

However, it's still leaking, obviously wasn't the hose after all. I can now see that the leak is under the exhaust manifold somewhere but despite using mirrors and torches I can't quite see exactly where.

It''s either the steel pipe that runs to the waterpump has rusted through or I have a blown core plug. More likely the core plug but I've ordered both a set of core plugs and a stainless steel replacement pipe. Juts need to find some time to strip out the carbs,  inlet and exhaust manifolds to gain access, not a 5 minute job...

RBRR Entry confirmed and penultimate White Lion Breakfast meet

First some good news. Team "Flyinng Log's" entry to the 2016 RBRR is confirmed. This time we are team 33, or in keeping with the poo coloured theme I will refer to this as team "Turdy Tree"...

Team "Turdy Tree" the "Flying Log"

Now some sadder news, the excellent series of Classic Car Breakfast Meets that I've been attending for the last few years at White Lion Antiques look to be stopping in the new year as the site is likely to be redeveloped. This is a great pity as the meets have been very well attended with a real varied selection of Classic and Sports Cars from Humble Austin A30s up to Lambos McClarens and Ferrari's. I'm certainly going to miss these meets.

Today was the penultimate meet, a few pictures below. The final meet will be on Sunday 13th December.


First a few of the Triumphs there today

This Sprint had a for sale note in the window for £2850 ono, looked like a bargain to me, wish I had space!

My GT6 , it was a bit packed early on and double parking was needed






Managed to get a proper space later on

 

Almost a Triumph, a really nice Standard Vangaurd (these have a similar Standard Triumph 6 Cylinder Engine as the later 6 cylinder Tiumphs, eg 2000, 2500 saloons, Vitesse Mk1, GT6 Mk1)

A now some of the other cars

Nice Europa, surprised this wasn't at last month's Lotus themed meet.

This time the themed marque was VW, more campers than other "variants" (excuse the pun) turned up

Nice Split Screen Camper

On it's way out

Gorgeous metallic blue paint on the Anglia

The regular posse of DeLoreans turned up

Nice fairly unmolested early Mini Cooper

Modern Vauxhall Engine in this Viva saloon, I bet that surprises a few cars who try and beat it away from the lights!

A Couple of XKs brought some class