Tinkering with the Triumph

[Father Ted]

All finished, and I have actually been using the car!

[Father Ted]

MoT today. Passed with no advisories.

Had a chat with the MoT testers, who it turns out are both classic Ford owners, 105E Anglia and Mk1 Granada.

2017 Edit: That was the extent of reported tinkering in 2015.

[Father Ted]

2017 Edit: This starts at the end of March 2016.

With the Zodiac away being welded I have been doing some more tinkering with the horrible Herald.

The intention is to fit the new carpets which were my Christmas present and fit a gearbox that I bought from eBay and refurbished, along with a new clutch and anything else that needs doing...

Car in the garage and raised up on ramps and stands.



Seats, grotty old carpets and gearbox out.





Decided to adjust the handbrake and investigate why it is wobbly.



Spacer and circlip are missing so handbrake lever could have come adrift at any time!

New spacer washer and circlip fitted. Also made a new cover for the handbrake mechanism out of millboard to replace the disintegrating cardboard one.





I am replacing the clutch while I am about it. Previous bodger had only replaced the driven plate, and this was worn unevenly due to the flywheel being badly scored. Skimming the flywheel will cost £60, but I have tracked down a good used one for £30, and am picking that up tomorrow. Spigot bearing also had a small chunk broken off so I have ordered a new one of those too.

Had to take the propshaft off to remove the gearbox and noticed that the front UJ was fairly new but the rear one was not and needed replacing. It would not come out without a fight, which ended up with me breaking my vice!



I will also replace the leaking oil seal at the front of the diff while I have access to it.

The more I work on this car that more I am of the opinion that the person who "restored" it in the 1990s should have been strangled at birth!

[Father Ted]

Fitted new clutch and replacement gearbox.

And I have the cuts and bruises to prove it.

[Father Ted]

Having fitted the replacement gearbox and refitted the propshaft (after replacing leaking diff pinion oil seal) I repaired the transmission tunnel with GRP and refitted that.

Then I could fit the carpets that were my Christmas present, but first I painted the seat runners and insides of the A & B posts, which looked awful because they had been brush painted very badly in black, when they should be body colour.











Also fitted new engine mounts ready for MoT on Tuesday as the old ones were looking rather tired.

[Father Ted]

The good news is that the Herald has passed its MoT with no advisories.

The bad news is that the DVSA seem to have deleted it from their MoT database...

So, in order to sort out my MoT certificate I have spoken to 4 different branches of DVSA, and had to send paper copies of all relevant documents, plus an SAE to someone in Kent.

That is over an hour of my life wasted, apparently because someone has not been trained to use the computer properly.

[Father Ted]

According to the nice lady at the Kent office of DVSA the tester entered an incomplete VIN. The system could not find a match for the registration number, so created a new record with the few and incorrect details provided by the tester. The tester obviously begs to differ...

[Father Ted]

With the NEC show coming up I decided it was about time I fitted the new ignition switch that I bought there last year.

The only thing wrong with the old switch was that the it did not work in the "auxiliary" position.

However, once I removed it from the dash I found that there was nothing wrong with the switch, it had just been wired up wrongly.

I would like to point out that it was not me who wired it up wrongly.

[Father Ted]

bought a pair of Vitesse wood door cappings at a club day. Unfortunately they are not a matched pair and the varnish was cracked and peeling so I carefully sanded off the varnish...






Stained the bare wood so it was roughly the same colour as the dash...






Then applied numerous coats of yacht varnish, sanding between coats with very fine wet and dry...





I am quite pleased with the result, and it was easier than re-painting the tops of the doors which were beginning to look scabby.

I also noticed that one of the front brake hoses was definitely past its best.


So I bought a new pair and replaced both. The other side was still OK (obviously replaced more recently) but I always like to replace such things in pairs.

[Father Ted]

2017: That was the end of the tinkering blog on the old forum.

[genegenie]

Great to see it all come back and thank you Ted for taking the time to upload it all again!

[penguin45]

Agreed - it was a most enjoyable read.

P45.