Wednesday 29 June 2011

June 25th & 26th- Good day bad day!

Saturday 25th

Saturday 25th June saw me heading down to East Kent to attend the Triumph 2000 Register National day. I had initially planned to go in the estate, but seeing as the power steering conversion was complete and the car looked good on its newly aquired TR6 wheels, I decided to take 'Gertie' the new Mk1 saloon.
The drive down was a good one and there were some nice cars at the show. I collected a Chris Witor semi-sport exhaust for my Mk2 estate and the other bits I needed to fit a full sport exhaust system on Gertie, so all was good.


I left the show at around 5.30pm but only got about eight miles down the road before 'Gertie' started running sick. I stopped in a lay-by a few times to see if I could resolve the issues, but she seemed to be breaking down under power. I suspected faulty plug leads, but didn't have any spares, so I decided to just carry on with her running sick and tried to make it home. It was slow going, but progress was being made, (although I was down to 40mph up the hills!) and I was quite glad when I made it to the Dartford Tunnel. At least I was in the right county now. However, just out of the Dartford tunnel Gertie decided she had had enough and gave out altogether. I was in quite a dangerous spot with no hard shoulder and right on the junction of an exit slip road. Luckily the police were quickly on the scene and even gave the woman on the breakdown switchboard a good telling off after she had insisted on reciting a ten minute speech on the company health & safety procedure regarding vehicle breakdowns! With traffic whizzing past me just inches away, I could have easily been killed before she'd even finished reading it! Health & safety my ass!!!!!!!!
Anyway, the police arranged free recovery to Thurrock services and then I was met by an AA man who then proceeded to try and bring Gertie back to life. He succeeded in part, but she was still running too sick to make it home under her own steam, so he towed me back home.

Sunday 26th.

After a lie in (I was knackered from my long day Saturday) I started work on Gertie to try and figure out why she was constantly misfiring. I changed the plugs, the plugs, the rotor arm and points and condensor all to no avail. I couldn't change the distributor cap as I couldn't find the spare.
I then decided to carry out a compression test only to find that cylinders 2 to 6 were reading between 170 & 175 psi, but cylinder no.1 was only reading 100 psi. Now apparently this still wouldnt have caused the misfire, but seeing I'm probably using this car for the '10CR' (ten countries in five days rally) in September I wanted it right. So, the cylinder head was removed where it was discovered that the exhaust valve was badly worn and wasn't seating properly, hence the lack of compression.


As I write this the cylinder head has now had new valves fitted and has been put back together courtesy of Carlow Engineering and the engine will be reassembled when time permits. Once this is all back together, I then still have to find out what's causing the misfire!!!!!!!

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