Saturday 27th July. Just too damn hot.

While attending the Triumph 2000 register national day a few weeks back I collected some lowered rear springs for Gavin's Mk2 saloon off of Chris Witor. Now that we both had a day free day, we decided to get them fitted. Gavin's car had always sat higher at the back than at the front so hopefully this would alter that.

This is a pretty straight forward job and I always use the method of removing the outer driveshaft in order to lower the trailing arms enough to remove the spring. (and unbolting the bottom of the shock absorber of course) Some people use spring clamps but I find it's quicker and less hassle this way.

After about hour both sides were done and a good test drive followed. The car not only looked better, but handled a lot better too.

The next job on the agenda was to change the steering rack gaiters on the Red Shed. (I really must stop calling it that!) They were fine when I took it for MOT, but with it recent return to regular use, they had disintegrated and split open.

New ones had been ordered and first thoughts were that I had been sent the wrong ones. after a quick perusal in the workshop manual and internet we discovered that one was indeed supposed to be a different shape to the other. The pinion end of the rack has a wide cone and is quite an easy fit. However, the nearside one has a small cone that has to go over a large nut and is quite a struggle to fit. Eventually though, it all came together and the car now has a new pair of gaiters.

Next on the agenda was to change the gearbox oil. The gearbox on this car is quite noisy and will need rebuilding sooner rather than later I suspect. I'm not at that stage yet though, so an oil change would have to do for now.

We got the car up high enough on axle stands so that I could crawl underneath and undo both the drain and filler plugs. With all the old oil drained, I replaced the sump plug and we then fed a piece of garden hose through the engine bay and into the filler hole and then used a standard 1L gear oil bottle to pour the gear oil into the piece of garden hose. A sort of intravenous drip feed. Much better than trying to squirt it in from underneath and getting covered in smelly gear oil!

With this done and it now being around four in the afternoon, both of us were roasting hot and had enough of laying under and working on cars, so we called it a day.

Well, that was the intention. By 6pm I was so bored of crap TV that I went back out to the garage for another spell. It was cooler now too, so it wasn't so bad.

I'd been meaning to fit some kind of additional cooling on Gertie for a while now and recent finding of a long ago ebay purchase inspired me to get it sorted. It took longer and was more hassle than I thought though but I got there in the end. Getting them up inside the nose cone was a real pig! By the time I had finished it was gone 9pm, but Gertie now has a large set of twin fans awaiting wiring up.