After further tuning the Triumph in the pissing down with rain and getting soaking wet on the Friday morning, I had managed to get it driving well enough to get it up to good friend Dave Harvey's today. Dave lives in Derby and the rally was starting just north of there, so if Dave could get it running properly, we could go from there and take part in the event.
I had filled up with fuel on the Friday night but had lost a quarter of a tank full by this morning due to a horrendous leak around the sender unit area. Undeterred, I set out out for Derby and collected Dave Maton on route. (My philosophy with the petrol leak was: I'm going to lose petrol due to the leak anyway, so I might as well try and burn it off while driving the car!)
Luckily we had a clear run and made good time, but the permanent smell of petrol was awful. You could even taste it. In fact, it was that bad, I even coughed at one point and flames came out!
We arrived at Dave's at around 12.30 and started work on various adjustments of fueling and ignition. We also tried another distributor and also re-checked the tappets. By about 4pm, it was running a lot better, but it still wasn't right. Reluctantly, I made the decision to withdraw from the event and head home. Before leaving though, we checked the sender unit on the fuel tank and found that it wasn't seated correctly at the top. With this rectified we went off and filled up with fuel and found that we no longer had leakage! At least something had gone right!
Again, we had a fairly clear drive home and I eventually got home around 19.30. The first thing I noticed when I got out of the car was how black and dirty my lovely chrome exhaust was. This will be the leaking petrol finding its way out of the boot floor and being blown backwards over the exhaust.
I don't know what my next move is with this car to be honest. This last week I have been out in the garage every morning at half seven and working on it before going to work and even a couple of nights after work as well, so I need a break from it for a while. It will also give me time to investigate more, and talk to a few more people about what the problem could be.
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