Monday 27th May. Red Shed Dead! Again!

An early morning walk to the shops on this fine morning led me to discovering this parked in a drive two streets away from me.......

Five years ago I had heard that there was a Triumph 2000 parked in an alleyway near my house, but never got round to pursuing it. A knock on the door at a more civilised time got no answer but it did allow me to have a closer look. This was a very, very rotten car that had obviously been parked for some time. I suspect it has been dragged from the alleyway and placed on the drive ready for collection by the scrap man. Pity as it could yield some useful spares……..but not many!

 

Gavin then arrived and our task today was to have a play with his colour tune contraption and hopefully get the Red Shed running better. However, before we could do that we had to resolve the serious overheating issue that had evolved along with the warmer weather. It wasn’t so evident with the bitter winter we’ve had.  I don’t know what it is about this car, but as soon as you improve one area of it, another decides to hold up any further progress. I think it just doesn’t like me!

 The day before I had removed and flushed out the radiator. I’d also flushed out the heater radiator, made sure that all hoses were unblocked and that water could flow through them, and relocated the heater and inlet manifold hoses so that they were in the exact place that workshop manual says. But it was still getting very hot, very quick.

 Gavin brought another water pump with him, so we removed the water pump housing to inspect that too. We did find a small hole blocked inside the housing, so we cleared that and blasted it out with an airline before refitting. Had that cured it? Had it bugger! We then removed the thermostat altogether just to see if that made any difference. It seemed to (Or so we thought) so we got on with the tuning. We even rigged up a temporary rev counter to assist with monitoring the revs…





But before we had a chance to do much, the damn thing bloody overheated again! (Certain words that I called it at the time have been replaced by the word damn!)

 Gavin by now had to make a move and so with nothing else left to try I decided to remove the cylinder head. I wasn’t convinced it was a head gasket problem as there was no tell tale signs of water in the oil or cream coloured sludge round the filler cap. There did seem to be a circulation problem though, so I needed to inspect the waterways in the block and the head. The head does seem to need a serious clean as the springs and valves are caked in a thousand years worth of dried and burnt oil, so maybe a chemical clean is on the cards.



With the head removed and with gentle probing with a screwdriver, I found one waterway blocked in the engine block and three waterways blocked in the cylinder head. I managed to clear them all and some serious flushing with a high powered hosepipe and an airline did manage to remove a hell of a lot of crap and corrosion. By now, it was 6pm and yet another full day had been spent on this unforgiving heap of red crap and it was time to call it a day. I pushed it gently back into the garage and stopped it in its normal place, but as soon as I turned my back, it developed a mind of its own and rolled itself backwards into the garage wall and smashed the rear spotlight I had fitted only a few days ago! I told you it doesn’t like me!