Saturday 5th November - A trip to Norfolk.

If you go back to April 9th on this blog, you will see that a Triumph Mk1 estate was purchased from Nottingham and delivered to near East Dereham in Norfolk for some welding work to be carried out. Well, to cut a long story short, the estate joined a long queue of cars to be welded and had to wait its turn. 

On collecting the estate in Nottingham, we had found the brakes non-existent along with a few other issues. Now that the car was ready to be moved into the workshop it needed some brakes so it could be moved around without crashing into things.

So, Dave Maton and I set out for Norfolk taking some newly rebuilt brake callipers and other brake type parts with us. On arrival in Dereham, the first thing we had to do was get the car started after its long lay-up. This wasn't too bad and after manually priming the fuel pump, it started and ran fine with no issues.  We then had to move it from under the canopy where it had been stored and down to the workshop. (With no brakes!) Using just the hand brake for brakes I managed to reverse it down the lane and get the front end into the workshop. 

With this done the front end was jacked up, front wheels removed and both brake callipers (which were seized) removed. We then fitted the rebuilt callipers I had prepared some time ago and also fitted new brake pads. Bleeding the hydraulic system was next on the agenda and after doing each side twice we had a semi-decent brake pedal. (The whole system will be checked thoroughly when the car eventually arrives at my house!)

The other job I wanted to do was to replace the driver's seat as it had completely collapsed and you're almost sitting on the floor when you try and drive the car. I had brought up an Alfa Seat with me, so this was fitted as well just to make the manoeuvring a bit easier. 

By the time we had completed our work it was gone 3pm and it was time for Dave and I to make tracks back to civilisation. I still had to drop Dave off at Harlow before heading back home.  We suffered non-stop rain on the way home which slowed things down considerably and I ended up not getting home until gone 6pm. It had been a reasonably successful day though, so we were quite pleased with our efforts.