Monday 24th April. Compression Test

 After my disappointing weekend I decided to have a 'non-car' day on the Sunday and just chill out indoors and do nothing. I have to say I quite enjoyed it. (Plus it was pissing down with rain all day as well, so I didn't much fancy going out anyway)

I did email a friend of mine who used to work for the Triumph specialist TR Enterprises asking him what he thought of my car problems and basically he advised to do a compression test. This made sense actually and I don't know why I didn't think of it before. As he said, 'if you've adjusted the ignition timing and the fueling and that's making no difference, then it must be a mechanical fault.' 

The replacement cylinder head we had temporarily fitted was also an unknown and untested item, so there could even be a problem with that. So, today I ventured outside and did the compression test. Straight away, I could see what the problem was. Cylinder 1 read 80psi, 2 read 140psi, 3 read 120psi, 4 read 140psi, 5 read 150psi and 6 read 150psi as well. 

Ideally, all of the cylinders should be reading over 140psi and should have no more than a 10% variation between each cylinder. Number one cylinder running at 80psi is far too low and will make the cylinder run lean and it will also cause a misfire. This could be due to a valve problem, or the valves not seating properly. I wont know until the cylinder head has been removed. (Again!) 

So, my plan now is get my original cylinder head (Which is a proven good one) back from Derby. (Dave Harvey took it home with him to get the broken stud out) I will then have it rebuilt with new valves and springs etc, and then go through the laborious process of removing the duff cylinder head and refitting the refurbished one. Loads of fun-not!

Saturday 22nd April. Historic Counties Rally- Or not!

 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. 

Thursday 20th April. Brake repairs!

 When I drove home from work on Monday night, I pulled up onto the drive and to my horror thought I was going to crash right through my front gates! The brake pedal almost sank to the floor! Luckily, my reactions were good and I managed to pull the handbrake up and stop in time before any damage was done. 

So Tuesday morning, I checked the master cylinder reservoir and found that I hadn't lost any fluid, so the fault was likely to lie with the master cylinder. I ordered two new seal kits from Chris Witor and waited, and waited and waited. By Thursday they still hadn't arrived, so I used a very old stock seal kit that's been in my spares box for about ten years. I wasn't happy about using this, but I needed to be able to test drive the car and needed brakes to do it. 

So, reluctantly, I stripped the master cylinder down and rebuilt it with the old kit. I then decided to fit the brake servo that I had had refurbished last year, but hadn't got round to fitting. 

With the brakes bled, I was able to go for a test drive and was going to take the car to work again, but to be honest, it was running so badly that I turned round and brought it back home again. It seems to be fighting me all the way this car. I'm not best pleased with it at present.

Tuesday 18th April. Change of distributor.

 Taking the Triumph to work on Monday had shown that even with altering the settings on the 123 distributor, the car still wasn't running right. 

With time now getting tight for the HCR rally this weekend, I decided to revert back to my previous distributor which was just a standard electronic item. I'm still not convinced that the fueling is right on this car either, but being a Lucas manual fuel injection system, it's a bit beyond my capabilities. 

Anyhow, I fitted the alternative distributor and adjusted it, but something still isn't  right. It's just not a very happy motor car. The Vacuum is reading right though, so in reality, the timing shouldn't be that far out. If at all.  

I've also now got a braking issue as well, so any test drives will have to wait until I sort that out. Work continues!

Sunday 16th April. A breakfast meet at last!

 Now that the weather is getting a bit warmer, the classic car breakfast meets have resumed. It's been a long winter, so it was nice to get out and start seeing people again. 

I went for a test drive before going to the meet to test the timing on the Triumph, but I found the timing too advanced. I was kicking myself for not bringing the laptop with me as I could have adjusted it at the meet. 

However, once there I met up with good friends Peter and Gavin. Peter hadn't planned to be there due to problems with the exhaust on his car, but he had brought it round to me on Saturday morning where I had carried out repairs to make it driveable again. 

It was a good morning, although the field was a tad water logged, but it was worth it just to get out and have a chat with fellow enthusiasts. We managed to sink a couple of cups of coffee and enjoyed a sausage in a roll and then spent a couple of hours wandering round the field a admiring the other cars. A very pleasant morning all in all and we're looking forward to the show season starting again. 

Saturday 15th April - Continued Pi work.

 Following last Sundays disappointing maiden journey in the newly injected Triumph, I was fortunate enough to receive my refurbished injectors back from KMI. With these fitted I then turned my attention to the ignition timing. Now that the car was running on injection rather than carburettors, the timing would need some adjustments. 

I have a programmable 123 distributor fitted to this car, so all adjustments have to be made on a laptop. The only downside to this is that the curve can be altered to each power band, (Every thousand revs) so it can take some time to get it exactly how you want it. It's certainly a clever bit of kit though.

You can also set two positions so you can switch from one to the other, so I chose the two programmes I thought would be suitable and loaded them into the distributor. I didn't have time to test drive it though as I had other jobs to do, so it will have to wait for another time. 

Sunday 9th April - The Pi's maiden voyage

 Good friend Gavin arrived at mine this morning in his Mk2 Pi as we had planned to go for a drive in our Triumphs. The first job though was to bleed the brakes on my Green Cortina. (Much easier with two people) With this done, we made use of the sunshine and decided to go for a drive over to Wallasea Island. 

I needed petrol, so we stopped for fuel on route and while we were stopped I fiddled about with injector number two as it had decided not to play ball. With this corrected we continued our drive. I still had a few issues and the car still isn't running quite on song. 

Wallasea is lovely in the sunshine, it's just a shame that they don't have a coffee shop over there. They would have had a good trade this morning as there were lots of people over there. 

After a relaxing hour in the sun, we headed back, but my car still wasn't performing that well. I did notice that on low revs, it's fine, but any form of acceleration results in a misfire. I suspect that the injectors are not opening fully at the correct pressure. It's my fault really as I had the Lucas pump refurbished, and the metering unit, and the pressure relief valve. Due to the fact that I had 12 injectors in my spares box, I took it for granted that at least 6 of them would be ok, so didn't bother having them checked. It's looking like I should have had them refurbished as well. I've already sent 6 injectors to KMI Injection in Bedford, so I will chase them up this week to see if I can get a quick return. This car is due on the Historic Counties rally in two weekends time, so it needs to be ready.  

Saturday 8th April - Oil Change.

With nearly everything on my list completed (I'm still waiting for the injectors to be refurbished) the only thing left for me to do was an oil and filter change. To be honest I'd only changed the oil about 3000 miles ago, but the recent removal of the cylinder head would have let some water down the bores and into the engine block, so it was best to drain it all out and replace with new. It made sense to replace the oil filter  while I was at it as well.

Whilst waiting for the oil to drain I removed the scuttle panel on the Zetec for painting again. I wasn't keen on the orange I have to say, so I painted it black for the time being. 

With the oil and filter change done it was time to start the Triumph up and move it out of the garage. Before I could do that though, I had to move both Cortina saloons out of the way.

 I got the Triumph started, but it was mis-firing first of all, but changing injector number 2 cured that, so I was able to go for a quick drive. I didn't go too far as the car is very low on petrol at present. Plus, I'm going out for a proper drive tomorrow with Gavin, so I had to save enough to get to a petrol station tomorrow. 

Friday 7th April - Good Friday-In more ways than one.

 So, more jobs to knock off the list today, but not many due to my successful day yesterday. The first thing was to tidy the garage a bit. I cant stand working around mess and I had left it messy yesterday because I was knackered.

With the garage tidier, I then removed the air filter and plenum so that I could get to the throttle return spring. The 6-3-1 manifold had stopped the original spring from locating in the correct place. So after some head scratching, I decided to remove the Plenum mounting bracket and drilled a small hole in it. This then allowed the spring to do its job without coming into contact with the manifold like it was before. To be honest, the spring could do with being a bit longer and it's already tensioned, but it's better than it was and it will do the job for now. 

While the sun was shining and it was quite warm, I then took a break from the Triumph and painted a spare scuttle panel for the Zetec Cortina. The original one is with the painter at present while he tries to get a colour match so he can repair the front wing.

I did find some paperwork in the vehicle history folder that I got with the car that indicated that the blue was 'Azzuro Gulf' which turns out to be the Blue used on the Ford GT40 race cars that were in the Gulf Oils livery. 

So, this discovery has now made me consider other options regarding the cars paint scheme. I'm considering having an Orange stripe down the side and also having the roof orange too. With this in mind I painted the scuttle panel Orange to see how the Blue and Orange would look together. The jury is out at present, so I will give it a lot of thought before I commit. (Especially as the two quotes I've had for painting and vinyl wrapping have both been £750 plus vat!)

So back to the Triumph. I had been unhappy with how untidy the fuel pump, swirl pot, PRV etc. looked in the boot. I was also worried about things in the boot moving around and knocking high pressure fuel lines off while cornering. 

I set about building a 'boot board' to cover it all over. I'm not normally good at this type of thing, but I have to say I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. I've made it so that it's not a permanent fixture and can just be lifted out of the way if ever I should have to make repairs in that area. I've also drilled some air vent holes in the top of it so if ever the pump runs hot at any time it can dispel the hot air. All in all, another successful day. I think I could do with a black boot carpet though! Or a new blue one. 

Thursday 6th April. Triumph continuation.

 I had another day off work today, so I decided to get on with all the outstanding jobs on the Triumph so I can hopefully drive it at some point this weekend. 

The first job (while I had clean gloves) was to hide all the wiring for the Lucas fuel pump behind the interior panels and under the carpets where it can't be seen. This only took about an hour, so I was off to good start. Next on the list was to secure the choke cable. (Or fuel enrichener as it's known on Pi's) It had been fitted in a rush to get the car started, but not finished properly. 

The next job was to route and secure the main fuel line and also the return line from the metering unit back to the fuel tank. This involved getting the car up on axle stands at the front and rear and spending long spells lying underneath. This took quite some time as I didn't want the plastic fuel lines anywhere near the exhaust. Eventually, I got it finished and then stopped for lunch. 

The first job after lunch was to fit six new spark plugs and after that I moved onto relocating the fuse holder for the live for the relay for the Lucas fuel pump. The fuse holder was already fitted, but it was a bit of a mission to change fuses in the place where it was currently mounted. I moved it to a more suitable place on the inner wing just behind the strut turret. I had to trim some of the wires to adapt them to their new home, but by the time I was done, it looked a lot neater, so all was good. 

Next on the list was to re-fit the battery clamp, but not before fitting a new battery terminal clamp onto the positive battery lead. The old one had gone slightly out shape over the years. 

A flame trap was next. This fits between the rocker cover breather and the throttle body inlet. This was a straightforward job and didn't take long. 

By now it was gone 3pm and I had been on the go since 8am, so I was feeling a bit jaded. So I just drained the water out of the radiator so I could add some blue anti-freeze, then called it a day. I was pleased with what I had achieved though and I had knocked quite few jobs off of the list. 

Saturday 1st April - Fire up day!

 Richard was due to leave early this morning to head back to Worcestershire, but instead decided to hang around to see if we could get the car running. We did, but we had a few failed attempts before we got it right. The first was a petrol leak due to me missing a connector that I should have tightened up, the second was a fuel pipe from the PRV to the pump that burst under pressure, so that was replaced, and the third one was one of the return pipes from the pressure relief valve that needed mating to the return to the fuel tank. 

With all of this cured, we then had an issue with the wiring. (Also my fault!) With this corrected we then primed the Lucas fuel pump. For some reason we couldn't get the fuel pressure up to where it needed to be. (105psi) It tuned out that my pressure relief valve wasn't up to the job, but luckily, Richard had a refurbished one with him and lent me that. With a small adjustment we got the pressure up to 105psi, so we could now attempt starting the car. 

We cranked the car over for some time until we finally bled all of the air out of the system at the injectors and started letting petrol through. The injectors were then nipped up where they meet the injector pipes and the car was then running. It sounded good and was running ok. Richard was happy with that and left to make the long journey home. It was now 1.30pm. 

Dave and I carried on and made one or two minor adjustments. It will need to be driven really to see how it performs, but I will need to do a few 'tidy up' jobs before I do that as well, so for now we called it a day. Dave was going home back to Derby early Sunday morning, so we really didn't want another long day in the garage. We were done by 3pm, went out for a carvery and enjoyed a couple of pints in the evening. 

I was pleased with what we'd achieved, but the snapped stud in the cylinder head had cost us a hell of a lot of time. We should have had the car running Friday morning and out for a test drive the same day really, but hey ho. This is the joys of owning old cars I suppose. I'm looking forward to driving it though, and all being well, it will be taking part in the Club Triumph Historic Counties Rally in three weeks time! 

Friday 31st March - Cylinder head replacement.

 Friday bleary morning saw me being woken up by a phone call at 6.40am from Dave Jones telling me that he had a head gasket for me. We arranged a meeting place, which was actually his first customers house in Heybridge, Essex. It turned out to be two streets off of the main road that we had driven down the night before on our way to Colins! 

The rain was already falling when I left, but luckily it didn't affect the traffic and I was back home by 8.50 am. Richard and Dave hadn't even missed me and both woke up shortly after I arrived home. 

The cylinder head we had collected from Colin needed some work. It had been sat on a shelf for a number of years, so the valves and springs were removed and cleaned before being reinserted. Dave and Richard did this while I started on the plumbing inside the boot. It does look a bit of 'Plumbers nightmare' I have to say, but the Mk1 Pi with the external swirl pot always did. If I can find a Mk2 Pi tank with the swirl pot inside it for a decent price, then I will switch to that and do away with the external swirl pot. But for now, it will have to do. It still needs a final tidy up, but the main objective today was to get it working enough to be able to get the car started if we got to that stage. 

Once I had done this, the cylinder head was ready for re-fitting, so I gave a hand to Dave and Richard. This was quite a time consuming affair, so by the time we had done this and fitted the throttle bodies, it was time to call it a day.  

As a reward for my friends working so hard I treated them to a meal at the local Indian Restaurant. This was followed by a couple of pints in the pub next door and a few Southern Comforts when we got a home. A very nice evening, but we were all feeling pretty knackered by now. 

Thursday 30th March - Disaster!

 Good friends Dave Harvey had arrived at mine on Wednesday afternoon and Richard Warr arrived this morning. We started our plan of getting into our Pi conversion and one of the first jobs was to trial fit the throttle bodies. Unfortunately, the studs for the original inlet manifold weren't long enough to accept the new throttle bodies. So our first task was to remove the three inlet manifold studs in the cylinder head. Two of them came out easy enough, but the middle one was stuck fast. We tried heat on it, but it just wasn't moving. One of our efforts was a bit much for it and then, disaster! The stud suddenly snapped! We then tried welding a nut to it, but it just snapped again. We then tried welding another nut to it again, but had the same result. By this time we just had about 4mm of the stud sticking out of the head. 

A decision was then made to remove the cylinder head in case we could find a specialist who could rectify the problem for us. After this I made phone calls to Thurston Engineering in Ongar and Specialised Engines in Grays who both quoted three weeks waiting time before they could even look at it. Explaining to them that it was urgent situation as the car was needed for an event fell on deaf ears and they were both equally unhelpful. 

My other friend Gavin rang CTM Engineering at Dagenham for me, but they were also a paid up member of the 'three week wait' club. Whilst I was making all of this and other phone calls, Dave and Richard made use of the time by fitting the newly refurbished metering unit.

Colin Wake was my next phone call to see if he had another cylinder head and head gasket that we could borrow while my cylinder head was out of action. he said he would look when he got home from work for me. Unfortunately, for us and for Colin, this was the night that the A12 would be closed for several hours due to a multi-vehicle accident. Poor Colin was stuck on the A12 for hours and didn't get home until around 8.30pm.

We finished what we were doing and then met up with Gavin at 7pm for a carvery in Wickford. After this we set out for Colin's house, north of Colchester, but all along the back roads: Woodham Ferrers, Bicknacre, Maldon, Heybridge, Tiptree, the centre of Colchester and eventually, to Colins house in Frating. 

It was worth the journey though as he did indeed have a cylinder head although it needed a small amount of work before fitment. We left Colin's and did a 'spirited drive' homeward bound and just managed to make the local 'Oakwood' pub to try and fit a couple of pints in just before closing time. I felt that we deserved a drink after out stress filled day! The young barmaid though, decided to ignore us for a full five minutes while she flirted with a group of lads, before telling us that we only had ten minutes to order and drink up! No wonder businesses in this country are suffering. The customer service we had experienced today with engineering firms and now this had been proper shit! 

We then ordered six pints just to piss her off and stayed in there until we had finished. Perhaps she'll serve people quicker next time! 

It was good job that we could only fit a couple of pints in though, as Colin didn't have a cylinder head gasket, but knew someone who did, and I had to meet them in Heybridge, Essex at 8am the following morning. So it was a late night and would be an early morning tomorrow! 

Tuesday 28th March. Swirl pot fitting.

 I had fitted the injection fuel tank into the car on Sunday, so the next step was to mount the swirl pot, (Which looks like a small flying saucer!)  Lucas pump and PRV (Pressure relief valve) mounting. This also included a dummy run of fitting all the pipe work and fuel lines to see if I had everything I needed. I then removed it all again when I knew I had. They need to be routed underneath the car properly, but I will do that once the car is up and running in case anything has to be re-designed

There was no rush today and I can't do much more until Dave Harvey arrives on Wednesday with the remainder of the bits I need. 

But, at least it's fitted and secured, and another job off of the list.