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.