Jason's Blog

I've been asked whether the fan touches the water pump boss on the Sixfire, well, as is often the case with GT6s, there's not a lot of space in the engine bay for an electric fan. This is a very slim fan, only about 2 inches deep in total - that's including the shroud, mounts and motor. Remember that in order to get the engine and radiator into this engine bay, Triumph pushed the engine back and the radiator forward - this is afterall the same engine bay originally designed for a 4 cylinder engine. The crank pulley is a Vitesse item not original GT6. Clearance here is now about 1/2 an inch, should be enough to allow for slight engine movement under load. I will be watching to see if there's any fouling going on but I doubt it will happen. Posted by Hello

First Job of the day was to fit my Vitesse with an alloy rocker cover I bought for my old Vitesse project - I had to get some longer studs as the original had some short ones on to allow a flush mounting with screws - neat but I wasn't able to replicate on the alloy cover. All looks nice now :-) Posted by Hello

And this is what was "left over" - essentially a full kit - it all works and will soon go on eBay - these kits are about £100 which I find quite scary considering it's just a few plastic bits. Posted by Hello NOW SOLD - to Dave Walker, they guy I bought my Vitesse off :-)

The finished installation. You can just see the oil cooler mounting to the left of the pipes as they pass the chassis. The Temp sender for the Pacet controller is in the top hose with the white wire going into the blue plexiglas controller box. Posted by Hello

20 COUNTY CHALLENGE :: Triumph Torque Looks like the CT boys had a good night out, the usual drama - old cars, you gotta love 'em. Still, I had a good day today. I had a couple of jobs to do to finish off the Sixfire after Thursday and Friday's work. The controller unit was only zip locked onto the oil cooler pipes and needed a proper mounting. The oil cooler itself needed locating properly as there was something not quite right with where I'd put it earlier. I also wanted to paint up the expansion bottle holder and bottle cap and paint the chassis where we'd welded on the cooler mounts. Also I needed to tidy up some of the pipework that was left. I had wanted to put some shiny bits in but Canley's didn't have any Stainless bottle carriers in stock. I would have liked to have had a new bottle, carrier, cap and pipework but there's been supply problems with this stuff and only the cap was in stock! Dave pointed me at a 2000 saloon and suggested I rob the bits...

It's with slight feelings of shame that I write this. I should really be taking part in the 20 Counties Challenge with Dave Canley Classics News Blog but business, work, time, apathy, being knackered etc all got in the way and well I'll cut to the chase, I'm not doing it. It's been a bit of a roller coaster ride this week anyway and I'm kinda relieved to be back at home. It went something like this - The Sixfire was built with a Saab 900 turbo radiator plumbed in - it was sound theory - the rad was wide, had space for twin fans and seemed to do the job. However, it revealed itself to be really marginal, a pinhole leak started to show up the design. The car wouldn't keep a constant temp, if left to idle it would overheat, chuck it's water out and well you get the idea. Radweld fixed the leak. The temp sender was zip locked to the outside of the top hose, this meant that there was no possibility of a leak but it also meant that the controller was operating at...

We went out today for Sunday lunch and took both Triumphs, me and Zoe my eldest in the Vitesse and Claudia my wife in the Sixfire (six cylinder Spitfire). The little one, Poppy, was out with her Grandparents. It was all organised by Hants & Berks Area of the Triumph Sports Six Club where I'm Area Organiser - although I didn't do much organising and ended up being the last one there! It was fun to get both Triumphs out but it did involved shuffling two modern cars (I'm looking after my parents VW whilst they are in Cyprus). Once both cars were out of the garage I gave them a wash and polish and then decided to go the whole hog and waxed them both! I was knackered after that and needed a rest but the cars looked great. So off we zoomed to get to the pub in Newbury for 12:00 noon only to turn around and go back home because I'd forgotten a package for a mate, Carl (that's a whole other story - toys from the US) . So we re-zoomed (sorry) and made our way out onto th...

mintylamb - automotive photography and utilities This is James, fellow Triumph enthusiast and it seems full time net junkie. This trackday lark looks like fun, I must find out some more - doesn't look too expensive, unless you break something!

OK so maybe not THAT near to death but it was frightening. So I'm on my way to Norwich, 8am bombing up the M11 in the Toyota Eurobox, in a line of fast lane traffic all doing 70 ish, good spacing, no one doing anything silly. It's chucking it down with rain but visibility is fine. I can see something in front of the car ahead of me, it's black and about the size of a laptop (I'm writing this on my laptop so it wasn't mine!) and it's flying over the car ahead of me and swooping down, heading for me! Now I'm in the outside lane, the inner lanes are occupied, cars all round d a central reservation barrier to my right - you get the picture, ain't nowhere for me to go! So I grip the wheel tightly and whince BANG! It hits the front of my car, BANG! it hits the screen BANG! it hits the tailgate. I am nervous - I check the screen for cracks, none. Check what I can see for obvious damage - none, nothing seems to be broken so I carry on. When I arrived in Norwich ...

Greeks In Oz I've just found Graham Reeks' Oz Blogg - Graham's a fellow Triumph enthusiast, veteran of the Ten Countries Run and the Round Britain Run and the man responsible for me ever thinking I could be a rally navigator (I was hopeless). Anyway, he's sodded off to Oz and is now teasing us with tales of Brumby driving in the outback - it's all Greek to me!