Oh Crap!
Well that was an eventful day! I decided to take my wife and youngest daughter the the Club Triumph National at Hollycombe, about 45 miles away.
The car's not 100% but it needed using to shake down a few things and create a list of must do jobs - yeah right.
First issue, a little stuttering almost like fuel starvation. No matter I can live with that and investigate further, then the heat of the day builds up with the traffic, the car is mis-firing badly, doens't seem to want to rev, almost dies then does actually die. It then refuses to restart.
It was hot today, very hot and although the car never boiled it did creep up the temp guage to the wrong side of normal. The car's never boiled and Dave Walker who had it before me said he'd never had any issues with cooling but it was damn hot today!
So there we were, 5 miles from the CT national when the car died on me, we coasted into the side of the road but it was a bad place to stop. Alfter messing about checking injectors and stuff I decided that I'd check to see if the pump was working properly. It wasn't screaming or obviously doing anything unusual, it's very quiet. I then realised I didn't have a spanner big enough for the union! so I undid the smaller low pressure return pipe from the metering unit - nothing came out. That's not right. I could smell petrol , very strongly - I must have flooded it I thought - whipped the plugs out - dry. More fiddling, try and start it etc. I then decided that I'd call James and see if he could come out and tow me into Hollycombe so the wife and kid could at least stretch their legs and I could sort the car out properly in safety. James agreed and I carried on trying to see if I could start the car. Just as James and Tim turned up I noticed it, the passenger footwell is swimming in what turned out to be petrol - an inch of petrol sloshing around in the footwell with my wife's favourite handbag in the middle of it! Oh shit, this is a serious situation.
OK so in hindsight it was a bad thing to route the fuel pipe through the car and it was equally a bad idea to run with such a temporary solution like that.
Anyway, I bailed the footwell out with some rags, apologies to Claudia for the ruined bag, contents and a fleece that was in the footwell too - it's all pretty ruined :-)
Tim rode shotgun with the fire extinguisher and Claudia and Poppy went with James who then proceeded to tow Tim and I in - note to self, James drives fast!
So we got into Hollycombe and had a proper look - the hose had burst -comprehensively burst! Never fear - Nigel Gair is there with a suitable length of hose to fix it and a spare length just in case. What a great bloke.
We had a fiddle and all seemed fine, the throttle linkage needs a better return spring but otherwise it's OK.
On the journey home I did some "testing" OK well I thought about as it died and decided that the pump was getting hot. A chat with Dave Pearson confirmed that the symptoms were indicative of pump cavitation.
So I need to sort out pump cooling too. Any suggestions?
I also need to sort out a proper high pressure fuel line with unions on - I think it needs to run outside the car - quite how I'm not sure. Maybe armoured flexible hose?
The car's not 100% but it needed using to shake down a few things and create a list of must do jobs - yeah right.
First issue, a little stuttering almost like fuel starvation. No matter I can live with that and investigate further, then the heat of the day builds up with the traffic, the car is mis-firing badly, doens't seem to want to rev, almost dies then does actually die. It then refuses to restart.
It was hot today, very hot and although the car never boiled it did creep up the temp guage to the wrong side of normal. The car's never boiled and Dave Walker who had it before me said he'd never had any issues with cooling but it was damn hot today!
So there we were, 5 miles from the CT national when the car died on me, we coasted into the side of the road but it was a bad place to stop. Alfter messing about checking injectors and stuff I decided that I'd check to see if the pump was working properly. It wasn't screaming or obviously doing anything unusual, it's very quiet. I then realised I didn't have a spanner big enough for the union! so I undid the smaller low pressure return pipe from the metering unit - nothing came out. That's not right. I could smell petrol , very strongly - I must have flooded it I thought - whipped the plugs out - dry. More fiddling, try and start it etc. I then decided that I'd call James and see if he could come out and tow me into Hollycombe so the wife and kid could at least stretch their legs and I could sort the car out properly in safety. James agreed and I carried on trying to see if I could start the car. Just as James and Tim turned up I noticed it, the passenger footwell is swimming in what turned out to be petrol - an inch of petrol sloshing around in the footwell with my wife's favourite handbag in the middle of it! Oh shit, this is a serious situation.
OK so in hindsight it was a bad thing to route the fuel pipe through the car and it was equally a bad idea to run with such a temporary solution like that.
Anyway, I bailed the footwell out with some rags, apologies to Claudia for the ruined bag, contents and a fleece that was in the footwell too - it's all pretty ruined :-)
Tim rode shotgun with the fire extinguisher and Claudia and Poppy went with James who then proceeded to tow Tim and I in - note to self, James drives fast!
So we got into Hollycombe and had a proper look - the hose had burst -comprehensively burst! Never fear - Nigel Gair is there with a suitable length of hose to fix it and a spare length just in case. What a great bloke.
We had a fiddle and all seemed fine, the throttle linkage needs a better return spring but otherwise it's OK.
On the journey home I did some "testing" OK well I thought about as it died and decided that the pump was getting hot. A chat with Dave Pearson confirmed that the symptoms were indicative of pump cavitation.
So I need to sort out pump cooling too. Any suggestions?
I also need to sort out a proper high pressure fuel line with unions on - I think it needs to run outside the car - quite how I'm not sure. Maybe armoured flexible hose?
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