Jason's Blog

Yup, the overdrive was prancing around stark naked, unprotected, sleeping with all and sundry and generally being a tart - engaging in all gears any which way you like! Not a good thing - reverse overdrive is a sure fire way to go pop! It happened on La Carerra Caledonia, or rather I noticed it happening. Having now taken the tunnel out I can see what I'd done - it was never going to work properly as I had wired it up wrongly! How the hell I did it I don't know or why. Oh well, a simple case of pull off one wire and replace it in the right place, test and it's done. Then I notice that the nice Aeroquipe clutch pipe I made is damp, with clutch fluid! Damn, check reservoir - nearly empty! OK, one to fix ASAP - it's silicon fluid so it doesn't do any damage but it's an expensive leak. Now for that intermittent starter issue - turn the key and nothing, no click. You have to wiggle the wires to get it to work. I thought I fixed i a few weeks ago when I spliced in ...

I borrowed this from a Blogger at Work but I thought it was interesting as it shows the power of the customer, the Blogger and that you should treat the little man with respect! Often these things get dismissed as Internet Myth so I followed the trail and verified the story - click the links yourself. It's great stuff - all for the sake of an empty box! May 25: Blogger Terry Heaton bought a digital camera from the US store's liquidation sale only to find out at home that it was empty box. Let's recount the series of events: June 2: Terry posts on his blog the response he got from the CEO's office about his empty box problem. A CompUSA agent tells Terry that he should have inspected the box before taking it home and all sales are final. Never mind that Terry was a longtime CompUSA customer and had spent $3,500 that day at the liquidation sale. June 3: The Lost Remote blog writes about Terry's story. 211 people comment. June 4: The story is posted to Digg where it...

Well you know it is, you drive the car and little things annoy you so you think "I'll fix that" then something breaks or wears and you think "Must get a new one of those" then you take your other car from an MOT and you get an 'advisory' so you think, "I'll buy some new ones and fit them now". Then you see a bargain and think "I'll get those as they are cheap" and so the list of things to fit and fettle starts to mount up! So here we have, in no particular order, a 43 amp alternator for the Vitesse - with that PI pump and 100w headlamps plus all the other odds and sods there's quite a draw. We experienced some weirdness on La Carerra with the power outlet for GPS and phone charger etc - it has some electrickery that turns output off is input falls - seems when we had everything on inc wipers and blower fan, the outlet would turn itself off! Hardly confidence inspiring. With 10CR on the horizon we will need all the elec...

This is an bit of an infomercial for my mate Dave and his company Canley Classics. I know Dave well, I get most of my Triumph stuff from him. I sometimes work on the Canley Classics stand at shows, I own a Canley Classics T shirt and I have spent many hours driving Triumphs with him. Other Triumph parts suppliers are available, your mileage may vary and this may contain nuts. If you don't like what I say, ignore it :-) - It's a well know fact that the small chassis Triumphs have some design frailties. One of the more spectacular failures you can suffer stems from the front trunnions. When you get a failure here you can loose a front wheel - this isn't a good thing. Often incorrectly known as "trunnion failure" what actually happens is that the vertical link that sits in the trunnion snaps - it does this for a number of reasons, lack of maintenance, fatigue, corrosion, previous trauma, bad luck. Most often it's the nearside that goes, it's the side that ...

On an event like La Carerra Caledonia it's inevitable that a few problems will come to the fore. I'd made a mental list of the silly faults that had occurred with the car. One of the main annoying problems was the temperamental starting - occasionally you'd turn the key and nothing, just the whir of the fuel pump. No click just nowt! The fix was to get out, open the bonnet and wiggle the red and white wire to the starter, it's a TR6 pre-engaged starter with the solenoid on top. Towards the end of the run the fault was getting more regular to the point where it happened every time! The connection to the starter was suspect but this turned out to be fine, on closer inspection there was a split in the insulation and the wire felt weird, well crispy. As I stripped back the loom and cut back the insulation is was clear that moisture had got inside and corroded the copper strands. I stripped it back a few inches into good clean copper and renewed the Lucas connectors. I t...

Well we did it, started and finished a CT event in the Vitesse , the demons are exorcised and all is well with the world again! Above you see the Vitesse with it's badge of shame on the rear flank, a CT RBRR sticker with the " RBRR " bit removed - the crank broke before the car could start the event! So what was La Carerra Caledonia? For me it was 1362 miles of hard driving and good company. Here are the highlights and a few low lights! I went up to Canley Classics to collect my co driver , Dave Pearson on Thursday. The usual preparation was done - change oil and filter as the engine had only done 300 miles by the time I got to Dave's and was still on running in oil. I also tried to cure the annoying prop shaft fouling the chassis - sort of improved it but it's not 100%. Whilst the tunnel was out I changed the gearbox oil for my fancy fully synthetic Redline MT90 - seemed fine all the way round. Secret weapons had been promised and these were a pair of new ...