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Showing posts from September, 2007

Shopping on the high street - Indian style

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Just a few photos - I hope they show up :-)

The ego has landed, with a bump

I've been giving some thought to what to do about my car's crap performance on the 10CR. I can't really live with that consumption and being limited to 5000 feet was just a real spoiler. The metering unit is a KMI unit that was selected, supplied and fitted by Gareth Thomas. I paid him £300 but, in my opinion, it's never been right. On La Carerra Caledonia we had 12" flames out the back, the car ran like a pig and we were stranded at the side of the road. Fair play to Gareth, it was a weekend and I sent him a text, he tried to help and was even talking about how he could get a new metering unit up to me as we initially though the unit was screwed. It transpired that the spill pipe from the metering unit was blocked. I can't understand how that happened. It may even have already been blocked when Gareth fitted the new unit. Once cleared, the car ran and struggled to reach 20 mpg and was still rich. Anyway, the experience on the 10CR was not that much better. The

10CR Photos

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Such as they are, here's the contents of Nurburgring web cam , not the best photo but it is the Vitesse, just coming into view on the left of the 09:35 picture (09/09/2007)

Just the facts

A few people have asked what MPG I got out of the Vitesse on the 10CR - probably because they followed me and got sore eyes from the fumes! I keep full records on these events, yes I am that sad! Total mileage from home to home - 2467 Average MPG - 19.16 Best recorded MPG - 24.67 Worst recorded MPG - 13.98 Highest the car would go without coughing like a retired miner - 5602 feet Oil used - about 3/4 of a pint in total Fuel bill for the weekend was a few quid shy of £550 Combine these with La Carerra's results and you get 3755 miles done with an average consumption of 19.5 miles per gallon.

Ellis is happy

Stick a fork in it, it's done!

2500 miles, Ten Countries, 4 days and one minor mechanical issue later and we've done the Club Triumph Ten Countries Run. The car was great, handled it all very well indeed apart from some PI related limitations that I'll have to document fully later once I have distilled the data! I have to work out the consumption from the detailed fuel records I kept and check the altitudes where we had issues from the maps and GPS coordinated I noted. Basically the car did about 20 mpg and would not run over 5000 feet. Neither of these are acceptable to me so I have to figure out what to do. The special recon metering unit is, I suspect, not all it could be so I may put one of my own on and start to manually play about. I'll collate the facts and report later, I need to get some real work done now, I'm off to India on Saturday and have to fit in a trip to Norwich and Liverpool between now and then!

Do not go gentle into that good night.....

.... blip the throttle and flash your 120 watt mains and maybe even sound a chorus of Dixie on the air horns! Or maybe just stop being so excited and get on with the grim reality of a couple of thousand miles of hard driving through ten countries. Yes it's D Day, currently H hour -4.5 (ish) and I'm just about to have breakfast. I slept really well despite a sickly No 2 child threatening to hurl at any moment - all is well with the world this morning now though. No 1 child turned up an hour late last night and is suitably well behaved this morning to make amends, she goes back to school today, thank God. Anyway, enough of my domestic bliss - stand by your cars, we're about to Cry Havoc! and let slip the clutch of Triumph :-)

Follow our progress

Thanks to Craig Gingell and Canley Classics we have the invaluable message diary again this year. This excellent service allows crews to send text and photo messages from their mobile phones to a web page for all to see. Check it out at http://www.canleyclassics.com/10cr.asp and track our progress. You can keep up to date with the trials and tribulations of taking a home built 39 year old car and a co-driver who's never driven anything "old" on a 2500+ mile journey through 10 Countries including high mountain passes, non-stop night driving and a race circuit. We must be bloody mentalists! Oh and if anyone see's us on the Stelvio web cam , please save the picture for me :-) I've no real idea when we will be there but probably some time middday Saturday - I think. As for the car, I fixed the overdrive and took it out last night to the TSSC meet, all went well. Carl Shakespeare was due to meet us there but called to say he had problems with the Sprint, totally gutte

PI Spares, the final touch

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Popped down to my local purveyors of hydraulic stuff and general Aladin's cave of high pressure plumbing stuff - I had a section of injector hose in my hand for them to match and true to the legend they came up with this "Pneumatic Air Hose" fuel, oil and temperature resistant and with a 160 psi working load. Spot on . How much?? £1 a metre plus the VAT :-) Got me a bundle and bunged it in the spares kit. There are apparently other colours but all they had there and then was the transparent stuff - well it's sort of "pearl". Should be OK and when I'm back I may just make up a full set of hoses from my spare ends.

A high, then a low, then a high again only to be repeated again!!

A quick blast up to see Dave this morning, the journey was lovely! Not much traffic at stupid o'clock and the car was flying. I was on a high :-) Got to Dave's and had a brew, a gossip and then to work, pulled the old trunnions out and put the new ones in no hassle, it's an easy job if you don't have seized nuts - I say that to all the girls ;-) A quick opinion from Dave on a rather strange feeling when turning the rear hub - feels like a wheel bearing giving way - damn! OK so strip it down and have a proper assessment. It's not the wheel bearing it's the diff - oh crud and I've left my spare diff on the shelf at home. Could it just be the quarter shaft? Maybe so I pull it out, nope it's not that. More head scatching and assessing of the diff, it's always been a bit noisey - grows a bit but it's never got any worse. It'll do - the shafts look good, the wheel bearings are fine and now the trunions are new it should be sorted. So whang it all b

The PI spares are packed

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I am going to regret saying this but I'm sure I have now covered most possibilities with this little PI spares kit. Yes you can see a a vac gauge and a fuel pressure gauge, a pump and motor all assembled together (with my NOS pump attached) a PRV and even a full metering unit. There's a couple of injectors and some pipes, unions etc. The only thing I don't have spares of is injector hoses so one of those is bouond to spring a leak! I set out to only take what I could fit in the case and I think it'll do. I found a decent first aid kit in the rubbish being thrown out on my last project so that's now packed too. I also found some flourescent vests, OK the say "fire marshal" but they'll do :-) I've rigged up a way of securing my spare wheel over the pump, filter and PRV in the spare wheel well, it's a bit amateur but it'll do, I was going to leave the spare and just take some tyre weld but as I seem to have kept the rest of the junk down to a

Oh crud!

Drove the car for the first time in ages today, my toe seems to cope with it so that's good. However, I heard a definite "clunk" as I backed it out of the garage and again as I drove off - investigations need. Jacked it up and thought immediately of UJs but they are good, then lay underneath and had a wiggle of things, damn! It's the Nearside rear trunnion (non-roto/swing spring set up) that seems to be worn - there's easy movement there. I have a day available to do it Monday although I have some work to do but it's all on the phone. I feel a trip up to Canley's coming on, that way I can at least get the parts and sort it. Everything else seems OK, fuel tank has leaked a little, more a weep than a leak - too late to do anything more about it now, I'm going to get that one sorted once and for all after this event and over the winter. Right, now to finish my tea break and take the hard top off.