Jason's Blog

Canley Classics - Blog Yes it's almost La Carerra Caledonia time! Certainly it's unlikely there will be another opportunity for me to blog again before the off. I'm planning on travelling up to Canley Classics tomorrow, stay with Dave tomorrow night ready for the trip up North on Friday. The plan os to fit some "radical new CC product" on my car. A good run around Scotlandshire should see if this kit is as good as we hope. What is it?? Well let's see, could it be the new 100 hp shot of Nitrous? Maybe the all alloy six pot engine, or perhaps some solid rocket boosters for that daring overtaking manouvre? Nope, none of those, so could it be something small and subtle, like an anodised gear knob or freshly chromed coil mounting bracket? Nope - you'll just have to keep guessing. Full story, pictures and verdict here after the event. Unless we crash and burn then I'll just remove this and deny everything :-)

Whilst driving in to Norwich this morning I had a chat with Dave at Canley Classics, he's co-driving La Carerra with me. He explained that the mystery grating noise is quite common, he subsequently sent me an email "Grating noise is easy and relatively common. Basically the prop is riding a little high in the prop tunnel and catching the strengthener plate welded inside the tunnel to beef up the handbrake lever area. This plate is welded in at an angle, so if the gearbox is mounted slightly to the left it catches this plate (and nearly invisible from underneath!). Move the gearbox over towards the drivers side by slakening off the mountings and shoving it across, sometimes a few mm will do it." Sounds like a plan, I'll have a go later in the week when I'm back home, failing that I'll do it up at Dave's place on the way :-) Jason ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and sc...

I can now isolate and whip out a Vitese fuel tank in about 5 minutes I'm that practiced. I think I've sorted it out now by taking all the old bodges off,being fairly brutal with the cleaning off the old repairs and scouring the tank for possible leaks. I joked that I would use all the tank sealer if I needed to and I pretty much have! I left it all sat with fuel in it last night and nothing came out so I've reinstalled it proper and now have fingers crossed! It's been throwing it down today and so I haven't taken the car out for a blast to see what that grating noise is - that may have to wait for the journey up to Dave's place on Thursday night. Yes I've managed to persuade Dave Pearson to co drove with me on La Carrera Caledonia. The object of the game is to never lift the bonnet (or boot) in anger and see if all this poncing about has built the reliability back into the old car. I want to enjoy driving it and the company of Triumph mates :-)

Jason's Blog: Oil your nipples Madam? Remember this? Well I used it today on the Vitesse and the Sixfire - what a GREAT piece of kit - works like a dream, very pleased.

This fuel tank has been repaired more times than Trigger's broom. It was still leaking despite my attempts at repair - yup it was leaking again so I drained it again, took it out again, cleaned it up again and a great big slab of tank repair came off to reveal not one, not two but three holes in it!   So, I've bodged it up again to get me through the next week, I just hope it holds! The next puzzle is this rubbing sound from under the car, something is grating on the prop I think. I had convinced myself that it was the U bolt for the exhaust but it's no where near the prop. I could see a very slight witness mark on the prop, just a bruise on the paint, not even chipped. Could that be it? It's down by the handbrake but it's not that - it looks like it could have been touching the chassis but not now. So I've put some tape over the witness mark and I'll go for a spin tomorrow then see if it's touched again. It's all good fun isn't it!

After the Vitesse's inauspicious last outing I got serious about the PI and specifically the metering unit. Having been chatting to Gareth Thomas over the last year I ordered a recalibrated MU from him. He did a lot of development work on fuel curves especially for the 2 litre PI application. Gareth said he was coming to the UK soon andwould be happy to come take a look at the car and have a twiddle with the injection. This sounds easy but consider that Gareth lives in Estonia and you start to get some idea of the logistics involved. Well it all came together yesterday and today, Gareth flew in from Tallin and I collected him from Hounslow. We got stuck in straight away and stripped out the old MU and fixed my mis-aligned dizzy drive. That allowed us to get the distributor looking right once the metering unit was installed and timed up correctly. Gareth adjusted the ignition timing and she sounded pretty good but not quite there yet. We took it for a quick spin - now that was bette...

  The workbench is clear!!! I can't ever recall it being this clear, I even managed to clear up the crap on the floor and painted it again with some paint I found in the pile of crap there. There's loads more work to be done but as I'm about to embark on sorting this metering unit out I thought I'd create some decent working space. It won't last long of course!