Jason's Blog

I am sat in Delhi airport using fruit based technology to scribble a few words, not because I have much to say, mainly because I can! It's times like these I wonder why I do this job, it's gone midnight, the plane is delayed and I have just watched some Russian bloke cut his toe nails, in the departure "lounge". I am also knackered. It's been a hectic trip with much eating and drinking in the evenings to keep the relationships fresh, it's fun the first time, then it gets samey, then it gets a little tiring but overall I do still enjoy the place and the people. No Triumphs spotted this trip, the nearest I got was what I thought were. once a couple of Leyland 20's parked up and rotting in Pune. I say "I think" because I never actually got close enough to tell for sure! I did see Indian ingenuity at it's peak though, imagine the scene - scorching hot day at the petrol station. Big queue of bikes (there are more bikes in Pune than cars) and there

Just click to go to the RBRR message diary where all the teams' progress will be reported in text messages, emails and possibly pictures too. The Vantastic team number 13, aka Team Atlast will be updating regularly, well at least until we fall over :-) All the team's who gave me their mobile phone numbers have been registered and their messages will show up with their team names and numbers. Each team was emailed this morning with instructions on how it works. Please don't ask Keith and I to troubleshoot any problems over the weekend, neither of us will have the time nor the equipment to do much sorry. Also, if you want to follow us around on the map then click to http://www.gingell.com/triumph/rbrr/ and courtesy of Craig Gingell and Google maps you can see where we are going to be at what approximate time. All stops will be pretty easy to find and there will be Club Triumph banners, signs and marshalls around. If you're looking for a particular car then ask the marsh

What a silly thing to get stuck on. I thought I'd fit the stainless steel sill finishers onto the PI, easy enough, although the car came without the trim I had found a good pair on eBay and Chris Witor does the special fixing buttons and pop rivets so I'd bought some of those. All the holes were already drilled and basically the job was - pop rivet the new buttons on and then attach the trim. I expected to have to bang the trim on with the palm of my hand, OK maybe a soft faced hammer. Well, what a pain it's proved to be! The trim buttons have to be a tight git but the angles involved make it so tricky to get the trim lined up, added to the fact that if you don't do it right you risk bending the back of the trim and then it will never go on properly. I had to space out one button with a small stainless washer behind it, just to allow the trim to get a grip. One side is on, the passenger side is in progress now - I came in to swear at the kids. I am going to have to spa

A lifetime of Triumph ownership has left me with a load of odds and ends in the garage, some of which I really can't see me needing anytime soon. None of it is especially desirable or rare, in fact there's a strong desire to bin some of it but I just can't bring myself to without trying to move it on to some other needy owner. There's new repro stuff never got round to fitting and lots of secondhand bits that need to sell on. I'll eBay is over the next few weeks but if anyone wants some of this then shout now. From today's ferkulling I've found the following One old repro outer door weather strip for a Herald, the type that were pre-cut. There's also one of the new ones that isn't pre-cut around the quarter light. These come complete with the clips AND the tool to install them! A pair of NOS in Lucas boxes front sidelight/indicator glass lenses complete with new rubber gaskets A handbrake cable fitting kit and cable, all new Vitesse glove box lid, lo

Yes it moves, with both forward and backward motion, maybe even a little braking in between. This is the better of the two Atli vans Dave has, the camper is, shall we say, more challenged than this one. I think this may well be the RBRR steed - we must be mentalists. Here's a pic I like too, one man at peace in his van

I'm just off to Penzance for a few days to see some friends then I'm back for a week and a bit of DIY jobs around the house plus, I hop, some work on the PI. You see whilst sat in hotel rooms with nothing but eBay for company has seen me hoovering up some Mk1 stuff. The car really wants very little but there are a few things that bug me and, as is the case when you have time on your hands, those little things have become big in my mind. Enter eBay - to replace a slightly cracked indicator lense I've managed to find a whole sidelight and indicator unit, NOS. In doing so I also found a NOS rear that was too cheap to pass. Although my choke cable buying has reached OCD levels I've never quite managed to get exactly the right knob - well I have now :-) a NOS cable with correct detachable knob is mine - but they are a bitch to fit onto the metering unit - I think I'm just gonna bite the bullet and pull the metering unit this time, far easier! I need to refit the PI stee

OK not entirely true but I have seen my first Triumph out here - on the TV. There's an Indian advert for Garnier shampoo, nice Indian lad with flowing hair doing the whole 'be fun young and attractive if you use our product' type thing and in the background is a red Herald convertible. I've only seen the advert twice and the car features for a nano second but nevertheless it is a Triumph. I am finishing up in the office now and off to Delhi for a dinner then on to the airport to catch the red eye flight back home, eta 9 am tomorrow morning. Lots of RBRR stuff to catch up with, quite a few changes to the running list and a few more reservists moving up to take up places. All good stuff, I will try and get it update as soon as I know where I am and what time it is! Jason ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam

Just before I left for India I managed to update the RBRR entry list following a couple of changes. It's all up to date on the Comps web site . When I get back I need to tidy up entry details for all those with missing cars, crews or anything else. Although crews can make changes at any time I do need to have a fully populated list in the first place! So my plea is that if you click on the above link and see your details are incomplete please let have those details by email and I will update it. Also, a number of crews have been contacted regarding Club Triumph membership, at least one crew member must be a member of the club to run on the RBRR so that means if your membership expires before the start you will need to renew. We appreciate that in these times of rising fuel costs there may be some crews amongst us who might feel that they cannot afford the event - that is an unfortunate truth and there's little we can do to get around this. So, if you are considering pulling out

Porsche : 944 Turbo Race / Track car Here's the link to my Brother-in-Law's racer that's been languishing for years in his lock-up. He's finally decided to retire from racing and sell it on. Anyone have any other ideas where to advertise it? I've suggested PPC and Retro mags.

Just a few photos of the fruits of my collecting labours. First the air filter canister, sand blasted and painted in satin black - it came out pretty good I think. I just need to sort out the horn positioning and then I can fit the pipes and the clip thingy that the air pipes attach too. Sorry about the weird angle of the photo, not sure why but I kinda like it! Note also fancy "Snap-on" wing protectors - very gaudy! Here's my "new" clock and "new" cubby door, much better than the piece of black painted hardboard that I bodged in to make it look a bit better than the scabby hole that was left once I'd removed the Dictaphone thing that was in there. It all works but I can't see how to identify the required key, not that it's a "must have" but it might be useful. I have apair of NOS external door handles to go on too, I have a mismathced pair on at the moment, one with a Wilmott Breedon key and one with an FS type key - and that on

Thanks to the power of the Blog, word of mouth, good fortune and a wanted ad on the Club Triumph web pages I have now collected, bought or borrowed most of the bits I needed. So a few "thank you"s are in order to Dave Pearson, Tim Bancroft, Colin Wake, Doug Thomson, Richard Underwood and Tim Walker who have collectively given, sold or loaned me various parts including a working clock (that keeps excellent time), the centre cubby box fittings including lid, hinges, lining, lock, lock keep etc, a PI steering wheel boss, PI air filter canister (now sand blasted, painted and fitted with new filter element) plus other odds and ends! I had a tinker on the weekend but didn't get enough time on the car as we had house guests and various functions to attend but at least the cubby box and clock are in place. I had meant to take the passenger seat out, pull the cover off and re-stitch it where the original seam has parted but that's going to be a long job and I hate leaving the

It was outstanding!

An Evening with Brian Culcheth - New CD/DVD I was trawling the Internet the other day and stumbled across this from the 2000 register. I recall the talk being on somewhere local but I was working and unable to go - I regretted it as Brian's a good speaker and the subject is close to my heart. Anyway, I sent off my cheque and got the DVD back by return - it's excellent :-) The talk is an hour and you can't pause it or rewind it which is annoying when your wife wants to talk to you but I can live with that. The DVD part of is pretty light on Triumph saloon action but there's Dolly and TR7 fun to be seen - Culch is quite scathing of the TR7 describing it as "a pig of a car to drive" whilst waxing lyrically about the 2.5PI he won the Scottish with. Well worth it.

Now rented for at least 6 months, from 10/10/08 I have a property in Reading that I look after for my parents who live abroad, at the last change of tenants the garage became surplus to the new people's needs. It's a standard single garage in a block in front of the flats, long enough to get a Triumph and loads of spares in. No power or light but it's quiet and reasonably secure (it's never been broken into in the last 10 years+ we've had it) Conventional up and over door and easy access that's always clear. It's just off the Tilehurst Road near the junction of Prospect Street - walking distance to the station and town centre. I guess you could park your car and walk down to catch the train if you want - come to think of it that might be a good plan! I'm looking for £35 a month and as far as I can see it'll be available for however long the bill gets paid. I'm happy to keep the garage and flat separate so I don't intend chucking you out - say

Over the years I've collected loads of info and books about the PI system, some better than others. I have always meant to scan and post up some of the more interesting stuff. I had my scanner working recently (but not on my spanking new Vista equipped PC - incompatible!) so I thought I'd scan a few things when I came across an old trio of A4 sheets held together with a rusty staple. They appear to be pages from a magazine article but from where I don't know. The last page has a few small adds on it but no clue as to where it first appeared. The opening paragraph suggests and owners club and the adverts are 1990 vintage - if you know where this came from please let me know and I'll give them the credit. Anyway, I scanned it and OCR'd it and here it is. I've been through it to correct the OCR errors but if anything doesn't make sense shout up and I'll check the original. THE LUCAS PETROL INJECTION SYSTEM - MARK II We are very fortunate to be able to publi

I've been meaning to do this for ages and have now found an easy way to publish these most usedful documents. If you want to download and save them you should be able to get a larger version by clicking on each image. The cards are really good and, as they were printed in response to all the "problems" of PI over the preceeding years they do seem to be pretty comprehensive. May the vacuum be with you.

The clutch on my PI is bled, I took the advice of those who've done this job before and I used the Eazibleed at 30psi and it bled first time, I need to shuffle some cars and take it for a spin to test it but it feels nice. I used a new Witor spring with an alloy cap (in place of the plastic one) not sure why but that's what he sent me. Pedal feels firm and positive now. The old seals weren't totally knackered but the fluid (new silicon) was full of black bits when I cleaned it all out and on close inspection the main seal does seem a little deformed. The new spring was noticeably longer than the old one which was in one piece and felt OK - I'll keep it for a "spare". The Master cylinder bore looked good so I gave it a little hone and cleaned it all up. It's a bit of a fiddly job under the dash but it was all pretty straight forward - reassembling the master cylinder was a bit of a pain, getting that new seal in place made my fingers ache! I even turned the

...to blog. It's a strange thing but I just feel rather frustrated, I'm sat listening to a "conference call" at the moment. This is what I do now instead of meetings, we all call up a number and try and sound like we know what we're doing whilst in fact we could all be doing anything! This one's even more tedious than usual as it's an HR show and tell call where I;m only really required to listen. Anyway, went up to Liverpool this week, dropped in to see Dave Pearson on the way, collected some bits for the PI that he's promised me. Also paid money for some new stuff - a set of plug lead (all will be explained) and some dizzy "O" rings to see if I can cure the oil leak out of the dizzy drive. The rest of the parts to fix the clutch had also arrived along with some trim clips for the sill finishers. So now I loads of jobs for the weekend :-) The HT leads are for an experiment and it goes a little something like this. I have some very nice Magne

I've had a mention in the Canley Classics - Blog today but not in a good way :-( You see I had a couple of interesting incidents on the first Ten Countries Run and, well I'm not being allowed to forget them. To be fair neither is the Stretch as it still bears the scar of what I did to it - I drove off from a petrol station forgetting that the thing is 22 foot long and the rear wheels don't steer. Not a problem in a Herald but a big problem in the Stretch when there's a petrol pump in the way. Crunch! I always said I'd fix it.... Still several years later Dave's daughter did a very similar bit of damage to my Vitesse after last year's La Carrera Caledonia and Dave said he'd fix that - same promise I made to him :-) I sold that car with the parts to fix it, much like Dave is doing with the Stretch. I have very happy memories of that Stretch, foolish monster that it is you can't help but smile when you see it and driving it is just surreal. It's as

Yes it didn't take long to break the PI but then you do need to lay spanners upon a new car sometime. I took it out for a blat and had one of those funny pedal moments where you think "Hey up, this doesn't feel right" so I drove home carefully without using the brakes much. I parked up and took a look in the fluid reservoir - low. Hmmm, lets have a looksee under the car and there it was, immediately obvious. Brake fluid all over the inside of the front wheel on the driver's side. Damn! One of the Stag calipers was NOS and one was a reconditioned one - they were provided by the previous owner for fitting so their provenance was uncertain. Yup - the NOS one was fine and it was the nice shiny plated new one that had let go. It was hard to see where the fluid was coming from but it was obvious that it was going to have to come out for a looksee. It all looked OK but it obviously wasn't. I tested it as best I could on the bench and then stripped it, separating the

a certain well known Triumph Club secretary recently destroyed a perfectly good diff. In the past he had complained to a certain well known builder of Triumph mechanical units about the colour of paint used by said builder - the previous diff having been painted yellow and green. Anyway, said rebuilder asked me to obtain a suitable colour paint for the new unit, so I thought something in keeping with the Club Secretary's standing in the Triumph community - flourescent pink! I do like to help out where I can.

The Vitesse just sold - email, phone call, viewing and deal done in hours - as is with no MOT - what can I say? I am most pleased indeed, I'll be sorry to see it go but at least I'm back in the good books with Mrs C and I can now work on the PI with a clear conscience :-)

The Vitesse is definitely up for sale - Mrs C has explained it to me, no work can commence on the PI until the Vitesse is gone and as her car is out on the drive and both mine are in the garage it's getting rather political - If I take one out I'm sure she'll steal the garage for her Saab! Pisonheads seemed like a good place to start, I'll do Club Triumph next although most will know it's for sale anyway - Pistonheads was easy Triumph : Vitesse Convertible - 2.6 injection and I had a call on it within a hour of it being uploaded! I've got some fettling to do to get an MOT, nothing major - the new steering coupling seems loose but it was a bitch to fit so I'll have another swearing session at that, I think it just needs pinching up but it's one of those cast ones and they seem to be rather substantial! Tunnel cover needs to come off to fix the overdrive inhibitor switch properly, last done in a German car park at 3am - it won't allow overdrive in thi

When I got the PI it had been off the road since about 1977/78. The previous owner had applied for and got a V5 but the taxation class said "NOT LICENSED" although the date of first registration is stated as "27 06 1969 (DECL/D MANUF 1969)". I had taken a chance and driven it home but knew that I needed to get some sort of tax disc in the car despite the fact that it's free. Anyway, I'd written to the DVLA but thought I'd have a got in the Post Office as I'd like to get some miles on the car in the coming weeks to shake it down. Unsurprisingly the Post Office weren't much help and the miserable old fossil behind the counter just said "You can't do that here, take it to the DVLA" well it turned out that there's a Local DVLA office just round the corner from me in Theale. What a great place! Clean and tidy and free from old gits behind the counter, nice modern ticket queue system and chairs to sit in. Nice bubbly young totty behi

I can't resist eBay and it turns up such good stuff just when you need it. 1 item ticked off my "wish" list is a pair of sill finishers, the PI came with none so I'm quite happy. As a bonus they are in Stoke which I pass on my way up to Liverpool every other week - I just happen to be going on Wednesday so I won't have to trust them to the Post Office. I won't be able to fit them as I don't yet have the clips and I think I may get killed if I start working on this car whilst the Vitesse is still here! That needs a few jobs and an MOT but I have the parts and will get some time on it this weekend I hope.

Well it's been a good few days. I got a lift up to Dave's place on Thursday afternoon and started the tinkering. Dave left me too it but it was good to have him around to help with my stupid questions and hamfisted ways of doing things! The car looks good on those KN Gemini wheels, they fill the arches really well with 195/60 15 Toyo Proxies on. I had some issues with the wheels over the Stag brakes, I hadn't realised just how much bigger the Stage brake drums are. It looked like the lettering on the brake drums was fouling the wheels, so I had at it with the angle grinder and they were better but still not good. The drum and wheel were not in full contact, I needed spacers. Went down to the local factors and picked up some 3mm and 5mm ones, the 5 mm ones were good. Whilst the wheels were off I also too the grinder to the arch flanges - just to be on the safe side. Now with the extra clearance I can get two fag papers in the gap ;-) Just thought I'd pop this one in, n