Rally car colour scheme 

Jubilee edition

The Jubilee special edition colour scheme on a car sold by Robsport in 2004?
Apparently these were in 1977 for the Queen's Silver Jubilee - the colour scheme is modeled on the rally cars of the time

Volvo v TR7

On the left is a Volvo 4 pot caliper next to a standard TR7 caliper on the right.
What can I say? The Volvo one is massive in comparison and will have loads in reserve over the TR7 caliper.

With the discs below and these calipers I have all the hardware - now it depends on my skill in putting it all together. Luckily I have a gent by the name of Martin Knapp to guide me through it all.

The Stelvio, the Nurburging and, eventually the Manx rally hold no fears on the braking front now!

BMW v TR7 discs

Which one would you prefer to be stopping you?
The one on the left is a vented disc for a BMW 325 complete here with spacer and TR7 hub. On the right is a standard TR7 disc.

The TR7 standard disc now looks completely inadequate! Plenty of meat on the BMW discs - Brembos no less and all for £32.50 + VAT!

Next stage (pun intended)

Next stage of the rally prep. Sumpguard "fitted" - it'll have to come off again as I am not happy with the fit but I have had enough today! It's a home made guard (by someone else) but there isn't enough clearance on the offside for the front anti-roll bar mount. The result is that it won't bolt up level. So' I'll have to remove it, buy an angle grinder and make the correct shape. Whilst I am at it I'll buy all new nuts and bolts too as I have used odds and ends to get it on as a trial fit. Also in evidence is another front spoiler - donated by Martin Knap who is a top bloke in my book.

Brake goodies

A preview of the goodies ready to go on the car - Brembo discs no less, new calipers in a very nice gold metallic (!) which should look great behind the minilites. There's also a set of pads and the spacers for the disc to hub.

Looking good

Looking like a rally car now

Three springs

On the left is the standard spring from the car.
In the centre is the rally spec now fitted.
On the right is the short spring

That's better

With the new rally spec front springs the car sits up more like it should.
Probably a tad high yet but a few miles on it should fix it.

Short 240 lbs spring

240lbs short spring

I decided to buy some more springs - to a "rally spec" so I took the struts off the car again!
You can see here that the short springs don't "fill the gap"

More brake investigations

Been over to a fellow TR7 rally car enthusiast's place this afternoon. Martin Knapp is building a 16 valve TR7 rally car too but mainly for the forests.

He kindly let me test out one of my 13" wheels on his brake assembly to see if it would clear and thankfully it does, so I'll be following Martin's route. This involves making up a kit from BMW 327 discs and Volvo 240 calipers - sounds a bit of a strange thing to do but the BMW discs are massive and ventilated making the standard TR7 discs look puny. They are also very similar in size to the works car's set up.

Then the Volvo calipers are big 4 pot ones too as opposed to standard small 2 pot ones. There'll be some machining to do but Martin has promised to talk me through it - top man!

The Warren Plate

A proud moment and a big surprise.

I am most pleased by the fact that I have managed to get the Club's motorsport championship going again. Andy Pearce received his award as Champion Driver 2004 at the dinner - the first time the award has been made since 1988.

Club Triumph Awards night

Hardly had time to think about Triumph stuff but did make the Club triumph awards night on Saturday March 5th.

Glad I did as I was awarded the "Warren plate" for services to the club in 2004 - mainly based on getting the championship up and running again and for the 10 Countries Run.

Great night anyway and the club raised £47,000 for Children with Leukaemia - what a result!

Not forgetting my mate Tim Bancroft who organised the RBRR and won "Club man of the Year" which was only right.