I've been here before!

I returned to the attack today! Having a day off work gave me the opportunity to make more progress and I approached things in a steady calm way' Hopefully, this will pay dividends later.

Whilst the head was off the car I remembered that the heater had not worked for some time so I backflushed that whilstI had the chance.

Then carefully cleaned up the block, blew through the waterways as much as possible with an airline, cleaned off the surfaces and generally did everything I could to give myself a good chance of it going right this time!

The cylinder head was all nice and shiny as it came from Dale's and finally I lifted it onto the block as you can see here with the cylinder head bolts and nuts etc in place. I couldn't torque it down as my torque wrench is over with PMW but it's good to see the engine looking more like an engine again.
Another bonus is that with the cylinder head off the bench and a bit of time put aside for tidying my work area in the garage actually looks clean and tidy for the first time in many months, well, by my standards anyway!

Sump 1 Head 0

I couldn't get access to the 2000 this week but I am doing my best to put in a couple of hours or so every weekend on the cars.

So this week it was back to BRP. My thoughts were that as I had just about got the sump back on I would finish that off and then fit the cylinder head.

There would have been a nice photo then as well with the engine looking more like a full engine again.

Oh well, it took alot more time than expected to get the sump all bolted back up. The main culprit was the bottom engine mount which fits across the bottom of the sump and onto the subframe. This had been the cause of my bloody hand (literally) of a few weeks back now.

There wasn't the problem of wrestling with it all this time though, it was just a very slow process. Whilst I was in the vicinity I changed the oil filter too so all the oil has been changed as well as the filter, hopefully making sure there are no metal bits in the engine oilways as a result.

In the end, 3 hours of work was quite satisfying as the sump is back in place and bolted up.

Next week I plan to change the screen rubbers in the 2000 as they are very perished which is not a good thing for a car about to be used over winter.

A thing of beauty

Attention switches to PMW this week as I have received my driving licence which is valid from November 5th, only 18 days from now and PMW is the only one of my cars taxed and tested.
There are a few jobs need doing though ideally before then and number one on the priority list is an exhaust as it was "blowing" and also knocking against the floor of the car on my birthday trip.

Having thought about it I bought a Chris Witor full sports stainless steel exhaust and today set about fitting it.Here it is fresh out of it's packaging and next to the old exhaust on the workshop floor.

The old exhaust was very thin in places and a number of the mounting points where either mssing or completely shot - whereas the new one is a thing of beauty!



It was a generally straight forward job although there were a couple of delays whilst Bryce and I worked out how it fitted at the rear - was it over or under the nearside drive shaft? The answer is under but it took some time working that one out.

Here it is in the picture below fitted showing the spectacular rear exhaust box and tail pipe.


It's not just the looks that are a thing of beauty though, oh no, the sound is just wonderful to behold. It certainly put a big grin on my face and I can't wait to drive the car on the road - first stop the November Pendle and Pennine meeting.

Proof of progress

Just visible at the front is the sump gasket - now there'll be no more progress for a while as I switch attention to PMW ready for me driving again!!

Sweat and blood but no tears (yet!)

I left off saying I needed to remove the sump - this is why. It may not be obvious in the picture below if you don't know the insides of engines but at the bottom is the front part of the sump sans gasket, which is not a good thing.


So, how to go about removing the sump? The picture below is the front of the engine just being lifted as can be seen on the right as it starts to clear an engine mounting (trust me on this one!).

I had to get under the car, undo all the sump bolts, loosen the engine mounting nut on the offside to allow the engine to move up and remove the engine mounting under the engine completely in the end.

With a trolley jack under the front of the gearbox it was then possible to lift the engine and ......

wrestle the sump off - as can be seen here. Also just visible in the first photo is the spring from the chain tensioner - it's much more visible on the one below along with a bit of sump gasket. Neither of these would be good to have circulating in the engine so I am glad to have gone to the trouble of removing the sump. It has now had a good clean, along with the mating surfaces for the new gasket.


There was certainly plenty of sweat and toil in all this but the blood? See picture below

Back to BRP

It's been a long, long time since I have worked on BRP but today was the day I started again. It's difficult to remember how all this came about so best to start from where I am now!

Above is the block of the engine in situ and having rotated the crank a few times the cylinder bores are fine with no scoring or any horrible scraping noises!

I need to get the sump off though as the sump gasket has broken in all this malarkey so first I drained the oil out using my suction device which works very well.
Ideally I want to try and get the sump off with the engine in situ so next was under the car (propped up on axle stands of course) and remove the sump-guard (see next two pictures). It's certainly seen some action but the bolts were a tad too long I'd say!

I think I'll try not to put this home made sumpguard back on - I have diagrams for the works cars so I'll see if I can have one made complete with bracketry and fit that instead.

Back to the point though, I took this off to see about removing the sump but I realised I didn't have a sump gasket yet anyway so left this until I do as I don't want a sump kicking around and foreign debris getting in the engine (well, no more than it is now!)
Not time to pack up yet as I could turn my attention to the top end. The photo above is the cylinder head that came off with the alleged group2 cam but there had been piston to valve contact so I removed it and asked Dale of Moordale Motors to recondition a spare one I had for me.

Well that proved to be a pig of a job with plugs seizing in it as well as studs etc. In the end Dale replaced one spark plug thread, 1 exhaust manifold fixing thread insert, 2 core plugs, cleaned all the threads out, recut and lapped in the valves, replaced a cam bucket, skimmed it and set the valve clearances. All of this with a standard cam which I am happy with as I just want to get to a reliable car with about 140BHP.

The new core plugs and the new spark plug thread are visible in the picture below - the head looks nice and clean, there was even the smell of the machining when I opened up the wrapping today!

Final work today was swapping the rear water transfer housing over to the recon head and then carefully stowing away the old head with a label of what it was and that it would need reconditioning (I'll only forget when I come to it again as I lose track of all the spares and where they came from, what condition they are in etc).

I suppose next will be seeing if I can get the sump off - if not then it means the engine out which is not something I look forward to.

But - work will stop on BRP in October while I get PMW fettled as this is the only Triumph I'll have available to drive immediately on my return to driving on bonfire night!

Clearing the decks

Back from my 50th birthday bash to the Alps and it's time to clear the decks. Much time was spent getting ready and then there's still a panic when loading a car before such a trip so "stuff" gets thrown into the garage - here's what it looks like; definitely a need to get things straight.

In the meantime, BRP looks like it hasn't been touched for years, not months as the photos below show. Time for a good wash and clean up before assessing what's needed next.