Sitting comfortably

After fitting the "new" driver seat to UNJ I found the back flexed quite alot and was certainly not fixed.

So, out it came again and after a partial strip down this is what was found - a broken weld.

So we cleaned it up and here's Bryce welding it back up

And the result

Refitting to the car today and all is well.

Little things that please

A series of little things done on the convertible but I am well pleased.

1. I had a TR8 steering wheel fitted to BRP and as I won't be using it for months now I swapped it over on to UNJ and it's a better driving eperience for it.
2. I have never been able to get the door/interior lights to work properly on a TR7 and UNJ was no exception but today's the day I cracked it. Thanks to help from people on http://www.forum.triumphtr7.com/default.asp as well as a PM on the Club Triumph forum and an email (you kow who you are) I have finally realised how thick I am
   
   Strangely,I thought that two wires both of which had purple in them would/should both be live whereas the one that was black would be the only earth.
   
   Hence I had the black earth wire to the single contact on the lamp and the two purple "live" ones to the other two connections. I was then wondering why there was no power to the purple/white wire
   
   Now I have realised there are two earth wires and only one power I have the lights connected correctly, I have cleaned up the courtesy light switches and guess what - yes, courtesy lights that work.

The correct way to wire the lights up! Purple is power to the single connection, the other two are earths

    3. Having done this I then thought about the annoying horns as they are more of a "peep" than a proper loud blast. It's one of those jobs that gets left as there are always more important things to do but today I had some time at looked at the problem.

One of them  just wasn't working so up into the loft for a replacement from my stash of hoarded second hand parts and it was replaced in a few minutes. Result is a proper blast from the horns as they should be.

  4. Adjusted the washer jets. Yes another small thing but like everything else, small niggly things spoil the experience of driving the car so it's good to get them fixed.

I'll have to return to the driver's seat though as the back isn't as fixed as it should be and then there'll be new bushes in the rear parallel trailing arms so there's more to do yet of course.

 

Happy for most of the time

Returned to UNJ this afternoon with all the nearside interior needing to be fettled and placed back in the car. Here's how it looks at the start of play, the carpets all pulled up, bits of trim missing and the passenger seat is not actually bolted in.

I found it all very satisfying actually. First I put the seat outside of the car and then went about finding and replacing the right screws where they were missing in the rear trim panel and also in the kickpad on the left. Then it was a case of putting the bulkhead sound proofing back on and refitting the original carpet.
The car has had another set of carpets fitted over the originals which are very faded and although the new set are black rather than the correct blue they look pretty good.
I did as a previous owner has done and fitted them on top of the originals so there's 2 layers which in theory gives good soundproofing although I like driving with the top down as much as possible which makes it all a bit academic.

Next I ran a bolt through all the captive nuts in the floor with copper grease on it to try and ease the refitting of the seat and this certainly helped as it went back in quite easily. I also took the opportunity to unbolt the the seat belt from the seat, unravel it and bolt it back on so that it will now fit much better and as intended.

Here's how it all looks and I must say I am very pleased.

So why does the post title say "happy most of the time"?

Well by comparing both seats it's obvious that the driver's seat's reclining mechanism isn't working properly, or even at all. It's in the one position and not firmly in that either so it looks like I need to do a bit of research and probably strip it down to make a repair.

It really is a shame as it's in very good condition otherwise, certainly better than the one that came out.

Keep on going

A return to UNJ this time.

I wasn't in the best frame of mind though as I had been away on buysiness to Spain and spent the last two days sipping water as I couldn't face any food. This was all good for weight reduction but not for a day's work on a Triumph when I know they rarely co-operate.

First on the agenda was driving over to Bryce's where he was good enough to help me out again. Priority was getting at a hole I knew was lurking on the nearside bulkhead where it butts up to the back of the inner wheel arch in the engine bay. I had stripped out all the interior for a better view and found two other small areas of rot which were probably caused by water getting in via the first hole and then being held by the carpet.

To get at the bulkhead hole though the windscreen wiper motor needed to come out and then the combined battery tray/wiper motor panel moved out of the way. A combination of drilling the spot welds and then cutting through the horizontal part of it meant it could be bent away to reval the horror below.

Nice grot!

 Having done that it was all cleaned up, metal patches made up, welded in (including in the interior) and then suitably treated with sealer and preservative. Sounds easy doesn't it? Well it wasn't.

With a welder available Bryce and I returned to trying to remove an obstinate bolt putting up a hell of a fight on the removal of the driver's seat front, specifically the one at the front near the transmission tunnel. Of course this wasn't in a convenient place either, what a surprise.

Not to be denied, Bryce welded on another bolt which immediately broke off. Another attempt saw a slight bit of movement before it snapped off again.  By now there was too much weld getting in the way and we still hadn't won. I have to admire Bryce's determination though, we kept at it.

At this point I commented that the seat was completely shot with a broken back in it as well as the fabric being in bits and the fact that I had a good replacement which was the whole point of the exercise. So, Mr Bolt, fight all you like you are not going to win.

Don't look down for those of a nervous disposition.

Out comes the knife to remove the front quarter of the seat followed by an angle grinder to remove the interior seat metal frame so that we could see the bolt directly for the first time. What I should have taken a photo of was the very large old screwdriver we welded to the bolt next and the large molegrips used on it until that bolt finally gave in.

Sacrificial seat!

By now having fought the car all day it was time to put it back into a drivable state - the sacrificial seat went back in for the 17 mile drive home whilst the wiper motor was bolted back in but I wasn't keen to try the wipers until I had another day to check things over again.

Luckily the wipers weren't needed on the 17 mile drive home as it was a fine dry day going into dusk and then

and then

I remembered how great it is to drive the car with the top down, jacket zipped up, woolly hat on head and heater on full.

Why would anyone not have a Triumph??

Coping mechanisms

Couldn't quite get to work on the 2000 engine this week so I changed tack and decided to replace the driver's seat in UNJ with one I bought from ebay.

The original driver's seat showing rip/wear to outer side section - there is something broken inside too!

The much better ebay seat.

So, a good plan then and I set off to remove the original seat only to find I could only get one retaining bolt out! Further attempts would probably result in getting absolutely nowhere and making things worse so I decided to call a halt on this project.

Never fear, next week I hope we can do some welding to the bulkhead in the passenger footwell and it would be a good idea to remove the passenger seat to give clearance room as well as to get a chance to dry the floorpan out! Much more progress with this seat; 3 bolts out and only one being a pig! Same decision made, leave it for another day.

My theory is that I am playing a long game and I know too well that if I let myself get impatient I only make things worse. I can even prove this theory as last week I replaced the viscous fan coupling. Now, when this is done it is easy to think there are only 3 bolts holding the mounting to the front of the block as one is lurking underneath.

Of course, this difficult to see bolt is also the one that is the most difficult to get to when bolting the mountiong back on, so much so that last week I left it off and decided I'd just make sure the others were tight by regular checking.

This week though, after the seat debacles I decided to return to the attack and succeeded with very little effort really. There you go you see, leave a difficult job alone for a while and come back to it with fresh eyes and attitude and "the job's a good un".

Check out next week's adventures to see if the theory works on those seat bolts.

The awkward bolt is the inner one at the bottom of the housing - much more visible in this photo than in real life!

Engine cleaning & fan replacement

It took 2 hours to steam clean all the 2000 engine components but at least it's a good base to start from.

Also, the flywheel fits in the lathe so we can machine it down from the current 13kg to a target weight of 8kg thanks to advice from the Club Triumph forum - that's one heck of a reduction and it should make a difference to low speed pick up.

That was yesterday but today whilst doing a check over UNJ back at home I decided to sort something else out.  There has been rather a strange noise develop which led me to believe the viscous fan was failing and it certainly did not rotate freely as it should. My plan had been to spend £100+ on an electric fan kit but then I remembered a viscous fan assembly I had removed from a Dolomite Sprint engine.

Best part of an hour later it was swapped over and all appears to be well. Subject to a roadtest that's a good way of earning £100 an hour!

I also rejoined Facebook today (against my better judgement) but here's a photo from my daughter Michelle's page showing me and PMW in the Alps last year which brings back happy memories.

PMW looking great with a tremendous background - not sure about me though!

Stripping on a Friday

A racy title but actually 3 1/2 hours of stripping the 2000 engine down.

All very satisfying and it's now stripped right down to it's component parts ready for inspection and cleaning before further work to recondition it.

There should have been plenty of photos but due to a camera malfunction here's just the one that survived.

Here's the cam removed and sat loose on the sump. There's some marking on the lobes which is just about visible in this photo but as I am planning a new cam it's not of any concern.