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Author: Scott Beattie
Total 5 posts - Started on 2012-01-15
Last Post Time: 2012-02-04 22:00:23
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
Been pluggin along . Ordered pretty much all the suspension parts . Repainted the steering wheel w/ rustoleum hammered finish and did the grill upgrade . Turned out pretty good me thinks .
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Author: Bob Evans
Total 11 posts - Started on 2011-01-19
Last Post Time: 2012-02-04 09:29:53
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
In response to Al (Falkon's) post on old models I dug out two I could not part with. A 1/8 scale Monogram Jag E-Type coupe that I did when I was 15 or 16 and a 1/24 scale Monogram die-cast metal MG-TC that I did in my 20's. The glue is letting go on both and they will have to be refurbished if I keep them. The plan is to put them in a glass case in my garage.
Bob
Feb. 05/12
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Author: Steve McCarthy
Top Contributor
Total 14 posts - Started on 2010-12-08
Last Post Time: 2012-02-01 14:14:14
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
Road Trippin’
with Steve McCarthy
I’m not really a morning person. Yeah, these days I seem to get up early, but that’s just a function of age and habit. I’m not what you’d call awake before about 10AM. Thirty years of teaching and needing to be out of the house before 7AM to get ready for the little dears has made it tough to sleep in. This means I’m rarely awake enough to bother with breakfast. A cup of hot chocolate (I really hate coffee- I know, sacrilege in this Starbucks driven world- but then you know me, an iconoclast to the hilt) and a breakfast bar is about it. If Marianne is making bacon, well, naturally I’ll have some of that, but really, I’m just not a breakfast guy. Unless we’re on a Road Trip.
If it’s Road Trip Time, I’m a breakfast-o-holic. Our usual deal is to hit the road at O’Dark-Thirty, and about an hour or so down the road, pull in and get some eats. As a creature of habit, for me it’s always the same thing. Pancakes. Unless there’s Waffles. Then either sausage (only if it’s link sausage in the casing, don’t give me those patties!) or bacon, lots of maple syrup and butter and a cup of hot chocolate. I tell ya, nothing beats good flapjacks in setting up the day for a long drive. Ya got yer protein from the porky goodness, carbs from the pancakes, sugar from the syrup (hopefully but rarely is it REAL maple syrup) and maybe blueberries for some fruit. What more can you ask for?
Now every one has their own favorites ...
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Author: Dave B
Top Contributor
Total 21 posts - Started on 2011-12-22
Last Post Time: 2012-01-28 12:25:19
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
Well I decided to put new 2 inch gauges in the center part of my dash. The background of the ones I bought are white. I decided to do a mod on my original tach and speedometer. I took them apart removed the number plates and scanned them. I then used photo shop to inverse the colors and fool around with the font. I printed them to a vinyl sticker material and stuck them to the gauge faces followed by a few coats of clear lacquer. After putting them all back together I was happy with the look.
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Author: Dickie Brewer
Top Contributor
Total 5 posts - Started on 2011-08-18
Last Post Time: 2011-12-22 13:31:40
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
Took the bumpers to the chromers. $670 to get them both cleaned up and triple chromed. Should have them back end of next week or the first of the following week.
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Author: Bob Coker
Top Contributor
Total 11 posts - Started on 2009-01-06
Last Post Time: 2011-11-17 14:36:46
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
About a year ago (Could it have been longer?), Brian Dougherty (rhitee93) was kind enough to make a set of Teflon "Button" bushings for my transverse leaf spring.
Some time ago I rebuilt the right rear wheel bearings and had a look at the spring, noticing that the leaves were quite compressed and seemed to have mashed the OE rubber bushes.
Well the other day I decided it was time to remove the spring and refresh the bushings with those that Brian made for me. I never really had a complaint about the ride but did notice that the rear end ride height was low.
Removing the rear spring was much easier than I imagined (This was the only thing holding me back all this time) and I was glad for advice from Eric Kieboom & Jacob Poortstra's excellent site:
http://www.triumphspitfire.nl/rearspringpads.html
and BPNW's YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/BPNorthwest#p/u/2/4E5rb2shsKc
From start to finish was about four hours, including paint time.
The rubber bushings had completely deteriorated, leaving only a rusty reddish dust where they should have been. I brushed each leaf on a brass wire wheel to remove rush and prepare for paint, using a good primer and a semi-gloss black finish coat. Silicone grease was liberally applied to the "buttons" to hold them in place during assembly as well as to provide lubrication (redundant, I know) between the leaves. I also applied silicone grease to the rubber buffer in the "top hat" where it contac...
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Author: Jamie Richardson
Total 44 posts - Started on 2011-02-20
Last Post Time: 2011-11-11 04:48:45
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
The dash is solid walnut and the door tops are walnut veneered. The shifter knob, window crank knobs, e-brake handle and door pulls are all walnut as well.
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Author: Michael Stoliker
Top Contributor
Total 14 posts - Started on 2011-02-20
Last Post Time: 2011-10-09 06:35:49
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
Here we are with summer gone and winter closing in and the Spitfire still hasn't seen the road. I'm not finding the time to work on the car as much as I'd like and I really need the therapy.
I've finally returned to the rust on the bulkhead and have removed the worst of the metal. I have to decide how much further to go with the rust around the perimeter. As you can see in the first picture, there are some areas that are holed and too thin to ignore. But I'm wondering if some of it can't just be ground down to bare metal and then have the pits treated with rust converter/encapsulator.
If there's enough meat left to weld to, I'm tempted to take short cuts. If I take out all the rust I'm going to have to rebuild parts of the vertical bulkhead to about a half-inch below where the top plate spotwelds on. That's more metal fabrication than I've ever attempted before, and I'm already pushing my limits.
The second picture is the panel I bought from Lee. I'm now tempted to remove the bubble for the brake reservior and lay the rest of the panel up against the bulkhead and cut away around it to replace as much metal as I can.
If I get my new welder soon I'll hopefully post the happy ending to this story next post. In the meantime...find a sand blaster.
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Author: Eric dit Meo
Total 36 posts - Started on 2011-06-02
Last Post Time: 2011-09-25 10:21:22
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
Some other pic of the work made on the rear....
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5 comment(s).
Author: Gregory B
Total 4 posts - Started on 2011-07-27
Last Post Time: 2011-08-30 01:35:49
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
Took off the black over unders on the rear bumper, it looks so much better now. Still some work now to fill in the holes and re-chrome the bumper. But before that I will be installing new front shock absorbers (the current ones are showing signs of ageing). Also finished up the prep and repaint of the steering wheel and alligned the Triumph logo so its straight again. Over all a relatively productive Sunday.
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Author: Geoff Kearley
Total 23 posts - Started on 2010-09-19
Last Post Time: 2011-07-08 17:33:02
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
Well. It's been a week, or two. The weather has been great and the TR7 has been performing perfectly. Well, really good. The top comes down and stows away easily. The car starts first try, every time. And, all you naysayers, it is a TR7.
The clutch ran dry and needed refilling and bleeding. The carbs ran low on oil and needed to be topped up. I checked these in March but should have checked them again as I have been using the car quite a lot lately. I haven't checked the differential or gearbox and, based on recent experience, guess I should soon. Those things are hard to do on an unpaved driveway. [Oh, my back!]
I have had several fantastic drives in the car lately; a 40 km run with a local club and a few private drives on my own. The club drive was great. There were 25 cars and about 1/4 were British; 3 Triumphs, 2 Minis, 1 Lotus and 1 Jag.
I have been on vacation and been using the car a lot. It is nice to get up in the morning and go for a drive with the top down. This is exactly what the car was built for.
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Author: Marcos Rodriguez
Total 24 posts - Started on 2011-03-27
Last Post Time: 2011-05-28 10:24:00
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
Finale view with wheel mounted
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Author: dave roberts
Total 6 posts - Started on 2011-04-29
Last Post Time: 2011-05-25 18:46:19
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
I stripped a bunch of parts off of my 1500. I was in the middle of restoring it when I fell into another project/deal. So everything I just hung on the new/used chassis is like new. The motor is Nancy's 1296. Her body is currently hanging from my HF engine crane. Holy cow, that makes it soooo much easier to weld up holes! I'll try to get some disassembly photos up.
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Author: James Patterson
Top Contributor
Total 7 posts - Started on 2010-11-08
Last Post Time: 2010-11-27 03:24:08
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
I spent the second half of today installing the alloy water pump housing that I've had sitting around for months.
The job coincides with replacing the radiator with a larger aluminium after market unit and also replacing the engine mounted fan with twin electric fans.
The water pump housing went really well without any real hitches. This even included re-tapping for the thermo fan switch!
First time for everything I guess.
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Author: Don McHale
Total 10 posts - Started on 2008-12-04
Last Post Time: 2010-08-27 10:34:08
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
Fixed 2 coolant leaks and a fuel leak yesterday. Also replaced voltage stabilizer, tuned the new dual carbs, timed it, and slowed an oil leak at the fuel pump. I thought it was totally fixed untill I found one drop of oil under the fuel pump this morning. attached the choke cable, replaced the turn signal switch assembly (which fixed the headlights). also fixed the header. it was vibrating against the frame so i had a small piece cut off. Then I took it on a long drive to the beach along PCH.
Next I plan on replacing the bumpers, brake hoses and waxing it.
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Author: Paul Gledstone
Total 7 posts - Started on 2008-08-26
Last Post Time: 2010-07-02 05:37:00
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
Took the plunge and started cleaning the engine etc. Not a full rebuild by any means but its suprising how a little bit of cleaning and renewing basics, can make things look better. Obviously new gaskets but also repainting , and just cleaning works wonders. Slightly worried abount the replacement head I purchased ages ago.Quite a lot was skimmed off the head and I am running with dommed top pistons, therefore the compression may be too high. We shall see! Spare parts are not particularly expensive but judging by my Bank balance recently, they soon add up.
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Author: Loren Welch
Total 24 posts - Started on 2009-07-04
Last Post Time: 2010-06-19 10:11:40
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
I fabricated an air tunnel to force air up into my lay-down radiator.
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Author: Jonathan Cronin
Total 12 posts - Started on 2010-01-08
Last Post Time: 2010-05-23 12:13:05
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
Things going well (ish!) This weekend I removed the windscreen glass and the surround then removed the dashtop. This was a little nervy as the dashtop are notorious for splitting and the very early Spitfires have a different dashtop to almost the rest of the Mk1, 2 and 3 production which all had the same. The early dashtops had no extended lip over the instrument cluster - it's not a documented change but it's beleived to have been chanegd sometime after the 1st 1000 cars or so were built. Fortunately mine is in good condition and came off easily enough in the end. Just need to store it someplace safe now :-)
To be honest I'm finding a lot of things are different on the very early cars (I have all the mechanical parts and interior for a mid 1963 Spitfire4 - FC14255 - to compare against) - The radio console/dash support is different; the fuel tank is different; the rear stop lamps are different (although I think mine are prototypes (no part numbers anywhere or makers name (lucas) if fact the design is ever so slightly different too; the inlet manifold is different; no makers name on my header tank (compared to the header tank for FC14255 which has a little plate underneath) - all interesting stuff (to me at least!).
The building up of the suspension is going ok too - apart from I've fitted the lower wishbones the wrong way so the antiroll bar won't fit! Doh! At least I hadn't tightened anything up so it's an easy shift really!
Post some pics of FC316 on this ...
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Author: Greg Deyo
Total 55 posts - Started on 2007-10-17
Last Post Time: 2010-05-20 06:40:48
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
I have always wanted to go to a Minnesota Triumph Sports Car Club meeting, but it meets at Fort Snelling's Officer's Club, and when I was unemployed last summer I couldn't afford the drive. Now I work five miles away and decided to go. They meet the second Thursday of the month. The meeting itself was boring, conducted as it was by classic rules, but I met some interesting people. It seems that almost everyone who drives a Spitfire is an insanely tall or large person. I thought I was big at 6'2" and 250 lbs., but I was average or even on the small side compared to most of these guys! After the meeting we all went out to look at the cars, but it was crappy weather and there were about six Spitfires and one TR3. I tried to get some ideas of where everything went so I could use it on my car, and some carb ideas as well. One guy had a four pack of Mikuni carbs on his that was interesting. We didn't stay long because as it got towards dusk, te temp dropped to around 40 degrees and the wind was blowing 25 to 30 mph along with light drizzle. It was freaking cold! I think I will hit next months and hope for nicer weather. I will have to bring my camera along as well.
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Author: Rupert Wild
Total 5 posts - Started on 2009-11-27
Last Post Time: 2010-01-22 16:40:44
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
Couldn't resist adding this one...
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Author: Tani Rieben
Total 9 posts - Started on 2008-10-10
Last Post Time: 2009-11-16 04:46:24
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
Well it's definately been too long since lot's of work had been done on "The Queen" but now that the weather here in the Middle East has reached it's best, so has my motivation to continue with the project.
Back in May The Queen was returned to my garage. After a short try to restart the engine, I noticed that there was some sort of short circuit inside the wiring. I've taken this as a chance to order new wiring harnesses etc. and I am currently waiting for these to be delivered. Once they are here I plan on redoing all the wiring (if anyone has a good wiring plan please let me know).
A couple of weeks ago I started putting all the bits and pieces back together. TRIUMPH lettering, bumpers, lights etc. It's taking longer to put it all back together than I expected, but it's coming along slowly but surely.
One major problem I've experienced is that putting the indicator lights back in, it seems like the bodyshop has aligned the holes wrong and I therefore can not fit the lights into the holes since there is no space between the holes and the "wheel arches". It seems like the only feasable solution is to drill a hole through the arch to be able to fit them. Again if anyone has had a similar problem please let me know what you did.
That's more or less it for now. I'm sure there'll be more to come soon.
Thanks for reading and looking forward to hearing from you.
Tani Rieben
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Author: John Gallagher
Total 5 posts - Started on 2009-07-29
Last Post Time: 2009-08-19 15:48:41
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
We've enjoyed some nice runs in the Spitfire, always being very cautious and listening for noises and such. Over the weekend we did a 30 mile run on Saturday morning and a 40 mile run on Sunday morning. No problems. While I got used to the difficult gear shifting, my wife didn't and it took away from the fun of driving the car for her. Therefore this is one of the jobs I tackled this week.
Upon reading about a similar problem someone else had on the forum I decided to disassemble the gear shift assembly. It quickly became quite apparent that the bushing (2-2102) that is supposed to be at the bottom of the gear stick had disentegrated. In fact I found little smashed bits of it resting on the rear transmission mount. Other nylon washers and bushings were also heavily worn so I ordered a gear shift kit from VicBrit....should be here in a week or so, and should solve the shifting problem....3rd to 2nd was impossible.
With the carpet/throw rug that the previous owner put in cut back to expose the screws to take off the transmission hood, I've decided to get a new carpet kit...which I need to order. The seats are also shot so I need to do something about them too.
When driving the car I felt that it had some get up in the lower gears, but once in 4th there wasn't much power. After seeing a British TV show called "Wheeler Dealers" where they restored a 1500 spitfire and did a compression test to see if each of the valves were sound, I decided to do the same. I had 170, 145,...
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Author: Steve McCracken
Total 8 posts - Started on 2008-03-30
Last Post Time: 2009-01-17 21:18:06
Posted on: The Triumph Experience
Today was warm finally...
Stuart, Aaron, Forrest, Austin and Christian worked on the engine.
There was blood, sweat and tears. All mine. Do not ever attempt to catch a flywheel with your foot...
Actually, it went very smoothly. Stuart is aces and everyone did what he said - even me.
We have pieces of "Nigel" everywhere.
I thank God for good friends and today was special in that we even did a "Hands and Feet" job for a wonderful lady from church.
I can't wait for putting back together what we have not so delicately taken apart.
I want the engine and front and rear suspension back together by February 5. We shall see. Tune in.
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