North American Triumph Sports 6 (Vitesse 6) and Herald Database
My 1967 Triumph Sports 1200 "blog"
North American Triumph Sports 6 (Vitesse 6) and Herald DatabaseMy 1967 Triumph Sports 1200 "blog" |
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I'll "borrow" the LR axle assembly from the '62...
July 29: Mom always used to smile (and even laugh quietly) when I'd tell her I was going out to work on the car and would be done in a half-hour. She learned long before I did that most of my projects would take much longer than I thought they would, and she was almost always right!
Today was like that. I had parts of two jobs to do. One was to (sigh) "borrow" the LR axle assembly complete from my '62. In the absence of a new u-joint and in need of having a car before Monday morning, I had little choice but to appropriate a known good assembly. And I figured it would be easy to grab this one, as it had been off only about 17 months ago. Unfortunately, the poor car had seen continuous use in most of those 17 months, including a mild winter (but winter -- and some road salt, etc. -- nonetheless).
As I expected, everything went smoothly ... until I got to the bolt holding the vertical link to the spring eye, which simply would not budge! In all my years of working on these cars, I don't remember having this problem before. Faced with a deadline, I had no choice but to fire up the old Sawz-All and cut through the bolt on either side of the spring. Da*n! I hate sacrificing a perfectly good bolt, especially since I was going to use it on GB53484! (I did save the nyloc nut and washer, for whatever little that's worth.)
(Incidentally, I'd also replaced the rear trunnion bushings in this assembly 17 months ago, but that seems to be a bit bound up again. Either I did something wrong in installing the bushings, or "they don't make 'em like they used to"! But the link does still move, so it will all have to do for now.)
Save for a few moments and choice words, assembly of the axle to GB53484 went reasonably quickly; everything lined up, bolted together, etc., without too much drama. The last chore, of course, was reinstalling the brakes. I rounded up two proper spring clips for the wheel cylinder (Ok, I borrowed them from the '62 as well), lubricated the sliding surfaces and got the cylinder installed. Much better seeing it staying properly in place. I had quite the struggle refitting the shoes, until I realized that the two springs were more than a bit mangled on their ends and generally well past their sell-by date. Two good springs from the parts stash, and all was good. Drum on and shoes adjusted, I refit the wheel, lowered it to the ground and went for a test drive!
Wow! The car has not rolled this smoothly since I've had it, and I've put almost 1,000 miles on it. There's no sporadic noise, no occasional "clangs," no rhythmic clicking/drumming when slowing to a stop. Most importantly, there's no virtually no vibration at any speed up to an indicated 60 mph (which is actually pretty darned near 60 mph. It's the most accurate Triumph speedometer I've ever had, but possibly the 165SR13 tires -- slightly oversize -- compensate for the normally optimistic speedometers in these cars)!
Oh, did I mention that I ended up scrounging up two lug nuts? One that, fortunately, came off without drama was almost completely stripped, and another was almost as bad. This makes three I've had to replace on this car, the third having been done early on during front brake work (I forgot to mention that back on page 4!) I've never had to replace a lug nut on a Triumph before, but I suppose I can't complain about 45-year-old lug nuts, huh?
Sidebar: Looking over all I've written, I realize I never mentioned the gas gauge. Perhaps the less said the better! From the first time I saw the car up to the present time, it has functioned ... somewhat. Fact is, the needle goes back to E when the ignition is off, and goes to about 5/8 when the ignition is on. Unfortunately, it never changes from that 5/8 reading! It is a "stabilized" gauge, so it slowly moves up to its reading rather than jumping instantly as the older-style gauges did. But it's fixated on that one reading. I've not had much time to troubleshoot. At one point, I did try a stabilized fuel gauge (condition unknown) from a Spitfire. That gauge seemed to want to go right to F, so I'm not sure what that was telling me. A couple weeks ago, I was looking again at the wiring on the tank sender and realized that someone had installed the sender upside down! Unfortunately, "righting" the sender had no effect. I did buy myself an inexpensive analog voltmeter recently, but I just haven't had time or inclination to troubleshoot further. I know that filling up when the trip odometer gets around 180 miles gives me a very good safety margin, so having a gauge is not a priority! I don't have any spare compatible senders or gauges anyway, so.... |
Is it just possible that I might have a (nearly) trouble-free week or so ahead of me? Should I not have said anything?
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7/25/12; revised 8/28/12