Autocar - 1973

Got my hands on a perfect copy of the infamous edition of Autocar 26 July 1973 ... seen before by many, no doubt, but the first time I've seen it. Enjoy the review of the new Dolly Sprint, and the Lord Stokes interview, prophetic or pathetic? You decide. (I wonder what he would have made of a K-series Spitfire?):

Aladdin's Cave

Well the commercial bloggers are really hotting up now ... so I've decided I should type in a nice soothing blue colour and stick to less controversial issues, and avoid links, 'cos I never have the time to follow them anyway.

I met a really interesting person last weekend, someone I’ve wanted to meet for a while – the chap who has a front yard literally littered with Triumphs. His name’s Russell, and he’s clearly got a collection. He has an aim in life to keep as many Triumphs on the road as possible. I recently counted seven saloons and one Dolomite on his drive, but he’s been cutting back and when I went to see him on Saturday there were only three saloons, a bodyshell and a dolly.

I was interested at having a look at his fireball red ‘S’ because it looks so much like BOB. It’s had some subtle modifications including the rear end colour matching, etc. Looking under the bonnet really put me to shame, though!


The wheels have been "Chattertoned" too:


One of the other cars looks like a standard 'S', albeit in the unusual Guinea Gold paintwork ... lurking underneath the bonnet is a professionally fitted 1977 4.2 Holden V8. It's not running at the mo. but I was assured it goes like the clappers. Incidentally it's for sale for a little under $2,000. Contact me if you're interested and I'll pass details on.



It has some neat little touches like a 4.2 grille:


And a filler neck protector (well worth having IMHO):


Russell probably has enough parts in his double garage, two containers and yard to put together several more saloons, but the only other one there that day, with an engine in it at least, was the Bamboo saloon, with Pi engine but CD175 Carbs. This has had the suspension worked apparently:


Russell sold me a set of Pi back seats for BOB for a very reasonable price. So on Sunday I fitted them... you can see why I got rid of the old ones! Check the sun damage, the grey is where the black has bleached or deteriorated - it's not dust!



And the new ones:


Sweet, now the interior's looking much better.

Did it.

It's still not Triumph ... totally non-technical, and all about me. But if I didn't blog it, then anyone who saw the last post might think I'd chickened out or that I didn't make it all the way to the top.

It went off without a hitch: I decided my tactics well before the race, and after having tried the course in two halves over the previous two weekends: Start at the back, run steady and probably finish at the back. I had a feeling that I’d be able to run the full distance and was hoping to make it in 2hrs 30mins – 2hrs 45mins. I wasn’t racing, I just wanted to get to the top.

Although it was cloudy at the start, and the top of the mountain was shrouded in mist, we ran through the cloud, as you can see from the photos Ella took as she walked up.




I made the halfway mark a little ahead of my target time, but, seeing as the course went up the side of a mountain, getting steeper and steeper, I knew I was going to slow down eventually. I had planned on conserving enough energy, such that at the final drink stop (at 19km) I could try and pick up the pace and get to the line in a bit of style (amidst the sweat and tears!). As it was, at 19km I was pretty much blown out, so I walked for a couple of hundred metres, before struggling to run at speed. I managed to do ok, but with 1km to go I slowed to a walk to summon up some more grunt. I fixed my eyes on a guy walking in front and caught up with him, told him that he was going to cross the line running with me, and proceeded to bully him over the line! I’m not quite sure where that came from, but he seemed appreciative. In this photo that Ella took he at least seemed to be talking to me!



I crossed the line at 2.42.06 placed 268 out of 358 finishers. Respectable enough for an unaccomplished runner that hasn’t run a half marathon before, let alone 1200 metres up a mountain. I think this photo shows how high up it is:



I think that all the food and water I consumed did me good, as I haven’t had any serious aches and pains apart from a bit of pain in my knee, which I’m sure will get better soon. It was great fun, and I’d certainly do it again.

Humungous Pinnacle!

Well nobody else seems to be making much sense in the CT blogosphere at the moment, so I thought I'd mention that I have a rather different challenge coming up at the weekend.



I've decided to enter the Point to Pinnacle half marathon... why? I'm not sure. But seeing as it starts very near my house, I thought I'd give it a bash. The organiser's recommend a year of training, I only found out about it two weeks ago.

Very Club Triumph, eh? Perhaps I should stay up all night glueing my running shoes together, and use gaffer tape for laces?



So, on Sunday morning I'll be setting off from sea level at Wrest Point Casino, and running (hopefully all of it ... but we'll see) 21.4km (13.3 miles) to the Pinnacle at the top of Mt Wellington at (cough) 1,273m (4,176 feet).



With any luck it will be bad weather and they'll stop us from going to the top! Here's my Google Earth mock-up of the course:

Absolutely filthy

The car, that is.

There are very few driving experiences I've had to beat the likes of a RBRR or 10CR experience. Exhausting as they may be, it's a real buzz to travel such long distances, and as for the camaraderie ... superb! However, last weekend Ella and I headed off to see a bit more of Tassie, and that was really, really, really good.

There are regional public holidays in Australia, and last Thursday we had "Show Day" in the south of Tassie. A great excuse to get out of town. We've already seen a fair bit of the south, some of the east, and a bit of the west. So we decided to do a road trip up the guts of the island to the north end of the state, then out to the wild west.

As we left town on Thursday I decided the clutch was definitely getting worse - so after half an hour, we pulled over and bled the clutch. I think when I changed the slave cylinder a month ago the realignment must have let some air in somewhere, because it's been great again since bleeding and hasn't got worse again ... touch wood.

The drive north down the Midland Highway is nothing special, fast but pretty boring. After lunch in Launceston we headed west to Devonport, where the fragments of dual carriageway finally peter out. So after 3.5 hours the intersting driving began, along sweeping coastal roads that took us to Boat Harbour, where the sea is most definitely blue!

A bit further west along the coast is Rocky Cape National Park - complete with Aboriginal caves nicely built into the quartzite.

I also spotted a "stupid sign" ... which way's the beach?

We camped by the sea at Black River, and had the whole place to ourselves ... except for some pademelons and wombats.

Next day we got to the first of the dirt roads! We tried to do the South Arthur Forest Drive - it's supposed to be a loop in amongst some impressive forests, with lots of windy roads and tracks and very little traffic about. Unfortunately though the loop was, erm, broken. Floods in August wiped out the bridge - look at these photos and see if you can spot the huge chunk of dolerite that was ripped up.




Never mind, we made our own way back around the loop, crossing lots of other interesting bridges:



Then we pushed out to the tiny town of Arthur River on the west coast for the night. Now you're talking - these roads were pretty rough, but solid.


Unfortunately it was extremely dusty too, and the boot was filling up with dust!

At Arthur River we had one of those very lucky moments, though. We were just about to eat our dinner (kangaroo stew cooked on the barbeque!) when Ella noticed fluid leaking from the car. We had driven 15km up the coast to get a full tank of petrol, and the full tank was trying to run out all over the campground. Amazingly, it was spotted before more than a litre had run out. It wouldn't have been fun to be stranded this far out with no fuel I can tell you!

The next day I got to drive the best road I've ever driven in my life. For over 100km we didn't see a single other vehicle as we ventured down the Western Explorer road. It was all dirt, loads of mountains, lots of variety from open plains to forests. Totally idyllic and a real treat to get to know how to handle BOB, on dirt, at speed, round corners. Even Ella seemed happy with this as you can see from the photos:




We arrived in Corrina - an amazing old frontier place - with big smiles on our faces, and after a coffee break, headed back inland, along more dirt roads, to Waratah, and then to Cradle Mountain for the night. I got a video of a Wombat from BOB too ...



After a night at Cradle Mountain it was time to head back to Hobart - via lot more great roads, of course. Here we are above Great Lake in the Central Highlands (at about 1,400m - which is high in Australia!).


All up we did about 1,100km, much of it on slow roads and all within the hours of daylight... it's not recommended to hit Wombats (colloquial term "Badger") as they're pretty hefty.
So what about the subject of this entry ... well that's about the state the car is in now - filthy. It's caked on like concrete, actually, could be fun trying to clean it.

MONSTER DOUBLE POST: Heritage / Are you sitting comfortably?

HERITAGE

Whilst I was back in England recently, preparing myself for a Toledo experience (more of that later)I had a look through my Dad’s old photos … and got a glimpse of my Triumph heritage. It was funny to see my folks before I was born. Apparently in the sixties it was de rigueur to smoke a pipe and sit on your Triumph motorbike and pose for photos!



Dad has fond memories of driving to Nice, via the Alps of course, in 1972 in his Vitesse. Mum, probably doesn’t as she had to stand around in the snow in Switzerland for photos! Unfortunately when he sold the car to a friend it was written off shortly after.



Then there was one of his Dolomites … this was the 1850 in Chinon in 1973, it had all the SAH work possible to make it as quick as a Sprint. I think it was this car that ended up mangled but that might have been the Sprint he had later.




ARE YOU SITTING COMFORTABLY?

I’m finally sitting comfortably. Until mid-August the broken driver’s seat diaphragm had been supported by a piece of wood. The seats had also suffered VERY badly from sun bleaching and the Bri-nylon had completely disintegrated on the outer shoulders of both seats … I should’ve taken photos. I set out to find some replacement modern seats that would offer a bit more support and take up a bit less space, too. One thing – I didn’t want MX5 seats. So, here’s what I ended up with:



Yes… MX5 seats. After three months of searching I couldn’t find anything better I’m afraid, and they’re a lot more expensive than in England. I got them fitted professionally though as I’m no metalworker, so they’re raised 35mm and mounted on the original rails to maintain the same height as the Triumph seats. A bloody good job they did on them, too. I’ve now wired in the headrest speakers as well, which was worth the effort I think.

Another change was made just before I left to come to England, and that was identity. BOB is now officially Tasmanian. A rather simple test was done for roadworthiness, and proof that oil doesn’t drop from the undercarriage more than once every 40 seconds was good enough for Tassie!

I brought back from England some new 160lb Witor front springs for BOB. These are now fitted, and make the whole car feel a lot more stable – a lot less diving under brakes, and the strut tops and insulators were replaced as on one side they had compressed and were causing a fair old lean. The only problem is that I’d got quite used to the camber the soggy ‘S’ springs gave and there doesn’t seem to be as much grip under hard cornering as there was before. I guess realignment might be a good idea.

I also had a surprise when Ella picked me up from the airport when I got back from Europe. The clutch was virtually inoperable, so after a 29 hour flight I found myself feeling the slave cylinder for leaks in the airport car park. Sure enough it was leaking, so on the way home we picked up a recon. 3/4 inch cylinder and I had to fit that. Well at least I could do I suppose and it wasn't too dear. The clutch is better than it ever has been now over the last two weeks, but I noticed last night that the pedal doesn't seem to be returning too well ... time for more investigations by the sound of it :-(

Tassie living

Living in Hobart is a bit isolated. The Greater Hobart area may have a population of around 220,000 but it's at the very southern end of Australia and the island itself, about the size of Ireland, has a little less than half a million people all up. This does make it open to accusations of in-breeding, etc. but in fact it's a fairly cosmopolitan place to live.

There are some advantages to living in a small-ish city like Hobart. I work about 5 minutes from the city centre, and strolling back from a meeting the other day I passed two Triumphs (admittedly one of them was our car - Ella must have parked it there) and the "City CV and Driveshaft" workshop... surely every city should have such a shop in the CBD? It would make a nice change from coffee shops.

I've noticed so many Triumph saloons around it's not funny. One guy has at least 7 in various states parked in his yard, and I've been told there's another bloke with the same "gardening" interest somewhere near Hobart.
Running home from work last night (I have to run off the local brewery's rented calories) I saw two green Triumphs - the first was a convertible Vitesse I've seen around a bit, I've yet to speak to the owner, but I noticed the dented door has been restored (still bare metal at the moment though). Then a little further along I saw a fairly tired looking Mk3 Spitfire. I've seen this car a few times now, too, and I'm intrigued as to the reason for its large bonnet scoop.

Now I've got the car garaged I'll have no excuse to getting things done on BOB. I'm currently trying to negotiate the purchase of some black BMW E46 front seats ... should help keep my arse of the floor and my back off the rail.

BOB has now done about 20,000km since we bought it two years ago - a paltry mileage really, but that's ok I guess, it means there aren't too many things to fix!

End of an era

After eight months in Hobart living on the side of a hill with no garage and precious little flat areas anywhere near our house, we're upping sticks this weekend ... to a place with a garage. It even has an electronically operated door - wow! It's been a real pain not being able to even jack the car up, or do anything on it after dark (4.45pm at the moment) so now I can get on with some tinkering and check out oil levels, etc.

Update time!

It really is three months since I've "blogged". Of course, you noticed that?

"I would have written a shorter blog, but I didn't have the time" Graham Bernard Shaw

Last time I posted I mentioned the humming noise that didn't go away when the diff. was changed ... well the good news is that the change of hub bearing sorted it out, and the car is a much quieter, nicer place to be. Since then there haven't been any major happenings. BOB's been behaving well on its duties, getting us to the shops, etc, but also out and about on a few trips ... although they were a while back now.

We went to Bruny Island (southern Tassie) where almost all of the roads are unsealed! That was fun enough. Then over the Easter weekend we drove out to see some of the hydro-electric schemes and the lakes that supply them, and then on to the Wild West Coast. It was a beautiful weekend, bright blue skies, etc, and driving into the campsite on the first night on a long section of twisting dirt roads in the dark was the first chance I've had to use the spotlights really usefully ... well, they work, and we saw lots of little hopping animals heading away from their beam just in time!

Here's me and the car in front of Lake Pedder (just before the sky got blue!)


The drive out to the West Coast was excellent, there's some impressive roads to say the least, and in parts the speed limit is ... let's say a challenge rather than a limit ;-) There are 99 sharp bends in the road on the final section of road on the way into Queenstown, apparently, no wonder they use this section in Targa Tasmania!

The weather was so good we could even see Frenchman's Cap, where we walked at Christmas, but hardly saw because of the cloud:


And one of the hydro schemes for those who care!


In April I got to see some of the Targa Tasmania. It isn't the most spectator friendly event, by any means, and they've scrapped the old saturday morning stage in Hobart because in 2006 a spectator was killed by a flying BMW Mini. A friend and I headed up an hour north of Hobart and sat in a field watching cars tear past us for a morning, including a Mk2 2.5Pi, a TR3 and a TR8. Good fun it was, too. I'd love to compete in this one day, apparently it's the world's longest tarmac rally - five days of amazing roads ... but I suppose I get to travel these for work and pleasure anyway.

Now I'm finally getting around to sorting some new front seats out for BOB ... currently looking at some black suede RX-7 seats, but who knows what we'll end up with?

Also, I'm getting reports from Ella of misfiring over 3,000 rpm ... great. Currently I suspect either fouling of the plugs, especially as I still have some plugs in that were recommended for Queensland weather, and it's hovering around the 5 degree point here in Tassie at the moment, or it could be time to try and re-route the cooling/heating system through the manifold where it's been bypassed (probably because it rusted out).

The good news is that we're moving to a place with a garage! The cars been getting drenched, scorched and even frozen in the last 3 months, so a garage will be good, and a flat surface even better.

Back again soon-ish?

Hummmmmmmmmmmmmm

Another month has flown by, so I suppose I ought to update.

I purchased the diff. mentioned before - reconditioned, no clunking backlash - and I had it fitted by the former Hobart Triumph dealership mechanic ... at a very reasonable price, too.
The good news: we needed the diff. - the old one was rather leaky and the oil was well dirty.
The bad news: some of the humming noise was in fact down to a worn rear hub bearing, diagnosed in seconds by the mechanic.
So, today the car is back in to have this changed ... it's going to be a pain if he can't reuse the UJ as the 'crossover' TriDat UJs aren't cheap - but then a bearing failure could be a bit messy to say the least!

Otherwise autumn is on its way here, and the car is getting a good regular soaking standing out on the driveway - it will be good to move to a place with a garage.
Ho hum.

WARNING - Ramble ahead!

I can’t believe it’s a month since my last update! Well, the last few weeks have seen some car fun of one kind or another so I shall ramble away.

Ella and I were late entrants in the Wrest Point South East Tasmania Rally. That turned out to be a bit less ‘rally’ than we’d hoped and a bit more ‘tootle’. Lots of fine cars, from the pre-1918 category up to the 1980s, but no real navigation to be done, and we spent most of the day attempting to get past old Wolseley’s with picnic hampers, and the like. There were numerous stops scheduled – half an hour for morning tea, an hour and a half for lunch – so we ate lunch early and then went off driving at lunch time. This was good; we did a big loop on a dirt track from the lunch break in Oatlands up to a place called Interlaken. We even saw an Echidna!

Ella is doing a bad job of hiding/sheltering in this photo!

These are the local roads that serve Interlaken - how much fun?:



You want to avoid running over these, however ... getting a flat tyre out here wouldn't be fun:


There were a few other Triumphs around – including a Herald Convertible (butchers job I think) and a “Bob-alike” (albeit an auto TC rather than an ‘S’).


So, as Ella was deeply unimpressed with the ‘rally’, the week after had to be an improvement … and it was! I’ve met up with a couple of younger generation Triumphers in Tassie, and they’d recommended coming along to a run down to Southport, and the southern-most tavern in Australia (arguably). This turned out to be pretty lively with nine or ten assorted Triumphs and a ‘boy racers’ and ‘old duffers’ agreement – the boy racers raced off, and then waited for the others to catch up. A pleasant morning was spent re-enacting sections of the famous Targa Tasmania . I got to drive behind Bruce in his smart (and well-driven) yellow Dolly Sprint as he led the run – he clearly knew the roads and allowed me to open BOB up. Great fun! The whole day felt somewhat Club Triumph - like ... smiles all round.

This is in Cygnet near the beginning of the run (I was allowing my brakes to cool here after some very fast Targa stage with lots of hills):


Here we are lined up at Southport:





Unfortunately, however, Glen (one of the younger guys) suffered a painful differential malfunction on leaving the car park in the morning … this isn’t the first time it’s happened on his Mk2, but then given its spec. it’s not that surprising I suppose. Glen showed me the damage done to the internals of the diff. … ouch! He has replaced the diff. With a 4.11 ratio, however, and is selling me a 3.45 to replace our noisy one. I’m going to try and requisition an empty house’s driveway to do the change over as I’ve got the steepest driveway in the world at the moment – not the safest place to change a diff.

In terms of maintenance, I've managed to sort out a fuel pump oil leakage, re-fit the weatherseal, fill the holes allowing water into my front wings, but still have to do the diff. get some replacement seats (then I can get rid of the wood holding the seat base up!) and get some new front tyres, and a grease gun that will actually reach my steering rack.

Phew I need a cup of tea after that!