Spring is here (Kinda) Interior is in (most definitely)

First Drive of 2012 - just around the neighbourhood as it was right at freezing.

I love the parking brake boot but it makes makes the parking brake handle look that much worse.

The view from the passenger-side

The view from the driver's side.

On the short list of things left to do: Gluing the leading edge of the vinyl top, safety inspection and getting the wheels painted.

Stay tuned...

Mid Winter Update

I walked into the house after work one day, a few weeks back. The first thing I heard from my lovely wife was "That car is stinking up the garage! What's wrong with it?"

I calmly replied "It's a British car - that's the way they smell". Eventually I too had to admit there was a strong smell of gasoline coming from the car. Upon minimal inspection under the hood I could tell the fuel pump was leaking everywhere. I tightened things to no avail so now, as I write this, the car has a new fuel pump.

From denial to inspection to diagnoses to half-ass-fix-attempt to surrender to purchase of new pump to installation was about a six week turnaround. Meanwhile almost every event where we had friends and family over I wanted to show the car off to came in those six weeks. Not a big deal since Calgary is currently buried under a foot of snow but I would have like to have been able to fire her up for the fans.

There are some small parts I need before I finish skinning my convertible top. And the big thing I'm hoping to get in January/February is my carpet kit from Skinner. But for the most part the car is now a living organism. So much so I often forget to pull the negative off the battery and she doesn't short or run the battery down while I'm away. I come back days later and open the door to the bright courtesy lights.

There is a point in the build where a car becomes more than the sum of its parts. It's the point where the car develops its personality again. We are past that point. The car has a presence. For those who were in my garage over the last couple months and hadn't see the car for a year it's not the same car to them. I can see people's happiness for things saved where there once was a sadness for things lost. Believe me, I've seen both looks over the 3 years I've been into this.

I'm not saying I've created Herbie The Love Bug but, I feel, the essence of a soul is now there. Not every car has it - my wife's Rav4 doesn't. It has more in common with our stove than it does the TR6. But great cars do.

It's Christmastime and I really am enjoying it. Times are good. I like to make sure I convey that in this blog. These entries were so dark for so long during that first year that it makes it that much more important to note the fruits of that struggle.


Hayden and Ruffin wish you a Merry Christmas too

Show and Tell

This is the point where I shut up and let the pictures do most of the talking. Since I last submitted a blog report Shawn and Dave were over to lend their expertise to the installation of the waist seals for the doors. Between the two of them they have a TR6, TR250, MGB, and TR250 project. AND wives who have given up all hope of parking in the garage - I’ll get Krista there someday. I had the windows in seconds before they installed the waist seals. the windows work great but those waist seals really have me tickled.

I had another order come in from EBay this week that I was trying to avoid but in the end I had to bite the bullet. The order was the column mounted dimmer switch. I reported earlier that I had rebuilt it but it wasn’t staying rebuilt. I opened it up two more times and it would work for a few uses then act up again. I picked a used one up for a hundred bucks including shipping. It wasn’t a screaming deal but almost half of what they retail for. I installed it last night and works great.

It didn’t take me long to get my door panels installed after the windows and seals went in. Within three days I had both new door panels installed. I put all of the hardware on except for one window crank as it’s missing the knob. I have new crank assembly coming in from EBay for sixteen bucks. I hope it will be here this week.

Also received an order from Moss. This ordered contained my windshield wiper blades. Along with those the order also contained seals for between the windows and the convertible top frame.

Speaking of the convertible top - as of this past weekend - I almost have the top completely installed. I need to glue the leading edge but before I do that I want to wait until my leading edge seal channel arrives from Moss. The top provided a lot of challenges not the least of which was a trip to “Michaels Craft Store” for a snap punch, leather hole cutter and Velcro. That place is not fit for man or beast on the weekend before Halloween. After a lot of line-waiting, hammering, tugging and swearing the top looks really good.

Stay tuned...

Dashing Dash

Late Friday Krista and I returned from Brother Lachlan’s wedding in Mexico. It was a great week and I did relax. Although the entire time I was there I couldn’t help but wonder: “has my dash arrived at home yet?”

Turns out it arrived the same day I did and with the three day weekend the car got some long deserved attention. 

I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves but I will share that I had the car out to celebrate the new dash on Saturday (most things are celebrated with a TR6 drive these days).  No side roads this time as I took her out on 1A and then on to the mighty Stoney Trail. Now that I am driving this car there are two things that I can’t get over. The first being the long power curve of that little motor. That thing is torque-y and long legged. It’s very fun to drive. The other thing is how small it is. Granted its big sitting next to my MIG welder in the garage but get her into modern (read: boxy behemoths) traffic and it’s a little intimidating. I had an F250 Diesel go by me on the right in three lane traffic and I have to admit I may have left a brown lump in my pants. I’m basically driving a double-wide Goldwing – except you sit a good two feet higher on a Goldwing. I do love plugging the little car into lanes with ease. It snakes through traffic like a ghost.   

Dash, Door caps, snaps for boot and tonneau cover and under the boot: softtop frame.

Look at that dash.

 

British Leyland Badge. I tried to save the original but it fell apart when I attempted to remove it.

Some of you may not beleive this but dad's car only ever had one and it was on the passenger-side

Night driving anyone? - all new bulbs- everywhere.

The first pic is from August 2009

Prince of Darkness Battery (Label) an the new hold down kit

Waiting on Parts

Waiting on parts again. The good news is that I see that TRF has charged my credit card. That's their anti-social way of telling me what I ordered is on it's way. The parts will probably arrive while I'm away for brother Lachlan's wedding in Mexico. So no post next week.

See you in a couple of weeks.

Stay tuned...

By The Numbers

I’m the type of guy that if there’s a subject that interests me I’ll find out everything about that subject until there is no more information that can be rung out of it. There were two occasions this week relating to “The Little Car That Could” where I had to dig until I got all the answers I needed. One was a win the other was a loss.


Before I put any real mileage on the TR6 it needs an oil change. It essentially still has the break-in oil in it. Being that I haven’t put any mileage on the car it hasn’t been an issue. October is my month to do some driving (hopefully) so it’s about to become an issue.

I have a bad habit of listening but not hearing. Match that with a spotty memory for detail and it’s amazing that I function at all. Everyone has been telling me what I need to use for oil but as I wasn’t ready to deal with it I wasn’t really listening.

It turns out what they were saying all along was “ZDDP”. ZDDP stands for zinc dithiophosphate. To keep it simple ZDDP does two things effectively: 1) it protects flat tappets as they move over the camshaft. 2) ZDDP kills catalytic converters (that’s the thing on you exhaust pipe that’s not your muffler).

New cars have roller type tappets which create less friction at the cam and therefore they do not require ZDDP in oil. With that being the case, and being that all cars have catalytic converters now, ZDDP has been slowly reduced in oils until it’s almost not there. Before catalytic converters oil contained about 2000ppm of ZDDP.

Even the oils that tout ZDDP as an additive don’t have 2000ppm. Most of those oils have between 150ppm and 1500ppm. After a lot of research on what was recommended, what was available locally and what was best I decided to purchase a 20W-50 weight oil from a company called Brad Penn. The oil is their high performance Penn-Grade 1 and it can be found at performance parts store in Calgary. Brad Penn stands for Bradley, Pennsylvania. That’s where the oil is refined. Independent tests put the ZDDP content around 1500ppm. I also purchased a bottle of ZDDPlus. That can be added to any oil to give it 2000ppm. Because I like many of the other benefits of using Brad Penn I’m going to add one forth of the ZDDPlus to every oil change to bump the ZDDP to 2000ppm.

I did a lot of research on oil online. A part of that is reading a lot of car forums. If there is a “third-rail” car topic it has to be what oil guys use. There is some passion for oil out there – to say the least. Dodge v. Chevy. v. Ford doesn’t hold a candle.

The other issue I tackled this week was the fact that shortly after the TR6 left Felixstowe, England in early 1976 bound for Montreal, Quebec and eventually Edmonton, Alberta it disappeared - at least on paper. There are no registration documents on the TR6 – anywhere. I know because I spent the last three days searching. I inquired with two registry agents and someone in the service center at the Government of Alberta Ministry of Transportation. The car doesn’t exist. There are no records in Alberta for cars last registered before 1984. But here’s the kicker: the car may never had been registered anywhere ever. The only document I have from the car is the last insurance document in my mothers name for 1981-82 and the VIN number on the card is incorrect. In the insurance doc the car is listed as 1976 Triumph TR6 CR52431UD. The VIN on the car is CF52431UO. It’s not clear when this mistake was made but if it was right off the hop when the car was first registered then the car was never-ever properly registered. I’m such a geek I find that fascinating.

The downside is that the car is going have to have an out-of-province inspection before I can register it. I insured through Hagerty insurance and because it was insured as a low annual mileage / pleasure vehicle they didn’t require an inspection to be done. For a moment there I was off the hook. But at the same time the car needs an alignment anyway and I found a good little shop that does a lot of British cars that will do both at a really good price. Not a big deal – the car is in great shape – might as well prove it. As a bonus I’ll score points with my in-laws who love checks and balances.

Still there’s a part of me that wanted to reach into that past again and pull back some tidbits of this car, and by extension, my dad’s history. I knew it was a long shot but the dealer name in Edmonton or something like that would have been neat to see on a VIR. It may be sick but I love to dig through those registry records if they existed somewhere – that’s my idea of a good time.

Last Thursday marked 3 years since dad’s passing and funny but I almost forgot about it. From a mental health point of view I’ve come a long way from the panic that punctuated the beginning of this blog. It might not be as interesting reading as it was when I was trying to get traction with this project/life but now is a good place to be.


Stay tuned…

Techie Week

Maybe to the confusion to most who read this and maybe it plays into those who say that I’m a bit of a strange cat but again I need to talk about the audio system going into this car. I know that it is rather a moot point as a stereo in a convertible is rather obsolete and I know that we all thought I had it put to bed with the Satellite on the dash and the amp under the passenger seat but I wasn’t happy with the volume control.

My plan was to install the volume knob where the dash light dimmer switch resides as the dimmer is not that important and could easily be bypassed without issue. The problem with that plan is that left me installing at radio-delete panel in where the radio used to reside. I didn’t love that situation but it seemed to be the best case at the time – until now…

It came to me in a dream the other night: What if I leverage the Blaupunkt radio to control the volume? I admit it was pretty far fetched but I did once turn a vintage Royal vacuum cleaner into a derby racer so I know I am sometime capable of strange things.

My first plan was to utilize the inline rheostat I had purchased for my system by sistering it to the radio’s volume knob internally. But once I removed the volume knob control shaft from the old Blaupunkt it became clear to be that I could simplify everything by using the Blaupunkt volume rheostat. It also became clear that I could also use the power switch on the Blaupunkt to turn the satellite head unit and amp on and off.

The advantage I had, and what also made so bold, was that I bought a second Blaupunkt on EBay last year just like the one salvaged from the car. This stereo is in great shape, I think it came out of a Porsche, but being that I have it I was able to take the old Blaupunkt apart to test all theory without fear.

Once I had the Volume shaft out of the old radio it didn’t take me long to map the functionality; as in: what was volume, what was, balance, tone and on/off. The hardest part of the whole thing was waiting for the soldering iron to heat up. Within an hour I had the volume rheostat soldered inline between the satellite head unit and the amp. It works like a charm!!! I haven’t soldered in the on/off switch yet but that will be simple compared to the rheostat.

This weekend I’ll install the modded shaft into the new Blaupunkt and drill some holes in the back of the radio casing to run all the wires out the back. The whole thing should look right-proper as the English say.

This past weekend, on the way through Red Deer on my way back from the Stampeders / Eskimos football game and drunkfest in Edmonton, I stopped by the acreage to pick up the remaining TR6 parts and leathers. Part of this pick up was the windshield sprayer jug and pump and the radiator overflow jug. After letting them soak in some CLR and cleaning up the pump motor, I installed them back on the car and they work great. I bought a new length of clear hose for the overflow but windshield sprayer worked with only plugging it in. I had to re-aim the sprayer nozzles but other than that it’s like new. My only issue was that the strap the holds the washer jug crumbled in my hand before I could re-install the unit so for now there is a strip of hockey tape holding the jug to the bracket – it looks not too bad… I’ll change it out at a later date.

To cap off last week’s post: I resealed the rear diff cover with grey silicone “The Good Stuff”. Then I let it to sit empty for more than 24 hours before I filled it with gear oil again. So far my leak is gone. Although refilling it sucked as I had a siphon tube with a bulb on it to do the job. I failed to notice when I bought it that it didn’t have a one-way valve. It took me more that an hour to pump two and a half liters of gear oil into the diff Saturday night. I had to keep pinching the line on each side of the bulb to suck fluid into the line then pinch it again on the other side of the bulb to push it into the diff. This is something I don’t want to do again for awhile.

Still waiting on my backordered dash panel.

Stay tuned…