Last Day with the TR4a

Well, today is my last day with the 4a. Drove it to work this morning and it is running great. Going to make me sad to see it go but the TR6 should do a fine job of replacing it and give me something to work on during the next few months. I guess I will do a quick review of my experience with the 4a for anyone thinking of getting one of their own.

Looks:

Very distinctive. I like the bonnet bulge and the headlight "eyebrows" the most. I can just see the guys at Triumph designing the bonnet "power" bulge when they first tried to fit the hood on the TR4 and realized that it didn't clear the carburetors! Not a huge fan of the rear with the small tail fin treatment. Looks a little to forced and not all that elegant. The convertible top doesn't ruin the looks of the car when it is up like many modern convertibles do. All in all nice lines but not near as pretty as the TR3 or as tough looking as the TR6.

Interior:

Small but laid out well. Has some funny quirks that show it is a British car. Bonnet release on the right, hood vent control on the right, choke pull on the right ect. Perfect driving position. Steering wheel is a bit large but the extra diameter comes in handy when trying to throw the car into turns. Visibility is great even with the top up. The area behind the seats is a perfect place to store extra tools or install some speakers. All the gauges are well thought out and easy to read. Nothing that I would really change on the interior.

Driving:

It is a blast to drive (once warmed up!). Corners as good as anything that I have ever driven. Shifter is the smoothest and coolest that I have ever used, just clicks back and forth willingly between gears. Backend will hop a bit on exit of a corner but no big deal, very predictable. Steering is quick and spot on, it can be a bit heavy in fast corners but hey this thing was designed 45 years ago! Cruising with the top down at 50mph is the perfect setting for the TR4a. It can do 70 on the highway or scream through the curves but it really is most at home just cruising. Top down on a spring day driving through some gentle hills is just amazing. I never really understood the lure of a convertible until the first perfect fall day that I took the 4a out with the top down. Wow.

Maintenance:

If you can change the oil on any car then you have the skills to keep a TR running. Nothing fancy under the bonnet here. Just a big 4-pot engine and simple electrics. The car has 4 fuses I think? I've done everything short of rebuilding the engine with no problem. Parts are very easy to come by, tons of workshop manuals out there to guide you. Heck, I am pretty sure that you can take the whole car apart with a phillips head screwdriver and a good socket set (don't forget the 8 point sockets!).

Drawbacks:

It is an old car. It was finicky when the weather was cold. That is about it.

Conclusion:

All in all this was a great car to get me started into classic cars. I found one close that was in good shape to start and cut my teeth keeping it running and updating it a bit over the 15+ months that I owned it. Sure, one day I'll look back and wish I had not sold this one (probably when I see one go for 6 figures on Barret-Jackson) but the time is right for me to move on to a new project. The finances have worked out perfectly to sell this one and get the TR6. I just don't have the money to put into the TR4a that I would want to if I kept it. With the 6 I get a car in better cosmetic shape with enough money to get it in great mechanical shape. Anyway, I hope the new owner takes as good if no better care of the 4a than I did!

Yep, TR6

Well it is official. The TR4a is sold and I have committed to buy the TR6. Out with one old car and in with a new old car. Looking forward to working on something new to me. It had reached the point with the 4a that I had done all I could do to it without taking a big step and sinking $7k into it to really restore it. The TR6 is in better cosmetic shape, will make a better driver with some of the improvements that have been made to it and I will have some money left over from the 4a sale to actually do some restoration to the TR6. I am also still holding out hope that I can keep the upgrades/repairs within a budget so that I can afford to finally buy the Nissan Patrol. Should be picking the 6 up by this weekend, I'll post some pictures and a to-do list when I get it home and really get into the guts of it.

Christmas Loot....

Hope everyone had a great holidays. I got some pretty neat stuff for Christmas and my birthday. XM radio, new Nikon camera, tools, clothes, some music and dvds. All in all some great stuff.

I may have the TR4 sold. Waiting on the buyer to get back in town next week. If that is the case then the TR6 could be sitting in my garage pretty soon. Already have a to do list for the 6: new front brakes (Toyota swap ins), new seat covers, and a transmission rebuild. I estimate I can do all this work and still clear a profit on the TR4.

Heading back to work for the first time in a week tomorrow. Going to get a plan in place for visits back up north, out west and through my southeast accounts. Planning to be on the road a lot this first quarter of 2008 to really try to expand my customer base and push my companies products into the aerospace industry as well (trip to Florida and Texas possibly.) Also going to look into a trip to South Korea sometime this year.

Looking forward to a good 2008. Hope everyone reading has a great New Years!

Waffle, waffle....

I worked on the TR a bit this week. Changed the oil and the spark plugs. Changing the plugs made a HUGE difference the first time I started it up. Still have not driven it around with the new plugs but I look forward to seeing what the performance different will be this weekend. I have been able to drive it a good bit the last week or so here in Atlanta, the weather has been perfect for cruising. Just like my MINI, when I haven't driven it for a while I forget how much fun it is. So I guess I am officially waffling on if I want to sell it now. I caught myself thinking of things I would like to do to it. Paint, Fuel Injection, engine rebuild ect. So what to do? Don't know. I think I am going to have to think about it over Christmas. I still have a few guys interested in the car but no one that has come and look at it in person. I also still need to call the guy with the Datsun and go look at it. Don't want to sell the TR and not have a replacement lined up.

Selling the Triumph??

Some news on the classic car front. I may be selling the Triumph. If you are interested drop me a line! Reason why I would sell it? Well, the classic British Roadster that I always wanted was an Austin Healey Sprite Mk I, commonly known as a "Bugeye" or "Frogeye" Sprite. I have recently found a few for sale around Atlanta that are affordable and figured that this would be as good time as any to make the switch. Depending on how much the Bugeye costs and how much I sell the TR4a for, I may even have enough left over to get the Nissan Patrol I have been trying to get for the past few months. Guess I'll just have to wait and see how it goes! As soon as I know anything I'll update my readers here!

Again, If you would be interested in buying my 1967 Triumph TR4a, drop me a line at clifclavin@gmail.com

Electronics Fixed

I fixed the fuel and temperature gauge this weekend. Both gauges run off a voltage stabilizer that feeds a constant 10v. I knocked the power wire off of the stabilizer when I was painting the passenger footwell. Hooked the hot wire back in and everything was back to normal. That is until I took the TR for a nice long drive and the radio stopped working! Grrr, dang old cars. Anyway, that was an easy fix. The driver side footwell speaker had come a bit loose and grounded out on the body. I took the speaker out for a bit so that I can get it mounted better when I have some time.

Otherwise the TR is running great. I can tell that the carbs (or state of tune of the carbs) don't really like the colder weather. The engine really hums when the ambient temp is over 75 or so but when it is below that there is some performance drop off. If I ever get around to learning how to rebuild and really tune my carbs then I am sure that I can fix this by tuning the car every spring and fall.

That is about it for now. Kel and I have started a morning boot camp workout thing, hope to see if I can drop a few lbs and finally put some work into getting my knee restrengthened. Waiting on the Nissan Patrol guy still as well. Have to kick around prices a bit more. It is a tough call because it is such a rare truck but the price is just a tad to high at the moment. Guess I'll just have to wait and see.

Lucas strikes back

Well, as it is said about old cars, there is always something.

I got the seats back in and the brake rub fixed on Tuesday. After getting that done, I decided to give the TR its first wash (yes I've had it a year and had not washed it yet). So I took extra care to be careful where I was spraying water and made sure to get it dried off as soon as possible. Once done I stood back and admired how good the car actually looks, even with a 20 year old paint job that has seen much better days. Decided to fire her up and take her for a nice spin. Start her up and don't you know it, the temp gauge and fuel gauge have stopped reading. I figured it could be a bit of moisture shorting something out so I drive a around and bit and decide to check on the gauges the next day. Well they still where not working on Wednesday. The thing I discovered about those two gauges in particular is that they are both hooked to a Voltage stabilizer that delivers a steady 10v to the gauge loop so that they will read. I am guessing I must have done something to this between painting or washing. I will check it out this weekend and hopefully get the gauges back reading normal.

Triumph of the Mountains

I finally got the chance to take the TR on a long road trip this weekend. I made a trek to the N. GA mountains to do a shake down run on the brakes and see how the TR handles some curves. Well, it did quite well. Dare I say that the TR can take corners as fast as my MINI. The brakes did well except for one annoying design fault. In corners, the outside front brake rotor has a habit of pushing the outboard piston back into the caliper, so your first press on the brake after a hard turn tends to head very far to the floor. I was expecting this so I didn't have any pucker moments. IN the turns the car has almost no body roll and the engine pulls great in 2nd gear on exit. The engine did struggle on some of the steeper climbs but I think it did quite well for a 40 year old 105hp lump. Tires held very well though made plenty of noise. The handling was very neutral. Front in turned in lighting fast and the back stayed in line though it would hope and step out a bit when exiting a corner under acceleration, though not enough to warrant any counter steer. I wish the MINI handled this well. I know no why these cars (TR3, 4, and 250) where so popular in the SCCA race scene 40 years ago. Add a little umph under the hood and these things where hard to beat. The TR held up great, better than I did on a day when the air temps where in the high 90's. It even made it through a brief rain storm on the way home. I am just happy that it made it through the trip without a single hicup. Water temp never got near 1/2 on the gauge (thanks to water wetter and a 160 degree t-stat), oil pressure never wavered and the engine just kept humming along. This little trip under very harsh conditions have me very confident that the TR can make nice weekend drives to the mountains when the temps become a bit more bearable to the pilot.

One interesting note, I pulled up behind a sweet looking 1956 Studebaker Sky Hawk. Wow, a very beautiful car done up in glossy black paint and nice shiny chrome. My car was getting waves and gawks for most of the trip but when I pulled behind the Sky Hawk my car disappeared, and for good measure.

Rebuilding the TRs brake calipers

Ok, I spent Saturday afternoon tackling the job of rebuilding the front brake on my TR4A. I used a rebuild kit from Victoria British, it included new pads, anti-squeal shims, rotors, flex hoses, new retainer pins, all new gaskets, and some new mounting hardware for the rotor/hub assembly.

All in all the job was pretty easy and straight forward. A few things to note below.

First off, the rotor assembly on the TR4A is unique. The wheel hub mounts outboard to the brake rotor. So, in order to remove the brake rotors you have to take the hub completely off of the stub axle. Pretty easy job, only really tricky thing is getting the grease cap off the end. After that it is very easy to take the whole assembly off and then detach the rotor from the hub and replace with the new one. This allowed me to examine the wheel bearings and to add a little more grease to them. The picture below shows the stub axle after I have removed the hub assembly.



Here is a picture of the new and old brake rotors. The old rotors are quite glazed and have a lot of rust on them. Hoping the replacements help the braking a bit.



Here is one of the brake calipers after I got it off the car. You can see it is in rough shape. I ended up having to split both of them down to two halves. This allowed me a little more room to clean them up and some clearance to get the brake pistons out to replace the gaskets.



This is where it got tricky. When I tried to remove the old brake pistons only one of them would move freely. Guess this is why my braking performance has been a bit sub-par. The three that where stuck took some persuading with my handy pair of vice grips and a BFH. You can see below just what kind of shape they where in. One of the little nuances about this car is that the OEM brake pistons where made out of chrome-molly, just the kind of stuff that brake fluid loves to eat over time. So, this is what ends up happening to them. I am going to order a new set of Stainless Steel brake pistons this week. Hopefully I can get them in and on the car by next weekend.



So the TR has it's wheels back on but no front brakes on it. As soon as I can get the new pistons in it should only take a few hours to install them in the calipers, get the calipers back on the car and then bleed the whole system. Next thing on the list is to go after the rear brakes and hope they are in better shape than the fronts.

I did find out some interesting info regarding the brakes on the TR. Apparently I can swap on the front brake from an early 80's Toyota Truck to upgrade the system from a 2 piston set up to a 4 piston system. The only modifications that you have to do to the system is buy new mounting bolts and fab up a custom flex line (metric threads on one end and SAE threads on the other). The write up I read about doing this had a test that showed a 30 or so foot improvement in stopping distance from 40mph. So that has been added to the end of the to do list of the TR.

That's all for now. I am in the Mid-west this week (MO, KS, NE, IO, fun fun fun...) so I should have another car review depending on what Avis gives me this time.

Front Brakes are here

Ordered the front brake rebuild kit from Victoria British last week. It showed up today, guess that gives me something to do this weekend. I am looking forward to seeing how the car stops with all new hardware up front. Figure I will take the rear drums apart to inspect them while I am working on the fronts. This should give me a better idea of when I will need to learn how to work on drum brakes.

Still no oil dripped from the oil pan with the new gasket in place! (Yes there is oil in the car). Since the new gasket has helped so much I am rethinking replacing the gasket on the rear differential. I can drain the oil I just put in it to reuse and then replace the gasket and stop the seeping and dripping.

I also cleaned up the top a bit last night. I drove the TR to work today because the high temp is going to stay at 80 or below. I had never cleaned the rear window and I alway thought it was just fogged up real bad as plastic windows do. I got to cleaning it and it has cleared up very nicely. If it wasn't for the few rips in the top it wouldn't need replacing. As it is I am hoping that I can squeeze maybe another year or so out of the top and replace it when (or if) I get the car painted.

That is it for now. I am sure I'll have a new car review next week while in New York, guess it depends on what Avis gives me.

Part in my Oil Pan....

Ok, here is the whole story behind the part that I posted a few days ago.

My plan for the weekend was to drop the oil pan on the TR and replace the gasket. I drained the oil then went about removing the oil pan. Not that hard just took a while (I think there where 17-18 bolts holding the pan on) and a few light taps with a dead blow to get the pan off the car. After I got the pan off the car I took it over to my workbench to clean it up. I start taking the remnants of the old gasket off and I notice something in the bottom of the oil pan, uh-oh. Start fishing metal pieces out, at this point I'm in a bit of a panic. Thinking to myself, I'm going to have to tow the car to Decatur, pay a bunch to rebuild the engine ect. The picture shows what I fished out of the oil.

I get back under the car to examine the bottom end of the engine, trying to see where this part may have come from. Crank looks good, counter weights look fine, piston rods intact, bottom of the pistons look good, no groves or scoring in the piston liners....hmmmmm. I dilute the rest of the oil left in the oil pan and filter it through a coffee filter. No small metal shavings, odd. Look through my workshop manuals and parts catalogs, can't find a part that looks like this thing. Decide to call in some help, I e-mail the pictures to a guy I know who races Spitfires and has owned 20+ Triumphs (4, 4a, 6, 250, a few GT6s and Spitfires) and has worked at a Triumph shop up in NC on and off for a while. He calls me back and says this....

"First thing, that isn't from the engine so no harm done. I don't know how in the world it got there but what you have appears to be an old spark plug gapping tool!"

So there you have it, my TR was hiding a spark plug gapping tool in its oil pan. Very odd, at least it didn't say Lucas on it...... ::)

So an hour job turned into a whole day thing with just a hint of anxiety thrown in for good measure.

Triumph Returns

I got the TR fixed last night and was able to take advantage of some nice weather and drive it to work today. Repaired the broken radiator hose, hit all the lube points with the grease gun, changed the rear differential oil and gave everything a good once over. Car is running great! Last few things I need to do before doing the brakes this summer; I need to change the transmission oil (but I have to figure out a way to get new fluid in the fill hole that is on the side of the transmission case), change the fuel filter and change the oil and oil pan gasket. After that it will be on to replacing the brakes.

Mazda 6 Review

Ok, I was in Virginia and Maryland this week and had the opportunity to drive a Mazda 6 around for a week. Ending up putting about 600-700 miles on it. Figure I would continue my series of reviewing my rental cars. If you missed any I have taken a shot at giving my thoughts on a Ford Focus, Pontiac G6 and a Pontiac Vibe....

The Mazda 6 looks good (very much like the G6, in fact I have a hard time telling which is which sometimes). I had a base model I guess, cloth interior, single CD sound system, manual climate control ect. First impression was that it was a pretty nice car on the inside as well. Seats are better than the G6 but the viewing angle of the instruments was funny. Took me quite a while to adjust the steering wheel (tilt and telescope! a nice feature) to where I could read all of the gages. The gages are hard to read, especially the speedometer. It only has every 20mph listed (20, 40, 60, 80, 100, 120) and the tick marks in between all look the same with almost no difference in size. This makes figuring out your speed at a glance very tricky and almost impossible to figure out at night without a prolonged stare. Other interior controls are straight forward. Nice layout of cruise and radio controls on the steering wheel. Climate controls are easy to read and operate. The only minus to the center stack is in the digital readout. It is red on black, making it hard to read in some light conditions. With polarized sunglasses, I could not always make out what radio station I was on (with polarized sunglasses getting more popular you would think car makers would maybe test the displays in their cars) and when I could read them the display was cluttered and had information I didn't need on it. All in all a nice interior but needs some big improvement on the gage and readout end.

Performance: Not bad for a 4 cylinder. Not sure on the hp but the G6 I drove seemed faster. This Mazda 6 did have the manual shift option. It would let me hold a gear and not change even if I hit the rev limiter (pretty neat) but shifts did take a while and I was not impressed on how the car lagged coming out of corners. Felt almost like I was driving an 80's Benz turbo diesel. Drive through corner, downshift right after braking (to avoid being thrown into the seat belt when down shifting because the tranny doesn't match revs), stomp the loud peddle and weight. Engine starts to make more noise, no real speed yet, revs pass 4500rpm, still waiting, revs get to 5000 and the car starts to get going. So this car had no torque. This is where the G6 did much better. Seemed to have a lot more torque down low and you could feel the car accelerate (the Vibe did this well also, even the Focus seemed to have some life when reved hard). With this Mazda 6 it just felt lifeless. Big minus in the Zoom Zoom category.

Ok, so I didn't like the gages and I didn't like the performance. But this was the base Mazda 6. I will admit that I almost bought a Mazda 6 Wagon with the V6 about 2 years ago. Very much enjoyed that car (with the V6 it has some punch) and if it had not been for employee pricing on a Saab 92x I would have bought one. Did I like the Mazda or the G6 better? I don't know. I would have to drive them back to back to give a real good review but both where comfortable on long trips, had good base stereos, and plenty of space in the cabin and the boot. I think I would have to lean towards the G6 just because its engine seemed to have a little life and made off the line starts a lot more fun than the Mazda.


TRIUMPH UPDATE!!!!
Last you may have read the radiator hose had let go. I ordered a replacement that never made it too my house. Called up Victoria British and they shipped me out another free of charge and it arrived today. Figure I will get it on this week as well as spending sometime lubing the chassis and topping of fluids to get the TR back on the road by this weekend.