Progress on Morgan

Fortunately "Morgan" the Triumph (named in honour of its saviour) had been loved once.

Inside the car and boot was virtually every part from its partial dismantling. All the bumpers still had their bolts in with greased captive nuts and rubber washers, all the doors fittings where in separate plastic bags, door cards and carpets were neatly stacked in the boot.

Most things needed no more than a good clean and they were ready for refitting.

Chris witor should have a enhanced pension fund after the last few weeks - that said its amazing how easily you can rebuild a basically rustfree but mechanically worn 53 year old car!

Bumpers on, badges fitted and starting to look a little more loved

I knew that the tyres all needed replacement and decent 13" tyres are not really available in Sweden -   
I took the plunge and ordered 7 x 15 Minilites and a set of 195/65 snow tyres - looks the part!

Note the rear old registration is the original - BD suffix means originally registered in Norrbotten - the furthest north Swedish county. I am missing one of the current plates AYF876 - assigned in 1972 - but fortunately the car is still legally in existence and I have the current Euro spec ownership papers. its tax free and next year MOT free too.

The door cappings were in a dreadful state but after stripping the flaked varnish with a razor blade - very time consuming -  I found the veneer was fine - so this is how they look with 4 coats of gloss polyurethane.

Amazing rustfree floorpans - just a bit of scaley stuff that I have rust treated and now primed

Swedish 2000 advert from mid 60's

Interior starting to come together - nice patina!

Swedish adventures

Recently the Thompson family have relocated to Northern Sweden to help manage an Australian companies interests in Sweden and Finland - we saw it as a chance to further the kids education and let them experience true seasonal variation, learn to ski, fish etc.

We are based in Mala, Vasterbotten - or West Bothnia as it was known in the UK historically. It is very close to the arctic circle, sees the Aurora Borealis in winter and the midnight sun through summer. It is remote - 800kms from Stockholm - which itself is level with the Orkney Islands. We are as far north as central Iceland.

We left our nice Perth house and garage of Triumphs in the care of Ken Bryant and the closest I expected to get to a Triumph was when I pop over to the UK to do events with Doug. What I was not expecting when driving through the neighbouring village was this.....

Seemingly abandoned outside a workhop in Norsjo - a 1964 Conifer mk1 looking very sorry for itself.

Trying to remain objective I had to have a closer look as although neglected it seemed amazingly solid

Looking underneath I expected the worst - but amazingly it seemed virtually unscathed - mild surface rust and oil or wax leaking from key areas of the sills

Most of the underside seemed covered in thin bitumen flaking off to reveal shiney factory paint

Early body number confirmed

I traced its owner, Morgan, to a nearby house where it became apparent he was a car saver with his own collection of barn finds

Morgan drives truck at the Kiruna Iron Ore deposit which is where he found the Triumph - virtually abandoned for the last 40 odd years. I crazily agreed to buy what I had sworn to Del I was going to avoid whilst on secondment - another project!

Over the next few weeks we got the Triumph back on four wheels and did a temporary fix on the rear subframe rubber that had failed - common 64 problem

And then 2 weeks ago - delivery - all part of the service!

In my shed and ready for revival

Stag Resuscitation

For too long my wifes poor old Stag has been languishing engineless in the shed whilst me and Ken have been getting the engine refurbished due to severe electrolytic head corrosion only 5 years and 15000 miles since its previous rebuild. So finally in November 2016 we had all the bit ready to get the whole assembly back into the slightly tatty looking shell.

The list of thing that we had done included:

Replacing an impossibly heavy Borg and Beck clutch with a AP cover from LD Parts which proved to be magically light.

Replacing leaking O rings on the gearbox selectors with  Quadring seals which have proved their worth on my TR6.

The head gaskets we are trying this time are made by Cometic via Tony Hart and we have also used 0.040@ thick anodised aluminium saver shims due to the heads being overskimmed following welding repairs.

I also managed to get a set of vernier timing wheels to allow the cam timing to be returned to factory settings. Most Stags suffer in this area once heads have been skimmed leading to sub optimal performance.

Putting the engine back into the Stag was mostly by the factory ROM although we didn't really have enough height and risked the front panel a bit as we heaved the gearbox into the engine compartment.

In she goes

It is an extremely snug fit and the only obstruction was the power steering hose that we had neglected to remove.

A jack at the back of the gearbox allows the assembly to slide in

Doing up the engine mountings was a little bit of a fiddle

Engine fitted the car saw daylight for the first time in 2 years giving us a chance to wash off the rat poo and assorted black filth

New year saw us making the final push to get the old girl running - this should have been simple but the dreaded pattern part syndrome struck - in this case a remanufactured 12vane water pump cover decided to put a spanner in the works. It simply didn't want to let the inlet manifold fit

Basically it was fouling the inlet manifold in about 4 places plus we had the inlet bottoming on the core plug casting in the center of the V

After some significant metal removal from the block, waterpump cover and the inlet manifold we were satisfied that the manifold gaskets had half a chance

One thing that had to be compromised on was the thermostat bypass hoses - these simply would not fit with the pattern cover - to solve this, blanking plugs were fitted and a hole drilled in the thermostat - it has proved to work perfectly.

All together and ready for the first start.

All that remains now is some minor fettling before a decent road test and a trip to a paint shop - oh and better put the seat covers in the wash to get rid of the rat wee

Bonnet back on after 2 years

All Triumph Day Guildford WA

Different look for a TR5

Nick Jones old Herald - getting more and more modded!

My dads old 2500S - still going strong

What do you call this many P76's in a group?

Back home - I think the estate enjoyed stretching ts legs - some people at the meet commented that you rarely see a Triumph with a family in it nowadays!

Road Trip to TSOA National - Clare Valley SA - Part 2

So as per usual three thirsty triumphs filling up with what turned out to be mouldy 98 Octane fuel in Ceduna on the thursday evening after a 1100km run from Fraser range. A top up of premium(?) unleaded fuel at Nullabor Roadhouse had made all our cars run like crap and we were hoping the BP Ultimate would help on Fridays run into Clare.

Wandered down onto the harbour front at Ceduna for excellent fish and chips - the sign reminded us how far we'd come.

After an excellent sleep we had a hearty breakfast and made our way east into quite a stormy looking outlook. We had a little light rain but luckily we missed the worst of the weather which we were chasing east.

Humph had the only issue of the run just outside Kimba with an aired up injector - just few minutes to bleed it and he was packing up his tools again

Wondering why Humph and Ken were dawdling along at 100km/h I went to pass them all only to notice blue and red light on the Hilux ahead - DOH! Turned out to be a Park Ranger!

On the home straight here- through the salt bush badlands heading down towards Port Augusta. A fuel stop at Kimba had invigorated our engines with the first 'fresh' high octane fuel in SA. Humph in particular noticed a huge difference - well you would with 11.6:1 CR

Didn't get any photo's between Port Augusta and Clare - but here we are in our apartment - the cleaners must have loved us as we unloaded our spares and extra R tyres into the hallway!

And parked at rest with some other National Rally participants

First proper day at the nationals was "Show and Shine" at Auburn where we made a small effort to be presentable.

Great turn out including a doppelganger of my car(!) but to be honest we were all ready to head back to Clare and prepare our cars for the Malalla Supersprint. 2600kms in 3 days means you feel its worth checking a few things before a maximum attack track day.

When we got back to Clare a beautiful Mk1 PI of Steve Phelan had arrived all the way from Brisbane - complete with 10kg bag of ice on its Lucas pump. Another epic roadtrip of over 2000kms - auto too but not for much longer!

Sunday morning demonstrated the large diurnal range of the Clare Valley and why its so good for vineyards. It was also bloody cold! Ken had to scrap the ice off his screen!

Humphs car re-tyred with Yokohama A048 and warming up for the cruise down to Mallala Raceway

At Mallala we were sidetracked from competition by this gorgeous Mk1 estate of Trevor Lindsay

Our garage - lots of discussions and new information from the eastern states racers

TR7 Sprints and TR8 prepping

To be continued ( when I have some decent photo's of the supersprint!)