Dipped in green glass

[ferny]

Quoted from Nick Moore

Also, it will be interesting to fit a 65mm system and larger back box one day and see how many extra horses are unleashed.

In reality, next to none. It'll just sound nippier.

[thescrapman]

Nice blue skies in Ipswich today, don't remember seeing them just now... 🤔

[Nick Jones]

Nick,

That's a snug fit.  Does this mean you can now move on to the induction side and fire the beast up?

Colin,

Can't be the Ipswich you're thinking of, not only is the sky blue but the traffic light is green......

Nick

[GT6MK3]

Noice!

Looking forward to seeing the intake side of your plans!

How long did you go with the 2ndaries?

C.

[Nick Moore]

The secondaries are quite short, merging around the back of the bellhousing. In the end packaging efficiency outweighed further performance gains. It's hard to find quantitative information on the perfect secondary length. I've seen it stated that longer equals to peak torque at lower rpm, but all the figures quoted refer back to primary length. I think mine will be OK.

I've no idea why Ipswich in Queensland was named after Ipswich in England. Ipswich QLD is an hour's drive in from the coast, and in summer is plain stinking hot. No doubt a nineteenth century expat felt homesick and named it after his old home town.

Yep, the induction side is next.

[Nick Moore]

Few more jobs done. First off, the brakes were re-bled using all four bleed nipples in the Canley Calipers (i hadn't seen the outer nipples the first time round). Now the pedal is nice and firm, for the first time ever in this rebuild. 🙂

It may not go, but it can stop.

Next, I replaced the front Koni lower bushes, again      I'd already 'upgraded' the original rubber bushes with blue Polybushes about five years ago, believing that modern rubber doesn't last as long as urethane. The car has sat on its wheels for the last couple of years, but hasn't turned a wheel, and yet the blue bushes had deformed and extruded. This time I've gone for red Polybushes. To add insult to injury, when I was refitting the Konis I noticed that two red Polybushes in one lower suspension arm have also started disintegrating. No others have, just those two. I know I didn't buy all the bushes at the same time, so maybe they're produced in small batches, and my failures are from poorly mixed or cured batches?

Next, I replaced the 2500 and GT6-style stainless water pipe with a TR6 pipe, as the GT6 pipe clashed with the exhaust. Lastly, I had the hi-torque starter adapter plate drilled so that I could rotate the motor away from the exhaust manifold. I'll need to get a heatproof sheath for the red and white wire.

Oh, I also touched up the engine paint where the exhaust monkey obviously used a pry bar. More may be said about him later, as his number 1 & 6 primaries include loose 'slip' joints and need to be redone. In the meantime, the car's booked to get the inlet manifold fabricated in mid-March.

[junkuser]

Have seen this happen before Nick with poly bushes, related to time rather than loadings.
Maybe Bill rarebits could could explain why with his experience in the use of poly.

Were they Superflex, as I've not heard of it occurring with that brand but would be interested if it does?

[andy thompson]

Never seen Witor bushes do this.  I have bushes +20 years old in some applications - Superflex

[Nick Moore]

I'm sure they were Polybushes, but haven't kept any receipts to prove it, or say where they came from. It would have been either Rimmers or Canleys, as nearly all my parts orders came from them. The replacement red bushes have come from Canleys. Some of the Herald's two-part yellow bushes are at least fifteen years old, so I know that some urethane bushes last very well.

[Jonny-Jimbo]

From memory the one piece bushes are 'Polybush' brand and the two part top hats tend to be Superflex.

I've seen another brand pop-up on ebay recently called Floflex... early days to say if they're any good. Also, I use Powerflex on the BMWs and they're good... as long as you don't mind lavender purple bushes haha.

[Nick Moore]

Don't mind lavender purple bushes.. in my garden.

Just filled up the cooling system for the first time, to see if it's watertight. When the radiator was recored about six years ago, I was warned that the solder can 'bloom' in radiators that stand dry for long periods. So far, no leaks 🙂

[Nick Moore]

The redesigned gearbox tunnel is finished - the hard part anyway. Because the rear of my Supra gearbox is longer and wider than a GT6 box, the standard tunnel wouldn't fit around the gear change remote and the gearbox mounts. However, the front portion of the tunnel fitted perfectly, so I chopped a plastic tunnel in two, fitted the front section and started hacking around the rear portion. Various bulges were crafted (bodged) from aluminium, duct tape and body filler, and once I was happy with the shape, the altered rear section was used as a mould for a fibreglass replacement.

My original plan was to use the first fibreglass moulding as a mould for a second tunnel, but the first casting was close enough to the final shape that I decided to use it instead. Its edges still need sanding, and it will be covered in Dynamat sound insulation, carpet and vinyl.

Done this way, the gearbox mounting bolts are accessible under the rear cover, so the interior, main tunnel and H-frame won't have to come out if I want to pull the engine and gearbox out. There's a small door for checking the gearbox oil level.

[Jonny-Jimbo]

That looks liks some good moulding for something 'bodged' together! Nicer that some of the moulds we used at Ginetta!

[Nick Jones]

That looks a bit familiar 🙂

I did it a little differently though and used wire mesh, hooked onto the cut end of the tunnel, to form the shape and then 'glassed over that.

Nick

[booley]

Quoted from Nick Moore

.... There's a small door for checking the gearbox oil level.

excellent idea, why didn't Triumph think of that?

[Mark Hammond]

Even the A60 had a grommet in the tunnel to check the gearbox oil level.

Mark

[WIMPUS]

On my spitfire i've done this to.
Have one side an access panel for topping up the oil level and other side i have panel where i can bleed the slave & i can actually change it to without taking the tunnel out 🙂

[Nick Moore]

A few days after the cooling system was filled up, the 1 1/4" frost plug behind the distributor pedestal started weeping. The seating surface on the block turned out to have localised pitting. At least it's about the easiest core plug to see and replace. I'll fit a new brass plug with a smear of silicone sealant and keep an eye on it. (I want a brass plug because the metal is softer than steel, and hopefully will seat better than the old steel plug. None of the local car parts shops have brass plugs though, so I had to buy one from eBay. Annoying.)

Apart from the last frost plug though, the cooling system is finished. I've fitted a 12" sucker fan behind the radiator, on a shroud which is essentially a flat sheet of stainless steel. The idea of the shroud is to make sure that the fan sucks air through the entire radiator matrix, not just the circular portion it sits over. As with everything else in the GT6 it's a tight fit, with the fan cunningly placed to avoid the water pump pulley and the timing wheel. Just 🙂 The radiator had to be tilted slightly forward with washers under the chassis mounts - so now, of course, the radiator cap is even closer to the underside of the bonnet. Sigh.

It seems to work - the airflow through the radiator is enough to hold a magazine against the front of the core. I used 'Triumph Torque'. The fan is powered through a relay, with a thermo switch in the top tank, an override switch (I repurposed an overdrive column switch) and an indicator lamp on the dashboard.

Oh yeah, a couple of unrelated details in the middle picture. The EFI's idle valve has been installed on the right hand engine mount bracket. That seemed like a good place, if I can keep the wires and hoses away from the exhaust. And the cardboard template duct-taped to the inlet port is an attempt to model the profile of the inlet runners so that the fuel rail doesn't hit the bonnet. CAD = Cardboard Aided Design.

[Tim Bancroft]

Nick,

Blimey, that is tight. Maybe another washer under the rear chassis mounts? Amazing, how compact everything is under a GT6 bonnet, quite nerve-wracking once one starts to fit different parts.

Since fitting a Golf rad to my mk2 (A la Roy Lacey), the amount of space that has been liberated is amazing!

What a car though, as I have said before, its a shame that I will never see the vehicle.

[Andy Flexney]

Quoted from booley

excellent idea, why didn't Triumph think of that?

they did! take a look at any TR2.

AndyF

[Nick Jones]

Quoted from timbancroft61

What a car though, as I have said before, its a shame that I will never see the vehicle.

Why not?  It's only Australia......  great place for a long holiday.  Should be possible to do a lap in a a couple of weeks.  New CT event, the Seven States (yes, that is missing Tas out)

Nick

[Sheepy]

Quoted from Nick Jones

Why not?  It's only Australia......  
Nick

RARR event! 😉

[Nick Moore]

It might take more than two weeks to drive a Triumph around Australia. My Christmas trip included 4 states in 14 driving days, although I did stop at a lot of cafes, or just to take a walk and cool down. People sometimes rent their houses out while they hitch up a caravan and 'do a lap'.

I've looked at Roy's Golf radiator conversion and considered doing something similar. Elderly Golfs are as scarce as Emu's teeth in Aussie, but a custom aluminium or copper/brass radiator would do the trick, at a cost. However, I'd already recored my GT6 radiator, so decided to fit that to start with anyway.

Tim, it's possible that you will have to fly a bit further to see the finished car, as I'm thinking about shipping it back 'home' to New Zealand once it's mobile. My last job finished in December and the market for geologists in Australia is very tight. If I can find a permanent position I'll stay here, but the last couple of years have been slim pickings. Still, trading the wide brown grasslands of Australia for New Zealand's South Island isn't a terrible choice!

[junkuser]

Hope you find a suitable job here Nick.
Rather nice having you around.

Run some travel tours of Australia for overseas visitors!

Fingers crossed,
                       Mal.

[Nick Moore]

The Subaru diff (hopefully) penultimate episode! To recap:

There's been a lot of discussion about whether the Subaru diff conversion kit locates the new diff centrally or offset in a Triumph chassis. It's an important question, because the common CV conversion has only just enough plunge to accommodate the rear suspension movement. If the diff's offset, then the adapters linking it to the inner CV joints have to be different thicknesses. Otherwise the inner CVs will reach the end of their travel before the suspension has moved through its full arc.

When I set up my suspension a year or so back, I found that one CV joint did need a spacer, while the other didn't seem to. So I figured that yes, the diff was offset. However, when I moved the car the las month for the first time to take it to the exhaust shop, the non-spaced-out CV joint pulled out of the diff. So obviously it needed a spacer too. Maybe the diff was centrally mounted after all?

I've just spent two days (Two Bloody Days!) lying on my back fitting the second spacer. It's a job requiring tiny fingers, allen keys, long nosed pliers and a mirror, with everything a few cm from your face. When the spacer was in, I tried to put the lower wishbone bolt back in, and it didn't go. You can see in the photo that the suspension is being held 6mm out from where it should be, at full droop. The arrow shows the direction it needs to go, but it's being held out by the inner CV joint. I guess that means that in my car at least, the diff is offset 3mm to the left. That could be down to my individual diff mounting kit, or my chassis.

Oh, for an adjustable wishbone.

I am not crawling back under the car today.