2021, 25th April, National "Drive it Day", FHC Handbrake.

Few little jobs on the DHC

At the start if April I brought the DHC back from its winter storage and did a few little tidy up jobs on it.  The weather the past few weeks has been great for open top motoring and now the Covid restrictions are easing we are being allowed out a little more.  

I had originally planned to move the Brantz tripmeter between my two cars but soon found this to be a bit of a pain so eventually bit the bullet and found second one on Ebay. Only problem was I couldn't find any of the satellite receivers to go with it so had to buy a new one of those from Brantz. Ouch! 

 

The wiring is not diffcult so that was a nice couple of hours tinkering.  I also made up a mounting bracket to carry the Garmin Satnav.  Again I had originally planned to move the mounting bracket between the two cars and had made it easily removeable, but I had some aluminium sheet and plenty of time so made another. Each car now has its own mounting bracket with a power feed so the Garmin just clicks onto the mount in either car.  The only thing I still swap over is the dashcam because I can't find another one as good yet, but that is just a rubber sucker job on the windscreen.

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25th April 2021.  National Drive It Day

 

This is an annual national event intended to encourage classic car owners to get out and drive their cars.

Normally there are various organised events but this year the pandemic restictions prevented all except some small local meetings.  Even then distancing was required but a I managed to meet with a few friends outside Winstones Ice Cream factory and shop on Rodborough Common.  The weather was superb, blue skies but with a bit of a cool breeze. In fact perfect open-top TR weather and the ice cream was excellent.

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FHC Handbrake issues

I have never been happy with the handbrake on the FHC. When I put the car on the road the rear brakes were rebuilt with all new cylinders and a new cable. The self adjusters were all new as well.  Turns out the new cable seems to be from a batch of new old stock cables that were produced and sold by most suppliers but which were made too long. 

The result is that it is impossible to set up the handbrake properly so it has too much travel and not enough "bite".   

 

Washers added to increase adjustment.

My answer to the adjustment part was a bit of a bodge but at least meant it worked after a fashion. I simply moved the locknut to the other side of the handbrake fork and added some washers to take up the slack.  Not pretty but it works.  The best answer will be to get the cable shortened so I am working on find someone who can do that. I spoke to my local machine shop and they have exactly the same problem with some Jaguar cables that are too long as well so they are on the case! 

2021, March. Some interesting SJW888S history revealed

SJW888S was a rally car in earlier times .

Browsing through some old rally pages on Facebook I am always on the look out for any TR7 related stuff and I noticed a familiar registration number on the entry list for the 1985 Port Talbot Novice road rally, 

TR7  SJW888S at start number 5.  

 

Asking around on the page I tracked down the navigator David Collins so I contacted him to ask what he could remember about the car.   He said it had originally been a BL managers car (hence the close registration number to the TR7 Sprint development cars) but had been rolled by the managers son.  The roof was quite badly damaged so it was sold off and rebuilt by his driver Martin Hall as a rally car.   They used it on quite a lot of events in the 1980s and he even sent me some pictures of them in action, see below.

When they rallied it the car ran a tuned version of the standard 8 valve motor and the obvious difference now is the colour was originally yellow.  Apparently it went pretty well and they had enjoyed themselves getting some decent results.

2021, March. Few tidying up jobs on the FHC

 Lower Front Panel 

When I got the car it had the standard plastic front spoiler as fitted to all the TR7s from about 1978. This covered the lower front panel that runs across the car but which had got a bit scruffy under the pastic. With limited time originally it just got some rust treatment and that was all so it was overdue a tidy up and now was a good time and. The car was registered in 1977 so I liked the idea of keeping it to the earlier spec. Looking closely it was actually in very good condition so all that was needed was sanding with wet and dry and some primer before a coat of Pageant Blue from a spray can. 

 

Nicer now with a bit of blue paint on.

 

Rear Panel 

The earlier cars also had the back panel between the rear lights painted Satin Black and as I needed to do some tidying up there as well I decided to paint it black.  There were some scabby bits of paint where the number plate is screwed on and needed cleaning up.   Again it was just a question of sanding with wet and dry before some primerand then a Satin Black spray can. 

Fellow TR7 blogger Beans had also noticed that the number plate was fitted too high on the rear panel.  I had done this deliberately to cover up an area of poor paintwork so I could now put that right as well.

 

Guilty secret, I had covered this up with the number plate!

Ready for some Satin Black paint.

Finished version, but is that plate on straight?

 Seems I need to adjust the number plate now!  Always something to do.

That is better!