2019 Calendar. Busy Year

2019 is shaping up to be a busy year.  We have ten classic runs so far with another couple of possibles and a couple of shows thrown in. The calendar so far looks like this:-

23rd March,  Daffodil Run
7th April,  Taith Cymru
14th April,  Corinium Run
28th April,  Drive It Day
5th May,  Wheelnuts Classic Car Show
11th May,  Bluebell Run
19th May,  Hills & Valley Tour
30th June,  Black Mountains Classic Tour
7th July, Aquae Sulis Classic Tour
3rd August, Gloucestershire Extravaganza, South Cerney
4th August,  Valleys & Villages Classic Tour
1st September,  Cotswold Classic Run
19th-20th October,  Lombard Rally Bath

 Daffodil Run 2019

2018, Classic Runs in the DHC

Whilst work was getting done on the FHC we had a number of events as usual during 2018 in the DHC.

24th March 2018: Daffodil Run

This took place in the usual area to the west of Gloucester. The route took us around the daffodil lined roads around Newent and up as far as the Malverns.

Coffee stop on the Daffodil Run

 

 2nd April 2018: Wheelnuts Classic Car Show

Our Glavon Group of the TR Register attended the local Wheelnuts Classic Car Show in Stroud as usual. Its a great local show raising money for the St Roses Special School. About 400 cars of all sorts were on show and our Glavon Group won the award for the best club display.

Glavon wins again.

8th April 2018: Glavon club run to Croome Court

This was a nice little club run to Croome Court near Evesham. This is an old house with an interesting history from Capability Brown to being a top secret World War Two radar research base and airfield. Amazingly the world's first ever instrument landing took place here in 1945.

Glavon lineup at Croome Court

15th April 2018: Corinium Run

The Corinium Run 2018 was our fourth consecutive year on this event. Starting and finishing in Cirencester, the route took us on a nice 120 mile tour of the Cotswolds. Water featured as in previous years.

Maximun attack required!

12th June 2018: Bluebell Run

The Bluebell Run is another tour based around the Forest of Dean. Excellent day out as usual and finishing at the Chase Hotel in Ross on Wye.

20th June 2018: Hills and Valley Tour

 This year the Hills and Valley was based in Oswestry and took us up into the North Wales and Bala area. Fabulous scenery on a lovely day. Morning coffe stop at the Lake Vyrnwy Hotel and lunch at Llyn Brenig. Excellent day out

View from the coffee stop at Lake Vyrnwy Hotel

1st July 2018: Black Mountains Classic Tour.

Based at Talgarth again but the huge difference from last year was the glorious weather. We actually got to see the lovely views all around the Black Mountains.

Coffee stop at Llangoed Hall

 

Typical Black Mountains road

8th July 2018: Dursley Rotary Cotswold Tour

The Dursley Rotary Cotswold Tour is based only 200 metres from our house so is a run we have to do. More glorious weather and a nice local route meant a jolly nice day out.

Leaving the start.

4th August 2018: Gloucestershire Vintage and Country Extravaganza

Long name for the steam fair based at South Cerney airfield near Cirencester. We went along as usual with our Glavon TR Register group on another glorious day. The three day show was bigger than ever this year but we only go on the Saturday. Too much stuff to see again but a grand day out.

Glavon Group stand. Good selection of TRs

2nd September 2018: Cotswold Classic Run

This was the second running of the Cotswold Classic and this time it was based at Grittleton House near Castle Coombe. Now a nice hotel and wedding venue Grittleton House is a 19th century mansion and was a boys school from the 1950s until recently.
Another lovely day out in the Cotswolds.

Nice house.

A rose between two thorns.

Nice car park.

23rd April 2017, Corinium Run

2017 was the third year running that I have been out on the Corinium Run.  As usual it started in Cirencester but this years route took us to new areas and further north than before. My old friend/mechanic Chris Riley was along as navigator again and it was a bit of a surprise was to find ourselves on the front of the Roadbook. Only a little picture top left, but still nice to see!

Morning coffee stop was at the Classic Motor Hub near Bibury which was quite a surpise. It is located at some old WW2 aircraft hangers which are now used as a storage for lots of classic - and VERY expensive - motor cars. The first area we walked into had two open top Ferrari sports cars from the 1960s, both red and gleaming and an old V12 Delage from the 1920s. There were about 15 cars in that section and the man polishing one of the Ferraris told us they all belong to ONE man.

Very nice Ferrari at Classic Motor Hub

The route then took us further north to a lunch halt at Batsford Arboretum and garden centre where our cars attracted a good deal of interest from the folks having their Sunday carvery. From there we meandered back to Cirencester via a tea stop at Bourton on the Water to complete the 120 mile route.

Quite a lot of the villages we passed through had people out watching and waving which was nice to see.  They obviously enjoyed seeing some nice older cars for a change and Quenington even posted lots of pictures of the cars on their village blog page.

Quenington village picture

Nice picture 1

Nice picture 2

Surely the Spirit of the Day

14th April 2016, Corinium Run

I asked my old mate Chris Riley to come along again on the Corinium Run again this year. I have know Chris since the 1970's and we have competed and serviced on rallies together ever since. He also helps me with the two man jobs on the TR7 so a very useful bloke to have around.

The Corinium Run is a classic tour of about 125 miles using "Tulip" navigation. For those who don't know this is a system named after the Tulip Rally in Holland who developed it in the 1950's. It uses a series of diagrams of the road junctions and features found along the route and the distances between them. Most serious crews have a special trip meter fitted in their cars to give a very accurate distances but we used an app on a mobile phone which worked pretty well. I will have to invest in a trip meter if we do many more runs.

Tulip navigation explained

2016 Roadbook, our actual route

 It was a nice day, but cold and even a slight frost early on. Leaving home we soon discovered that the heater blower was not working, not a disaster, but we had to rely on the air coming through the heater as we went along which turned out to be OK. It was my own fault because I had been working on the centre console and had not tested that everything was OK afterwards, beginners mistake.

This year they had allocated us the same start number as last year - 42 - how neat is that.

Start was at the Cirencester Town Football Club premises where they gave a us a nice bacon roll and a hot drink before the first car left at 9:30am.  The route then took us through Daglingworth, the Duntisbournes, North Cerney and Rendcombe before our first stop at Chedworth Farm Shop for a tea and one of their excellent cakes.

Duntisbourne Leer.   Sorry, but I can't resist a watersplash.

After refreshments our route took us further north along the lanes via Yanworth, Compton Abdale, Hawling, Hailes and Greet before the lunch halt at the Gloucestershire & Warwickshire Steam Railway in Toddington.   This suited us fine because both Chris and myself are steam enthusiasts. Turns out he has bought himself a day out there soon and will be actually driving one of the engines so I am very envious.

Wonderful stuff

The afternoon run then took us though Stanway and another ford to Guiting Power, Bourton on the Water and Turkdean before our tea stop at the Cotswold Lion Cafe. This is actually the old Northleach Prison and again they do very good cakes. Do you detect a pattern here - lots of stops for tea and cakes!

I tried to get the photographer wet

The tea and cakes are excellent here!

 We got back to the finish in Cirencester to be greeted with a choice of curries, chili or sweet & sour whilst the organisers worked out our fuel consumption.  This turned out to be 25.99mpg so not bad for a lot of twisty and hilly lanes.

Another great day out in the TR7, which is exactly what I bought it for in the first place. The car had behaved itself perfectly and we had really enjoyed ourselves.

19th April 2015 - Corinium Run

The Corinium Run is a fairly gentle tour of the Cotswold lanes around the Cirencester area organised by an old friend and ex-navigator of mine Martin Saunders.  Its part of the HRCR Scenic Tour Series so always has a good selection of interesting cars taking part and all of this within 30 miles of home. Excellent stuff.  They ask you to nominate your estimate mpg on the entry form then see how close you actually get to it.  I had no idea what the TR7 fuel consumption is so made a wild guess at 28mpg.

The day of the run was nice and perfect for open top motoring. We covered 122 miles in lovely scenery and our fuel consumption at the end was 27.6mpg.  An AC Cobra replica also taking part did about half that as I watched the guy put £48 of fuel in after only 122 miles !!
It was a bit scary filling the fuel tank right to the brim for the first time ever but it never showed any signs of fumes or leaks.

The TR7 had behaved itself perfectly all day with no problems whatever so we agreed it was a grand day out.

On an interesting note, we went past Down Ampney and the ditch where my very first proper rally ended in 1970. This was the Mynd Trophy Rally that I did in our family Ford Prefect 107E. The ditch was deep and we had to get the local farmer to tow us out, but not a mark on the car. Very lucky.

15th April, 2015. Window winders and more tidying

I have had dealings with doors on several cars over the years and always disliked working on them and I can show you the scars to prove why.  There is never quite enough space to get your hands in and those edges always seem to be razor sharp.

The side windows on the TR7 have always rattled and the passenger window winder has got progressively worse so it was time to fix them.  A while ago I bought a complete Rimmers window overhaul kit for less than half price from a guy who was moving to New Zealand, so I had all the bits ready.  I also had the winder mechanisms from the old red car which seem to be as new so proposed to use them rather than the new Rimmers ones which I can sell later.

The rattle was easily fixed because it was just the usual problem with the felt having slipped down the guide.  I used a new felt but also added a bit of glue behind it to be sure it didn't slip again. I also followed the tips in the guide written by Mike Rotherham on the TR7/8 Forum.   

 http://www.forum.triumphtr7.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=20318

The guide was a great help in advising the sequence of how to get the winder mechanism back in and the rollers into their guides.  Even following it the expletives were frequent but it all went into place eventually and operated nicely until I found that one of the rollers (the white one) had come out of its track.  I put it back but it came out again when the window was fully down.  Bugger !!

Then I remembered some polystyrene blocks I found in the bottom of the doors in the old red car. Could there be any connection?
Bingo!
That block was there to limit how far the window can drop and prevents the roller coming out.

Old red car polystyrene block

My new version showing how it limits drop

Thinking about it since I remember that the winder mechanisms usually have a tab bent over to stop them going off the end of the teeth so I wondered if the winder mechanism I used did not have that done?  Its hard to see down inside the door and I don't want to take them apart to find out but next time I go in there we may find out.

The other problem was with the outer weather strip. The old ones have some kind of stiffener built in but new ones do not and are much more floppy.  I found it impossible to get the spring clips to work on the new one and ended up putting the old strip back on for now.

16th April - Brake Fluid Leak
I noticed was a small puddle of fluid under the car below the oil filter area. At first I thought the T piece or oil pressure gauge pipe was leaking but a quick check showed it was brake fluid. I thought that maybe I had done something wrong when I fitted new seals in the master cylinder which would be really bad news but then I noticed some fluid ON TOP of the master cylinder so it must be a reservoir seal leaking. It was a quick job to take the reservoir off, clean up the seals and refit with some red brake grease to aid the fitting. Problem solved, but it has also left the paintwork below the area damaged so it will need tidying up again.

New servo and master cylinder with leak fixed!

Spark Plug Tubes
The day before the Corinium Run I was putting together a toolkit and thought it would be a good idea to check I had the correct spark plug socket but when I tried it in the engine I found the plug tube was half full of oil and a quick check showed that three of the tubes had oil in them. 

That's oil down in there!

Evidence of previous owners attempt at sealing with silicone

You can see in the pictures that someone had previously attempted to seal the tubes using silicone and it must have worked for a while because I had not had the leak before. The rubber seals on the old tubes were rock hard and useless but I had a set of replacement tubes ready for building my new engine so these had to be called into service now. Not a difficult job but a couple of hours doing something I hadn't expected to do.

Old and new tubes for comparison