July/August 2016. MOT, shows and tinkering.

I was well pleased with myself after the heater job last month until I discovered that the top steering column clamp bolt had damaged some wiring again. My own fault as I should have remembered and been more careful placing the wiring when the dash all went back in.  My solution (after repairing the wiring) was to add a shield around the column to prevent it happening again. Its just a cut down hand cleaner bottle but it stops any chance of wires and bolt tangling up again.

Shield added over column clamp bolt prevents wiring damage.

Sunday 10th July: we took the TR7 down to the Forest of Dean for my old 143 Motor Club summer barbeque and discovered a problem.  When you buy a pay and display car park ticket, where do you leave it on an open top car?  Think I will have to fix it on the screen next time with a piece of tape. Very nice afternoon out though.

Sunday 17th July:  Cotswold Classic Car Club have a little annual show at their HQ on the cricket ground by the Frogmill Inn on the A40 near Andoversford.  It was a lovely day and a good selection of interesting cars turned up.  Its a free entry, turn up and leave when you like show and the organisers had laid on some excellent home made cakes to help raising money for charity. Fellow TRDC member Guy Brinton also came along in his very nice original Pharoh Gold TR7.

Good selection of cars

This lovely Vauxhall won best in show.

Guy Brinton's original TR7

Bonnet open to display the Sprint engine.

Saturday 6th August:  Gloucestershire Vintage & Country Extravaganza. This is a huge three day show based on South Cerney Airfield near Cirencester that our TR Register group attend every year. Because of the size it is a much more organised event with designated display areas and a main arena. The programme is 68 pages thick with almost no adverts so that gives you some idea.  There were 70 different steam powered vehicles (traction engines, road rollers etc), 17 ex-emergency vehicles (fire engines, ambulances), 55 old buses and coaches, about 500 classic/vintage cars,  250 motorcycles, almost 250 old commercial vehicles, 50 light industrial trucks, 100 military vehicles and about 200 old tractors. Not to mention all the old fairground rides and trade stands.  Like I said its a big show.  We spent most of the day wandering about and only saw a fraction of it.  Excellent.

Our Glavon Group, TR Register stand

Some of the engines are quite big.

Some are quite small.

Traction engine powered sawbench working hard.

Beautiful showman's engine providing power

Fairground rides powered by the traction engines.

Sunday 14th August:  Our Glavon group joined up with the Gloucester TSSC for the Severn & Wye Bridges Run. About 20 cars took part on this nice little day out took us on a tour over many of the bridges across the rivers Severn and Wye in our area from Tewkesbury in the north down to the original Severn Bridge in the south.  I think we crossed the Severn about nine times and the Wye at least twice but I did lose count. Morning coffee stop was at the old Tintern Railway Station which does sell excellent cakes.

Some of the Severn & Wye runners

Wednesday 17th August:  I heard about a little evening gathering at the Sharpness Dockers Club. This is open to most older/interesting vehicles where you just turn up and park for a couple of hours to mingle with enthusiasts. Quite a few trucks and buses and about 50 classic cars. It was a jolly nice evening.

Quite few folks turned up at Sharpness Dockers Club.

A good variety of cars at Sharpness.

.............................................................

On the Severn & Wye Run another driver who had been following us mentioned that my brake lights didn't show up very well in bright sunlight.  This confirmed what I had suspected since I fitted some LED bulbs. They appear to be good but many of the LED bulbs you see for sale are just not bright enough.  A bit of searching around and I found some much better ones, not cheap at £17.99 pair but well worth the money if it prevents an accident!

These LED stop/tail bulbs are excellent.

.................................................................

Sunday 21st August: Tewkesbury Classic Vehicle Festival 

The weather stayed kind so we popped up to Tewkesbury for the Classic Vehicle Festival organised by the Rotary Club to raise money for the Air Ambulance - a worthy cause. This is another show held on a school playing field and was very well attended. The organisers reckoned 550-600 cars were on display and very large numbers of visitors attended as well.  The Air Ambulance itself also managed to drop in for a visit after an earlier call out.

Lots of kids got to sit in the helicopter

Us arriving at the show

Nice Morgan three wheeler

Beautiful MG SA saloon

Rare Lea Francis

Lovely Austin A40 convertible

April 2nd 2015, Hood cover, instruments and starter heat shield.

Now the roll hoop had been repositioned the top could fold back at last which was great to see. All we need now is some nice weather to enjoy it.  The hood cover still needs to be modified properly to fit around the bar but I was able to attack it with scissors enough to get a temporary fit.

Now that is how a convertible should look.

With the roll hoop done I was able to concentrate on refitting the dash instruments.  I had ended the day before with it half finished but all the covers and screws are now done.  Momentary problem when one of the indicator repeater lights in the dash wasn't working but that was just a bulb holder not seated correctly.

We have instrument lighting.

 The green LED illumination bulbs work really well and replace the standard white bulbs with their green plastic covers.  The other warning lights I have left with standard bulbs for the moment.   I tried some LED's in them but was not convinced they make a worthwhile improvement.

...............

The oil pressure gauge I use is a Smiths full scale mechanical one so the feed pipe needs to be connected to the engine.  This connects to the oil transfer cover by the filter via a T-piece.  I do have a modified transfer cover with fittings for an oil cooler but I don't think its necessary for the moment.
I also took the opportunity to do an oil change.  The new oil is Millers Classic Sport 20-50 Semi-synthetic which I have seen good reports about.

Not the best picture but the oil T-piece is clearly shown.

With it all fitted and working this is what the working instruments look like now with the engine up to temperature and ticking over..

........................................................

When we transferred the Sprint engine from the old car, I took the opportunity to fit a new modern High Torque starter. This spins the engine over really well but the old heat shield no longer fits.

Powerlite High Torque Starter RAC406

 The TR7 heat shield clips onto the solenoid but the new starter solenoid is different so the shield clips do not fit.  I could have made a nice one out of aluminium sheet but found a really nice universal one for sale quite cheaply.  These consist of a kind of aluminised blanket that wraps around the starter and fixes with Velcro.

New starter heat shield.

New heat shield in place round starter.

 

March 2015, Indicator Warning Buzzer

Now most of the car is working OK I thought it was time to start on changing the instrument cluster to the one with an oil pressure gauge from the old car. This one also has LED bulbs so you can actually read the instruments in the dark.  At the same time it was a good chance to add the indicator warning buzzers because I find I do not hear the indicator "clicking" with the top down sometimes.
The clever types manage with one buzzer by using some kind of diode arrangement but I find it easier by just using two buzzers - one wired into each indicator circuit. The cost is next to nothing and I can understand how to do it.

Indicator warning buzzer wiring adapter, one red tail to feed each buzzer.

To join the buzzers into the car wiring I used an idea I copied from Odd Hedberg. Its a very obvious and neat adapter which just plugs into the car loom where the column stalk joins. You don't have to use Scotch locks or cut the wiring and it can also be removed leaving the original loom intact as well.

I also called on my long suffering mate Chris Riley to give me a hand adjusting the roll hoop mountings so that the soft top could be folded down past it. Mission accomplished as you can see. 

The hood folds down over the roll hoop now.

2011, LED dash bulbs, new propshaft

2011 was going to be a pottering about year and when my Mum died in the summer it made everything else pretty well unimportant.  She lived in Stroud at the family home of almost 50 years and it turned out we had accumulated an amazing amount of "stuff" which needed sorting out. Not a job you want to do.
I also had lots of my old car stuff stored in her garage which would have to move. I found things I had long forgotten about.

.............................................................................................................................

Earlier in the year however, I had decided that I wanted to improve the dash lighting. There had been a lot of talk on the forums about LED bulbs so I thought they would be worth a try.  Its an easy job but you have to take the instrument cluster out which isn't.

I actually looked at the workshop manual to find some of the screws that hold the dash together and to be honest it was not too difficult in the end.  Fiddly and frustrating yes,  but not too difficult. The standard bulbs are pretty small and the LED ones are even smaller so you might need your specs on for this job.

Result is much better instrument lighting at night and highly recommended if you are considering it.

...........................................................................................................................

Driving the car about I found that a previously small vibration had started to get more noticeable. I had a spare propshaft on the new car so tried swapping that but it didn't make it much better. Swapping one old propshaft with another old propshaft was never really going to prove anything so I bit the bullet and got a new one from James Paddock Ltd.  They were cheaper than the usual TR7 sources so I guess they had some stock they wanted to shift - lucky for me.