2012 Sprint engine installed

All the usual hoses and wires connected up to the new Sprint motor with no problems but I had to fiddle about with the exhaust.  I had used the scruffy mild steel manifold that came with the engine and the car already had a stainless sports system so I had to make up a sleeve to join the two together. Not difficult but getting it all lined up and hanging nicely was a hassle.

I had read the clearance between the manifold and the chassis rail is sometimes a problem but I had a whole quarter of an inch!










I cranked it over on the starter a couple of times and saw oil pressure on the gauge so the big moment came - and it fired up easily after a couple of turns.  Phew !!   No nasty noises and no more smoke than usual with a new engine installation. Excellent.
Let it run for a couple of minutes and then checked around for any leaks the noticed the oil pressure was a bit high, in fact, much too high.  I was seeing  80psi running and even 65-70psi at tickover. Hmmm.

This seemed it might be a problem so I asked around on the Triumph Dolomite Club forum and they all agreed too much for a normal engine.  The consensus pointed to the oil pump so I whipped it off and found someone had fitted an uprated spring in the relief valve. It was longer and stronger than standard. This might be OK for competition but really not necessary for a normal engine and can cause premature wear to the timing chain tensioner so I just swapped to a standard one and normal pressure was restored.  I now had about 55psi running and 35-40psi at tickover.  Much more comfortable.

Completed Sprint engine installation

A quick road test found it was a bit flat above 3000rpm so I obviously needed to get the carbs and timing set up properly but otherwise everything worked OK..  It ran sweetly enough but needed a tune.  At this stage it still had not got the air filters and it was on standard needles so I booked a session on my local rolling road to get it running just right.

Couple of days later, K&N filters fitted, I took it to Maynard Motorsport rolling road in Nailsworth to sort it out properly. I have known Mark Maynard for years since before I rented some space in a spare corner of his workshop to build my Sierra Cosworth rally car in the early 1990's. He has a good engineering machine shop and can make almost anything you need for a car.

If you have never been to a rolling road it is a bit of a shocking experience first time.  The sheer noise and violence of a car running flat out whilst you stand a couple of feet away is pretty scary. You will not believe how loud it actually is.  I knew what to expect but it had been a few years, so I stood back with my fingers in my ears, whilst the car was given a good thrashing. Carb needles were swapped for some richer ones to match the K & N filters and the tubular manifold and ignition timing adjusted slightly to optimise everything.  Needles fitted are now BBP.

Result was 134bhp at 5800rpm and a smooth flexible engine, see printouts below.

 

2012 Sprint engine project begins

So having decided not to spend money repairing the old 8-valve engine I had to find a complete Sprint engine more or less ready to go in.  Some asking around on forums turned up an engine in Chipping Sodbury, only a few miles from me, which sounded suitable.  Speaking to the owner I found out it actually came from a TR7 which had fallen apart around it!

When I went to collect the motor I found out just how heavy these things are - or it may be I am getting old!
My long suffering mate Chris came with me and we only just managed to lift it into the back of my estate car.

I had borrowed an engine stand so we got the engine set up on it to have a good look at it.

First impressions not too bad but a couple of concerns soon arose.
The seller had told me he could never stop it weeping oil around the back of the sump and I quickly found the two bolts into the aluminium crank seal housing would not tighten - the threads were stripped.  Easy to swap the housing but that needed the flywheel taken off and I couldn't do that on the engine stand.  I have since seen a neat trick using a modified engine mount on the side of the block so its possible to get to all parts with it on a stand - next time then.
With the sump off the bottom end all looked good so it went back together and I turned my attention to the water pump.
Taking off the cover I found a 12 vane pump, excellent - but it was a 6 vane cover !!!  Again easy to swap but I started to wonder about what else I would find.

The carbs looked pretty dusty so I decided to give them a good going over with an overhaul kit.

Grimy carbs as received

I also got rid of the old waxstat jets at the same time. It was quite a nice and satisfying job completely stripping and cleaning the old carbs and they ended up almost good as new with their new butterflies, jets, needle valves and gaskets.

One of the fiddly bits to putting the Sprint engine in a TR7 is to sort out the heater pipes. My new engine still had Dolomite heater fittings so the previous owner had obviously bodged the pipes somehow ( yes, another bodge) but I wanted to do it properly. 
One heater connection joins to the water bypass pipe that runs along under the carbs.  I just used a standard TR7 bypass pipe here, only had to swap the olive fitting where it screws into the manifold.


The real factory TR7 Sprints had a special outlet casting fitted on the back of the head but these are super-rare so most folks use a made up version. Rimmers or S&S Preparations will sell you one which is just a standard Dolomite Sprint blanking plate with a standard plumbing outlet screwed and/or welded to it, see picture below. It looks a bit crude but works really well.

The picture shows a standard TR7 heater outlet and the modified Sprint one. You will need to re-use the screwed in outlet from the TR7.  After one failure which came out with all the aluminium thread I found I had to heat it up on a camping stove to avoid stripping the thread of the outlet.
Now all you need are some standard TR7 heater hoses to join it all up - simple.






Looking at the distributor I found it already had a Pirhana electronic ignition fitted so I would need the amplifier module to go with it. I also tested the vacuum unit by the good old sucking method and found it didn't move at all.  Searching around the web I found a Pirhana module on Ebay at a good price but the vacuum units proved to be nil stock at all the usual suppliers.  More searching and I eventually found a new old stock one at Mick Dolphin. Nice genuine bloke and good to deal with.

So finally I had a Sprint engine fully assembled and ready to fit

Please ignore the Speedograph air filters, they were just some new ones I had lying around and put them on whilst the engine was being fitted.  The engine runs on K&N filters now its in the car.

( The Speedographs are new and for sale in case you know anyone wants any for a Spitfire/MG/ etc )

The engine came with a scruffy but OK mild steel exhaust manifold so that went on.





Having experienced how heavy the bare engine is  ( around 140kgs I read somewhere )  I decided to buy myself a decent hoist to install it, especially bearing in mind it would be going in with the gearbox attached to it as well.
I decided to buy a 1 ton folding crane which cost £150, because I think when you have 200kgs of metal swinging in the air above your shiny paintwork you want to trust it to stay there. It also came with one of those adjustable leveller gadgets which are essential to tip the engine to the steep angle you need.
Trusty mate Chris assisted again and it all dropped in pretty easily leaving me to connect up all the fiddly bits over the next couple of days.

IT FITS !!

2012 - Engine goes bang.

Driving the TR7 to Gloucester one day it started to play up.  It was a damp day and I set off with a slight fluffy misfire.  I put this down to the damp weather but instead of clearing the misfire persisted and then got worse.  When I noticed the distinctive smell of burnt oil I realised it was serious and stopped to investigate. There was fresh oil that seemed to have come from the dipstick hole and a bad misfire. Taking off the oil filler cap revealed a loud  chuff - chuff - chuff  sound. The conclusion was a possible gasket or maybe a boken ring or blown piston so I drove back home gently watching the oil pressure and water temp gauges.

Having had another look and ponder out came the engine and see what I found - a couple of broken rings.

I also found some evil looking sludge in the sump, maybe due to the oil cooler?

Decision time, do I repair the old engine or bring forward the Sprint conversion?

I didn't think too long before going for the Sprint option.

2011, Brakes and Wheels

So its 2011.  There is the new project parked in the garage and my original "everyday" TR7 is parked outside under a nice cover. Not ideal but its only a temporary arrangement isn't it ?
I wasn't quite ready to really start work on the project but had started to strip stuff off and get rid of some of the scrap items like the ruined carpets etc.

In the meantime I regarded the "everyday" car as a kind of test bed for stuff I planned to use on the new one and one of the first things that came along was a set of 4 pot brakes.  They were advertised on Ebay starting at £50 but with no pictures and a vague description..  When I contacted the bloke I found he was not very helpful but said he had taken them off a TR7 rally car and they were complete and ready to bolt straight on.  What to do?
I thought £50 was worth a gamble,  so I placed a bid and was amazed to find out a couple of days later they were mine!
Turns out it was the small Rimmers upgrade kit using Princess 4 pot callipers and vented discs of 244mm diameter and 20mm thick. It would have cost at least £250 to buy so that was a good deal and they went onto the car.

Princess 4-pots fitted

 

The handbrake on my everyday TR7 had always been poor so I decided it was worth having it apart to sort out.   The rear brakes have a self-adjuster mechanism but it hardly ever works properly and that was also going to mess up the handbrake operation.  I had a new kit to replace all the adjuster mechanism in stock (another Ebay purchase) so this was the time to use it.

Standard wheels on a TR7 are 13" diameter and many TR7 brake upgrades need bigger wheels to fit them inside, so when a new set of 14" x 6" Minilite style turned up at a very good price they went into stock as well.  The wheels needed taper fitting nuts so I had to get some of those to match.

New "Minilite" style wheels fitted

 Replacement wheels are a bit of a concern on TR7's.  The standard wheels are hub-centric meaning that they are a close fit on the boss in the centre of the hub to give them their accurate location.  The wheelnuts do not locate the wheels they just hold them on the hub.
Most replacement wheels are located by the studs and can sometimes cause vibration problems if the wheels are not centred accurately.  Time would tell if mine were OK..

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.

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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.

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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.

2010, Another TR7 arrives

The car had always looked OK from across the road, but a closer inspection would reveal the previous owners welded patches, and the fact that the doors have been repaired and aren't aligned quite right, and the rust bubbles on the rear deck seams, etc etc etc. Under the bonnet the welded patches on the inner wings and turrets were very obvious.  It was all sound but not too pretty.

When I took it to my local garage for its MOT they noticed something else that I hadn't spotted. The flat tops of those rear chassis rails under the boot floor were starting to bubble.  I had never looked at them before but there was no mistaking the first signs trouble when you ran your hand along the top.  I treated them with some rust killer and paint immediately but it meant the bodyshell would need some proper attention if it was going to last for many more years.

A couple of days after the MOT, as I was walking past the local garage they called me in and asked if I knew anyone who wanted a TR7. It was local, been stored for years and the owner wanted rid of it.................
To cut a long story short I suddenly found myself with two TR7's

The "new" car was from 1981, Carmine Red and had done only 23000 miles. It was Zeibarted from new but had still needed door skins, sills and wheelarches done in the mid 1990's. The owner had lost his garage a couple of years previously and I think the car had been moved around lockups. The hood had split and closer examination also revealed it had got wet at sometime as the interior was not too good.  The panel repairs were good quality and the boot lid and bonnet were both good as new but it would need a respray to get it looking just right.

The plan would be to get the body painted and fitted out nicely, then change over all my good mechanical stuff with the new poly bushes, springs, dampers etc.  I also had plans to install a Sprint 16 valve engine.

The Sprint Option

Ever since I first had the TR7, people asked me when I was going to put a V8 in the car, but I always liked the Sprint option better.   A few of my reasons are:-
1..it is a lot less work therefore cheaper.
2..the Sprint engine has over 130bhp, similar to the standard V8 engine.
3..no changes to the bodyshell or gearing required.
4..there are loads of TR7 V8's about but not many Sprints.
5..the factory started making the TR7 Sprint but it never went into full production.

Its worth noting that all the TR7 factory rally cars were Sprint powered up until 1979.

2010, non-starter. Bugger!

So the scene moves on to 2010. I went to get the car out of the garage and it wouldn't start, well it would fire OK but wouldn't run.  It had been standing for a couple of months over the winter.  The fuel tank was a bit low so I added some fresh petrol and tried again.  Still would not run.
It was firing OK but that was all.  Hmmm.
Dirt in the fuel line/pump maybe?
Flushed it all through, cleaned out the pump filter and tried again.  Still the same. Hmmmmmm.
Checked the float chambers to see if they were clean but found the fuel level well down,  Ah, dodgy fuel pump maybe?  Fitted the spare fuel pump ( we all have one I assume?) and tried again.
YES, SORTED, RUNS OK !!
Then I noticed the fuel leak, petrol was dripping from the new fuel pump. I found there was no way I could get the lid to seal properly. It was one I had bought ages ago "just in case" from Ebay- like one does - so no hope of a refund.
Robsport came to the rescue with a new one delivered next day and worked a treat.

BACK ON THE ROAD AGAIN.  yeeeehaa.