2021, February Life begins again!

 FHC Front Suspension Job

When I built the FHC a couple of years back it was in a bit of a rush so there was not time for some little jobs like modifying the front strut tops for the roller bearings. The best way is to machine a recess in the aluminium bells so the bearings fit inside them. There wasn't time for the machining work so I fitted the bearings without the recess anyway which resulted in a slightly increased the ride height by about 5-10mm.   Now I needed to have the struts apart to replace the "rubber" bellows which had split so it was time to do the bearing job properly.  

These gaiters lasted less than 2 years!

The most commonly used bearings used are a standard part from a Ford Escort Mk4 and cheap, part no. 6150276.

Ford Strut Bearings, part no. 6150276

 

 

Background:  The standard TR7 strut top bearing is a plastic/nylon bush running against a greased flat washer. This may have been OK when new but over the years these have often dried out and many owners now find the steering too heavy for comfort. Power steering was fitted to some cars back in the day, mostly the TR8s in the USA market but this has two drawbacks, 1 it is for LHD cars, and 2 it is almost impossible to find nowadays.  Some folks have used a modified Rover SD1 power rack but the modern equivalent is an adapted version of the electrically assisted steering column used in many cars now.  The other easier and cheaper option is to just fit the bearings which do the job perfectly for me. 

 The standard strut top parts look like this:-

 

1. Spring top pan

2. Nylon bush/bearing

3. Rubber seal (runs outside of 2)

4. Flat steel washer (runs on top of 2)

5. Aluminium cone (goes on top of 4)

6. Strut top with rubber insert

7. Cupped washer 

 

The new bearings replace the nylon bush (2) and the flat washer(4).  I retained the rubber seal (3) as well to help preserve the new bearings.

Like I said above, when I built the car I just put the roller bearings in place of the nylon bush but being much thicker they do raise the ride height so I wanted to fix this. 

Thickness of the Ford bearing

 The way this is done is to machine a recess into the aluminium cone to take the bearing with only the running surface being slightly proud of the cone, like this:-

Modified cones to take Ford bearing (photo Beans)

Putting it all back together with the well geased new bearings and new strut gaiters was pretty easy, not forgetting to include the bump stop on the damper shaft.  There are various options with the bump stop, some folks don't use one at all (not a good idea!) and some have the nice expensive polybush version.  I just use a cut down rubber one as suggested by Steve Wilcox of S&S Preparations.  The new standard ones sold now are too long.  All you need is one (yes one) rubber bump stop and cut it in half, so it does for both struts. Result!

Half a rubber bump stop is used

With the car back on its wheels I took it for a quick test drive and the steering feels excellent, light and precise - and back to the proper ride height.  

2020, September Tulip Run

Glavon Tulip Run

After a very strange summer September gave us a chance to actually go out in a TR7 on the Glavon Tulip Run.  With all the COVID restrictions in place our TR Register group managed to organise a small run out with the cars on 13th September.  

Fairview Garden Centre at Birdwood opened up specially early at 8:30am to serve the 12 crews with a nice bacon roll and a cuppa before we started. We were the only visitors there at that time and the lovely weather meant we were able to sit at outside tables.

Glavon cars at Fairview Garden Centre

The gentle route had been planned by Noel and Ange Jones and took us out towards Ross on Wye and then down via Upton Bishop and along the beautiful river bank at Hole-in-the-Wall where we got a cheerful wave from some folks camping by the river. 

River Wye at Hole-in-the-Wall

Socially distanced campers

 Being harvest time we did meet quite a few tractors with heavily loaded trailers full of sugar beet in the narrow lanes. No rest for the farmers who have to work Sundays when the weather is kind to them.

Jo calls a turn near Ross on Wye

We all paused for a coffee at Raglan Garden Centre where people were starting to arrive for Sunday lunch in the cafe.  This felt a bit strange to us but arrangements were in place to enable everyone to keep their distance and again we were all able to sit outside.

After a short run through the Forest of Dean we crossed back over the Severn Bridge to finish at the Royal Oak in Wotton Under Edge.   A Sunday lunch had been arranged for us here but we chose to pass on that and continue home which is only 7-8 miles away.

Glavon cars at the finish pub

 

 

The day after our run the country entered a new lockdown and it turned out to be the only outing of 2020.

2020, February & July. Tidying up jobs on the FHC and Strut Braces

Changing Switches

One of the really irritating things for me on the FHC was that it had the wipers and indicator stalks on the "wrong" side, so there were several times when I indicated to turn and the wipers came on instead.  Apart from being embarassing it was also potentially dangerous so I wanted to swap the switches around.  All the cars made from the next year onwards have theirs on the "normal" side - indicator on the left so I wanted to swap them over.  I already had a set of the switches from my original old red TR7 that I had broken for spares.  The ignition lock was also on the left which sometimes had me fumbling to get the key in, so I wanted to swap that over as well.  I needed the plastic cowl that covers the ignition switch but Steve Wilcox at S&S Preparations supplied that from his huge stocks of all things TR7. 

It was not a difficult job and only took a couple of hours, the most difficult part was getting the security bolts out that hold the ignition lock assembly. They are the sort that are made to shear off when you tighten them up, presumably to deter car thieves.  I had to use a Dremel to put a slot in the head and a centre punch to start them turning but they came out easily enough.

Right side and left side ignition key assemblies

 

The changeover means I no longer have to fiddle with the key or have to think every time I want to indicate or switch the wipers on which is a good result for me.

Ignition key where I like it!

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

July 2020:  Strut Braces

One of the TR7 Owners Club members called Glenn Allchurch asked if anyone was interested if he got a batch of strut braces made by Whiteline who had made some really good ones back in the day.  This was always something I wanted to fit on the DHC as well so said yes immediately, and ordered two - one for each car.

 

Whiteline Strut Brace on the DHC

The one for the DHC went on very easily as you can see from the picture above, but on the FHC it was a bit too too close to the throttle linkage on the Dellortos for comfort so a little engineering was required.

One of the TR7 friends I have met over the past few years is Henry Brown who lives up near Evesham and he had been telling me about machining and building a model steam engine. This was in the middle of the COVID lockdown so he had been using the time to rediscover his machining skills. I asked him if he could help and he jumped at the chance.

Problem: Throttle linkage too close to brace bar

New Henry Brown outer cable end

 

New Henry Brown inner cable fixing

Final result: nice amount of clearance to brace bar.

The throttle linkage on the Dellortos is made by Magard and is aimed at the competition market where dual throttle cables is the norm. I don't need two on the FHC so some modified parts could easily be used.  I sent Henry some pictures of the problem and the parts concerned and in a couple of days his solution came back. He had made some completely new parts from stainless steel and they fitted perfectly.  Superb job.

2019, October. Lombard Rally Bath 2019

We had very much enjoyed the Lombard Rally Bath 2018 so were keen to do it all again in 2019. The idea was the same with cars using some of the classic stages for the 1970s-80s and some new ones. This years start was moved out of the city up to Bath Racecourse to give better access and reduce the traffic problems.  The proposed route took us up through Gloucestershire and then across the Severn Bridge into South Wales, with an overnight stop at the Celtic Manor Golf Resort. The entry was about 120 cars of all shapes and sizes with five TR7's taking part. The other four were serious rally cars and had V8 engines.

After a short run fron the racecourse our first stage was through the Badminton Estate, more famous as the location of the Badminton Three Day Event for horses.  This was a short section on nixed surfaces but was good fun and an excellent start to warm us up.

Badminton Estate stage (photo Noel Jones)

 You can see the Badminton in-car dashcam footage here:-
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA7NSg6yqsc


From Badminton we headed up to Cirencester Park. The stage here was to be run twice and was the same as used on the original Lombard RAC Rallies in the 1970s and 1980s. It was also the main spectator venue for the day. Queues to get in extended for a couple of miles so it was certainly popular!   The stage was again a mixture of tarmac and loose surfaces but under trees with spectators lining the track.  We had a bit of a go here and this seemed to be popular with those watching.  We were parked next to the Stig (the real one!) in his ex-works Audi Quattro and he queued up behing us on the start line for our second run - no pressure then. He didn't catch us up, but was doing charity runs with paying passengers so was obviously taking it a bit easy.

Cirencester Park Stage with crowds

Cirencester Park, spectators lined the stage

The stage was very enjoyable and there was a little more grip than might be expected, see our run in Cirencester Park here:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsYQSQrzByY&t=

From Cirencester we headed down across the Severn Bridge into Wales via a couple of passage controls and then lunch at the Celtic Manor Gold Resort.

Next offering was at Parc Bryn Glas which is a country park near Tredegar. As we arrived here the roads around were lined with parked cars on every available space so there was obviously going to be a few folks watching and there was a little delay whilst the organisers tried to get the spectators to stand in safe (ish) places. There was a tight hairpin in the middle of the stage that I had to do a reverse at because the handbrake is not good enough on dry tarmac - that will have to be improved for the future.  The road here was tarmac all the way so there was plenty of grip and we could have a bit of an attack again.  This was confirmed by the brakes starting to go off towards the end. Excellent!

See the run through Parc Bryn Glas here:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbOBCC7tIB4

Next stage was quite close by at a place called Trefil Quarry. This was a short tarmac road leading to a dead end at the quarry so the plan was to run about ten cars in who would then wait at the far end and come back out in convoy so the next ten could have a go.  The marshalls told us there were some potholes but they had been filled but this truned out to be not quite true. We hit a couple of water filled holes very hard which punctured a rear tyre. As we were changing the wheel a marshall brought us an electric fan which he said was ours, so we opened the bonnet and turns out it was! 

There should be an electric fan here!

So with no spare tyre and no cooling fan we proceeded carefully to a second run at Parc Bryn Glas keeping a close watch on the temperature gauge. Thankfully it stayed well in the normal range and the run was fine.

Last stage of the day was at the Caerwent Military Training area.  This was originally a Royal Navy propellant manufacturing factory site from WW2 where they made explosives for shells.  Naturally the buildings there had to be kept well spaced out for safety so there is a large network of service roads between them. These days it is used for training troops and we were told the SAS were there observing - but we would never see them. The site is regularly used for modern single-venue rallies but we had never been there before.  Most of the roads are lined with kerbstones and it has a reputation for breaking wheels and suspension if you hit any.  I managed to have a slight brush with one on our second run, when I dropped a front wheel off the edge of a concrete road as you can see from the picture, but we escaped with minor rim damage.

Typical Caerwent scar on this rim.

You can see our run through Caerwent here:-
 https://youtu.be/TT8oHSh73MY

 To sum up the Lombard Rally Bath 2019 I would say it was a victim of its own success. Large numbers of people came out to watch - probably many more than was expected - but spectator control was almost nil which created a potentially very dangerous situation. Luckily there were no incidents this time but the organisation needs to be very much better if future events are to take place.

2019. September part 2. Driving the FHC with the Sprint motor.

First chance for a nice little run came a few days after the rolling road when two visiting TR Register groups arrived in our area.  Windsor Forest and Camb Followers were having a joint visit to the Cotswolds so we all met up at a convenient pub.  They had a lot of very nice cars, mostly TR3-6 but with a couple of TR7s as well.  There was quite a bit of interest in FHC and a few nice compliments.

The car drove smoothly with plenty of torque low down.  The afternoon only amounted to about 75 miles so I needed to do a lot more for a good test.

Luckily the following week our own Glavon group of the TR Register were having a Glavon Tulip Run.  This was a small version of the highly popular classic runs and as the title suggests the route was presented to us in the form of Tulip Diagrams.  There were 12 cars taking part and we would set off at minute intervals. Since we have done a lot of these runs in the past couple of years we were deemed to be "professionals" and sent off as car number one.

Glavon Tulip Run, coffee stop at Kemble airfield

There was a stop for coffee at Kemble airfield and a visit to the ford at Duntisbourne for a bit of fun.

Glavon Tulip Run, Duntisbourne ford

The weather was kind to us and the car ran perfectly so the day was a good 120 mile test.  Fuel consumption was pretty good as well working out at about 28 mpg.

2019: September part 1. Trying out new sprint motor

With the engine in and running I had a little tinker to tidy up and check settings etc.  The fancy (and expensive) Mangoletsi throttle linkage seems to be well engineered and was easier to fit than it looked. The engine idled quite nicely and I set the ignition advance at tickover to 10 degrees BTDC as a good starting point.

10 degrees BTDC using the Snap-On timing light.

Driving the car it felt good and responsive and with that fantastic growl from the carbs when you floor the pedal.  Almost worth changing the engine just for that sidedraught roar!  I booked a test in a couple of days time with Martin at Maynard Engines on their rolling road in Nailsworth to check what was really happening with mixtures etc.  A couple of days later I took the car over there and we strapped it down on the rollers.

First run showed it was actually set up quite well.  I had used the carb settings recommended by Matt at Eurocarb who are the Dellorto main agents in the UK. For the anoraks amongst you this is what he suggested as a starting point:-

Dellorto 45DHLA
Chokes    36mm,
Main jets  145,
Emulsion tubes  7772.5,
Air correctors  180,
Idle jets  60,
Accelerator pump jets  42.

I have been reading up on the carbs to try and get a better understanding of what all these numbers mean and how they all work together. This book was my main source of information.

I wouldn't claim to understand them now, but I do have a bit more of an idea than when I started.

Martin found it was running a little rich at the bottom end then went a little lean at the top so he made a few changes. We were not trying to achieve ultimate power but needed it to be a nice engine to drive on the road.

Turns out that folks have differing opinions about setup, Martin prefers to run bigger spec emulsion tubes so changed them from the recommended 5 to an 11 which gave a richer acceleration phase. They have more holes and in different places - see picture - and it certainly worked to make the top end mixture much better.

Dellorto Emulsion Tube Range from 1 ti 17

Driving the car afterwards it certainly felt smooth, with plenty of torque at low revs and pulling all the way up through the range.

Final carb settings are:-
Dellorto 45DHLA
Chokes    36mm,
Main jets  175,
Emulsion tubes  7772.11,
Air correctors  135,
Idle jets  60,
Accelerator pump jets  42.

2019. August Part 3. DHC car show and classic runs.

In between work on the FHC Sprint engine upgrade August was a busy month for the DHC as well. The car had its birthday on 1st August having been first registered on 1st August 1981.
On 3rd August we took it to the Cotswold Steam and Vintage Extravaganza at South Cerney. This is a huge three day show with a huge range of vehicles including steam traction engines, lorries, busses and classic cars. As a participant we get a free ticket so its well worth attending.  It was a nice day but with a few heavy showers which kept us all on our toes.  At least the DHC looks more shiny wet!

Showers at Cotswold Steam

Next day we were off in the DHC again to take part in the Valleys and Villages Classic Tour. This was based at Royal Wootton Bassett and took us on a nice route all around the Marlborough Downs and past several of the ancient White Horses and a lunch stop on the green in the centre of Hungerford.

Passing just below the White Horse at Uffington

It was an excellent route organised by Devizes and District Motor Club who have been well known as proper rally club for many years.

A couple of weeks later we were out again on the Cotswold Classic Run again based at Grittleton House near Castle Coombe.  This is a much more gentle run aimed at less serious crews and with many older cars.  The route took us to a lot of the usual Cotswolds places before returning to Grittleton for a cooked meal.  This year they had a Peaky Blinders theme so a lot of folk dressed up in 1930s outfits to look the part, some even carrying fake Tommy guns!

Cars at the start of Cotswold Classic Run

Some older cars at the start of Cotswold Classic Run

 It was a nice day out and the weather was really kind to us again so the roof stayed down all day. An excellent day out in the TR7 DHC.