Project Rusty Triumphs in Scotland - Actually doing things with shit cars - 03/07/25

[Spottedlaurel]

11 hours ago, aldo135 said:

She’s in Lincolnshire, not far from Kings Lynn which is Norfolk I think? So many counties meet here I get confused. Last time I was down I got magazines from Beep near Wisbech, not far away but that was Cambridgeshire! I’ll come and meet you, hoping to camp in Norfolk if the weather suits  

Not mega local, but I'm sure we can work something out - send me a PM nearer the time.

[somewhatfoolish]

21 hours ago, captain_70s said:

To celebrate the fucking thing decided it'd rather its driver's door won't stay closed unless you wedge it closed with your leg and lock it with the key, which is nice. *adds to the to-do list.

 

Bastard is fighting you all the way; it's like a dug that knows it's being taken to the vet.

[captain_70s]

Door fixed itself overnight. Woo!

Today was move day. Mr @davidfowler2000 arrived at my flat at the exact same time I arrived home from work at around 14:40ish, his steed of choice was his Volvo V70 T6 AWD and a massive trailer was attached to the rear end - An ideal towing rig.

Within 30mins the space on my street previously occupied by a Dolomite didn't.

Now, loading a non-running car with an engine in the boot onto a tilt bed trailer on a fairly narrow one-way street could have been an utter fuck about. Inexplicably it was easy...

By parking the trailer facing downhill at the bottom of the road it was at a much gentler angle once lowered and with a couple of feet to get rolling before hitting the skids the Dolly simply rolled on via gravity. 

The resulting combination was both aesthetically pleasing and very long...

The drive to the workshop was uneventful, the Volvo would still out-drag the Acclaim despite towing a car containing two cast iron engines...

Once at the workshop minor poking was done and the quality* of prior repairs was admired.

 

@GingerNuttz's assessment of the bodywork was something along the lines of "pretty good overall" The real work begins on Saturday....

[vulgalour]

Classic lump of carcheology there, containing every material of choice of every home enthusiast.  The Jeyes cloth is a particularly colourful addition to an otherwise drab selection of materials.

[GingerNuttz]

Found a rusty 3/8 drive extension that looked structural to the repair too 

[captain_70s]

Don't forget the plastic bag!

[GingerNuttz]

Oh aye that's still up in the hole just in case the car folds in half when it's removed 

[big_al_granvia]

nice one mate getting it moved, the volvo looks sweet with that trailer, it isnt that big, our v70 has has a 25' twin axle caravan on the back, its what volvos are made for. the van makes the v70 look smoll

 

[dollywobbler]

Great stuff. Can imagine this one might get a bit scary yet...

[dave j]

Excellent stuff! Can't wait to see the updates, but going by those pics above from a quick poke around its going to get a lot worse before it gets better! 

[big_al_granvia]

ere cpt, if you want a hand give me a shout, happy to grind, fill, paint or spanner. my welding is shite though, the car is in glasgow area aye??

[captain_70s]

It'll get worse but hopefully not by miles. The only bit that's both fucked and a complicated shape is the front wing. Everything else is either a simple curve or under the skin.

It's the usual case of prior bodgery causing worse rot in the long term. If less of Isopon's finest had been used in the past there would be more salvageable metal left to work with.

It's reckoned both front wings and the valance are savable though so fingers crossed we'll have no major panel purchases.

Toying with the idea of spraying the car another shade of green as Brooklands fades like fuck and looks a bit de-saturated and dull in overcast conditions. Any recommendations for similar hues?

[vulgalour]

Connaught Green is probably closest if you're keeping it in the family, looks like this, quite popular on MGs in America.

[Amishtat]

My old Toledo was Mallard, that suited the shape nicely and wasn't far off Brooklands in colour without fading particularly. 

[danthecapriman]

4 hours ago, captain_70s said:

It'll get worse but hopefully not by miles. The only bit that's both fucked and a complicated shape is the front wing. Everything else is either a simple curve or under the skin.

It's the usual case of prior bodgery causing worse rot in the long term. If less of Isopon's finest had been used in the past there would be more salvageable metal left to work with.

Very true, but, if you want to put a positive spin on that... if the bodges and isopon didn’t get used in the past it’s most likely the car wouldn’t still be here now.

hmm, how very unlike me to be positive!

Anyway, can’t wait to see this becoming unfucked.

[GingerNuttz]

Triumph conifer green is a nice shade too 

 

[plasticvandan]

Applejack, surely? 

[SiC]

What about paint over the green with some Blue tractor enamel?

Like someone did here...

[NigeT]

11 hours ago, captain_70s said:

It'll get worse but hopefully not by miles. The only bit that's both fucked and a complicated shape is the front wing. Everything else is either a simple curve or under the skin.

It's the usual case of prior bodgery causing worse rot in the long term. If less of Isopon's finest had been used in the past there would be more salvageable metal left to work with.

It's reckoned both front wings and the valance are savable though so fingers crossed we'll have no major panel purchases.

Toying with the idea of spraying the car another shade of green as Brooklands fades like fuck and looks a bit de-saturated and dull in overcast conditions. Any recommendations for similar hues?

I can recommend HAA Shitish Racing Green - I resprayed my formerly silver XJ-S in it 3 years ago and if anything it seems to have got a bit glossier over time. 

[eddyramrod]

That should be the strongest Dolly on the planet when you've finished!  The J-cloth was a particularly nice touch.  At least I haven't found any of those in Huggy!  Good luck :)

[Split_Pin]

Good to see plans are afoot to make sure the Dolly lives on, looking forward to more updates chap.

The semi-structural J-cloth is interesting, I don't think that's in the AA Book of the Car chapter about body repairs.

[junkyarddog]

https://www.smithandallan.com/products/tractol-paint/3410-tractol-329-single-pack-machinery-enamel-bs-221-john-deere-green/

Cheap and plentiful. 

[Saabnut]

There can only be one green for a 1970s car (and a black roof would et it off nicely)

[sdkrc]

41 minutes ago, Saabnut said:

There can only be one green for a 1970s car (and a black roof would et it off nicely)

 

[captain_70s]

 

[GingerNuttz]

Weight reduction 

[captain_70s]

With the lightweight big end bearings and the 25lb of metal shavings removed from the sump she'll fly now.

[GingerNuttz]

Lightweight big ends and hardened rods ?

[Yoss]

Another one for mallard here. I had a mk2 2000 in it. It's a lot darker than yours but lovely when it's shiny. There's almost some blue in it. I also had two green mk1s, one Olive and one Conifer. They were quite similar but if you put the two together the Olive was a bit more brown. 

Or Russet brown. I had a Russet 1850. It's a similar tone to Brooklands but in brown. It looked fabulous under streetlights, it turns almost orange. But Mallard  is the classiest by far. 

[captain_70s]

Right. Weekend summary.

Day -1 : Yes, minus 1. Work was due to start on Sat but @GingerNuttz couldn't resist prodding at the wobbed up rear door and found it was rotten as fuck at the bottom and filled higher up, probably a dent repair. So roughed in a repair on Fri before I'd even arrived. It'll need loads of hammer and dolly action to look the part but is solid and 100% metal. Once finished everything is going to be drowned in vactan, zinc primer and waxoil so I'll never need to come back to it again!

 

Day 1 - The first actual day of work with me present. I arrived at 10:30am for assessment of front panels and chassis legs. White pen had been used liberally across the car to highlight repairs required.

Mr Nutzz had also taken off the bonnet and remaining engine bay clutter and started undoing the gearbox/engine bolts ready for removal. We pushed the car into the garage behind the Triumph Herald chassis as there was a van blocking the gate so we couldn't swap them over. The the strip down of the front end commenced. I started pulling trim and lights off while the Nutzz man made a start on repairing the N/S chassis leg.

Removing the front bumper required some angle grinder usage...

It was quite grotty behind the lights and grille. As in at least half of the metalwork was entirely absent and the rest was utterly fucked.

The corners of the wings and edge of the front valance were entirely filler and up on cutting the rot out we found...

Seems the rear arches weren't the only part to get the double skin treatment. At some point a new valance has been glued over the remnants of the old. Although they did at least cut most of the old one away this time...

I think it was around this time we decided to pull the engine. This was done properly with a crane and some chains and definitely wasn't* three blokes lifting it out by hand while being really confused as to why the gearbox was also coming despite being detached (because the gearbox mount was totally and utterly fucked).

With the engine out we pulled the sump off to admire the condition.

This is the big end bearing for No.3...

The hardened surface on the crank is entirely gone...

This end cap had gotten so hot the metal had blued... The adjacent oil pump was heat seized solid, we couldn't even get it apart...

My next video release will show the sheer amount of play in the crank/conrods and the fore-aft movement caused by shagged thrust bearings. I ran a magnet across the bottom of the sump and gained 2mm of metal... We were going to take out the crank but the pulley nut may as well have been welded on and we lacked the right adaptor to get the huge socket on the impact gun...

Diagnosis of failure: Catastrophic destruction of big end bearings, potentially accelerated by wear in the thrust bearings but as the engine was all sludged up when I got it it was probably neglected badly at some point in the past anyway.

If I'd done a full rebuild when I first got the car it would have been savable, but 12,000 odd miles of use down the line? Nope.  Salvageable parts? Nothing. It's entirely knackered, the crank is beyond regrinding, the bores are scored, the area around the main bearings will be compromised from the heat given off by No.3 going supernova so the block is toast, the cam will have 140k of wear and the original head is fucked from long term oil starvation. RIP  engine... 

No evidence of any prior rebuild and plenty of evidence the car had done 138,000 miles... A long life for a Triumph SC engine, but it's now finished.

We poked around with the front valance and wings a bit more trying to find solid metal until we decided it was home time at 16:00. The car was pushed back into the driveway for the night.,

Day 2 - I turned up at around 10:45. Now the gate was clear and we could swap the Dolly and Herald around. We towed the Dolly out with the Acclaim and pushed the Herald clear.

The Dolly was then rolled into the garage and the Herald sat on the driveway and well covered with tarps.

The front of the car was then bashed/cut to fuck in a hunt for good metal...

The "eyebrow" panels that live under the front panel and above the headlights hold the front panels and the wings together and a notorious rot spot due to the location and the number of overlapping panels/seams. Mine were completely and utterly fucked.

The remains of the O/S example was removed more or less intact via use of a plasma cutter to use as a template but the section that runs down the side of the wing beside the headlight was entirely missing on both sides. This had us pretty stumped because without knowing how it all went together and what purpose the panel served we couldn't really replicate it or replace it in an effective manner. So we finished a bit early and I hit the internet to find pictures. Thankfully a guy on the TDC forum had documented his concourse resto of a Sprint and there were loads of pictures of the whole area repaired as per it left the factory, so now we have something to work from.

A rough up of the O/S "eyebrow" panel has been knocked up and a few test fits attempted but it'll need a fair bit more work to be finalised.

Another thing we did do was make up a large chunk of the N/S front valance and indicator mount. Sadly @GingerNuttz doesn't like posting WIP shots (preferring before/after) despite the fact that about 25% into him making a panel is the point where 95% percent of people would say "yup, that'll do" and weld it to the car. so you'll just have to make do with this teaser shot...

It took a while to get the indicator area correct as the indicator mount remains vertical while the panel curves both downwards and inwards.

A full GRP panel is avaliable from the TDC for £160 + £25 for joining the club, and then a 10 hour drive and £100+ in petrol to collect it from the Midlands. The "eyebrow" panels are avaliable in GRP for £45 each, headlight mounting panels are £52 each. Just to get the panels for the front end would be the best part of £500 and would leave the wings still to be repaired. That's a lot of money/time that can be spent actually working on the car/ buying suspension bushes, etc + time waiting for parts to arrive which would probably need fettled to fit anyway so the decision was made to fabricate the lot...

Anyway, work was a bit slower overall on Day 2 but overall still utterly blistering due to the speed Mr Nutzz works at. He's threatened to have the entire front of the car finished by my next visit a week on Sunday which I can easily see being the case...