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Rusty Triumphs in Scotland - Dolomite in "most reliable" shocker - 08/02/24


captain_70s

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On 6/15/2020 at 12:20 PM, Lacquer Peel said:

I enjoyed the Volvo video. The Volvo in line six sounds fruitier than I'd have expected. 

Sorry for the "well, actually", but it's actually a radio aerial on the side rear window. 

Yup, it was pointed out in the comments also! Fucking technology eh? What was wrong with a big metal pole sticking out of the wing?

5 hours ago, davidfowler2000 said:

I'll need to lend you the 740 so you can compare the 960/V90 to it's more humdrum, every day counterparts.

Then a proper road test of the V70 T6 

Yesssssssss. Any excuse to drive cars, it was your 740 that put me on the path towards 700 Series ownership...

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4 hours ago, sdkrc said:

 

FAEM

Yes I did drive the Marina in the background, yes I did film it, yes I will release it at some point.

In Acclaim news I popped over to @GingerNuttz place today to do the Acclaim's cambelt.

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It was two teeth out and probably had been since the belt was last done 4 years ago before I bought the car... It's amazing it ran as well as it did! It was a bit of a bastard of a job though, I couldn't be arsed filming it but it was essentially:

Jack up car and remove passenger front wheel
Support the engine with another jack
Slacken the alternator bracket and remove aux belt
Zip off the crank pullet nut with an impact wrench, Remove the pulley, try not to loose to tiny woodruff key
Undo the passenger side engine mount and shuffle it out of the way
Undo the rocker cover and remove the upper cam belt cover
Take off the water pump pulley as it get's in the way of some bolts for the...
Lower cam belt cover, un-bolt and remove
Now you can slide the old belt off.
If you're like use you didn't bother to set TDC before this point, so refit the lower cover and a the crank pulley so you can align it properly. Then remove them again.
Un-bolt one of the tensioner bolts to allow for fitting the new belt, remove the funny little spring that doesn't seem to do anything.
Align the markings on the cam pulley to be in line with the surface of the cylinder head
Fit the new belt
Wrestle for a thousand years with refitting the tiny spring that doesn't seem to do anything
Bolt up the tensioner
Put the water pump pulley back on
Go to fit the lower cam cover and realise one bolt hole is behind the water pump pulley, elect to pretend it doesn't exist and fit it anyway. You now have one spare bolt.
Put the crank pulley back on - This is a faff due to the tiny woodruff key
Fit upper cam belt cover
Refit engine mount
Replace aux belt and tension with alternator bracket
Start car, run up to temp and set ignition timing with strobe light
Readjust idle speed and notice your airbox is full of oil. Great, that's new
Realise car is running way too rich and vow to fix it another day

Car now goes like fuck from a standstill and holds constant speeds on the motorway with far less effort, it also idles way smoother. Still bogs down under heavy throttle but if it's running rich is might be flooding. Need to sort when it isn't pissing it down.

Mr Nutzz also has form for Triumph tinkering, as this ongoing nut and bolt rebuild of a Herald will attest to...

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Hotted up 1296cc engine running Honda bike carbs (descendants of the Acclaim's twin carbs no less!), sounds fantastic and it's not even properly tuned yet...

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31 minutes ago, plasticvandan said:

Can't watch because of that hateful woman unfortunately. Captain,have you not thought that the extra few hundred quid insuring a car like the Volvo would be offset by not having to spend every spare penny,every spare minute,docked pay,etc on the triumphs?

Ooft, harsh.

The Triumphs aren't really costly, the Dolly is as it is essentially a resto project but the Acclaim costs pretty much fuck all. Any 20+ year old Volvo is probably going to need similar sort of work doing throughout the year to keep it in decent fettle.

The most expensive cars I've ever run are still my '05 Civic and my '12 Corsa 1.4T, the former on servicing and repairs and the latter in finance payments (and servicing and repairs).

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36 minutes ago, plasticvandan said:

Can't watch because of that hateful woman unfortunately. Captain,have you not thought that the extra few hundred quid insuring a car like the Volvo would be offset by not having to spend every spare penny,every spare minute,docked pay,etc on the triumphs?

Hateful? 

Is there previous beef between you? 

I’m not a fan of YouTubers at all - but I found her to be sweet, charming and genuinely passionate about cars. Oh, and terribly upset by people making personal remarks about her videos, rather than the cars and her style. 

Anyway, everyone’s entitled to their opinion. As long as it’s informed. 

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23 minutes ago, BorniteIdentity said:

Hateful? 

The audio on the video certainly is. Sounds like she was talking into a fish bowl!

She needs to buy a decent Lavalier Microphone.

Edit: what's with the editing with Captain70s interview!?

Not a bad video otherwise. Decent amount of knowledge talk. Learnt a few things. Better than her previous videos I watched last year for sure. Quite enjoyed it, apart from the audio and dodgy interview editing. 

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Bad audio in Steph's video is because the microphone on her phone partially died and she didn't realise until the last few vids were filmed. She drove 250 miles to drive the Acclaim so it's not like a re-shoot would be viable, the audio on the video has been heavily edited to be usable at all. I'm having to overdub all the audio on the Marina video because it was utterly fucked by wind noise...

The editing is because I was pausing like a motherfucker, if the full length version was included it'd be twice as long due to me staring into the middle distance thinking about what to say... ?

Can confirm Steph is a nice person and is genuinely into motors, we spent way too long chatting shit and not driving cars... Her videos are very much geared towards your Average Joe though, less towards "car people" - Hence the focus on controls and odd details. She doesn't half get some grief online though, it's pretty grim.

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8 minutes ago, sdkrc said:

Holy fuck. I feel like no one's addressing the elephant in the room, the colossal effort on that fucking timing belt.

I left out all the bits where we took bits off and then put them back on and then took them back off again because we'd missed a bit or something was behind something else.

I couldn't have done it at the side of the road, it'd have been fucking hellish. I'm really glad I shouldn't have to worry about it for 3 years, the old belt was shagged...

1 minute ago, plasticvandan said:

Well done on the belt,that will make a massive difference,if the timing has been do far out it may well have needed the carb richened up to compensate for valves not being open at the right time etc

That's our working theory for the rich running as well, although Mr Nutzz did note the car smelt rich when I arrived as well. Either way, with the cam timing and ignition timing now set correctly the carbs can be set without worrying about anything else. Hopefully on the next dry afternoon we have, as at the moment you can practically watch the fuel gauge drop as you go along the motorway...

Rough dates for shifting the Dolomite over to his place are also now pencilled in... All highly exciting!

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35 minutes ago, captain_70s said:

The editing is because I was pausing like a motherfucker, if the full length version was included it'd be twice as long due to me staring into the middle distance thinking about what to say... ?

You was staring into the distance think what to say, while in Gretna Green with a woman in 1970s floral dress, who loves classic cars and drives a Marina ... ? ?

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6 hours ago, sdkrc said:

 

Is that before or after the cambelt change/two teeth improvement? It looks so rev happy. I still remember my bosses pool car Acclaim I drove in about 93. The arse end had required judicious application of the MIG to scrape an MOT, but it still drove amazingly. The carb noise was pretty addictive too. 

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They always rot arse first, that's where mine is most fucked.

That was before the cambelt change, it's now much happier to rev and considerably smoother. I kept lighting up the tyres pulling away from junctions on the way home... The induction noise is ace, if I was going to keep it as a fun car rather than a daily I'd ditch the air box and just have filters on top of the carb intakes, because yobbo.

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21 minutes ago, captain_70s said:

They always rot arse first, that's where mine is most fucked.

That was before the cambelt change, it's now much happier to rev and considerably smoother. I kept lighting up the tyres pulling away from junctions on the way home... The induction noise is ace, if I was going to keep it as a fun car rather than a daily I'd ditch the air box and just have filters on top of the carb intakes, because yobbo.

Yours has done so well to survive against all the odds. Brilliant that it now clearly has a bit of an ASBO streak which was waiting to be released all along. 

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Steph is great to see to be honest, it's a shame she gets so much abuse because she's clearly both passionate and knowledgable and doing her level best to get the hobby as accessible as possible to as many people as possible.  I just wish I could enjoy her videos more, they do feel like they're aimed more at the beginner than the enthusiast (no slight to Steph with that).  I hope she continues regardless, the quality of her videos, recent technical issues aside, has really improved.

Great news on sorting the Acclaim belt out too.  No wonder it was grumpy if it was two whole teeth out.

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We had the cambelt go in our Acclaim when I was about 8, we were on holiday in Machynlleth at the time. The car went “ping!” and wouldn’t start when we came to go home. Various locals pushed, and towed, us round the carpark trying to start it but no dice.

Dad phoned CSMA and got the car recovered, i went with him in the truck to the garage. I always remember this because the recovery driver offered me a cigarette. At 8 years old.

Anyway we went back the next day with my grandad and the car was done - new belt, no other damage. As far as i’m aware these aren’t non interference engines so that was very lucky.

Other than rust, and a failed ignition module, that was the only thing that ever went wrong with the car. 

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Good to know the Acclaim is receiving TLC. Still have happy memories of ours from the late '90s.

@captain_70s, I have a bag of Acclaim bits I need to get up to you at some point. I imagine it's as unlikely you'll be visiting East Anglia anytime soon as I'll be coming up your way, but they're here for you when the opportunity arises. I know there are lights in there, basically odds and ends donated by a friend who stripped one for banger racing when we had ours, so they've been kicking around various garages for the 20 years since we got rid of it.....

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 6/23/2020 at 7:06 AM, Spottedlaurel said:

Good to know the Acclaim is receiving TLC. Still have happy memories of ours from the late '90s.

@captain_70s, I have a bag of Acclaim bits I need to get up to you at some point. I imagine it's as unlikely you'll be visiting East Anglia anytime soon as I'll be coming up your way, but they're here for you when the opportunity arises. I know there are lights in there, basically odds and ends donated by a friend who stripped one for banger racing when we had ours, so they've been kicking around various garages for the 20 years since we got rid of it.....

Never spotted this! Cheers fella!

 

With the reopening of the local recycling centre The Doloshite has now been emptied of cardboard and old Triumph Acclaim exhaust, the 3-ton jack I usually keep in the boot has been heaved upstairs and all the ancillary components I'd removed have been gathered up from around the flat and gathered up for transport. On Thursday the SVM Light Haulage Division will be arriving with a rented tilt bed trailer with no winch (because some prior fucker broke it) and we'll be loading a car which doesn't run but does contain two engines on a narrow one way street which will go VERY WELL*. Said car will then be transported to @GingerNuttz's shed for a not inconsiderable amount of work to put it back on the road...

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*

 

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On 6/23/2020 at 7:06 AM, Spottedlaurel said:

Good to know the Acclaim is receiving TLC. Still have happy memories of ours from the late '90s.

@captain_70s, I have a bag of Acclaim bits I need to get up to you at some point. I imagine it's as unlikely you'll be visiting East Anglia anytime soon as I'll be coming up your way, but they're here for you when the opportunity arises. I know there are lights in there, basically odds and ends donated by a friend who stripped one for banger racing when we had ours, so they've been kicking around various garages for the 20 years since we got rid of it.....

I’ll be down in the next couple of weeks to visit my mum, maybe I could meet you and get these up the road? Will check with you when I have a plan in place! 

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