Project Rusty Triumphs in Scotland - £100 of MOT tests and counting... - 09/12/25

[GingerNuttz]

Your mask is in the garage hanging up btw, I forgot to put it in the Dolly 🤣

[sdkrc]

 

50 minutes ago, GingerNuttz said:

Your mask is in the garage hanging up btw, I forgot to put it in the Dolly 🤣

[captain_70s]

1 hour ago, GingerNuttz said:

Your mask is in the garage hanging up btw, I forgot to put it in the Dolly 🤣

My garage is a disaster zone so I figured it was either at yours or burried.

57 minutes ago, sdkrc said:

 

Cannae wack it.

[captain_70s]

MOT'd with 7hrs to spare.

Arrived at Pitlochry with a rhythmic howl which intensified when turning right and vanished under braking.

That'll not help... 

Needs more investigation as the car still pulls to the left, as it did before, with no signs of the front brakes binding and being retracked not long ago. I also think the "doughnut" that supports the propshaft is tired as there is substantial drivetrain vibration.

Overall it's just not driving as well as I'd like...

Still getting the job done though.

[mk2_craig]

GR8 news Capn. Living tha dream. 

[captain_70s]

FLEET UPDATE TIME.

THE ACCLAIM:

I washed it, put a cover on it and forgot about it.

Then one day I went to move it and it wouldn't start. A bit of faffing found that no fuel was reaching the carbs. Diagnosed fairly rapidly as a dead fuel pump. The original mech pump is NLA (I found one for sale in Aus, but it was gonna be £120 for a 30+ year old part...) so I replaced it with a decent quality electric lift pump. Currently it's wired direct to the battery so I can move the car around the driveway and works great. Just need to find a switched live to run it from and somewhere to mount it.

Less good was this:

The cover was fine for the 5 odd weeks of no rain we had but some rain leaked through and the mineral content seemingly baked into the paint within the space of 2 days. Polish/T Cut wouldn't touch it so I resorted to wet sanding which  at least got it to a point where it's not as noticeable. This paint just has no resilience to fuck all. The only reason I put a cover on it was that any bird shit causes the paint to crack in under 24hrs.

Even less good was that while I was hunting for a fuel pump mounting spot I spied that the passenger side windscreen wiper had collapsed into the scuttle panel.

Essentially it's just rotted off. Access is abysmal, ideally the windscreen would come out for a proper repair, but they're NLA and mine is cracked already and the seals are also NLA so that's not happening. I have formulated a vague plan of making an entirely new mounting plinth and welding it in font of the original. This is somewhat down the priority list currently as I've been working on...

THE VOLVO:

Nothing major to report with this one. I replaced the ARB drop links.

Naturally there are two styles and the one I needed was seemingly out of production and only available easily on mainland Europe. Luckily I found Brookhouse Volvo had some in stock, albeit at double the price of the Euro stockists.

@rml2345 also raided a 740 saloon that had landed in U-Pull-It in Inverkeithing and got me a few bits. Namely a correct side rubbing strip to replace the 940 one I had, a tow cover and the trim for the windscreen corners.

Just back from a Haven caravan park holiday in it (Me and the Mrs really know how to live).

The main eater of my free time has been...

THE DOLOSHITE:

I continued building up the newest iteration of it's powerplant.

@juular and Mrs Juular came over, dropped off and assembled @320touring's engine crane which had been used to fit a Volvo Amazon engine. Then Mr Touring himself and @jaypee came over to assist with the engine swappage.

Manifolds were tarted up and swapped over.

It took a while to get the engine wiggled onto the gearbox but with some blocks of wood and a jack we got the two angled correctly and bolted up.

The only real issue was when the front engine lift point/alternator bracket died midway through lifting the new engine.

Luckily it snapped and then slowly bent rather than letting go and instantly dropping the engine onto the nose of the car and @320touring spotted it dying. Presumably it was just fatigue from having been used to lift the engine on multiple occasions. Luckily I had a spare...

We actually used a different mount for the lift though, one off the Herald engine which was a different design with less harsh angles.

The following day @davidfowler2000 came over and helped for a bit before utilising my driveway to swap his 205's sump... Then @juular, Mrs Juular and @Supernaut turned up to really start devaluing the local property values.

Several days were then spent trying to get the fucking thing to run.

Essentially it'd cough but not actually run. We swapped the carb, the dizzy, the coil, wiring, cleaned points, adjusted mixture. You name it we fucked about with it endlessly. Eventually I had to admit that, despite quadruple checking everything I must have fucked up the cam timing.

I think it was 3/4 a tooth out. Or something fucking silly like that. Anyway it got put back together and an attempt to start had it briefly run for a few seconds. So the cooling system was rigged back up ready for breaking in.

Then I broke it in. Nothing particularly interesting to report except it'd only run on full choke. After the break in I found massive air leaks around the carb so manufactured some new gaskets.

Breaking in oil already swapped for 20w50 and the filter changed. On the "to-do" list is re-torqueing the cylinder head and doing the valve clearances again, refilling the coolant system, as at the moment it's just water for leak testing and flushing, and carb tuning/double checking ignition timing. Then I can start road testing.

Fixed the (loose) headlights in with new hardware today and Girlfriend_70s assisted in fitting the bonnet this eve.

Maybe by the tail end of this summer I'll have three fully functional cars...

 

[SiC]

9 hours ago, captain_70s said:

Then I can start road testing

Excited? Apprehensive?

It must be a long time coming to get to this point now where hopefully you're back to a decent Dolomite.

[somewhatfoolish]

Excite.

[captain_70s]

3 hours ago, SiC said:

Excited? Apprehensive?

It must be a long time coming to get to this point now where hopefully you're back to a decent Dolomite.

Bit of both. 

Must be coming up on a full year since the sump full of bronze discovery as it was just before FotU...

It's only the last month or two I've been been putting major time into it. It's booked in to FotU (again) so that was the deadline but to avoid it being an inevitable last-minute shitshow I was aiming to have it ready to take to Berwick on hols, so the last few weeks I've generally been in the garage from 6 till 10 every evening. 

If I'd not buggered up the cam timing I'd have had it broken in Weds 21st and had the rest of the week to test drive and do other misc shit before leaving on Mon. As it was it first fired at 22:15 on the Sunday!

Either way the shifting the goal posts worked, as I now have a few weeks to put miles on and iron out problems before the big trip.

(As well as make sure the Volvo will make it to Shitefest)...

 

[LightBulbFun]

really awesome to see the Dolly has a fresh engine in it and is up and running! I look forward to seeing it out and about once more  

[captain_70s]

Not a great start.

This was immediately preceded by the Volvo not starting due to having run out of fuel, again. The Acclaim then sprang a fuel leak, luckily I spotted the smoke from all the fuel pissing onto the exhaust. 

Anyway. The Dolly's throttle linkage had died. I'd constructed it out of cable ties to be fair. Bits have been ordered but not yet landed. I reconstructed it with more cable ties.

Yes, it has broken down. A quick blat up and down my street saw it going fine but mega down on power. So I chucked the timing light on it and dialed that in better.

Then went for a loop around the town. As it warmed up it started running like shit and kangarooing. I opened the choke and it seemed to sort it for another 1/4 mile until it started playing up again. Eventually it would barely drive and I pulled over as it wouldn't climb a 2% grade.

Eventually I made a break for it and got it halfway along main street where it died another 2 times. Removed the fuel filter in case that was blocked and checked the pump connections in case it was pulling air.

Sat here for 15 mins letting it cool down and managed to get it the final 1/2 mile home by feathering the throttle and slipping the clutch.

So it fires right up with a bit of choke from cold, comes off choke in a min or two. Then it runs fine until it starts getting hot at which point it starts acting like it has no fuel. It'll idle and rev a bit but won't pull it's own weight.

I thought it was leaning out, but it stank when I pulled up at home so maybe it's actually mega rich...

[Jenson Velcro]

Is the coil overheating and breaking down?

[somewhatfoolish]

Condenser playing up?

[SiC]

Are there any needle changes needed for that uprated cam?

[Datsuncog]

Leftfield suggestion, but were you cursed by a wicked fairy as an infant?

[SiC]

Which carb is on it? If it's the one with the engine I supplied, it may still have the 'orrible wax stat on the bottom of the jet. 

[sdkrc]

Major respect for your persistence with the misery machine

[captain_70s]

2 hours ago, SiC said:

Are there any needle changes needed for that uprated cam?

As far as I'm aware it should run with the stock setup. It is the carb with the waxstat, I wouldn't have thought it'd adjusted the mix so much it was undrivable but who knows. It's a 2p fix...

Coil and condenser are a possibility. Have spares to swap in.

I wasn't going to keep driving a car with an empty silencer around in circles at 11pm. Further testing tonight...

Wicked fairy curse almost certain.

Persistence through misery, the thinking man's strength through joy...

[somewhatfoolish]

The waxstat suggestion does chime with it turning to shit as it gets warmed up. I have no experience of them, are they as shit as they sound?

[captain_70s]

3 minutes ago, somewhatfoolish said:

The waxstat suggestion does chime with it turning to shit as it gets warmed up. I have no experience of them, are they as shit as they sound?

No idea. I binned the one on the original carb because why bother retaining a 1970s emission control feature?

Some folk say they're shit, some reckon it makes no odds, either way it's a component that's 30 years beyond it's design life so may as well rule it out unless you're going concourse. 

[somewhatfoolish]

1 hour ago, captain_70s said:

 It's a 2p fix...

 

Now I've googled the things this makes sense. 🤣

[captain_70s]

Big thanks to @juular and Mrs Juular popping over in the Toledo yesterday to offer assistance with Dolofuckery.

Waxstat deleted. I spent way too long attempting this with the carb on the car. Fucking stupid idea. Eventually resigned myself to pulling it off (fnarr) which made it less impossible.

While doing this I took the dome/piston off and realised the needle was wobbling all over the place. So I pulled my other (mirror image) carb off the shelf and swapped the relevant parts to the one on the car. Fucked with the mixture a bit while driving up and down the road and got it passable but not great. Then found the timing was wandering, the clamp that secures the dizzy wasn't quite fitting to the dizzy was moving up/down a bit. Pried that back into a functional shape, reattached the dizzy and timed to 10° BTDC with the strobe light saw it now actually drivable.

A run up the road to @320touring's unit was on the cards and with the car just about not shitting itself the obviously solution was to throw it at the motorway with the Toledo following.

I started regretting this decision when it really didn't want to go above 50mph. Occasionally being hit by a bout of stuttering that'd take it down to 40mph odd and then cleaning up again. Eventually it let out a big cough and then drove perfectly. As in I was feathering the throttle and struggling to keep it at 60mph, it just wanted to go like fuck.

Arrived at destination and took it a few drive around the local area and it was going well. On the drive home it played up again and foot hard to the floor = a steady 60mph on the flat and no more. Chief suspect is that the carb has shit in it which is blocking it up. Occasionally if you boot it the crap will get sucked through and it runs fine for a bit. Mixture is also only very roughly set on the "that sounds about right" metric, timing could also be tweaked and the fuel is year old E10 which will be shit. Will investigate further today.

Important thing is it managed a trip and didn't dismantle itself! 40 miles completed since rebuild!

[somewhatfoolish]

A clean of the carb and some fresh fuel and it will be reet. How does the dizzy clamp work on these? I've had luck with stuffing bits of coarse wet and dry into the bit where the clamp grips on ford dizzys, the roughness really helps when the clearances are factory tight*.

[SiC]

1 hour ago, captain_70s said:

fuel is year old E10 which will be shit

That probably won't be helping things even if it's not the root cause. I put some year old E10 in my mower made it run like shit. The same mower ran fine on 5+ year old piss coloured fuel drained from the MG Midget fuel tank.

I reckon a carb service kit (pack that contains the seals), tooth brush and an evening of strip down then scrubbing using carb cleaner will have it right as rain. A job I actually really enjoy doing and makes a big difference.

Also worth checking the jet bore hasn't gone oval and the needle hasn't got a ridge on when dragging your nail across. I can't remember if I took that carb apart. Probably not as it ran enough as is to prove the lump itself seemed a healthy runner. 

I'm still keeping my fingers cross that it proves a good engine for you. 🤞

[Noel Tidybeard]

the good thing with an S.U is that if there is a bit-o-shit in the fuel you can give it a fist full of choke which opens the needle right up and shit-be-gone

[juular]

@captain_70s has done top work on this engine and car. After it had its little strop on the motorway and began to fuel correctly, it just fucked off into the distance.

Looking forward to Scotch Corner at FOTU being sponsored by Triumph this year.

[Yoss]

Watching this thread gives me flashbacks. Pretty much everything here has happened to me over the last 30 years but despite that I still own a Triumph.

The above is showing the advantages and disadvantages of single vs twin carb. The twin carbs are a pig to set up and have usually untuned themselves within twenty minutes of having them professionally set up. But when you get shit in one at least you have another one to keep you going with at least three quarter power.

The single carb is a lot easier to set up and one HS4 is really adequate for this engine but if it gets blocked you're kind've buggered. 

[Cheezey]

I was nipping into the Spar on Foundry Loan the other night and thought I was having a Life on Mars moment as I saw these two bombing past. It was a great sight. 

[captain_70s]

So, the last few weeks were pretty busy with me getting the car ready for FOTU.

Polishing the entire car and refitting missing trims.

Also got the parcel shelf refitted.

Discreetly wired in some upgrades.

Flushed the coolant system out (doing the rad, heater matrix, block and expansion tank seperately).

Gave the steels a halfarsed satin black.

@davidfowler2000 popped over with a wet vac and the interior was cleaned, seat runners greased etc.

Before on passenger side, driver's side done.

Replaced some exhaust mounts which were tired...

Drained and refilled the gearbox.

Car was running great and the only issue was the bonnet release cable snapped and was replaced with a bit of wire sticking through the grilles in the bonnet as a temp measure.

Of course, those who've seen the FOTU/Grumpy thread know the outcome...

About 15 miles in I noticed it was getting hot, over 1/2 on the gauge. This never happens, it rarely ventures much above 1/3rd. I flicked the heater on and reduced cruising speed to 55mph as I had been going pretty hard and didn't fancy stopping on the hard shoulder with the girlfriend in the car unless absolutely necessary.

Pulled into Hamilton services with the gauge tapping the red marker. Heard something hit off the undercarriage and spotted something roll off towards the lorry park in the rear mirror.

Met up with @blackboilersuit and @Supernaut and then jogged over the road to see if I'd ran something over or something large had fallen off. It's not uncommon for me to leave tools in the engine bay... Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be the crankshaft pulley nut.

@blackboilersuit and @Supernaut launched off back to Mr Suit's house to acquire a BIG SOCKET to reinstall it while I had a nose at the coolant system.

It hadn't exploded out of the overflow but was clearly very hot and opening the rad cap with a very long screwdriver revealed a lot of foamy coolant. I quickly whipped out the thermostat to make sure it hadn't stuck, but it seemed find.

We then refitted the crank nut (with Loctite this time) with me manning the bar while the radiator was held up out of the way.

Then we could restart the engine. This showed that the water pump was working but with the rad cap off revving the engine would overflow the rad with foamy coolant. I went to check the oil and found it reading slightly overfull, and the car nearly stalled when I took the dip stick out. HGF M9.

Coolant was topped up and I toddled back home at a steady 50-55mph with a check of levels at the halfway mark and no issues. The car also never got massively hot, although admittedly the 'stat was still out of it.

My best guess is that when I'd flushed the coolant 2 days prior and ran the car around the block I actually had an air lock somewhere in the system. I've never had an issue with air locks but @MrsJuular had loads of issues getting the air out of her mechanically identical Toledo. The car didn't really get used much the next two days as I was out of the house 12-14 hours at work. Throwing the car at the motorway and sitting at 75mph then cooked the cheapo head gasket. 

It wouldn't be the first time I've had a generic gasket fail not long after fitting, but I couldn't get hold of a decent Payen one for this engine as they seemed to be out of stock everywhere. At least a head gasket is only a 2hr job and there doesn't seem to be any major mixing of liquids... Jury is still out on the oil level as neither my driveway or the place I'd broken down were on level ground.

As a bonus the 740 blew a tyre on the return leg of the trip.

Not much fun changing a wheel  in the dark on a bit of the A66 with no hard shoulder but some guys in a pair of Mk3 Cavaliers were making their way north post FOTU en-route to Belfast and stopped to help.

 

[captain_70s]

Nothing much to report lately.

Been busy at work and post FotU I've not been majorly arsed.

Acclaim is in the garage, new fuel pump is located, just needs a power supply sourcing from the switched ignition side. Need to refill my gas bottle so I can weld up a new mount for the wipers.

Re torqued the Dolomite's cylinder head. Only two nuts were appreciably loose although one did managed over one revolution!

Ran it up to temp and it's seemingly no longer pressurising it's coolant. Massive exhaust leak though, one of the nuts/clamps for the exhaust manifold had simply vanished and another was spinning loose. Reinstalled but it still sounds like I'm running open headers, so will require some further fuckery.

Moved to the front of the driveway for ease of test driving...