Project Staggering Shenanigans - Fixing a mates Stag page 6

[spartacus]

Me too! I don't know how I've missed it, great work.

I owned a Chevette back in the late eighties with a Stromberg fitted. Early on in my ownership the diaphragm failed on the carb, for some reason the symptoms led me straight to it and after repair it ran really smoothly with no more issues.

I think overall it's a good design.

[richardthestag]

ordered service bits ages ago, only found time Saturday to fit them, ignition misfire at around 1500rpm was getting worse so I hadnt really bothered using it.

 

bit annoying really because root cause was fookin obvious

 

exhibit "A" cheapo rotor arm was all I had when I fitted the new ignition module. when I removed it I noticed a hairline crack and with light fingernail managed to get it to split.

 

Cheapo nasty bollocks

 

 

anyway, buoyed and in good spirit I chose to replace the cap and rotor with qualitay but not necessarily that much more expense* items from Distributor doctor.

 

And leads which I bought from a stag supplier in original green BUT 8mm silicon and the right lengths.

 

Tidy

 

 

 

think I got my moneys worth out of the air filter

 

done

 

result was impressive, though Mrs Thestag riding shotgun, I really need to stop doing that, "too fast" "why are you driving so fast" damnit woman I am doing 35 mph

 

made the decishun go drive it to Devonshite yesterday, did all the jobs I needed to at home, checked googlemaps, hmmm M4 1 lane closed just before Swindon. Shall go M40, Oxford, A420 to swindon and bypass it and get some nice fast a road in on the deal. 5 miles onto A420 closed, some poor bastard had made a mess of it, turned around, A34 down to M4 by the time I got to Swindon the lane closure had cleared.

 

Good fast run, most enjoyable except my arse was hurtage by the time I got out of the car at Chez Fathathestag 3 hours later, maybe I should take a break but where is the fun in that.

 

anyway 200miles, one "nice car mate" 3 thumbs up and one bloke in Wycombe shouted Tossa.

 

engine temp behaved, at 30-50mph it is 85centigrade, 60-70 it runs at 90cent and a little faster it varies between 90 and 100centigrade. Not bothered because the system is sealed with a 20lb cap so boiling point will be iro 130.

 

Might put the original electric temp gauge back in now that it is behaving, mainly though because the mechanical gauge only goes to 110cent which isnt much use for me, but then again is 25degrees of ambient temperature and me being somewhat hooliganish I got it to 100 but no higher. 

 

etc anyway

 

onto Range Rovers

[richardthestag]

yet again hardly used my Stag all flippin year. 

 

unlike my mate,Giles, I have had a quiet year of comforting reliability with mine.

 

Giles drove his to Le Mans Classic this year and consumed 10litres of oil. Had to stop and clean the plugs every hundred or so miles.

 

I went to have a look at it on his return and found that the rear 4 plugs were very oily and the front 4 plugs clogged with carbon

 

compression test was not encouraging

 

in a nutshell left bank #1,3,5 and 7 all at 180psi, right bank not quite so nice, #2, 4 and 6 were definitely on the naughty step. Wet test bought about a major increase in compression.. iro 40psi increase on each cylinder. Most likely to be bedding of rings and bores.

 

Roll forwards to Sunday, plan was to strip down to head removal. assess the cylinders and act of what we found

 

LH head off

 

showed signs of some of the honing that should be in place but way too shiny. can clearly see the piston size reflected in the cylinder wall. something has gone wrong.

 

Engine is coming out.

 

found loads of problems along the way, inlet manifold was not tight, RH head was not torqued, RH cam caps were all finger tight

oh and 5 nuts and bolts were holding the engine to the gearbox

 

still, after a leisurely 5 hour shift the have dismantled engine was free and Giles was astounded at the work we managed to achieve. 

 

 

Even the block like this is outrageously heavy. stripdown and assessment continues this Thursday

 

 

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

+40 rebore?

[SiC]

What are these Stag V8s like nowadays? Are all the problems figured out and not much of a liability anymore?

[Uncle Jimmy]

What are these Stag V8s like nowadays? Are all the problems figured out and not much of a liability anymore?

In a nutshell, yes; the Triumph V8 is a perfectly good engine, just needed more development.

[artdjones]

I think Triumph spent 2% of their turnover on development,which was less than half what it should have been.

[somewhatfoolish]

Various means of ameliorating the design flaws have been devised and obviously the BL/union-induced shonkyness is long consigned to history, so they're perfectly useable; much the same as the aftermarket will sell you the necessary gubbins to make K-series OMGHGF-proof.

[richardthestag]

+40 rebore?

 

yes and the engine looks to have been sleeved!

 

if only it could talk. the car doesnt have starship miles on it but the engine would appear to have suffered somewhat.

[richardthestag]

What are these Stag V8s like nowadays? Are all the problems figured out and not much of a liability anymore?

 

there are somethings that can never be fixed but overall understanding of the unit is now much better.

 

Triumph Stag (project code name that made it to production) was seen by BL management as being a winner. Engine was not ready for launch yet.

 

The whole story would make any grown man weep but lets concentrate on the engine....

 

are you seated comfortably

 

The Stag was originally designed to run on a 2.5 litre fuel injected v8, but constantly changing US emissions regulations for this key market could not be met by the factory. The engine was then “hastily” adapted to run on twin Stromberg carbs and the capacity was upped to give enough power, but it seems with little thought for the now stressed bottom end. Biggest issue here remains that the big end bearing shells for a 3 litre v8 are narrower than those used on the a-series. 

 

Why not use the Rover v8 then?

Rumour has it that when Triumph management asked the engineers whether the Rover engine would fit the answer came back an absolute and categorical no! I have no doubt that pride existed within the various marques jumbled together under the BL cattle brand and I can imagine that Triumph engineers were determined to make their mark, after all Triumph and Rover were very much competitors before the BL takeover and remained so right up until Triumph were put to sleep in the 1980’s. 

 

Regardless of whether the RV8 would fit or not, I seriously doubt that engine production could have been increased to match the demand for the Stag (original forecast was 20k units per year! 27k units sold in seven years), don’t forget that Rover already used the engine in the Rover saloons and planned it for the brand new Range Rover due for launch at the same time as Stag.

 

why not use the Triumph 6?

Had the car launched with the 2.5 straight six then the Triumph V8 could have been developed properly and bought into production the following year, as Mercedes did the (Bobby Ewing) SL!! The vital US market may not even have been impacted, after all their beloved ‘Stang had a 6 pot on the options list, and the Triumph could rightly have claimed what it should have had and not been a laughing stock of epic proportion. I fear only management could answer this.

 

The Stag v8 is a pair of dolomite engines glued together donchano

Another load of old bollocks. V8 was always designed to be part of a modular range of engines. LH head on stag could fit a slant 4 pot Dolomite. exhaust manifold, waterpump, timing gear and distributor designs etc were shared. Saab made it work after extensive reengineering and made it a great success for many years.

 

Triumph V8 was only ever fitted by the factory to one model. the Stag. The engine was a commercial disaster

 

Why?

Where the heck do I start

 

I think first remember that Stag V8 was designed in the 1960s, at that point it was not unusual for an engine to wear out quickly and require extensive attention. By todays standards any engine (aside from the Rover v8) could be deemed unreliable.

 

Are there design faults?

Yes, some are from the point when the cars were new, some are only applicable now.

• Waterpump is level with the top of the radiator, if the coolant level drops to 5cm then the water pump can run dry. 
• The cooling system had a low level expansion tank which relied on a vacuum in the cooling system to draw the coolant back into the Radiator as it cooled
• Even when working correctly the temperature gauge will fluctuate wildly due to hotspots in the cooling system and poor efficiency of the water pump.
• head studs corrode to the cylinder heads due to chemical reaction between hardened steel and alloy
• Oil pump which is luckily on the outside of the engine block has a very short lifespan
• Timing chains similarly should be changed at 25k miles
• Bigend bearing shells are too narrow for the capacity
• The engine is too wide for the bodyshell to be dropped down during production, therefore it had to be popped in from above which rendered it a bit useless for rapid assembly line

The big issues today aside from a market place full of shoddy (made from cheese) replacement parts is that the crank MUST MUST MUST MUST be hardened after a grind and before new shells are fitted.

 

In it's day Vandervell shells were used. softer than the stuff available today. Even then Triumph saw fit to harden the cast crank allegedly to 20thou. though that is debatable as I had a 10thou crank that destroyed it's journals within 30k miles. Without hardening the crank journals by tuftriding the new bearing could last a couple of hundred to a few thousand miles. Now on a show queen car the owner might struggle to cover a thousand miles a year. so several years down the line or even several owners down the line problems appear and the warranty is long gone. Oh dear throw another £4k at an engine rebuild then!

 

 

So what killed the Stag then?

In the haste to launch at the cost of testing a couple of key points were missed in the service schedule. 

 

Firstly the compulsory addition of antifreeze was missed from the service schedule. Thus a chemical reaction in the un-antifreezed water occurred due to the mix of alloy heads and cast block, this in turn caused the radiator and the rest of the cooling system to bung up. Now in the UK we use Antifreeze probably all year round because of our climate but the vital North American climate probably wouldn’t, why should they? 

 

Secondly and party due to the furring of the cooling system, the service schedule missed the vital flushing of the cooling system every year. Thus the radiator becomes less efficient as each year passes and the car becomes more prone to overheating. This applies to every single Triumph V8’ed Stag because the cooling system is so very marginal and the annual flush is so very important. 

 

Now I reckon that these two omissions from the service schedule combined with Triumph/BL failing to train the BL dealer mechanics to spot the symptoms (after all the Triumph v8 was not that widespread, and the product range was huge) are the sole cause of the entire myth! Allow me to elaborate;

 

1. Cooling system becomes less efficient as the car reaches its 1st birthday, thus the car runs hotter
2. Car eventually overheats badly causing cheaply cast alloy heads to warp and head gaskets to blow.
3. Engineer removes heads and skims them flat again but doesn’t bother to re line bore the cams, so the camshafts will run tight. Or does line bore and the cam sprockets runs out of alignment with the chain.
4. The rad is still blocked so the engine still runs hot.
5. The cams are running tight due to the warped heads being skimmed and the chains are under greater load than originally designed
6. The chains fail prematurely causing the valves and pistons get very cozy indeed.
7. The chains, valves etc are replaced, but the cams are still running tight and the rad is still blocked.
8. The car overheats / chains snap again
9. Owner curses the whole damn thing and finds a mechanic under the arches who will install a Rover v8 then tells his mate down the pub how rubbish the Triumph V8 is..

 

Lack of development of the engine saw repeated attempt to solve the symptoms and not attack the cause and this led, not only, to the cars downfall but ultimately Triumph. 

 

Compressed pre-production testing also failed to identify the life of timing chains and oil pump which both had to be added to service schedule once the issues became apparent. A very conservative 25000 mile life was put on the chains, possibly because of the above tight cam scenario? 

 

Ludicrous statements appeared in the service schedule such as, loosening the cylinder heads to replace the inlet manifold gaskets. No mention was made to replace the head gaskets at the same time!! That’ll really help won’t it? 

 

I have been told that one of the two head manufacturers did not necessarily make the heads correctly and didn’t always get the casting correct in the water channel areas and the fact that BL had a habit at the time of putting things right as part of the warranty claim system rather than fully inspect every part put onto a car.

 

and all of that ^ before we even start on a disgruntled Union controlled workforce. It is not unheard of for sabotage to exist on the shop floor. Engines assembled with grit on the bearings and missing piston rings

 

Can it be reliable

Too bloody right it can, it is also in my opinion the best sounding v8 ever, and one that will pull to 6500rpm at which point hairs stand up on the back of your neck.

 

quality parts is the key. I buy nothing new for it from ebay, I worry about new old stock which is often stuff that was left in a box in the basement because it was shite in the 1970s. Tell you something and that it that it's situation is no different.

 

Buy the very best you can afford rather than shopping around for the cheapest.

 

Quality German chains can be fitted, these are better made and stronger BUT tend not to stretch. Chances are that they will outlive the big end bearings so chains can easily become an engine rebuild item every 50-100k (my original engine was rebuilt at just shy of 100k, had original everything in it but was fooked) 

 

Move the expansion tank to a high level so that the cooling system is more reliant gravity than vacuum to top the system up on cooling. Also fit a reed swicth to the tank to warn if the expansion tank level gets too low. Avoid header tanks as these can bypass the radiator if not plumbed in correctly

 

Waterpump, ah the waterpump, as if it wasnt flawed enough already some bright spark flooded the marked about 30 years ago with pumps that didnt have the gear correctly hardened. Thus the gear strips over a few hundred miles, cooling system fails and the engine bearings are contaminated with little shards of steel. read my comment about about new old stock and Caveat Emptor. Me? I would NOT touch them with yours!

 

There are a couple of alternate solutions. an external low level belt driven pump which offers many advantages over the oem setup. and an electric pump system which is far to new tech for me

 

Oil pressure gauge is a useful addition to assess engine condition, BUT you need to know how to read one. Oil pumps can be rebuilt now, or Saab units used but the pressure relief valve needs to be changed which is easy enough. Supply dries up but there are quality remanufactured parts available.

 

Pistons, rings, bearings. sorry but you will struggle here as only average quality parts are available wholesale unless you have a very fat wallet or get lucky.

 

Cranks! Only you a hardened crank!!!!!!! many engineers will tell you not to bother ffs and that does not help. I know of a couple of suppliers who are reliable in the crank department

 

treat it with care and it will be reliable, quality 20/50 changed often is a must 

 

rewarding though

 

[N Dentressangle]

 

 

why not use the Triumph 6?

Had the car launched with the 2.5 straight six then the Triumph V8 could have been developed properly and bought into production the following year, as Mercedes did the (Bobby Ewing) SL!! The vital US market may not even have been impacted, after all their beloved ‘Stang had a 6 pot on the options list, and the Triumph could rightly have claimed what it should have had and not been a laughing stock of epic proportion. I fear only management could answer this.

 

 

 

A read through that leaves me thinking that this would have been the most sensible option, and perhaps the best option in terms of buying a Stag which has had an engine transplant, too. You really wonder why Triumph didn't do this - a well proven engine, easily tuned to produce similar power to the stock Triumph V8, and available off the shelf. Still, as a veteran of working in large organisations I can see the way mongrel projects just get pushed through to the bitter end, usually on the whim of someone on the board, and only being quietly dropped when they leave.

 

Having read all this thread, any desire I may have had for a Stag has evaporated. I'll get my V8 fix from the Range Rover, thanks! 

[richardthestag]

 

Having read all this thread, any desire I may have had for a Stag has evaporated. I'll get my V8 fix from the Range Rover, thanks! 

 

There are many cars out there that are far more trouble, not many have killed a brand name but still.

[artdjones]

Don't forget that stupid idea of having one side of the head held down by bolts at 90° to the block deck,but the other half held down by studs at an angle with a nut on,so that when the stud corrosion mentioned above takes place you can't get the head off.Plus also making it much more likely that the car will suffer hgf.

[SiC]

One thing I have noticed about Stags is that their value hasn't really changed in the last 5 to 10 years. Unlike many classic cars that have gained by a fair bit in that time.

[richardthestag]

Don't forget that stupid idea of having one side of the head held down by bolts at 90° to the block deck,but the other half held down by studs at an angle with a nut on,so that when the stud corrosion mentioned above takes place you can't get the head off.Plus also making it much more likely that the car will suffer hgf.

 

they do come off but you need to go a bit mediaeval on them

 

 

the stupid studs bend, once the head is up 2" or so the stud can be cut off leaving enough of a stub in the block that an extractor can be applied.

 

 

anti seize lube should be spread on the studs before install. there are a couple of brands that work well.

[richardthestag]

One thing I have noticed about Stags is that their value hasn't really changed in the last 5 to 10 years. Unlike many classic cars that have gained by a fair bit in that time.

 

They are creeping up, some dealers have them advertised at comedy prices, some sell so I guess that there are folk out there who want one.

 

Mine has gone up 4k in a decade.

 

A wreck of a car that is saveable is pretty much anything up to £3k, then comes the danger zone wobfest and shiny paint. Something together and reliable* mid teens. show queens with shiny engine bays go for up to low 20s. cars sell better in spring than autumn.

 

Big thing with anything classic even from a dealer is Caveat Emptor, you need access to someone who knows what to look for.

 

BUT a cars should not be seen as an investment. Use the damn thing and enjoy it unless it is something exotic* and even then use the damn thing and enjoy it.

 

Aside from Blue Oval, Green Oval, Moggie and Mini pretty much everything else chodwise from the 70s is slowly going up in value in line with inflation etc. 

 

some moan that Scimitar GTE, Rover p6 are undervalued. err no! the supply still exceeds the market and long may that continue for affordable chod. The problem here is that a full restoration is rarely cost effective. so spotting the wob and bodges continues to entertain.

 

as the 70s move further away, Lord I am old lol, the desire to own something from then is diminishing. Most folk want to cherish something that they saw on the roads during their formative years. The desire to own something that their Grandpa swore at gets further away. 

[richardthestag]

yesterday morning started to strip down the short engine. 

 

The machine shop who built it wanted the pistons and crank as they installed it so I didnt get to dig too deep 

 

Giles is big in Marketing here is Nicole's frock from the Renner campaign. He is married now so it live in the garage along with all his other blokey stuff like Stanglers artifacts and so forth.. He is way more scared of his mrs than I am of mine

 

 

even at this point it is fooking heavy

 

I r disappoint to find non hardened crank. investigating 

 

also all 8 pistons sit proud of the block deck. Lord alone knows what the compression ratio is? should be 9.5:1 but suspect that we may be some way above that

 

next step is to remove gearbox to replace all seals and gaskets. Plus fix the overdrive

[N Dentressangle]

Is this something he's bought recently, so not too sure of the history of, or been bodged around by someone else?

[SiC]

How do you know that the crank isn't hardened?

[richardthestag]

Is this something he's bought recently, so not too sure of the history of, or been bodged around by someone else?

 

he had the engine rebuilt 4 years ago but because of various issues etc wasnt on the road until 2 years ago which is when I came on the scene. It has done just 2k miles since rebuild and consumes more oil than petrol.

 

There is certainly some history with this thing.

 

The engine block is a factory recon, the engine number of which is not recorded on the v5. not unusual tbh.

 

Triumph went through a phase of replacing broken but under warranty engines outright with a rebuilt replacement rather than have dealer channel faffing about with them. New engine numbers were stamped onto them 

 

What is unusual is that the block had been sleeved, possibly by the factory from their pile of broken engines, BUT then bored to 40thou!

 

Looking through his receipts Giles did find a quote from a respected Stag garage at the same time as it was rebuilt locally. he was a little shocked at the estimate. BUT the estimate quoted a rebore to +20. it is likely that there was damage which warranted the 40thou job to be done. trouble is that one more rebore and the block is an anchor.

 

oh the joy of it.

 

Good news is that there are more stag v8s than stags right now so we may be able to cherry pick a better engine,

 

Bad news is that heads are in desperately short supply, but Giles' heads appear to be ok on the face of it

[richardthestag]

How do you know that the crank isn't hardened?

 

because tuftriding gives the crank a matt black finish

 

Plus the machine shop told me that it wasnt necessary when I quizzed them about it, as do other high end machine shops so these guys are not alone.

 

BUT they are not correct in their assumption that king bearings are soft and therefore ok imho

 

When triumph built the engines new (the accounts dept at B fucking L) decided not to bother hardening the whole crank as many other manufacturers do but chose to just harden the surface via nitriding or tuftriding not sure which.

 

The hardened surface treatment is supposed to go to at least +10 into the surface. Triumph found very quickly that cranks were being reground but not hardened and did fuck all about it. worst case scenario the crank lasts a couple of hundred miles,

 

Best case as I found was nearly 30k. My crank was on a 10th grind on big end and mains when fitted by me 20 years ago. advertised as surface hardened and supplied with the only bearings available at that time which were also harder than the Vandervell bearings the factory fitted.

 

This is that crank. front of the crank is on the left. 5 main bearings and 4 big end journals. they get worse as you get towards the back. At 30k I would not have expected this kind of wear and tear

 

 

here is a close up, of #3 centre, #3 big end, and #4 main journals and journals. nice contrast

 

#3 main (shiny surface with a matt stripe on left of piccy)  could probably have polished and still taken a +10th bearing shell

#3 big end (next journal along to the right) was ruined, and would need a grind to +20

#4 main (furthest journal to right) was like the surface of a 78rpm record

 

I exchanged for a prepped and hardened crank from a known and trusted supplier. They took the above in exchange confident that it would end up as a properly hardened +20th crank

 

From what I have found through my limited experience of building engines surface hardening is only ever needed on stag v8 cranks. Even TR7 crank didnt need it.

 

No idea what Triumph were playing at but guess that they lost all hope in Stag and left it to rot while newer projects like Dolly and TR7 etc were treated better.

 

*so one engineering shop I spoke with years ago did admit that hardening was needed. "but if you are only doing a couple of thousand a year and change the oil annually and were lucky, then the car would be 3 owners down the line before any issue were brought to the surface, so what you worried about?" 

 

True I guess but yet another nail in the coffin lid

[richardthestag]

Massive jump forward to this week. 

I have just been busy with Range Rovers

The above Stag arrived back from the machine shop back in January. The machine shop and I surmised that there was bugger all wrong with the work that they did. Initial running in caused the bores to glaze! gah

Anyway machine shop were absolute stars and went way beyond the call of duty by stripping, honing and rebuilding the engine only charging cost of parts.

Giles the owner was potless at the time so the block was stored in his garage while he waited for permissions from her indoors.

Roll forwards to Thursday, he had cashes for swapping unhardened but machined crank with a hardened crank, so I nipped around to strip down the block, bit of a shame to undo the work but still.

Talking to a highly reputable Stag workshop we managed to secure a hardened 10thou big end and main crank with bearings - delivered for £200. Exchanged of course for the correctly machined 20thou big end and main unhardened crank and set of unused but installed bearings.

I thought that was a freaking bargain but owner needed reassuring. I am always wary of spending other folks money for them.

He has it now! Needs to order up some woodruf keys and thrust washers before I build up the engine which I will do my best to document.

That afternoon another mate has recently acquired a proper 1970s poo brown stag to add to his collection. Without warning one day it just wouldnt start.

I nipped around and just over 2hours later it was running. Fucking thing. Fuel pressure was the issue. I got caught up with 90% of ignition related issues are fuel and vice versa. I was kind of perplexed with leccy ignition modules and confirming that 12v feed, coil and module were all fine which took a lot of fucking around with. Naturally we had pulled a fuel line off and watched a steady stream of pez pour into a pint glass. 

Took a long time because Paul has no extinguisher and we were working inside his garage so I had much nervous!

Start of the 2nd hour we tipped the carbs and removed float chambers and one was bone dry and other was full. Now regardless of that and ignition timing I would have expected the car to have at least coughed while turning it over. alas none of that. We fiddled about removing float valves and cleaning them, reinstalled and still bugger all.

Desperate for any sign of life I squirted a syringe of pez into the throat of one carb and it coughed on turning it over then backfired through the carb. we are only pissing around with 10ml of pez so no real issue. tried again and it coughed again.

pulled the fuel line and again steady stream of pez. BUT this time I put my finger over the flow and was able to stop it! Now any electric pump worth it's weight pushes 5psi these days so that shouldn't have happened. Also Strommie float valves need 2psi to open. no fuel pressure in float chamber = no pez coming via through the jet.

Relocated my arse to the back end of the car where the fuel pump is located. Nice nearly new SU jobby. Checked it for ticks with ignitions on and very very faint. Gave it a whack with a screw driver handle like you do and one big tick and then nowt. Removed the pump and found the earth wires had been bodged. FFS Fixed and stag roared into life instantly.

Typed all that ^ shit out to save one of you fellows a couple of hours of perplexment in a similar situation.

Interestingly both mine and Paul's prophecies of "something really stupid" and "fuel delivery" (in that order) came true. 30 mins of tuning up and it is running better than ever. Shame it is poo brown

[richardthestag]

Yesterday was more favours being earned and cashed in. Really must get around to earning some money out of this Stag Whispering stuff

Spent all day on a really nice stag that needed lots of attention. Mainly silly things.

Oil Change, replace leaking high pressure PAS hose, replace decade old crumbling coolant hoses, flush cooling system out, sort bodges that other folk had done to the ignition system (cheap chinese distributors etc), sort wobbly steering wheel and lastly massive clonk from the front nearside when cornering.

8 flippin hours

Still it was good fun and I do love this stuff. May have found a nice unit to work out of as a result of this but at £20k / annum plus rates it is a bit rich for me. Checking numbers and chatting with Mrs thestag.

Thought I would share a couple of neat fixes that would be useful in Triumph big saloon and stag circles.

First top steering bush. factory fixing is to draw the tapered steering column outwards through the top bearing and secure with a serrated washer. Nasty shite job

The teeth of the washer loose their sharpness over the years and then the steering column loosens on the top bearing and feels shit, top is the oe serrated washer. below it is a neat solution made by Stag aficionado Tony Hart and sold through his ebay shop 

Fitting is using some big ring spanners and the steering wheel to pull the steering column outwards against the bearing and ring. then simply tighten the grubs screws and happy days are here again. 

Second challenge is a clonk from the passenger side front suspension unit, caused by the spring kissing the inner wing turret.

Undocumented but easy fix is to remove the strut, compress 6 loops of the spring on two sides, rotate the spring so that the lower start point of the spring (when wheel is straight ahead) is directly inboard, i.e. facing the side of the engine.

This is how it was when I started, wheels straight ahead position. You may just be able to see the spring is bowing outwards to the left and touching the turret.

30 mins to undo 4 bolts at the bottom end, three nuts at the top end, withdraw the entire strut, locate two spring compressors, rotate the spring about 70 degrees ( so that the lower end you can see above is hidden from view but now closest to the inside of the turret) and reassemble. 

The spring now bows slightly towards the inside of the turret and operates silently.

 

[richardthestag]

latest on the Triumph Staaaag engine build from hell

And it continues 

There are other Staaaags that I enjoy working on though

 

[richardthestag]

Another friends car, complained that it was making a racket in reverse but ok forwards.

Shims on the diff cross pin had disintegrated but also the nose section that connects the diff to the rear subframe had cracked!

Might not seem a drama but I have never seen one that is about to fail. When they do fail the subframe drops, traps the handbrake cables and the arse of the car his the ground.

First the diff, this planet gear is moving up and down on the cross pin (the silver shaft that you can see running vertically under it. Result is that sometimes when one rear wheel wants to turn at a different speed to the other the diff gets all locked up.

Big give away was the amount of non metallic swarf in the diff oil (shims are or should be brass)

then onto the diff nose, this lump fits between the two subframe arms and connects the propshaft to the diff

The tube that runs through the middle should be a single solid lump 4mm thick walled. however stresses cause them to crack on the diff side. This was was minutes away from disaster. It is likely that the diff failure caused the crack because of additional stress

Refurbed diff was £400 ish, there are more expensive options available with new crownwheel and pinion. this one is reburb tastic and 1 year warranty 

next up the new crank pulley and viscous fan is too tight on the PAS belt

The bit on the left side of the smoll pulley is shorter on Mk1 Stags. this is a Mk2 stag. needs the longer extension.

Working now, very rude health..

 

[SiC]

Are Stags usually this maintenance heavy? There seems to be quite a lot of potential problem areas!

[artdjones]

Don't forget that the newest Stag is nearly 40 years old and the oldest not far off 50.And lots of them have been taken apart and reassembled at least once. 

[richardthestag]

11 hours ago, SiC said:

Are Stags usually this maintenance heavy? There seems to be quite a lot of potential problem areas!

I think you are on the verge of answering your own question with the Sprint ? ?

seriously though, and as Artdjones says, they are old cars now. things wear out, previous owners bodge or/and fit cheap parts. I would jump into mine and happily drive it 200 miles with not a lot more than checking the fluids

[somewhatfoolish]

That and BL's product development wheeze of shipping the things to unsuspecting dealerships and letting the customer do the fettling.

[Cooper1]

Great thread this, I spied quite a few Stags at Much Marcle stem rally last summer. 

They are great lookers, sound great too. 

 

I was amazed at how low they're. 

The engine though, it's quite an unusual Lump nowt sound better than it though!!