All of my pictures are dead. bad times. Also bad times was the fact that the car managed to shit itself immediately before the MOT was due in October of 2015 by dumping all it's clutch hydraulic fluid and the starter motor dying on the same day.
My supervisor at work push started the car, I drove to my parent's house with no clutch and parked it in their garage... I asked my parents if I could stay with them for a few days while the car was repaired and they said "no" and promptly bought me a Honda Civic. I started saving up money to have the Triumph fixed but it ended up going into the Civic which lost it's exhaust (?350 to replace) and snapped a halfshaft (?400 to replace) not long after purchase.
It stayed at my parent's place for a year. Then they moved house, I had ended up renting a garage for a Leyland Princess I failed to buy local to my house so I had the Doloshite moved there.
It stayed there for quite some time. I tinkered with the 1850 in the meanwhile, then shifted it to a shed belonging to a mate and finally swapped it with him for a Soviet record player and a clock radio... This left me with just the 1300, at which point I lost my job and moved 200 miles south to Glasgow, the car stayed in the garage in Moray. At this point working on the car became essentially impossible, the garage cost ?70 a month to rent and had no power, my parent's new house was an hour away and to get to the garage and back from my flat would use over ?60 worth of petrol and was 4 hours of driving each way.
I'd pop up an tinker for an evening every 3 months or so but never got anything of much worth done, progress would also be reset every new visit as several months storage in a damp garage does a car no favours.
Finally I got sick of paying for the garage and not having the car a practical distance away, did some maths and found that having it taxed and insured would be a fraction of it's current storage costs, it had to come south. I worked out several options:
A: Have it trailered south. This would cost ?400 and leave me with a car that can't legally be stored on the street and no money to have it repaired. Not practical.
B: Have it MOT'd up north a drive it home. Would take far too long, I'd have to get time off work to stay up there with the car and have assistance to drive me back from dropping it off at garages etc. Wasn't going to happen.
C: Book it in for an MOT in Glasgow and drive it all the way there from it's resting place in Moray. After it had been stood for 2 years, would barely run and had no clutch. It's technically not illegal as you can drive a car with no tax or MOT to a pre-booked MOT appointment and there is no maximum distance but it'd trigger ANPR cameras and a copper who thought you were taking this piss could probably do you for driving an un-roadworthy vehicle if he found any faults. Madness in the extreme.
D: Sell/Scrap it. Utterly unthinkable.
Naturally I decided that option C was the one to go for. After all, how hard could it be? It had to be done soon, before winter weather hit, and I'd end up renting the garage until the summer again. I dubbed the endeavour Operation Dolorescue.
When working backshift I get Fridays off so I booked a Monday as a holiday for a long weekend off, enlisted the help of a good mate to drive us up there and follow me back, invested in a new car jack and a variety of tools/parts, arranged insurance and booked WAC 257S in for an MOT on the Monday at my local garage. We set off at 8:30am on the Friday and hit snow in the Cairngorms, we didn't get to the garage until it was pitch black and freezing, we dumped our supplies and went back to my parent's place to sleep for the night.
After this point there is a distinct lack of pictures as I was rather busy!
We got back to the garage at about 10am the following morning (Saturday) and set about tinkering. Flushing the stale petrol from the fuel lines, putting 20L of fresh unleaded in the tank and a bit of tweaking to the ignition timing saw the car running again. It also transpired the lengthy stay in the garage in the damp coastal air had done the bodywork no favours with wheelarches practically peeling off and the lower rear panel behind the passenger side rear wheel simply disintegrating under prodding.
My mate who now has the 1850 came over for a while and we set about getting the clutch working. This was an utter pain in the arse as there was not enough access to the bleed nipple to tighten or loosen it with a spanner. Tightening it hand tight and quickly wacking a socket over it let air back into the system. We toiled until well after dark at which point we were very cold and disheartened, as a last ditch attempt we went back to my mate's farm and cut the appropriate spanner in half to allow it more movement, it only bloody worked! I gave the car a celebratory drive around the yard having to pre-set the throttle as the cable was sticking and stuck it back in the garage.
On Sunday we arrived at the garage at about 9:30am. I went to the local shop on the way and bought quite a bit of Isopon fibreglass and easy sand filler, some sandpaper, a rattle can of Brooklands Green and a tin of black Hammerite, my bodywork repair materials of choice.
We started bodging the various holes in the bodywork to make the car look slightly more presentable, we also pumped up the tyres using a 12v electric pump, fitted a new throttle cable (choke still has to be set under the bonnet), loaded all the other junk from the garage into our two cars. I gave the Triumph a few more spins around the yard to check the steering and brakes, topped all the fluids and declared it to be go time as it was midday and I really wanted to get over the mountains before it got dark.
We hit the road and the initial drive to get petrol at Huntly went well, it was clear the rear shocks were fucked as the car bounced like a trampoline but otherwise the car drove very well despite a complete lack of power. At this point the weather turned to shit with torrential rain and gale force winds battering the car, I added 30 litres of fuel to the tank at Huntly and set off for the next checkpoint at my parent's place in the Cairngorm National Park. We got there with no bother at all and I decided that we'd brave the trip to Glasgow, if the car had played up that would have been where I'd have left it but the thing was performing great.
We hit the road again ASAP as light was fading, I had a brief arse clench moment as a police car went by in the opposite direction just as we left Strathdon but they gave us no attention other than the usual "that's an old car" glance. I also had to stop at every junction to check the map which was a good opportunity for adjusting the ignition timing on the fly as I was doing it by ear and feel and it took a while to find a good balance. Despite uphill stretches being taken at 30mph in 3rd gear and some rather scary snowy/icy bits of road we cleared the Cairngorm mountains just as the sunlight faded entirely.
Once we hit Perth we were on to the dual carriageways and motorways which would be a big test on a car that's been sitting and rarely ventured over 55mph when it was running! Turns out I needn't have worried, aside from a few puffs of blue smoke from the exhaust suggesting the exhaust stem seals need attention I rapidly found myself blatting along quite happily at 65-70mph and overtaking lesser vehicles on a regular basis, not in the least because by this point I was knackered and wanted to get home quite badly.
Then I got home.
It really was that simple. Although driving around city traffic revealed the throttle wouldn't quite go back to a low idle unless you stomped on the pedal first which was a bit anti-social. The following morning I attacked yet more bodywork with Isopon and spray paint and sent it off to the garage for it's MOT.
The result was a fail although not a particularly bad one. It needs a bit of welding to the O/S/R sill, both rear shocks are shagged, handbrake does almost nothing and needs adjusting, exhaust is blowing at the manifold, number plate bulb is out, horn won't work, front brakes are slightly imbalanced and the sticky throttle cable issue.
It's currently at the garage having a quote for the welding and shock replacement made up, the other jobs I can easily do myself. The bloody thing will be MOT exempt as of next May anyway but I'll be having it checked over annually anyway. The bodywork still needs doing, but that'll require saving up for panels and also keeping an eye out for rare NOS rear wheel arches which could be hard to find...