Ownership Verified: My Brooklands Green sports saloon...

Roadside head job! You quickly become my hero!

I'll be in the Highlands second half of September. Maybe you can drive one of your shitboxes up so we can have a pint...
 
i was expecting "yes" as a reply :D
Yes
Roadside head job! You quickly become my hero!

I'll be in the Highlands second half of September. Maybe you can drive one of your shitboxes up so we can have a pint...
Just wait until the next instalment where I remove one engine and replace it with another at the side of the road, preferably quickly enough that it'll be done in less time than it takes for my mad neighbour to notice I'm doing it, phone the police, and have them arrive...

Meeting up could be do-able, fling me a PM with some dates/approximate locations and I'll see what I can do!
 
Just wait until the next instalment where I remove one engine and replace it with another at the side of the road, preferably quickly enough that it'll be done in less time than it takes for my mad neighbour to notice I'm doing it, phone the police, and have them arrive...
...without an engine hoist!

Meeting up could be do-able, fling me a PM with some dates/approximate locations and I'll see what I can do!

Will do!
 
Man, I operate slowly.

Essentially I've been busy with having an life, and having a cool 0-hour contract job (because UK) leading to a constant lack of time and money.

The original engine in the Doloshite = Fucked.


Rebuildable, but not worth the hassle.

The Spitfire engine = Fucked. Pulled the bottom end the the bearings were all shot and there was scoring to the crank, probably ran shit oil at some point.

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Fuck it, it was free... Also rebuildable but...



I acquired another engine. (I now have 7 engines and 3 cars scattered around the nation).

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This is a 1960s Triumph SC unit, still 1,296cc but an earlier variant. Essentially in 1973 BL modified the crank to share it's bearings with the TR6 6-cylinder engine and in doing so made it less free-revving and more prone to bottom end wear. Thus the early engines are better candidates for a rebuild because they're betterer.
One cropped up for very cheap down in England and a guy on a forum pointed it out to me and said he could collect it on my behalf. Well, he did just that. Then I got another message saying he'd stripped it down, sold all the non-essential bits and was in the process of rebuilding it...

So I now have a freshly rebuilt engine and owe some bloke on the internet about £450 although he insists on not taking any money until the engine is in the car and proven to be a good runner. He's built several of them over the years and also has a Dolomite, albeit with a Rover V8 installed...

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Anyways, it's now ready for collection and should be in my hands by the end of this month.

Once I have it I'll need to entirely pull the old engine out of the car as I'll need the Dolly specific parts (sump, backplate, flywheel etc), swap them to the new engine and then drop that in the car...

This is a very minor snag in that we don't know if the engine will actually fit because it's from a Triumph 1300, which is fwd and as such had a big fuck-off cast iron gearbox on the bottom of it. Somebody suggested they have a tapered crankshaft to accommodate this but we've measured and they seem identical in every way which actually matters for a rwd application, the block also seems identical to any other 1300cc Spitfire/Herald/Dolomite lump except the dipstick hole had a plug in it as the fwd cars had one in the gearbox bit.

We'll fine out when I go to fit it in the Spring time. If it doesn't fit I'll just sell it buy a 1300fwd to put it in.
 
Awfully nice of that guy to do a total rebuild without being prompted. Hopefully it's a good runner.

We'll fine out when I go to fit it in the Spring time. If it doesn't fit I'll just sell it buy a 1300fwd to put it in.

Flawless logic haha.

I eagerly await the inevitable 5 FWD parts cars.
 
Man, I operate slowly.

Essentially I've been busy with having an life, and having a cool 0-hour contract job (because UK) leading to a constant lack of time and money.

The original engine in the Doloshite = Fucked.


Rebuildable, but not worth the hassle.

The Spitfire engine = Fucked. Pulled the bottom end the the bearings were all shot and there was scoring to the crank, probably ran shit oil at some point.

U4Tdz7B.jpg

9wuTYax.jpg

CSDd3L1.jpg


Fuck it, it was free... Also rebuildable but...



I acquired another engine. (I now have 7 engines and 3 cars scattered around the nation).

05V96Su.jpg


This is a 1960s Triumph SC unit, still 1,296cc but an earlier variant. Essentially in 1973 BL modified the crank to share it's bearings with the TR6 6-cylinder engine and in doing so made it less free-revving and more prone to bottom end wear. Thus the early engines are better candidates for a rebuild because they're betterer.
One cropped up for very cheap down in England and a guy on a forum pointed it out to me and said he could collect it on my behalf. Well, he did just that. Then I got another message saying he'd stripped it down, sold all the non-essential bits and was in the process of rebuilding it...

So I now have a freshly rebuilt engine and owe some bloke on the internet about £450 although he insists on not taking any money until the engine is in the car and proven to be a good runner. He's built several of them over the years and also has a Dolomite, albeit with a Rover V8 installed...

rCqCzil.jpg

u4xm3Fr.jpg

bgxd9TR.jpg

2KGJm32.jpg


Anyways, it's now ready for collection and should be in my hands by the end of this month.

Once I have it I'll need to entirely pull the old engine out of the car as I'll need the Dolly specific parts (sump, backplate, flywheel etc), swap them to the new engine and then drop that in the car...

This is a very minor snag in that we don't know if the engine will actually fit because it's from a Triumph 1300, which is fwd and as such had a big fuck-off cast iron gearbox on the bottom of it. Somebody suggested they have a tapered crankshaft to accommodate this but we've measured and they seem identical in every way which actually matters for a rwd application, the block also seems identical to any other 1300cc Spitfire/Herald/Dolomite lump except the dipstick hole had a plug in it as the fwd cars had one in the gearbox bit.

We'll fine out when I go to fit it in the Spring time. If it doesn't fit I'll just sell it buy a 1300fwd to put it in.


Sounds like something i'd do. :p
 
I'm hoping to collect the engine this weekend as I'm going down to Cannock to view a crap car auction and have dinner with some fellow shit car enthusiast types.

One of whom was going to be bringing his Volvo 850 estate and could easily lug the engine back north, however he's now having to work so it may end up in the back of the torque-less wonder that is the Triumph Acclaim. I'm sort of hoping to be able to cajole another friend who is going down in a very nice Volvo 740 estate into lending aid....
 
Date tested 13 November 2017
FAIL
Mileage 36,654 miles
MOT test number 4139 5013 0293
Test location

View test location
Reason(s) for failure
  • Parking brake: efficiency below requirements (3.7.B.7)
  • Nearside Registration plate lamp not working (1.1.C.1d)
  • Horn not working (1.6.2a)
  • Offside Rear Vehicle structure has excessive corrosion, seriously affecting its strength within 30cm of the body mountings Outer sill (6.1.B.2)
  • Offside Rear Vehicle structure has excessive corrosion, seriously affecting its strength within 30cm of the body mountings Inner sill (6.1.B.2)
  • Nearside Rear Shock absorber has a serious fluid leak (2.7.3)
  • Offside Rear Shock absorber has a serious fluid leak (2.7.3)
  • Front Exhaust has a major leak of exhaust gases At manifold flange and center exhaust clamp (7.1.2)
  • Nearside Front front brake application uneven (3.7.B.2)
  • Nearside Rear Brake lever has restricted free movement (3.5.1k)
  • Exhaust engine idle speed too high (7.3.A.2a)
Advisory notice item(s)
  • Starter motor loose
  • Nearside Front Brake pipe slightly corroded (3.6.B.2c)
  • Offside Front Brake pipe slightly corroded (3.6.B.2c)
  • Brake pipe slightly corroded Nearside rear to offside rear (3.6.B.2c)
  • Offside Front Vehicle structure has slight corrosion Wing at outer sill (6.1.B.2)
  • Play in steering rack inner joint(s) ()
  • Rear Exhaust hanger deterioting
Cap, I would suggest the engine is the least of your problems! :ROFLMAO:
 
That wis yonks ago. Since then the following has occurred:

The sill has been welded up, although by my local garage and it's a shit job.
Both shocks replaced.
The front calipers cleaned up and new pads.
New rear drums and shoes.
Handbrake adjusted appropriately.
Carb cleaned up and readjusted.
Exhaust re-fitted and putty'd up.
Smacked the reg plate light back into life.
New horn fitted.
Starter motor secured with more than one hand tight nut.

The last MOT was for my exercise in law bending whereby you can drive an un-taxed and un-MOT'd car straight to a pre-booked MOT, I just happened to be driving from my lock-up in rural Aberdeenshire to my local garage in Glasgow...
I then left it with them to do the shocks and brakes and they kept it in the yard for months until Spring arrived (handily storing it off the public highway for free as they never got around to sorting it) and I took it home and rebuilt the brakes myself over a weekend, by that point the car was MOT exempt so I never sent it back.

Then the engine asploded. Then I tore off a wheelarch in a fit of rust poking.

So current priorities are

1 - Fit un-asploded engine.
2 - Weld on a new wheel arch.
3 - Maybe look at the crusty brake lines...

Hopefully can be finished by summer as the Acclaim is getting tedious, I did 640 miles in the thing t'other weekend and it didn't even use any oil...
 
A video of me moving a car...


So, t'was a sunny Saturday and I had decided to strip down some more of the Doloshite's engine bay for rust treatment/painting before the engine swap. To facilitate this I'd ran an extension cable (or two) down from my bedroom window down to the street below, it was as I was setting up the angle grinder I noticed something...

With the wheels at full lock and turned into the kerb I saw a moist looking area of peeling underseal in the F/N/S wheel well. A compulsion came over me, I leaned over and pressed my thumb gently against the suspicious area, the was a wet crunch and my thumb vanished into the chassis leg right next to the front subframe mount. I started poking about by hand...

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Oh yes, that's really rather fucked.

I then applied the grinder.

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The other side was assaulted with a wire wheel and then attacked with a screwdriver.

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Alright. That's all quite bad, the outer edge of the chassis leg is fucked all the way back to the brake pipe mount, the inside edge is rough but I can't hole it, ditto the bottom the top is fairly decent, the grot on the top is because that's where the battery lives. The leading edge is also all fucked, I suspect this is where it initially failed and water/dirt has piled in and rotted it from the inside out.

Perhaps this is an isolated issue though, the other side might be fine?

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Aye, no. That's worse, and it's already been patched up at some point prior to my ownership. Okay, time to step back from the poking for now I think...

So, I wire brushed all the loose rust from inside the engine bay, Vactan'd everything and then splashed some red oxide over it all to prevent further nightmares.

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I then removed the heater blower motor and windscreen washer bottle, because they look like shit and hey, while I'm here...

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So. So... Soooooooooooooo...

Aye, that's a bit grim to be honest. Obviously my original plan of simply working on the car at the roadside just isn't going to work, I contemplated welding it at it's current location but the drawbacks are... extreme and negative consequences are likely. The way I see it there are 3 options from here for the car:

1 - Break it for spares.
2 - Patch it up.
3 - Drop the subframe and replace the chassis legs*.

Obviously the plan is going to be either 2 or 3, I haven't decided which one yet. I have secured a place to work on the car, somewhere indoors, with electricity.

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Yes, it's my parent's garage. Again. Not the exact same one that I started my Triumph tinkering endeavours in, but my parent's garage nonetheless. People who know me may also know my parents live in the middle of nowhere, in the Cairngorm National Park, 130 miles and 3 hours drive away from my Glasgow flat. This is inconvenient, but as they also live there I can kip on the sofa, for long weekends of automotive grafting. Transport will be by the medium of rented car trailer and an appropriate tow vehicle owned by a friend.

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I have also acquired AN WELDER for the princely sum of £free, this is coming from the chap who has my old 1850HL in a field, he's upgrading his setup and lives a mere 40 mile 1 hour drive further North than my parent's place...



I've not yet decided how much work I'm going to do to sort this out. I could patch it, the top and bottom of the legs are solid enough to take a weld, and it needs never see an MOT station again (gr8 idea m8). The subframe might not even fall off...
However, if the car is already in the garage, and the engine is already out, and I know the rear mounts always rot out first (that's what sent my 1850HL off the road) and I haven't even glanced at them yet... Welp. The subframe might have to come off... And all the front panels because the headlight retainers are essentially gone... New sills would be ideal... Those rear arches, obviously. Yeah, I don't know how far this is going yet...

The engine swap and tart up was only ever going to last until I had my own garage to actually do proper work to the car. I knew it was frilly, I was just counting on this being a couple more years down the line... We'll see once it's in my parent's garage and up in the air, which isn't going to be until after lockdown is lifted regardless.

So yup, the project has snowballed, again. It's going back up the country to where it fucking was before I rescued it the first time and I'm going to have to throw acres of MIG wire, money and time at the thing to get it anywhere near the road. So everything is going about as well as can be expected.



*As a hilarious aside, the main panels I'd need from the TDC are all "collection only" from the West Midlands 270 miles and 4 hours of driving South of my flat and 400 miles and 7 hours of driving away from where the car will be...
 
What if you, and hear me out, do a The Grand Tour and the Doloshite starts to look suspiciously like one of those five grand Bentleys that will need the same amount of money every quarter? :p
 
That 205 on the trailer looks great! But everything else....
 
I still miss my old Series III but I don't miss sights like that. It looks like there's much work to do before thinking about putting the engine in, I do have a crane but I'm very much in the wrong part of the country.
 
The 205 sadly isn't mine. :( Tis a little N/A diesel, would be grand to nip about in... I hope to get a shot in it once it's back on the road, it's been sat in a lock-up for over a decade and only recently dug out.

The Doloshite is just a vast unending money pit, but such is the case of any pre-1980 car that you intend to use on a regular basis. The market has increased in value at such a rate that an example in better condition is now far beyond my budget limitations, anything worth having is going to be £2000+ and I'd rather sink that sort of money into improving at welding and metalwork.

The main issue is I've not looked after it particularly well over my ownership.... It's just been thrashed about on salt/mud covered roads and stored away in damp garages for most of it's time in my ownership, because I really enjoy driving it but have also spent most of the last decade hoping I'd go to sleep and not wake up. This is bad for having the motivation to lie under a car and scrape off mud/reapply flaking underseal. Coupled with living in the middle of nowhere with very few friends and just being "that weird guy with long hair and old cars" I was stuck doing everything myself.

Now I've gotten my life together I can actually do work to the thing, but the damage is done. Years of sitting in storage or at the side of the road haven't exactly been kind to the bodywork on a generation of car that rarely reached 12 years old (8 if you bought Vauxhall, Italian or Japanese)...
 
We're already up to version 3.0 of the plan.

I've been offered the use of a workshop and it's equipment about 20 miles East of my flat. This is slightly more manageable than having to traipse 200 miles North every time I want to work on it. Plan is as thus:

Remove engine + subframe.
Weld front of car.
Replace subframe, install new engine.
Weld middle/arse of car.
Paint.

Currently deciding which panels to buy and which to fabricate. The front wings and nose panel/valance are going to be GRP at some point so I'm not too fussed about repairing them...
 
Currently deciding which panels to buy and which to fabricate. The front wings and nose panel/valance are going to be GRP at some point so I'm not too fussed about repairing them...

Dolomite Superleggera, I like the sound of that. Gut the interior, roll cage, hill climbs, profit?
 
LS swap.
 
VR6 swap!
 
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