My 'new' 1967 Triumph Herald 1200

[Nabster]

The good news is, wheel bearings on something of that age will be fairly simple and cheap to do. If you're going to do them, it'd be best to do them all at once.

It's good to see it's not having any other major issues though, must be a good car.

 

[captain_70s]

The new engine is sounding lovely. The only problem I'm going to have now is keeping the keys away from my housemate, who seems quite smitten and even made a random trip to the shops last night 'to give Gerald a run'

You may well want to make a point of ensuring the car is well secured, the door locks on a 60s Herald will probably be worn enough to be opened with a screwdriver.

You'd be suprised how many old cars vanish while the owner is at the shops and are either never seen again or found burnt out in fields nearby. Its getting more and more common for classics to get stolen to be sold on over-seas as the prices are steadily rising.
They are also a suprising target for joy-riders as they stand out more then most cars, and if somebody like that gets hold of it then its last drive will probably end in a field on fire.

Larger cars tend to vanish when the less scrupulous of banger racers decide then need something for the local up-coming pre-1969 meet...

 

[EyeMWing]

You may well want to make a point of ensuring the car is well secured, the door locks on a 60s Herald will probably be worn enough to be opened with a screwdriver.

This. Personally I'd wire in a racing-style killswitch operated by a keyswitch (and the keyswitch I'd use would probably be an ignition switch bogarted from a newer model junkyard car and rekeyed, since most normal keyswitches are easily operated by a screwdriver)

Yes, this means your car takes two keys to start. Deal with it.

 

[argatoga]

Yep. I have one of these wired in next to the battery. I take it with me.

I figure most will give up after hot wiring fails. It helps that the battery is in the trunk as well.

 

[Steve Levin]

Car is looking great.

As far as security, a friend of mine once wired his airplane in what I considered a brilliant failsafe. Rather than having a switch (like argatoga's master switch) or a wire that he disconnected/removed, instead, he had a specific wire that, when CONNECTED, grounded the ignition circuit and kept the engine from running.

The number of thieves looking for something that has to be disconnected for the engine to run is going to be very small. They look in, see everything connected, and assume that the issue is elsewhere, and hopefully give up.

Steve

 

[Wyvern]

Car is looking great.

As far as security, a friend of mine once wired his airplane in what I considered a brilliant failsafe. Rather than having a switch (like argatoga's master switch) or a wire that he disconnected/removed, instead, he had a specific wire that, when CONNECTED, grounded the ignition circuit and kept the engine from running.

The number of thieves looking for something that has to be disconnected for the engine to run is going to be very small. They look in, see everything connected, and assume that the issue is elsewhere, and hopefully give up.

Steve

Now that is clever! And there was I thinking I'd go with some kind of steering wheel lock or something :lol:

Not that I'll be taking him far just at the moment - I failed my sodding driving test yesterday on something so incredibly stupid I'll be kicking myself from now till next Tuesday for it - about three minutes from the end of my test What's worse is I have to put my hands up and say the examiner made the right call - having done all the difficult stuff, I let myself down with a simple error of judgement. Even worse, I can't get another test until the beginning of January at my local test centre and my instructor's too busy for me to ask for a cancellation

 

[Spectre]

Steering wheel locks are useless. You can defeat one in seconds.

 

[Spectre]

Any updates on this?

 

[bone]

wow - haven't seen this thread before

congrats! looks like a cute fun car


and for the theft thing, bolt one of these to your steeringwheel

 

[EyeMWing]

wow - haven't seen this thread before

congrats! looks like a cute fun car


and for the theft thing, bolt one of these to your steeringwheel

.... Those are the same cables one of my client companies used to use to hold down sensitive computers - until I walked off with one of them during a live-fire penetration test. At least a normal steering wheel lock makes them cut the steering wheel, which can be kind of hard and is pretty obvious (guy in the car going at it with a hacksaw) - that cable cut in one shot with 14" boltcutters. If I saw a car secured with that, I'd steal it out of sheer spite.

 

[bone]

^it's an ignition cut, not a steering wheel lock

take the blue cable...and it won't start...

 

[EyeMWing]

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding how it works, because it looks exactly identical to a standard tiedown cable to me.

 

[bone]

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding how it works, because it looks exactly identical to a standard tiedown cable to me.

that's the type of kill switch they tend to use on quads, snowscooters and jetski's; you attach the curling part somewhere to you body, when you fall off, the cable is pulled out, and the engine dies...

 

[Spectre]

Ah, a dead-man's switch.

 

[EyeMWing]

That makes a bit more sense - but it's still a straightforward task to bypass.

 

[93Flareside]

That is REALLY nice. Good luck to you on that awesome little car.

 

[Cobol74]

Pain in the arse, but my mate had a P4 he took the distributor cap off and walked off the the arm in his pocket. Good temporary measure for parking in high risk areas on a car of that vintage.

 

[Wyvern]

That is REALLY nice. Good luck to you on that awesome little car.

Thank you! I'm almost there now, I think... once the wheel bearings get done, all the most pressing jobs will be done and I can get on with the constant round of one maintenance job after another for the rest of my life... :lol:

It will be a while before I do anything more, though... when I left to stay with my family for Christmas, poor Gerald looked like this:

Roll on summer, when hopefully everything will be lovely and my little car will be pootling along the pretty B roads near me with the top down and the engine purring and me behind the wheel

Oh, and on the issue of me driving - apparently, you can't take a driving test in weather conditions like that, so I have to wait until bloody FEBRUARY! I'm not amused by this...

 

[Wyvern]

And the good news is... I FINALLY passed my driving test!

But now I have a technical question.

I've been listening to Gerald's engine, and although the people I bought it from told me they'd been running it on unleaded, I got the impression that they weren't certain whether the conversion had been done. When it was pinking on the long drive home (the one where the crank wormed into the engine block, leading to the bottom end rebuild), we all assumed it was just a symptom of impending doom. That really shouldn't be a problem any more, but the pinking is still there.

Long story short, I don't think it has been converted. It's really not a problem, my local garage carries lead replacement additive, but what if it has been converted and I stick the additive in? I know people used to say if you had a conversion done and you could still get four star, you should occasionally still fill it with leaded petrol, but if the conversion has been done (presumably a bit inefficiently), how much harm can a single dose of additive do? It seems like the easiest way of finding out if that's what's going on, but I don't want to make things worse.

 

[Spectre]

Pinging isn't a symptom of leaded or unleaded per se. If it has an aluminum head, it should have the hardened valve seats needed for safe unleaded use. The garage should have been able to tell when they had the engine apart to rebuild it. Then, retard ignition timing until the engine no longer pings save under hard acceleration or heavy load (and then only lightly). By the way, you did do the Pertronix or other optical ignition system, right? If you haven't, there's a special system intended for Brit cars that has selectable ignition advance curves that may help.

Side note: It always amuses me how Brits freak out over the leaded/unleaded conversion like it was a huge enormous deal and yet when the same thing happened over here it wasn't exactly an earth shattering event. Then again, given the fragility of the machinery over there, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised - but it's worth noting that for the US market when the XJ6 went from leaded to unleaded all they did was change the fuel filler necks and change the timing with no ill effect.


Edit: It looks like the Herald has a pre-war engine design in the bay, so it's probably got an iron head. In that case, unless you are certain that the engine has had hardened valve seats installed, you need to run lead replacement in every tank to prevent expensive mechanical damage. A skilled mechanic may be able to tell you this without major disassembly by using a borescope and other tools.