I bought this triumph in august last year as i was looking for a decent car to drive as a daily runaround while i rebuild my skoda estelle
as bought
anyhow when bought i was looking for a rot free example as i thought the mechanicals where reasonably reliable,,,,,,as it turned out the car was absolutely rot free underneath all the main rust traps were in excellent condition the sills,,chassis rails,,suspension mounts,,,inner archs and bulkhead all origional and rust free
at 68'000 miles and full mot cert back up it'd never been layed up in 30 years use hence the good body condition
the first thing was to replace the brown interior with dark blue ,,electronic ignition and a sprint radiator to keep the 1500 cool
at 73'000 miles the engine started over heating all the time which then led to the crank rumbling and the head gasket going
reverse gear also disspeared and the diff was whining badly
at the time it had major starting trouble i parked it up at the front of the house for a month while working out what to do with it
i bought a scrap spitfire engine for rebuild as i couldnt find anything else
this is how the rebuild went
removing the engine
pulling the cylinder head and finding a slight mess
after freeing the engine by means of wd40 and rocking the crank back and forth I checked the end float on the crank (limits were 0.1-0.23mm it checked out as 0.11mm)
the pistons were removed and cleaned up (the old rings were rusted in the grooves,,,so were prised out and replaced)
the crank bearings were 10 tho undr size and in really good condition so I gave the assemlby a good smothering of lubricant
I gave the cylinder a good hone,,,hydraulic jack oil gave an excellent medium for the stones to work with,,,then I fitted the pistons
the cylinder head was looked at next,,,despite its horrible appearance the valves are unworn and the valve seats/guides were still in good order,,,
the valves were cleaned and ground in
this left the head like this
and it was fitted with the help of "pandaselecta" and another friend (this is the old engine coming out)
it would seem that my rebuild was a rather large FAIL
the running in produced huge emissions of oil clouds,,,which gradually worsened as time went by,,along with the head gasket failing
1000miles later the crank started rumbling,,,,,again ::)
and very suprisingly the head gasket failed to the the extent of the coolant flowing out the exhaust and the engine trying to hydrolock when on the move
I don't think I get on with the 1.5 triumph range of engines or the single rail gearbox's (which doesnt have reverse gear anymore)
despite this major failure (along with broken halfshafts and whining diff's) I really enjoyed the driving dynamics of the car and with it being totally rust free underneath i didnt want it to go to waste
i had a v8 already to run and a mint condition gearbox to go with it
this one is a SD1 engine that was rebuilt ,,run in then removed so its mega clean internaly
first job was to remove all the running gear/exhaust/engine bay bits and bobs
I had a spare sprint subframe so I chopped the mounts off and welded on some mount rails (so I could fit a box lower mount where ever the engine mount sits)