About to buy my first Triumph!

[DaveyP]

Hello, my name's Dave and I'm about to buy my first Triumph.

Maybe.

I'm going fo a second look at a brown Dolomite 1300 this weekend.

Upon first inspection it looked pretty solid. It's a 1980 V registered car with what seems to be very little rust. It does have water in the near side footwell though. Also, the fuel guage isn't working and the 'skoosher' system for the windscreen is very weak.
The passenger seat seams to have a comedy subframe. It won't stay in the position it's adjusted to so that when the driver brakes, the passenger is propelled forward into his/her seatbelt!

Can anyone advise me on whether these are common faults? None of them seem too drastic for a 32 year old car, although the leak does worry me a bit.
I'm reasonably handy with a spanner, so hope to tackle these things myself.

That's if I buy it!

[tinweevil]

Hi Dave, welcome.

Upon first inspection it looked pretty solid. It's a 1980 V registered car with what seems to be very little rust. It does have water in the near side footwell though.

This will be (in order of increasing hassle to fix and with percentage occurance)
1) 30%. blocked drain holes in the chamber between the cabin and engine bay, under the slots in the bonnet. The chamber fills up and drains into the car through the eyeball vents.
2) 50%. Leaking windscreen seal.
3) 20%. Rust holes in the bulkhead in the area you cannot see under the front wings. If you follow the rear edge of the bonnet outwards there's a gap between the front wings and the windscreen panel. Peer in there and in the corresponding area behind the dash.

Also, the fuel guage isn't working

Probably a faulty sender, an easy fix.

and the 'skoosher' system for the windscreen is very weak.

Clean the pickup strainer in the bottle.

The passenger seat seams to have a comedy subframe. It won't stay in the position it's adjusted to so that when the driver brakes, the passenger is propelled forward into his/her seatbelt!

Probably the lever you move to release the seat has rusted up and stuck when forced across. Not hard to get a replacement or to change. Look under the car and make sure all 8 seat fixings are in good condition and ideally the bolts covered in some kind of under seal. Getting the seat out is the only occasionally challenging part of the job.

[DaveyP]

Thanks for the reply.

All good to know, I'll let you know how I get on.

[DaveyP]

I've bought my first Triumph!

I think I've narrowed the leak down to the windscreen seal.
The fuel sender is goosed right enough.
The seat sub-frame turned out to be down to a the spring being weak.
And you were right about the window washers, too.

Having driven it for half an hour in varying traffic, I've noticed that the temperature guage doesn't rise beyond 'cold'. Is the fan coupling supposed to be viscous? Because it ain't. It's solid.
Thought it might be this rather than the sender, as the needle does move, just not very far.

Other than that, I'm looking forward to some classic motoring.
I do have one or two ideas for the car though, so I'll be back with more questions, no doubt.

[Edin Dundee]

Temp needle doesn't move and the fuel needle doesn't move - check the 'voltage regulator' which should send 10 Volts to both guages. If it's goosed, replace with a 7810 chip.

[DaveyP]

Sorry, probably a bad description.

Both needles move.

The temp one moves off of it's rest, rising as you would expect but doesn't go any higher than the 'cold' end of the guage.
This is why i asked about the fan.


The fuel guage works. When I short the wires at the sender, it rises all the way. That's what makes me think the sender is knackered. Thing is, I seem to have bought a car with a full tank of fuel, for the first time in my life. This, as you'll know, means I can't remove the sender from the tank until I've burned some fuel off. As the car has been unused for a while, I'm going to change the fluids before undertaking any real motoring.

[JPB]

I can't remove the sender from the tank until I've burned some fuel off.

Why not? Unless the fuel is right the way up the delivery pipe - unlikely as that only holds about a quart - then you can remove the sender in situ as it fits from above.
But hey, if it's an excuse to go for a drive that you're after....

[Toledo Man]

If you're changing the sender unit (make sure you get the correct one. There's 2 different types.) it would be wise to renew the seal (70p from Rimmer Bros).

How about starting a thread in the Resto section?

[JPB]

...How about starting a thread in the Resto section?

Yep, we like to watch others' hard work.

[Toledo Man]

The temperature problem could be a defective or missing thermostat. If the thermostat is missing then this might be covering up an overheating problem. I recommend that you get an 82 deg thermostat with the "foot".

[xsquared_uk]

The temperature problem could be a defective or missing thermostat. If the thermostat is missing then this might be covering up an overheating problem. I recommend that you get an 82 deg thermostat with the "foot".

I agree, had exactly this with my car recently - temp gauge always used to work fine, suddenly it would only move a tiny bit from the bottom and sometimes would sort of jiggle about a bit. Replaced thermostat and gasket, works fine again now and more importantly my heater is much improved. Total cost was about 8 quid or so including delivery so no biggie to do on the offchance, easy job too.

[JPB]

....I recommend that you get an 82 deg thermostat with the "foot".

For an OHV? I thought that was a slant-only thing. I could have this wrong, but don't see why the foot would be needed in an engine whose thermostat and water pump are positioned in a more conventional way. Surely all it would do in an OHV, assuming that the foot didn't catch on the bottom all the time, would be get in the way and possibly prevent full opening.

[Toledo Man]

John, you could be right. I can't remember the last time I did it on an OHV engine (if I ever did!). The OHV engines have a different part number (GTS104/GTS106 for 82/88 deg) to the OHC cars so they might not have the "foot".

I should've mentioned earlier that only the Sprint has a viscous fan.

[Jod Clark]

No foot on an OHV thermostat.