Sprinting from Chicago to Detroit

[USASPRINTMAN]

Flew in Chicago Saturday and was met at the airport by the owner of the red Sprint I bought on eBay Tuesday. Now I know more about the car.

Someone in the club must remember NGE 6V. It has a Manvers Triumph sticker on the windscreen. It's previous owner was a bloke named Geraint Luke Burndred of Towcester.

She's Carmine red with a Britax roof. And wow, what a ride home. My '77 Sprint is quick and has stock suspension. But NGE is nothing short of wild. It some sort of Triumphtune cam, Spax shockers and lowered springs, among the high performance hardware. She's like a road-going rally car.

NGE destroyed the 308 miles of pavement on Interstate 94 today. She cruised all day 6-straight hours at between 75 and 80 and never missed a beat. And used only 9 gallons of gasoline, Amazing. What a car.

All is not well, though. NGE has a terrible, terrible judder on take off. I believe the brake booster has packed up, too. But body-wise, interior-wise and otherwise, she's very, very nice.

I may be looking at a clutch to fix that judder. It feels like the whole back axle is loose.

Cheers,
Richard Truett

[smifter]

Sounds great! The judder could be the centre prop bearing if the juddering feels like its coming from the back of the car - common fault, nothing to be too scared about.

[Mike Groom]

Richard,
With Spack shocks and lowered springs, what spring rates do you have?
Sounds a similar set up to mine (210 front 170 rear) but I know the I94 between Detroit and Auburn Hills, and as its not the smoothest road in the world, I'd not like to do that journey in mine!
Sounds a good car though. Mine occasionally judders but I've put that down to a slight weep in the crank rear oil seal.
Mike.

[miniman]

Mine does the judder thing - will have to get it over my mate's pit and take a look at the prop.

Sounds like a fantastic journey to make - brave, though, to take it on in an unknown, 25+ year old car from the other side of the pond! How does it compare to the photos on eBay which were very obviously taken when it was still in the UK?

[xvivalve]

Route 66 next...in a Gumball style?

Who is up for it? Reckon we could get a deal on bulk car shipping!

[DavePoth]

Richard,

Mine had a really bad judder when pulling away, and I couldn't figure out what it was, turns out the front subframe mounts were badly corroded. It's highly unlikely it is this, but it's probably a good idea to check.

[USASPRINTMAN]

The car matched up with the photos very well. She's had a lot of work to the body, but it was done properly. On a scale of 1-10, the paint rates a solid 8.5.
The interior has new carpets, but the seat fabric is slightly worn. No other issues.

The engine, though it ran great on the highway, needed sorting. So today I set the carbs, which made a massive improvement. She would not idle well if at all yesterday. The carbs were not only too lean, but out of synch and the chokes were touching the cams. It's all fixed now and idles smoothly at 950 rpm.

The best part is something I haven't mentioned yet: The car came with a massive load of spares. In the back seat was a new factory bonnet still in primer. I got a good tinted Triplex backlight and windscreen. In the boot was a huge box of NOS spares, including nearly all the switches. I see filters, a speedo cable, motor mounts, plenty of stuff like that.

I checked the subframe and she has new poly bushes. One motor mount looks suspect.

Does anyone remember seeing NGE 6V anywhere? It was in England until last year.

Richard

[Mad Mart]

From the RAC website. NGE 6V

Manufacturer TRIUMPH
Model DOLOMITE SPRINT
Body type 4 DOOR SALOON
Colour RED
Fuel type PETROL
Date manufactured 30 December 1980
Number of previous owners 5

From the DVLA site.

Date of Liability: 28 10 2005
Date of First Registration: 18 01 1980
Year of Manufacture: 1980
Cylinder Capacity (cc): 1998CC
CO2 Emissions: Not Available
Fuel Type: Petrol
Export Marker: Export
Vehicle Status: Unlicensed
Vehicle Colour: RED

[canuck]

Richard sounds like you picked up a very good buy, nice to get parts along with the car. I hope I get the a good deal with the sprint on Ontario but I would not be driving it home as it is a little more than 300 miles and this car has not been on the road since 1988.
My car has the 1" lowered springs from rimmers along with adjustable shocks made the car look and handle very well.
By the way just looked at an article from an old BCTR club magazine and saw an article Baby Rolls from 1989 British Car are you the same person.

[USASPRINTMAN]

Thanks for the info, Mad.

I was just reading through a blue looseleaf book that came with the car. It's stuffed with receipts going back to 1986.

She's had at least 8,000 pounds spent on her by two of the last 5 owners. One big bill was from last year for a new chassis leg to be welded in at a cost of 1450 quid. yikes. That's expensive.

I'm not sure what the future holds for NGE 6V. I originally bought her to flip for a quick profit. But hell's bells. She's amazing fun to drive.

If anyone in North America needs any spares for a Dolomite, check with me first. I just may have it.

Good luck with the car in Ontario.

If it has been off the road since 1988, it will need a major going through. I just lived that scenario this summer with my Stag, which had been parked that long.

Yes, that is me in the 1989 British Car magazine. You know you are getting old when you go to swap meets and see back issues of magazines with your articles in them!

Cheers,
Richard

[Judge Mental]

Are there any names of previous owners on the receipts that someone might recognise?

[xvivalve]

This car was once owned by "DSC Parts", I forget the name of the chap that ran it, but I am very surprised it is still in one piece; he was the Terryman of the day in early nineties.

Oxdonian sold a car a coupe of years ago, brown with no bumpers that was subsequently stolen. Didn't that end with 6V too?

[USASPRINTMAN]

This chap, Geraint Luke Burndred of Towcester, bought NGE 6V in 1988 and kept her until May of last year.

In looking over the blue notebook full of receipts, I see that he was (is?) some big muckety much at the Nissan Technical Center in Cranfield, Bedford. That were most of the spares were delivered.

He also was a member of the Dolomite Club. So I it does not appear that DSC parts owner the car. The car was purchased by Burndred from a used car business for 1560 pounds.

Question: I've only ever seen British number plates with 7 digits, like OMK 172R, my 1977 Sprint. Why does NGV only have 6V and no more letters or numbers?

Richard Truett
Detroit

[miniman]

Question: I've only ever seen British number plates with 7 digits, like OMK 172R, my 1977 Sprint. Why does NGV only have 6V and no more letters or numbers?

That type of UK number plate splits into:

XXX nnn Y

XXX is a combination of 3 letters, 2 of which signify the location of registration of the car (not where it was built, but where it was first registered). NGV is either NG (Newcastle-upon-Tyne) or GV (Brighton)

nnn is any number between 1 and 999. More recently, 1-49 were not issued until much later when they became available to buy for vanity plate purposes (e.g. M3 GRR on a BMW M3 or whatever).

Y is a year identification letter. In your case, V is August 1979–July 1980 because, being British, we could never do anything as logical as make a single letter equate to a single year!

So in summary, NGV 6V tells us that it was registered between August 1979 and July 1980 and was registered either in Brighton or Newcastle. Unless, of course, it's not wearing its original plate!!!

The system has now changed over to XX nn YYY where XX is the location of registration, nn is the year, split into 2 halves (0n and 5n) and YYY is random.

The reason we don't just switch to the US style of "pick your own plate, anything goes" is that the government makes a huge amount of money selling vanity plates. e.g. a standard number like M3 GRR would go for £250 - £1000 or thereabouts, whilst interesting stuff will change hands for big bucks - "M1" went for £330,000.

Full details here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_number_plates

[Jon Tilson]

The UK reg system is mostly as described by miniman except that the location letters for that period were alwars the last 2 of the 3 letter group.

So in this case it would be Brighton, not Newcastle. I thought Brightons letters were UF and CD. I didnt remeber GV but he may be right. I'd have guessed at Glasgow. They did change periodically as the local offices were re-organised. As an example my ZB magnette is DA, which was Maidstone in Kent but was changed to Reading at some time in the 70's IIRC.

Before the XXX nnn Y sequence it used to be just XXX nnn until some offices ran out, so the year end suffix started in 1963 with A and was in country wide use by 1965. When that ran out it was reversed in 1984.

It used to be on the year end, but car dealers winged as cars became impossible to sell, so they moved the letter change to August 1 in 1967, so E ran form Jan 67 to July 31 67 only. Then it was changed again to stimulate sales with 2 letter changes in March and October I think. I never have modern cars so someone may correct me here.

On the clutch judder you may find your axle tie bar bushes are shot. There are 2 each side on that diagnonal pair of bars joining axle to body.
Very easy to fix and fit...I'd certainly do that before swapping cluthc plates.

Jonners