The Triumph Dolomite Club - Discussion Forum

Well Stu I know you are itching to know and I know you want me to tell the rest of the world that I drive cars other than Triumphs.

The car in question which is occupying the workshop space and is about to receive some tender loving care is a Sunbeam Lotus. A car which I have owned for about 25 years. Seen here in what for us was a most un-seasonal snowfall and very rarely seen in this part of the country.

I was saddened to note that the thread on this forum about the “British Disease” has been quarantined for I made some observations on there on my views about how the British car and aircraft industries had lost their way since the Second World War.

The Sunbeam Lotus, or the Sunbeam family of cars, which came to light in the dying days of Chrysler/Rootes group in the UK in the late 1970’s is, in my view an example of getting everything wrong. But make no mistake a Sunbeam with a factory fitted Lotus engine and ZF gearbox is, as a car, a pretty impressive piece of kit. The car though is, in my view, very poorly designed, conceived and put together and apart from the attraction of owning something with a Lotus engine in it, is not one I would normally choose to keep in my shed.

The Sunbeam range of cars was never sold here even though in their day the Hillman Hunter, following its win in the London to Sydney marathon, and the Avengers with their rallying successes generated a huge amount of interest, and sales, for the Rootes group range of cars in this part of the world.

But this is a Dolomite/Toledo forum so I will not dwell on the Sunbeam Lotus other than to say it too has oil leaks – factory fitted, as someone on the Sunbeam Lotus forum tells me, and that it is nowhere near as comfortable or for that matter as pleasant to drive as a Dolomite Sprint. And when I attend to the oil leaks in that car I shall move it out and continue to fettle bits and pieces on the Dolomite. (And move another car into the workshop which too needs some work done on it).

I know too that some of my colleagues in the Sunbeam Lotus fraternity have been following this thread as well so I apologise to them if they become offended on reading this to think that I currently prefer my Dolomite Sprint over my Sunbeam Lotus.

Robert

That is a very nice car you have there Robert. I quite fancied one ever since my Dad talked about one that his colleague had. He bought it new when they were deeply unfashionable and very cheap. He then kept it for many years and enjoyed it a lot. Dad talked of times when they went out in it and showed a few chav Nova drivers a thing or two.

You don't see many these days, even at shows. Interior and build quality is nowhere near as nice as a Dolomite but then the car was built for a different market and purpose.

I too like the Sunbeam Lotus, I've always been a big fan of the wolf in sheeps clothing. The only thing that puts me off owning one (apart from the seriously stupid prices they now command) is the bit with Lotus written on it! Everybody knows what LOTUS stands for:- Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious!
Now a Sunbeam with a Redtop..........

Steve

The British Disease thread was moved because it straued into the realms of religion and politics.
Its still available for comment. You just need to send an access request for that part of the forum, used by those of us
who like to debate such things.

Ive found it unusual for a Sprint diff to whine on the pinion bearing side, but they do often dribble oil. Mine has for years....I just think of it as in built
rust proofing.

As the the gearbox oil leak...could it be the attachment to the overdrive mounting plate? I tend to use studs on this although I think most were made
with bolts. They can leak unless a copper sealing washer is used between plate and overdrive so I prefer studs with sealant.

Jonners

I was a little saddened to read Carledo/Steve’s comment about the supposed unreliability of Lotus for in my experience a Lotus is as reliable as many of those modern cars now coming out of the far East. I speak from personal experience having owned a Lotus from new – bought in 1968. All I can say is that it has been quite the most reliable car I have ever owned and what bits on the car which have been replaced or which have given problems were from other British manufacturers and were marked with the codes Stanpart or FoMoCo!!

The phrase though that Steve used is generally regarded, outside the UK, as applying to the British car industry as a whole. Hence few, if any British cars other than some of the more exotic, are now exported to this part of the world. There was a time when so-called British cars, like the standard Dolomite and the bigger Triumphs were assembled here and they were considered to be much better assembled (and therefore more reliable) than those imported fully built up from Britain. So “Lots of trouble usually serious” - well I am sorry to say but perhaps that term really applies to Britain as a nation.

Find the “British Disease” thread and read what has been said there.

Jonners has commented about the dribbling oil leaks coming from the diff. Very British also!! In my case I know it is a wheel bearing which is failing, along with the outer axle oil seal. It will be dealt to in due course. And I have noted that lazeruspete has commented that he has lived with axle noise for some time too.

The gearbox leaks? Still seems to be coming from the gear selector rod seals. I have done as Jonners has suggested, used sealant on the studs and various bolts in order to eliminate leaks from elsewhere around the gearbox.

But the success this week seems to have been that I have cured the intermittent fuel leak which was coming from the overflow vent on the rear carburettor. I put a query up on the thread Setting the carburettor float levels, (viewtopic.php?f=4&t=25810) and received some most interesting, informative and very helpful comment. I have now established that the leak was being caused by what looks like rust coming through from the petrol tank and pipework which had sat dry for the best part of 25 years as this restoration took place. The rust was not evident until I cleaned my spectacles and took the tops of the float chambers off outside in the fresh air where there was plenty of light and where I could see something sitting in the bottoms of both carburettors. I have sucked the best part of a teaspoon full of the fine residue out of the bottom of both. Indeed I was almost tempted to get my gold pan out and start panning this, for those who might have had experience in panning for gold, will know that the gold often sits within the black ironsands, certainly on the beaches on the West Coast of the South Island here!

I surmise that a fine film of rust has formed on the inside of the tank and that from time to time particles are becoming trapped under the float valve needle – causing the flooding.

The cure? As a temporary fix I have fitted an inline fuel filter and I will change this filter each time I change the oil filter and if the problem does not reoccur then I will just continue to change the filters on a regular basis. There has been no flooding since the filter was fitted. The alternative might be to coat the inside of the tank as Stu - straylight has done, viewtopic.php?f=19&t=21065&start=45#p23349 in his thread sprint #2, South Australia.

Meanwhile I continue to use the car as my daily drive. The speedo has now passed the 2,000 mile mark. It still feels and looks like a new car. I hope that it will become as reliable as the other cars in my garage. Still several jobs to do though but these will be done when I have the time – and inclination. This week a set of silver coach lines arrived from the club stock and I am sure that by sticking them on the car will go even faster!

Robert

Great to hear that the car is (mostly) reliable! . The rust in the fuel tank certainly sounds plausible. We have a few spare tanks but I'm guessing that postage out to NZ wouldn't make it viable?

And I will reply to your pm, I just keep forgetting!

My experience with any classic car (not just lotus and british cars) have 'lots of trouble usually serious' if they aren't maintained correctly. The fact that the phrase is primarily associated with Lotus is (I think) just a coincidence.

Good luck and afterall it's now a New Zealand assembly

Jeroen

Robert, I'm sorry! I did not mean to offend you! But I am afraid to say that my experience with Lotus engines has not been positive. Perhaps being in the motor trade has prejudiced me, since I don't see the ones that never go wrong! It is also possible that the British market, with it's "disposable" attitude to cars - made neglect more prevalent and hence failure more common. I think the Lotus engine, like the MGA twin cam before it, was just a bit too delicate and high maintainance for the British buying public. You see the same thing nowadays with the modern, high output, Mitsubishi Evos, which need attention every 3000 miles. They don't get it, break, and get a rep for unreliability! There aint no justice!
I've only owned one myself, (though I've worked on quite a few others over the years in both Ford and GM derived guises) a Ford derived unit, bought in a scrap (rolled) Police Lotus Cortina mkII and fitted by me into a 65 Ford (Classic) Capri. It had done less than 20k when I got it and still needed 2 cams, a timing chain, a head overhaul and the water pump rebuilding (twice) in the 2 years I ran it before selling the car on. It did go rather well though!

Steve

Steve – you have not offended me at all! Rather I think you have added a very worthwhile observation to this thread. Your comments about cars, some cars, being just a bit too delicate and high maintenance for the British (Might this or could this read the “International”?) buying public is I suspect, a very valid observation.

Sadly we are all share a very “disposable” attitude, where care and attention – and maintenance of what ever we do or own, including sadly our relationships with others, is often neglected and then abandoned. And we pay the price accordingly. So I encourage this sort of comment for in setting out to describe the restoration of this car I was hoping to be able to help others who might be contemplating doing the same thing or who are struggling to put right some part or process with their own cars which has been neglected over the years. It is the very essence of this forum.

I own a Dolomite Sprint - I restored one because I was always impressed by the concept of the car although in carrying out the restoration I can understand now why the British car industry – as it was, British names, British designs, British built has not survived. And that is a huge pity, for Britain was at the forefront of the international car industry for many years. That position has been sacrificed and I doubt will ever be regained. The Sunbeam Lotus – as seen above in this thread – also restored by me, represents to me a sort of dying gasp of the British car industry. Hastily conceived, poorly put together using designs and construction techniques that were long outdated by the time that car was sold to the British public.

But back to this thread. What have I learnt carrying out this restoration? Well those who designed and built the Dolomite Sprint often did so without really understanding that the car would have to be maintained and maintained properly, if it was to survive and give the sort of service we expect of it. However what the designers neglected to do is plan properly how the car would be maintained for as I have discovered it would be well nigh impossible to follow some of the steps nominated in the official workshop manual.

An example might be the removal of the Dolomite Sprint cylinder head while the engine is in the car. Others have written elsewhere about the difficulty of removing the exhaust downpipe where it is attached to the exhaust manifold. I have retained the three studs which are screwed into the manifold itself and on which are three brass nuts which hold the downpipe to the manifold.

In restoring this car over a very long period of time it was inevitable that some parts were mislaid and one of those was the exhaust heat shield which attaches to the bulkhead. (I keep hoping the original will turn up somewhere)! So I fabricated one myself out of a suitable aluminium section which forms a backing onto which is fitted a piece of thin polished stainless steel strip. It is slightly larger than the original for I can always make it smaller if it needs to be. But rather than pop riveting it to the bulkhead I chose to bolt it into place. I did this so that I could adjust its spacing off the bulkhead if that became necessary. It meant though that I had to cut nice little round holes in the sound padding which sits behind the passenger footwell carpet to reach the nuts.

Its all non original I know, but then significant parts of this car are “non original” anyway (the back end of the car at least) so originality was not something that concerned me greatly.

However the first time I tried to remove the cylinder head in the car I discovered that (as everybody else has done before me) the unbolting and moving the exhaust downpipe back off those three studs is all but impossible. But then I found that by unbolting the head shield off the bulkhead and removing that, that there was ample clearance to move the exhaust downpipe back clear of the manifold.

Had those designing and building these cars realised this then perhaps they too would have bolted rather than riveted that heat shield in place and made reference to it in some revision to the workshop manual.

That does not appear to have happened and rather it seems the attitude was that “its not really our problem – let somebody else worry about it”.

All this links in, I think, with your comments and observations Steve, and which I think is another of those little factors which when all collated together was the reason for the British car industry’s demise.

Let me conclude though and add to your observations for there are some cars (not British!!) which I have owned where it was impossible for instance to change some of the spark plugs without first removing the inlet manifold (a Japanese Nissan). Access to the oil filters is another of my pet gripes, (I am thinking of VW Polo’s and BX Citroens) – surely an item which is expected to be changed regularly, where it requires hands of a five year old and where there is very little space to remove the filter without involving the antics of a contortionist.

So perhaps it is not necessarily a mark of poor British car design but rather a sad reflection on our disposable society.

Meantime my Sprint continues to run and the fuel economy has improved marginally.

Now the fine tweaking can commence to make it run even better.

Robert

Thanks Robert, as usual, a concise and lucid post. I too have had issue with the recalcitrant downpipe on a Sprint, and it is not the only problem with them by a large margin. However the Sprint is no better or worse than other cars of its era, foreign or domestic and the situation is far, far worse today. My best friend (since schooldays) is also in the trade, he describes it as "accountant driven engineering" modern cars are not designed (I use the term loosely) to be maintained or worked on, because they are no longer designed by engineers, but solely to be cheaper to build and thus satisfy the shareholders.
Your comments about poor maintainance access on British cars nearly prompted me to ask if you'd ever worked on a FRENCH car! But I see you have and I can assure you the BX is not alone in its orneriness! ALL French cars are built this way! My theory is that they start by mounting the bare block and gearbox case in the shell, then get all the ancillaries, manifolds, carbs, alternator, PAS pump, air filter, etc in a big cardboard box, invert the box over the engine bay and bolt everything on where it falls! French cars almost always require you to move 3 things to get at the one you want, yet they still have a motor industry! Am I missing something?

Steve

PS I'm glad you're enjoying your Sprint and that it is finally responding favourably to all the TLC lavished on it!

I suppose it could be said that no news is good news and in that regard it is pretty much that with my Dolomite Sprint. The mileage recorder is just nudging 4,000 miles. I have done something like 2,000 miles since my last posting. So that is the good news. It runs, and is running extremely well.

An oil change is coming up when I will be refilling with some sort of classic 20W-50 mineral oil which has all the old fashioned additives that were standard back in the oils of the 1950’s – 1980’s.

I have partially drained the engine of the water with which I filled the car after completing the engine work and refilled with a couple of litres of anti-corrosion/antifreeze. I reckon the water which dropped out on the ground was clean enough to drink. I have read the hype about all these so-called waterless coolants. Not for me. Whilst this car will not have to tolerate the temperatures which are more common across the Tasman Ocean in Australia nevertheless it does get quite warm here in the summer, (which it seems has already started), and filling with a waterless coolant which might make the engine run hotter seems to be totally counterproductive to what the system is designed to do – cool the engine. And the cost of these waterless coolants? They seem to be grossly overpriced for what they are.

I have adjusted the idle and slowed the engine down for the idle speed seemed to creep up a little in the first 3,000 miles. Over the course of 1,700 miles I have averaged just under 30 miles to the gallon and that included a short period when the rear carburettor was flooding because sediment was coming through the petrol lines somewhere.

Had a look at another 1850 Dolomite recently which came up for sale locally. The car was complete except that the gearbox and overdrive had been removed and fitted in a Spitfire. I quizzed the owner as to how he had done it, how he had adapted the gearbox to fit. “With some modifications”, I was told. There is rust in the sills just behind the a-pillars and rust/large holes on the two panels to which the bonnet is bolted. So without a gearbox and with some significant panel work required in order to get the New Zealand equivalent of a MOT I told the vendor that I would only be prepared to pay its scrap value. I have heard nothing further.

I have though, visited another two Sprint enthusiasts, one who is building a Sprint rally car. The car itself has already been rallied but with a Mazda engine of some sort fitted. It will have the Sprint engine refitted but perhaps sitting in a more upright position. Here is a photo of the owner, Michael, with his navigator. The bones of this car came in from Australia so was probably a different colour to that which it is now.

The second Sprint enthusiast has owned his car from new. It is the only white example that I have seen in this country.

There are others here in this country. Geoff/GM Classics spotted a link to a blue one down here and alerted me to it http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephentri ... otostream/ It is not a car which I have seen before, so is one that is not known to me.

However after a little sleuthing through my files I found this photo which is of a Sprint which was offered for sale through Trademe last year. This, it would seem, is the same car. Perhaps it was touring through Christchurch on the day the photo was taken and shown in the link above.

Robert

Robert, I doubt that the Sprint engine could be fitted in a more upright position. The main idea behind the slant-4 engines was that it could be fitted under the bonnet so having it upright would defeat the the object. You should've got those 1850 autos and made one good car (or more) out of them.

Good to hear that no news is good news so to speak.
A good running sorted car is a delight, makes the effort worth it .

Robert 352 wrote:I have read the hype about all these so-called waterless coolants. Not for me. Whilst this car will not have to tolerate the temperatures which are more common across the Tasman Ocean in Australia nevertheless it does get quite warm here in the summer, (which it seems has already started), and filling with a waterless coolant which might make the engine run hotter seems to be totally counterproductive to what the system is designed to do – cool the engine. And the cost of these waterless coolants? They seem to be grossly overpriced for what they are.

I disagree with you.
Using Evans coolant my car does not run any hotter (or cooler for that matter). The reduced stress on the system (hoses, clips, water pump, etc) is surely beneficial?
I am of the opinion that using EC eliminates the hotspot at the back of the cylinder head (I have the heater input from there and the heater is not as hot as it was when
on water/antifreeze I reckon), or if it is not actually eliminated then it is reduced.
By far the best modification to the cooling system is to fit a proper expansion tank with a low level warning (I have used one from a Volvo 850 but many others are suitable).


Nice to hear its warming up in NZ. It is pretty dark here (58 degrees North) and still three weeks to go until the shortest day.



Ian.

BTW Delft blue looks smart on a Sprint

Toledo Man has commented about sitting the Sprint block in a more upright position. I raised the same question with Michael. He explained that the engine was being dry sumped and could therefore sit lower, or at least not foul the subframe. I expect he will find a way to sort it all out. He has several reasons for contemplating such a change, ease of servicing the engine and its ancillaries, making a simple efficient and effective exhaust manifold and shortening the inlet manifold. But it does involve making a new adaptor plate onto which the starter can be mounted. There are no such words in his vocabulary as “it can’t be done”. He will find a way.

Ian, you are right with your comments about a good running sorted car, so much so that the Sunbeam Lotus has been left parked forlornly in the corner of the shed for some months. I really should have some sort of system which says I shall drive each car week and week about. It makes me wonder how chaps can contemplate having more than one (good running sorted) wife!

Waterless coolants! The real stresses in my engine come I think from those four pistons going up and down in some regular sequence and on every second stroke having to cope with an explosion which is all somehow contained within the cylinder head/engine block/piston arrangement. And some of those stresses are transferred from that wobbling mass to various hoses which are then attached to rigidly mounted items scattered around the engine bay. It’s like the stresses that poor little fan belt has to cope with being continually straightened and bent as it rolls around the pulleys.

My comment in relation to waterless coolants has probably more to do with its cost rather than it is method of transferring heat from one part of the engine to the radiator.

The human being is a funny sort of thing given to believe that either the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence or that if it costs a lot of money it must be better. Let me give you an example. I had an occasion once to stand at the counter of an extremely exclusive jewellery store in New York called Tiffany’s where we were pricing a simple wedding ring. The sum quoted was eye watering stuff. When I asked the lady how much did the ring weigh she looked at me with some puzzlement. “This is a Tiffany’s ring” she tried to explain. In return I tried to explain that nobody would ever know and gold being gold is only bought and sold by weight. I used to buy old wedding rings for scrap – for melting down, when working for one of the major British precious metal companies which had a branch down here. Perhaps there was a fiver’s worth of gold in them. It does not cost hundreds of pounds to make a simple wedding ring.

Yes I had already noted and filed away your change to the expansion tank for future reference. Yes indeed a very smart move.

I too looked at that shade of blue on the Sprint and thought it did look smart. I had a blue car once of a somewhat similar shade. Delft blue, I shall remember that.

58 North? Is that not somewhere close to where Santa lives? I am 42 South which I think puts me somewhere closer to the Sahara in terms of latitude. Perhaps that is why it does get warm here although I have to tell you that today the weather is being influenced by some super cold air that has spilled off the Antarctic continent somewhere way down in the southern Indian ocean. It is a cool damp day and we need the rain. But the days are long.

Robert

Robert 352 wrote:Toledo Man has commented about sitting the Sprint block in a more upright position. I raised the same question with Michael. He explained that the engine was being dry sumped and could therefore sit lower, or at least not foul the subframe. I expect he will find a way to sort it all out. He has several reasons for contemplating such a change, ease of servicing the engine and its ancillaries, making a simple efficient and effective exhaust manifold and shortening the inlet manifold. But it does involve making a new adaptor plate onto which the starter can be mounted. There are no such words in his vocabulary as “it can’t be done”. He will find a way.
Robert

That is exactly what I have done with mine, Engine stood up by I think 10 deg, lowered a bit and moved rear wards by 2". Starter moved to the other side of the engine, Dry sump fitted.
Took a lot of modifications but all quite doable.