The Triumph Dolomite Club - Discussion Forum

To be honest my engine was driving me mad, everytime I thought I had it going properly, it would misfire again, there would be poor idling and run ons. Fixed the timing, clean up one of the float ball which was leaking petrol, switch to electronic ignition, still wouldn't run properly.

So I decided to change the exhaust, middle section was blowing in serveral places, really badly around the silencer. It was a pig to get off, I attacked it with a hammer, then a blow torch, then a hacksaw, and a cutting disc. Two days latter the damn thing came off. Alas the back exhaust had a hole in it, but our friendly local garage platted it for a tenner.

It took me all of 10 minutes to rebuild the exhaust system ( always the way with cars, the hard part is getting it off). Fired it up and everything was suddenly fine. Idling at the correct speed, no misfire, no run on. Fixing the exhaust, fixed the engine.

This also gave me a chance to go for a test drive. Now I know that the 1500 engine is the weakest of the range, but one thing I do like about it is the torque. You can drive it a bit like a diesel. In fact the car was actually quite pleasant to drive. My only other experience of it was driving through a blizzard up the M1 and on that occassion I couldn't really enjoy it, because I was trying to avoid losing the backend at 45 mph. Plenty of front wheel drive cars littered the hard shoulder, so it was pretty unpleasant.

Still it is running now, I have the garage cleared, so terry can go indoors into the dry and I can get on with welding. When I get a working welder, the one I bought was faulty , but that is another story.

More progress, and bad new. The footwell was wet and i have found out why. The bulkhead rotted behind the sound proofing on the passenger side. Lots of pin holes in the wheel arch and missing metal in the bulkhead. Only good news is I have 8 feet of sheet metal and a brand new welder. Not to mention the fact my dad brought one of those supermarket compressors and loads of tools. Which I am going to borrow.

Managed to fix the broken speedo, it had fallen off the dial behind the dash. It looks like somebody snapped off the retaining clip that holds it in place to get through the rubber seals. Fitted new cable, speedo working, and found that I couldn't select gears on the test drive. Oh no, another expensive problem. Turns out there was no fluid in the clutch, put a load in, gear box working fine. My guess is there must leak somewhere. Which I will find once I have clean all the oild off the engine from the lose oil filter. Good news is the engine is strong and I found that one of the previous owners had paid for hardened valve seats in the service history.

The car is still on the drive, will get it in the garage when all the damn snow goes. Meantime I have been working on the GPR panels. Driver side is OK, and a few molding errors around the edge, and few more problems with the front panel. The bad one is the near side, I thought it was a dent, but not possible with fibre glass? There is a dent depression in the lower raised section that sits by the A-post. So I have got out the gpr filler I bought to fix the boot on the Xantia and have been building it up. Give a few more weeks, I might have the panel in decent shape.