Robert 352 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 24, 2021 10:51 pmCan you make me a floor which is a couple of inches deeper please? So I can lower the Sprint sized spare.
Carledo wrote: ↑Sun Jan 24, 2021 11:10 pmYou only need
5/8" for the floor board to fit flat!
Carledo wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 9:47 pmIs it REALLY that much of a hardship that the boot board doesn't sit down properly? ALL Sprints suffer this problem (if it IS one) and have from the factory, Triumph were much too tight to build a Sprint specific spare wheel well and nobody saw fit to complain at the time! It's just one (and a very minor one) of the quirks the Sprint inherited from using a body that was designed for a much smaller engine than it ended up with.
An anorak would also say that altering the boot floor is (technically) messing with the monocoque structure of the car and thus rendering one liable to a BIVA and all that entails, loss of identity, Q plate, endless MOTs and VED, blah blah. In reality, I doubt anyone would notice or care, but them's the rules!
The Carledo doesn't normally carry a spare wheel, so the boot board (now marine ply) covers the battery and fuel pump/filter and sits flush. If I think i'm likely to need a spare I just throw one in on top!
For the Dolomega I've mounted the battery above the diff and the pump etc underneath the boot floor so it has a 14" MGF steel spare with a 185/60/14 tyre fitted to match what i'm using on my 14" fake minilites (normally 185/65/14 on the MG which is close on rolling radius to the 185/55/15 and 205/50/15s that the MGF uses on it's normal roadgoing alloys) This wheel still sits the board a tad high but it's barely noticeable. It sits on top of the clips at the front of the well rather than in them.
Except when I travelled by public transport or used the 1973 VW “1600” Type 2 Westfalia Continental motor-caravan for weekend outings and touring holidays, the 1974 Triumph Toledo 1300 “HL Special” has always been my short, medium & long distance transport within Great Britain since 1975; cruising contentedly at up to 55~60 mph (i.e. 88~96 km/h | close to New Zealand’s maximum speed limit of 100 km/h).
https://www.newzealand.com/in/driving-in-new-zealand/
https://www.drivingtests.co.nz/resource ... w-zealand/
https://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/str ... d-policing
https://www.police.govt.nz/faq/how-do-i ... rit-points
https://www.nzta.govt.nz/driver-licence ... it-points/
I would not contemplate driving it without carrying a spare wheel & tyre; especially these days when it would be difficult to obtain one at short notice far from home, for a 40+ year old classic car! These days, it is probably wise to have more than a single spare wheel in reserve for an old classic car, which is why I have a total of
SEVEN matching MG 2000 Maestro 5½ x 15 inch alloy wheels!
Given that I have often travelled with a full boot, it is essential that I retain a dedicated spare-wheel well and not encroach on the existing luggage capacity! My battery is staying in the engine compartment where it is supposed to be; in neither the boot or passenger compartment!
Having a split-level load platform in the boot has been rather inconvenient on occasions in the past, especially when transporting certain items like delicate Brüel & Kjaer sound-test equipment, masonry building blocks, paving slabs or a Volkswagen air-cooled engine. It also prevents one from properly anchoring the black-fabric load-platform cover and making it susceptible to localised wear at the boundary between the two levels.
Only soft conformable items, would “comfortably” straddle the split-level boundary. Rigid items straddling the split-level boundary were less stable in transit, owing to significantly reduced contact area with the underlying load-platform surface and the tendency to rock from side to side!
Compared to a Dolomite with a high rear sill, it’s relatively easy to load the boot of a Toledo, which completely lacks any boot-sill, and enables one to simply slide in heavy, awkwardly shaped items; one of the reasons why my family chose a Toledo in preference to a Dolomite. It’s amazing how low the rear suspension sits when transporting just ten or twelve, two-feet-square concrete paving slabs, despite carrying no passengers! This is one of the reasons why a trailer would be useful!
Failure to design the Dolomite boot floor so that it would not properly accommodate the wider 5½ x 13 inch GKN Dolomite Sprint alloy wheels & 175/70 SR13 tyres, as well as the standard 4½ x 13 inch Dolomite steel wheels & 155 SR13 tyres, seems like a significant oversight to me. To compensate, they could have increased the capacity of the fuel tank, so that the top of the tank was level with the top of the spare wheel.
Whether it would be practical and structurally safe to lower the Toledo boot floor remains to be seen!?! Maybe I could have the Toledo fuel tank banded instead, to equalise the load-platform levels, whilst increasing the fuel-capacity & range at the same time! An extra
5/8 inch (i.e. 15•9 mm) fuel-tank depth would result in quite a significant increase in volume, of maybe as much as 5½ litres; increasing the capacity from circa 48 litres to 53½ litres!
At circa 39+ mpg, the existing range won’t be too bad, but a little extra range can be useful sometimes when travelling in remote areas; especially on a Sunday when rural petrol stations are more likely to be closed.