General TR What Did You Do to Your Triumph Today?

[TexasKnucklehead]

Saturday was the clubs annual election of officers at joint meetings on Lake Livingston. I filled the TR3 with gas en route to pick up my wife after her yoga class. We made it on time to the later of the meetings and managed a few challenge pictures on the way back to get her car. We dropped her car off at the house and drove the TR3 to a friends another hour and a half into "the country" in the other direction. We spent the night and headed home in the morning with skies that looked like rain was certain. After spots of water appeared on the bugged up windshield, my wife double checked the weather with her i-phone. It was not to rain until Monday, so we figured there must be some mistake -they couldn't put it on the internet if it wasn't true, and we weren't going to stop and put the roof on. A little while later I had to run the wipers. It wasn't long until the bugs were all cleared from the windscreen. I was glad my sun visor was blown off my head on the return trip from the meeting and I was forced to wear a ball cap. The cap keeps my head much drier than the visor. We also noticed that those great looking wind visors I installed on the side of the windshield don't do much for wind, but they do a great job of keeping the rain out. The weather cooperated perfectly because every time we had to stop at a signal light in the little towns, the rain stopped with us. At 75mph, driving on 2 lane roads, the rain-x makes the wiper speed seem unimportant, and the rain just blows on by. We were probably the only people that were smiling at laughing down the road. We made it back into the garage, still as dry as when we left, and drove almost 300 miles without running out of gas (or breaking down).

In a nut shell, we went for a relatively uneventful drive in the TR3.

 

[PatGalvin]

Jer, you are my hero. A casual 300 mile drive in your TR3. That is outstanding. Please post some photos!

pat

 

[TexasKnucklehead]

Ok, Pat, since you asked...

Here's the signs I got pictures on Saturday. The funny thing about the Moss challenge, is it's more of a memory and organizational challenge than you might think. I know I have few pictures of towns or counties. But, I already had some for M and C, and had a county for W. I like these towns/counties better, but I'm only 1 point ahead of where I was, before talking a dozen or so pictures and watching closely for good vantage points where photography is possible (and driving 300 miles). We opted to not stop for pictures in the rain on Sunday, hoping we'd make it home dry -and we know we will be in that area again soon.

These roads have 75mph speed limits. Texas has some small towns. Maynard, Tx grew from 25 people in 1990, to 200 people in 2000. Pumpkin had a population of 150 in 2000. Coldspring is so large that most Houstonians know it's close to Lake Livingston.

 

[justin_mercier]

finished gutting the interior of the wedge. In removing some of the cracked and broken asphalt sound deadening under the driver side, i found the edge of the sound deadening in there, because of jack damage (which i hammered out) was trapping water and there's a 1/4 inch wide 4 inch long hole in the floor pan, bleah ! Question now is do I weld a repair (i'm a terrible sheet metal welder) or do I glass it in or whatnot. Already sprayed the whole area down with phosphoric acid (Purple Stuff rust converter) but I'll have to figure out my plan forward before i put the seats and interior back in =)

Got my hood liner from Classic 9 leather in the mail today, so need to take the hood off to install it best.

 

[DNK]

Justin
PICS

 

[justin_mercier]

Justin
PICS

Sorry ! =D

Here's some quick pictures.

As you can see, there was a little bit of rust perforation around the area, plus the one big line I mentioned where the front edge of the stock sound-deadening was, but in general its still very solid down there, with the original paint still intact even.

I haven't finished scraping off all the glue and gunk from the driver side just yet, though the passenger side is done, and I just need to put down the dynamat everywhere the asphalt original deadener isn't.

At the B pillar area, I'm going to just seal up and cover over with the sound deadener the 'vents' that the coup has underneath the black plastic grilles. I can get plenty of air through the sunroof or the front floor vents without holes to the outside of the car right next to my ears =)


EDIT: What you dont see in this pic is that there was extensive jacking damage right where all those little rust holes and whatnot are. Someone at some point put a jack under the floorboard there and lifted the car. I hammered it all back into shape =)

 

[tinman58]

Pat
Loooooking good!!!!! Are you going to be ready for Dixon?

 

[charleyf]

Today we had our annual Funkhana event. We begin with pizza in the park and then do a Funkhana with our LBC's. And then we finish it up with root beer floats for all. Having been the one to put this event on for the last several years, I tried to skip it this year. But the club members enjoy it so much that they insist on doing it again. I have to admit that I enjoy it even if it does take a bit of planning.
Charley

 

[PatGalvin]

Hey Dan
No, I'm not going to finish in time. I had a set back. Installed some less expensive Eastwood sound deadener (dynamat hushmat type stuff) on floor and tunnel and it is like runny tar. I'm going to have to scrape and solvent wash the entire floor and replace with new better stuff. It is clearly defective. So, that was a couple days set back. I need an interior, steering column, scuttle vent lid, and then just minor sorting out of whatever I didn't do well. So I am very close but probably won't finish till July. Maybe I can park next to you at the Scottish Games in September?

Pat
Loooooking good!!!!! Are you going to be ready for Dixon?

 

[Jerry]

Cleaned up the TR3A to get ready for the Dixon show. Of course found a few more issues with the paint that needed polishing. I find that my polishing skills are ok, but I chicken out in some places, too worried about going through the paint. So maybe it is a 10 step process. Polish, step back for two days, then polish, and so on. See some of you at Dixon. I am going to pack my tools today for setting up the field and show.
jerry

 

[justin_mercier]

Talked with a friend of mine who has done a good bit of body work in the past, asked him , since I suck at sheet metal welding, if he wanted to do the patch for me. He looked at it, hit the metal around it with a pick hammer and said dont bother welding. he said rest of the metal is solid enough that now that I treated it with phosphoric acid, go get some JB weld and cover over the holes, and that I may need to 'back' the bigger one while the JB weld sets, but that the holes are so small and the metal around it good enough that I can make a permanant long lasting fix that wont re-rust (assuming I dont re-dent the floor pan with a jack to trap water again in the first place) without having to cut anything out and weld.

Went out this afternoon and got some JB Weld and did just what he said to do, and it looks like I'll be able to make it so that you'd never even know there was a hole there. Saves me a bit of work, and it's sandable, paintable, and strong as all heck. If I wasnt doing this sound deadening project, I may have never known the hole was there festering away for years and years to come =P

 

[RJS]

After about 6 weeks of planning and parts ordering, today was a big day for the TR4A. Started at 5:30 this morning:
1. Installed new angle drive on the tranny for the speedo cable
2. Installed rebuilt speedometer from Nisonger (with new chrome ring)
3. Installed chrome ring on tachometer
4. Drained and refilled tranny with Sta-Lube 85W-90 GL4 gear lube
5. Replaced slave cylinder. Seals were going bad. BIG bonus is that I discovered old SC had a 7/8" bore. The new SC has a 1" bore (per factory spec) so, I am really excited to try the new, light clutch pedal. I also expect it will no longer operate like an "on-off" switch.
6. Removed hub assembly and differential flange from old splined axle shafts.

Tomorrow, new splined axle shafts go in along with 4 new u-joints. Goal is to get the axles all done and back in by end of the day tomorrow.

Time for a hot shower and cold beverage (or two!)

Bob

 

[poolboy]

Greased all 6 U-joints and the axle splines. Adjusted the brake shoes while I was there.
The front propeller shaft thru this access hole in the tunnel after removing the passenger seat and pulling back the carpet.


The outer axle U-joints were greased when I had the hubs out.

The only unexpected was minor..an upper bump stop needed replacing.
After a cooling dip in the pool...a test drive followed...then back home for an fried oyster po-boy.

 

[Crankshaft]

"Cars & Coffee this morning and a cruise in at "Dog & Suds" tonight. What a day.

 

[Gordon_Dedrick]

Nascar All Star Race is in Charlotte this weekend. I live about 30 minutes from the track so I drove out last nite on the back roads. Even the State Troopers gave me a thumb's up!
Gordon

 

[Foura]

Finally got the piston in the front SU sliding reasonably well. I'm still not sure what caused it to stick after it ran well for 4600km in 3 weeks last year. I replaced the needle and re-centred the jet and cleaned everything with carby cleaner. Contemplating taking it to a guy I met at the TR club meeting last week. He runs a TR3 in historic racing and is getting 180hp out of it. I guess he knows what he is doing....:fat:

 

[justin_mercier]

Installed my bonnet liner from classic9 leather (he's a Porsche guy, but sells liners for british cars too) and finished up most of the dynamat on the interior. Need to finish up the last of it tomororw and glue the floor plugs back in so I can put the carpet and seats back in. It was supposed to be pouring rain this weekend so I didnt hang out in the garage friday night getting it all done, and then it turned out to be pretty gorgeous during the days ! Missed some cruising time because of it =(

 

[Tugboat]

Drove my TR3A to the UBSCC show in Dixon, CA and had a great time with Pat Galvin looking at Jerry's yellow TR3 and talking with Dan (tinman58) about his TR250 along with a bunch of other really neat cars. Beautiful day!

 

[PatGalvin]

Here's Mike, trying to act like he's not totally consumed by the Herald's charm!!

 

[Tugboat]

I knew that picture was going to come back and haunt me.