9th October 2016, Ludlow Classic Tour

My old rally navigator has been keen to get a run out with in the TR7 and suggested the Ludlow Classic Tour. This is of the classic tour series that runs all over the country like the Corinium Run earlier in the year but covers the lovely scenery all around Ludlow, much of which we had used back in our road-rallying days many years ago. It was also sponsored by Ludlow Brewing so that seemed like a good omen.

Ludlow is not much more than an hour drive from home so we didn't need overnight accommodation, and as we needed to be there for 8:30am signing on we left home at 6:00am in full darkness. It was a very cold clear morning so we drove up under twinkling stars with the top down and it felt fantastic.  My previous work to improve the lighting with halogen headlights and driving lamps proved to be a great success and with no traffic we really enjoyed the journey.

The route took us over Clee Hill, the Long Mynd and the Stiperstones with beautiful views and some quite tricky lanes. Apparently we had used many of those same lanes on road rallies back in the 1970's but they seemed a lot different on a nice Sunday in daylight.

Typical scenery.    (Photo by Chris Huish)

 There were also some very nice stops along the way with catering laid on by the organisers like the morning halt at Downton Hall with and superb home made cakes served by the staff.

Back at the finish in Ludlow they laid on a meal for us and we were presented with our finishers award - two bottles of special Ludlow Brewing beer. Nice end to a great day out.

4th September 2016, Tetbury Car Show

Tetbury Classic Car Show has grown quickly since it started only a couple of years ago and this year it was bigger than ever. Looking at the organisers information and just looking round the site we reckoned there must have been over 400 cars on show.  What fascinates me is where do they all come from and then disappear back to in between shows? They must all be hiding in garages all over the area.

Anyway, back to the show.  We went as part of the Glavon TR Register group and we had a really good turn out of our cars. In addition quite a few other independent TRs turned up and the organisers directed them to park with us as well so it produced a really impressive double row of  more than 20 TRs of various types.

Glavon TR Register stand

My TR7 in the line up

There were lots of great looking cars to see but not all were what they appeared to be, see the example below.

Looks great doesn't it?

But look closer, telescopic dampers and vented disc brakes!

Now this is more like it, a real car with cable brakes and friction dampers.

There was also other exhibits like this Dursley Pedersen bicycle.

And one of my all time favourite cars, a lovely Alfa Spider

July/August 2016. MOT, shows and tinkering.

I was well pleased with myself after the heater job last month until I discovered that the top steering column clamp bolt had damaged some wiring again. My own fault as I should have remembered and been more careful placing the wiring when the dash all went back in.  My solution (after repairing the wiring) was to add a shield around the column to prevent it happening again. Its just a cut down hand cleaner bottle but it stops any chance of wires and bolt tangling up again.

Shield added over column clamp bolt prevents wiring damage.

Sunday 10th July: we took the TR7 down to the Forest of Dean for my old 143 Motor Club summer barbeque and discovered a problem.  When you buy a pay and display car park ticket, where do you leave it on an open top car?  Think I will have to fix it on the screen next time with a piece of tape. Very nice afternoon out though.

Sunday 17th July:  Cotswold Classic Car Club have a little annual show at their HQ on the cricket ground by the Frogmill Inn on the A40 near Andoversford.  It was a lovely day and a good selection of interesting cars turned up.  Its a free entry, turn up and leave when you like show and the organisers had laid on some excellent home made cakes to help raising money for charity. Fellow TRDC member Guy Brinton also came along in his very nice original Pharoh Gold TR7.

Good selection of cars

This lovely Vauxhall won best in show.

Guy Brinton's original TR7

Bonnet open to display the Sprint engine.

Saturday 6th August:  Gloucestershire Vintage & Country Extravaganza. This is a huge three day show based on South Cerney Airfield near Cirencester that our TR Register group attend every year. Because of the size it is a much more organised event with designated display areas and a main arena. The programme is 68 pages thick with almost no adverts so that gives you some idea.  There were 70 different steam powered vehicles (traction engines, road rollers etc), 17 ex-emergency vehicles (fire engines, ambulances), 55 old buses and coaches, about 500 classic/vintage cars,  250 motorcycles, almost 250 old commercial vehicles, 50 light industrial trucks, 100 military vehicles and about 200 old tractors. Not to mention all the old fairground rides and trade stands.  Like I said its a big show.  We spent most of the day wandering about and only saw a fraction of it.  Excellent.

Our Glavon Group, TR Register stand

Some of the engines are quite big.

Some are quite small.

Traction engine powered sawbench working hard.

Beautiful showman's engine providing power

Fairground rides powered by the traction engines.

Sunday 14th August:  Our Glavon group joined up with the Gloucester TSSC for the Severn & Wye Bridges Run. About 20 cars took part on this nice little day out took us on a tour over many of the bridges across the rivers Severn and Wye in our area from Tewkesbury in the north down to the original Severn Bridge in the south.  I think we crossed the Severn about nine times and the Wye at least twice but I did lose count. Morning coffee stop was at the old Tintern Railway Station which does sell excellent cakes.

Some of the Severn & Wye runners

Wednesday 17th August:  I heard about a little evening gathering at the Sharpness Dockers Club. This is open to most older/interesting vehicles where you just turn up and park for a couple of hours to mingle with enthusiasts. Quite a few trucks and buses and about 50 classic cars. It was a jolly nice evening.

Quite few folks turned up at Sharpness Dockers Club.

A good variety of cars at Sharpness.

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On the Severn & Wye Run another driver who had been following us mentioned that my brake lights didn't show up very well in bright sunlight.  This confirmed what I had suspected since I fitted some LED bulbs. They appear to be good but many of the LED bulbs you see for sale are just not bright enough.  A bit of searching around and I found some much better ones, not cheap at £17.99 pair but well worth the money if it prevents an accident!

These LED stop/tail bulbs are excellent.

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Sunday 21st August: Tewkesbury Classic Vehicle Festival 

The weather stayed kind so we popped up to Tewkesbury for the Classic Vehicle Festival organised by the Rotary Club to raise money for the Air Ambulance - a worthy cause. This is another show held on a school playing field and was very well attended. The organisers reckoned 550-600 cars were on display and very large numbers of visitors attended as well.  The Air Ambulance itself also managed to drop in for a visit after an earlier call out.

Lots of kids got to sit in the helicopter

Us arriving at the show

Nice Morgan three wheeler

Beautiful MG SA saloon

Rare Lea Francis

Lovely Austin A40 convertible

3rd July 2016 - Devils Bridge Run

The car got a good test a few days after fitting the new heater matrix on a club run up to Devils Bridge in mid-Wales. This had been organised by the Wyedean group of the TR Register and they invited the Glavon group which I belong to come along as well.

Several of us Glavon members met up at the old Severn Bridge services and drove up through the lovely Wye valley on a beautiful Sunday morning with hardly any traffic. We joined up with everyone else just outside Hereford and headed up to a refreshment stop at Crossgates near Llandrindod Wells. We were rather surprised as we arrived to find the large car park virtually full of motorbikes. There must have been well over 100 bikes but luckily there was some parking space in front of some business units at the top of the car park so we lined all our TR's up there.

Lined up at Crossgates Cafe.

 Everyone was in good spirits and luckily the bikers didn't seem to mind us car drivers in their midst. It appeared to be some kind of charity event with quite a lot of them wearing the Blood Transfusion Service tabards. They also seemed to mostly as old as us!  The cafe staff were working at full speed so we didn't have to wait too long to get served.

The drive from Crossgates to Devils Bridge took us up past the Elan Valley and over the mountain road which is a super drive with great views.

Heading up the Elan Valley

We had some local company as well.

I have driven through Devils Bridge many times on rallies over the years but there was never time to stop and explore.  Turns out it is actually three bridges, each built on top of the other. The legend tells how the first one was built by the Devil himself but I suspect that is unlikely. It is well worth a visit and you can pay £1 to go down into the gorge below the bridges.

Three bridges at Devils Bridge.

Not many of these left.

We got a cuppa and an ice cream from the Woodlands Cafe and then our return route took us south to Llandovery for another stop, this time at the Castle Car Park. This is another place I have been to so many times on rallies because it was very often used as a service area. We parked in front of the sculpture of  Llewelyn ap Gruffydd, the first Prince of Wales.

Llewelyn ap Gruffydd sculpture at Landovery

 Many of us sat outside the Castle Hotel for one of their excellent cream teas before we all split up for our various journeys home.  The first few miles along the A40 towards Brecon are another lovely piece of driving road, fast sweeping bends and lovely scenery so I was really able to have some more fun.

Arriving home we had clocked up 276 fun miles, it had been an excellent day out with good company and great cars. 

20th June 2016 - Heater matrix leak

On our return from the Bullet Run I noticed a few drips of something on the passenger side rubber mat and a finger /sniff test proved it to be coolant. So it could only come from the heater which meant the whole dash would have to come out. Bugger!

Water on the carpet means a heater leak!

Removing the dash assembly and heater from a TR7 is not too difficult but it is just fiddly. There are lots of fixings in places you might not expect but the factory workshop manual took me through it step by step with numbered pictures of where all those hidden screws are located. It also gives you the confidence you haven't forgotten something and without it the job would certainly have taken much longer.  I also took lots of pictures along the way to help me remember where all the wires etc were positioned.

Dash and heater unit removed.

With the heater unit out it was clear to see that it had been leaking from the matrix seals.   These are well known to cause trouble in TR7's, they were fine when it was new but after 40 years its not surprising that they can fail. The problem is that they are one of the few TR7 parts that are no longer available. New old stock ones do appear for sale occasionally at inflated prices but they are also 30/40 years old so I would not trust them anyway. The other issue is the metal pipes that go from the matrix to the engine compartment also go rusty and cause problems. There is an expensive modern stainless steel option to fix this as well and luckily my car already had the stainless pipes so a previous owner had obviously been there before me.

The infamous heater matrix seals.

 I ordered a replacement modified heater matrix from Steve Wilcox at S&S Preparations which has normal outlets and does away with the seals and comes complete with hoses, jubilee clips and even the self adhesive foam to go round the outside.

S&S Preparations heater matrix kit.

The only problem was that I had to shorten my nice shiny stainless pipes to go with the new matrix and hoses which felt a bit like sacrilege. They are also expensive so I didn't want to get it wrong and have to buy some more.

Stainless heater pipes had to be shortened.

 The heater unit itself is mostly held together with lots of pop rivets which have to be drilled out. Again the workshop manual was very helpful with step-by-step instructions to follow because its quite a complicated item with lots of levers and flaps to disconnect. Once it was all apart I also took the chance to renew all of the rubber foam seals on the various flaps, most of which had long since disintegrated.

Old foam rubber debris inside the heater.

 Re-assembly was another case of following the steps in the manual and lots of pop rivets to do.  I had plenty of rivets in stock but they turned out to be mostly too long so I had to buy some more short ones, 3.2mm by 6mm long.   Best deal I could find at short notice was a box for £4.99 - but it had 1000 rivets!  I must have enough left over to fix all the TR7 heaters in the UK.

Before and after matrix replacement

These pictures show the stages in replacing the matrix, 1 original, 2 those troublesome seals, 3 new matrix fitted, 4 completed job.

Following advice from Steve Wilcox I connected up the heater pipes before fitting the dash and ran the engine up to temperature so I could check for leaks. Fingers crossed and it was all good to go. 

Putting it all back was just a reversal of taking it all apart, but I also took the opportunity to fit some wire mesh over the main air intake to prevent that experience of dead leaves etc being drawn into the heater and shot out of the air vents into your face.  I also tidied up some of the wiring harness which appeared to have been left to just float about.

Wire mesh on main air intake.

So after all that work it looked like it did before, but without the wet spots on the mat. I also had a heater that all the flaps worked properly and sent hot or cold air where you asked it to.

Job finished.

17th June 2016, Bullet Run

The TRDC decided it would be a good idea to mark the 40th anniversary of the TR7 launch in the UK and also the recent death of Tony Lee who was the Triumph Chief Development Engineer.  The result was the Bullet Run which followed the old factory test route up to Bwlch-y-Groes in North Wales.  Bullet was the factory code name for the TR7 when it was still in the design and testing stage.

Day 1.  About 40 TR7/8's of various types came, with some being driven by members of Tony Lee's family who had been invited to take part.  Some of us started from the base hotel near Stratford-on-Avon with others joining us at a rest stop in Oswestry. From here the roads became much more interesting as we drove up to the next stop at Lake Vyrnwy.

Some of the cars at the hotel start.

Our lunch halt location, Lake Vyrnwy dam.

Leaving Lake Vyrnwy the route follows a narrow mountain road up to Bwlch-y-Groes which is the highest mountain pass in North Wales. During the 1960's and 1970's this road was used regularly by several car makers to test their new vehicles. The modern road is all single track tarmac but back in those days much of it was still a gravel surface.

TR7 traffic jam on the road to Bwlch-y-Groes

Photo opportunity.

Nearing the top of the pass.

Having stopped to admire the views and take a couple of pictures we arrived at the summit car park to find it full of TR7's. Many of the first wave were just moving off as we got there but it was soon full again. Lots more pictures followed before we set off down the other side to Bala. As you can see the weather was perfect for everyone to enjoy the great views.

TR7's only allowed!

 From Bala many crews decided to take the quickest way back to the hotel via the motorways but we chose to take a much nicer cross country route.  This took us across the B4391 to Llangynog which is a superb road to drive. It is a fast sweeping mountain road with no traffic so I was able to push the car quite hard and it handled perfectly.  Exactly the kind of road the TR7 was built for.  The fast corners and sudden changes of direction suited it perfectly with no dramas at all. Great fun.

Back at the hotel they had prepared an excellent buffet for us followed by a talk from Gordon Birtwistle who was the Triumph High Speed Development driver and has an endless supply of amusing stories from those days. Very interesting chap.

Day 2.  The organisers had arranged for us to visit the Midlands Air Museum at Coventry Airport where we were able to park the cars amongst some of their 70 or so historical aircraft.  They have all sorts of planes from a Fairey Gannet to a Vulcan  and even a more modern Russian attack helicopter.  We especially liked to be able to climb up into the Vulcan bomber cockpit to see where a crew of five worked to fly with our nuclear deterrent. We were also able to sit in a Gloster Meteor and an Armstrong Whitworth Argosy cockpit.

Another photo opportunity.

My partner Jo in the Vulcan cockpit

Driving home after lunch we came across lots of old motor cycles on their own tour and talked to some guys in a 1914 AC Sociable which had stalled. Never seen one of those before.

1914 AC Sociable

 We arrived home having done almost 500 miles in the TR7 which had behaved itself perfectly.