Unkel Kunkel

Regarding testing batteries. Just a suggestion: I bought one of these a few years back for about £15, it was on offer at the time. My reasoning was that if I only ever used once it was cheaper than buying a new battery or alternator if it demonstrated I didn’t need to. Importantly for me, it is very simple to use. I’ve used it a few times since - and loaned it out more times.

If it is one that completely cuts off the connection, no it wouldn’t. There are types where a there is a fused link crossing the isolator - this allows a 12 V current to pass subject to the size of the fuse. They can used as an anti-theft device in the sense that a small current can flow to maintain things like the radio memory, but if someone tries the starter (very high current), the fuse blows. but in the situation you describe, If there is a parasitic drain, then one with a fused link may not help -depending on the size of the current, fuse rating. I’ll risk asking a daft question, on the basis that 1. I have a tendency to and 2. My rather simple view on things is , ‘common causes ’ are common and rare causes are rare, so eliminate the common causes first. So, forgive me but - How good is the battery ? -If you charge the battery up then just leave it alone unconnected to anything, what happens? Does it keep its charge? If there is doubt or wish a more speedy answer, suggest perhaps connect a 12v bulb (s) of fairly high wattage and seeing how quickly it discharges or better still a battery discharge tester

Modern cars can have all manner of systems that can remain active for varying periods of time after everything is apparently switched off, but our old cars, unless they have extras added are fairly straightforward and an old school 12v circuit with a bulb in it - ( as others have already suggested on here ) in series ie between battery neg.( if neg earth) and body should suffice to detect a drain. Another approach ( advocated by Scotty Kilmer on U -tube -not to everyone’s taste but some good advice sometimes!) to both protect your multimeter by avoiding high current throughit and to detect small parasitic drains, is to put a biggish ceramic resistor 1 Ohm 10 watt placed in series with the earth lead and measure the voltage across the resistor. (Multimeters normally have a good wide DC voltage range) I have used this method -when searching for a mysterious parasitic drain on a VW. It should give a very low reading - in mV. Apparently, some Mercs can ‘ normally’ have a reading of around 30 mV. Something like an interior/ dash light on would give a much higher voltage 3 or 6 V perhaps Then a case of disconnecting things. The voltage quoted after charging - as others have noted, does drop after charging and after disconnecting things as the ‘float charge’ which can be as high as 14 or so drop-and if it settle and stay at 12.7 V then that’s fine. Does the battery ( assuming it’s a good ‘un) go flat eventually ?

I have never understood why people did this. Perhaps there was an idea that the engine draws in an unburnt charge of fuel vapour that might ease the next start.Equally it could be argued that it might degrade the oil film on the cylinder bores.. Perhaps it was just something people did - some sort of flamboyant gesture, even the with an occasional back-fire. In contrast, for a modern engine with a turbo it is recommended to the not to rev and switch off, and even let the engine idle briefly after a fast run. The reasoning is that the turbo continues to spin (very fast) for a short while after the engine has stopped after such a ‘ revving ‘.Importantly, the oil pump will have also stopped and with it the supply to the turbos (very hot) bearings.If adopted as a routine then the life of the turbo could be reduced. At the other end of motoring history, some cars had flywheels of considerable mass and it is surprising to see how long they continue to spin over after the ignition is switched off.

Keep going! You are making real progress and you are learning all the time. From personal experience, discovering the extent of rust in these cars can be quite daunting and there will be heart- sink moments which will make you doubt whether you should have even embarked on such a project - but just keep plodding on - you will get there. I was completely zero-experienced in body repair and an entirely self taught MIG welder when I started my restoration of Spitfire - I made all sorts of really major cock-ups, - I had to re-do bits; I had to and walk away from it now and again, but gradually, slowly, things will start to come together, and with experience gained there will come something else which is a very satisfying sense of achievement. This extraordinary forum will help you, as it helped and tutored me - and continues to assist me. ‘K.B.O’ as Churchill said!

There must be lots of ways of doing this. Here is one idea: With very restricted storage space at the time, I stored the bonnet vertically on a wheeled wooden platform shaped to the rear end of the bonnet, cushioned by foam flooring bits and all fixed to a a metal frame work welded up from scrap bolted to the bonnet It allowed the bonnet to be protected whilst stored, and easily wheeled to where it could be tipped flat and worked on,( serving as a jig for welding in new wings and wheel arches ) and then wheeled back to the narrow vertical storage area as work slowly progressed.

Frying bacon (in my experience) is, ‘ fizzle.. pops, pause, pop … pops. fizzles, pause , fizzle pauses fizzle fizzle…’ - which is the sound of trying to weld unsuccessfully, with poorly prepared metal, wrong wire speed /Amperage” Whereas hitting the well-tuned mig setting is a more like a steady, resonant continuous ‘ berzzz’

Wouldn't dream of doing that, John - as I said the deviation is fascinating and i’m no more organised than the trajectory of the sliver sphere in a pin ball machine, it’s just that we’re not helping Attwood 65 with his question.

Fellow highly-esteemed ‘ Triumphants’ May I humbly point out that we seem to have not only drifted a little from the path of the subject , which was a question entitled ‘ How to Mig Weld’, we have now veered off down an unmarked track on another subject. -fascinating as it is.

From a self- taught DIY welder , who still has a lot to learn: The Metal: Clean it’ - bright and shiny is essential. Don’t try and weld through rust,oil, paint under-seal/ waxoyl. ‘Clamp it’ - panels need to be firmly clamped together- -You can’t have too many clamps. ‘Cool it’ - avoid distortion - Don’t be tempted to run a long weld starting from one end otherwise you’ll get a lot of distortion /bucklingDo it in stages as tacks, allowing things to cool- jet of compressed air can be useful. - Clean , check readjust Clamp before each weld. The Mig machine : ‘Tune it ‘ Unlike the power setting and and gas flow which are fairly straightforward to set from info that comes with you machine for whatever gauge you are welding, I found wire speed to be both the most crucial - and also the most difficult setting to achieve as the rotary dial range is not ‘ linear’, least not on my machine. The best way I found to get the optimum wire speed is by sort of ‘ tuning’ - Take a piece of scrap of the required gauge, select a low wire speed and start welding a bead.Keeping your other hand on the wire speed dial knob and as you continue to weld, slowly adjust the wire speed up and down to find the optimum setting which will become obvious by the appearance of the bead - and it will sort of ‘sound right’ too.

Also, If you haven’t already got one, I strongly suggest Auto- darkening welding helmet. They really do make a huge difference.

As well as advice given, I find this DIY mig welding site can also be useful

I recall that getting the swing bolt to line up and go through the tube was a bit fiddly but was helped by using several G clamps to compress spring leaves together and aid the leaves to fit fully into the box. (The new poly spring pad and leaf buttons I fitted may have made the lining -up less easy) Once thats in The lowest, leaf ie separate spring leaf, fits in a recess on top of the diff. and the then tightening the nuts on the dive studs pulls everything in place.

Approaching the problem of a damaged tunnel can begin by simply repairing the original card/ fibre type tunnel with fibreglass resin.If the tunnel isn’t saturated with gear oil the resin soaks in quite well and can produce a very strong repair. Moving on to replacement tunnels, the consensus does seem to favour the ‘plastic’ rather than fibreglass.It seems they seem to fit better and are a bit more ‘bendy’ to take up gaps when fitting. Fitting it in place - don’t waste money on the ‘self- adhesive sealing kit ‘ which seems be very disappointing and rather expensive. Instead , use a thicker gasket material,- a single B&Q rubber, garage closed cell type foam floor tile sold in packs of of six will produce as much gasket for this job as you could ever want and is oil resistant and very compressible. There are lots of ways of securing the tunnel to the floor and bulkhead from large self tappers, roofing bolts and washers etc. I opted for using ‘ floating anchor/ nut plates’, like the sort as used in aviation industry, and bolts.

Rust is not just oxides of iron, there is also a lot of brass in there, - not in the metallurgical sense, more ‘where there’s muck there’s brass’ Big business is rust.

Machine Mart also do a rust remover (which is phosphoric acid) It is sold under their Clarke brand name simply as ‘Rust Remover’ I find it indistinguishable to Jenolite. However, there is a big price difference: - £8.39 for a litre bottle compared with Jenolite @ £34.99 ( or 5L is ~£100) at B&Q

Here is the Screwfix deal. Difficult to compare with ‘conventional’ type tube lights -some about the same some cheaper like £ 8.5O on B&Q - but since they are also marked as ‘ not currently available’ the price was irrelevant. The reviews of the product were very positive. Other factors were that my old lights were now 3 out of 5 u/s and needed change; the ease of fitting and use ;thoughts of ‘future proofing’ , as tubes will perhaps become less readily available and some small reduction in energy costs. Having fitted them , they do a much better job and look quite smart.

My garage, like many thousands of others uses fluorescent lights. 5 x 5ft .Mostly very old and rusty In the space of a few days, tubes failed in 2 and a ‘ballast’ in a newer fitting failed. So, fix the lighting… This is when I learnt that this month, RoHS ( Restriction of Hazardous Substances) Regulations mean that the manufacture of T5 and T8 tubes has ceased, based concerns regarding the hazards of mercury they contain. You can still buy the tubes as stocks last. Although the effect will be gradual, there will be a need to change from fluorescents ‘as we know them’ to such things as LED ‘tubes’ in existing fittings where possible or new LED ‘ battens’ . (There must be millions of these things everywhere- in every office, supermarket, school , hospital etc.Gradually changing all those could be challenging, I imagine) Anyway… I thought this is an opportunity to modernise the garage lighting and ditch the rusting cobweb encrusted old units. - so I changed all mine to LED battens ( I used. x5 ScrewFix Reeves 5ft LED - but there are lots of other options) They are sealed ( they can even be used outdoors), they are remarkably light, they even come pre- wired, making them very easy to fit.They look smart and will be much less of a dust and cobweb magnet. The lights come on instantly; There is a very noticeable increase in light output and quality they are more energy efficient. They are really good.

Until as recently as last month, I would have shared that view, Pete. This changed my mind: I was with a small group of people watching the start up of a very old and rare motorcycle. It had been running briefly earlier, so the exhaust manifold was still a bit hot. A very slight leak from the fuel tap allowed petrol to drip onto the exhaust manifold. What happened next was just so fast - suddenly there were rapidly growing flames lapping the underside of the fuel tank… Fortunately, a large foam fire extinguisher had been placed next to the bike as a routine precaution. This meant it could be used almost immediately, and a brief blast was sufficient to put it out almost in an instant -only a matter of seconds after the first flames had appeared. . If someone had needed to ‘go and find’ an extinguisher,I am sure the outcome would have been very different.As it turned out, though there wasn’t even any visible damage to the paintwork.

Agree, there isn't ‘much’ sliding but what little there is seems to be needed - as it does seem to have a significant effect on handbrake efficiency. Over a few years, I have encountered similarly seized up cylinders ( ie unable to slide in the backplates) on a 100e Prefect and 105e Anglia and also a Spitfire.( They share the same sort of brake system) All had really hopeless handbrakes - which were transformed simply by freeing everything off- which entails dismantling the ‘horseshoe’ clips, lubricating ; dismantling and freeing of the adjuster and lubricating it and then adjusting.

Diag. Borrowed from elsewhere, this pic from W.manual with added comments in red Shows general arrangement - If the wheel cylinders don’t slide, hand brake efficiency is reduced. The back plate wear depression can impede the cylinder sliding. An answer is to mig weld -‘ fill up’ the wear depression -Copper lubricant is a popular choice.

I put polyurethane bushes in as part of restoration a little while ago. Seem fine but can’t assess fully as only been driven a few hundred yards since…

I found this has some really useful details for the Mk1V. Packed with pretty much all the detail there can be about the vehicle. my primitive IT skills may not allow me to attach it, successfully. In which case. Ref : supplement to ‘Motor Trader’ Service Data No.497 17th Dec 1970. 497.pdf497.pdf497.pdf

Digressing a bit…I have also used the widely available type ( as suppled by the club shop) on two very old non Triumph cars (1921 and 1924 ABCs - air cooled flat twins )that I and my fellow volunteers look after. The filters seem to work very well, solving the cars’ fuel problems, that despite repeated cleaning and de-rusting and repairing the 100 year old tanks had caused frequent breakdowns and starting issues. This version of glass filter here have threaded ends for metal pipe unions but otherwise identical. The big black thing is the petrol tank.towards the bulkhead the tank incorporates a separate compartment for engine oil ( that is the other tap) The filters are easily serviced and their appearance doesn’t look too out of place - not too ‘modern’, like a disposable plastic one .. perish the thought…

Have used the glass type on a couple of very ancient non Triumph cars. No problems at all and completely solved some problems which were caused by petrol debris from aged tanks. A little care needed setting them up - to avoid over-tightening the ends as it can scrunch up the black rubber seals which might leak I suppose, - and to ensure the components are assembled in the right sequence for it to filter properly I haven’t worried about breakage given the sort of use these cars receive and careful installation should mean they are not subject to mechanical stress.The old glass bowl AC types were certainly very tough but I suppose they might break if dropped from a height onto concrete. A gadget that combines a fuel pressure regulator and a good paper filter element in a glass bowl which is very easy to change ( and might even act as a sort of fuel reservoir for cars that stand unused for a while )is the Malpassi Filter King. Mounted on the bulkhead should mean it doesn’t get all hot and bothered and get a touch of the vapours or vapour locks.