Colin Lindsay

Nope... I do it outdoors well away from anything combustible but it needs careful watching - the centre of the solidified top face that you can see starts to melt and when that happens, the rest is well liquified. I found that hot water took too long and didn't get it to the required fluidity unless you were actually boiling the water it was sitting in. It's lazy and probably highly dangerous but so far I'm still in one piece... Clive - the tin I use is one of the metal tins with the large screw cap; my gun fits straight on and I just top it up from a large 5 litre refill pack. I never found the hand pump setup to work properly (I won one off Practical Classics magazine back in 1993!) but the tall tin and the screw-on gun are perfect. At least, they don't blow up on me...

12HP???? Even the Herald had thirty-odd....

I have one of the pressurised containers that fits onto a Schultz gun, and regularly heat it over a gas stove until the Waxoyl runs like weak tea.... someday I'm going to blow myself up but until then I can get a jet six feet long out of the gun which goes absolutely everywhere on the car that I need it to. It just needs to be kept thin and runny; once it starts to cool it's already solidifying and going to clog.

Good job it happened off the car; if it had taken that much force to insert the u-joint, it would have been seriously stiff and probably died within a few miles once on the road. I use a large g-clamp and if that doesn't do it then something's wrong. I broke a vice once trying to compress something or other; just bought a bigger one (years old, bought second-hand and built like they don't make 'em any more) and now my shoulders give up before the vice does.

I'm so unfamiliar with these that I had to search the Net for photos, but my first suggestion would have been from looking at the layout, as you did, to remove one of the hoses and fill it that way, with the end of the hose held well above the engine. I'm assuming - and feel free to enlighten me on the setup - that you can fill it most of the way by this method, then trickle top-up by letting coolant drip through the thermostat?

It's hard to tell without being there, and I may be completely wrong - just thinking out loud here - but isn't one or more of the valves going to be compressed / open to some extent anyway - I don't know if you have that much adjustment that you can fit the rocker assembly with all valves closed, but I never found it on the GT6 - one or more was always open when I replaced the rocker assembly, even though I had slackened them off as far as they would go. I've never completely reset an engine to all closed and then adjusted from there, but then I did it my way, as the song says, and it's not always the proper method. In the past I've broken a rocker because of an incorrectly seated push rod, but if you tighten up as is, do they all open and close normally as the cam rotates, or is there any resistance? Canley's list two different push rods, the 1600 is 129058 and the 2000 is 151073 but a for differences, I'm not sure if it just means they're thicker rather than any longer.

I've recently sold one of these online and the buyer tells me that every time he connects it up (a 1977 Dolomite 1300 with standard ignition) it registers 7000 rpm and stays there without moving. I've sent him the wiring diagram and he says this is the way he has set it up, and the car has standard ignition but he is soon to change to electronic. As far as I know - and the photos I took of it don't tell me - it's an RVC unit and not an RVI. Anyone have any ideas of what the problem might be?

There's another thread running on Insurance cover without locks, or at least with defective locks - if you don't tell them and they find out, they may not pay up; but if you do tell them, they may require other security on the car.

There are more TR ones about - TR7 versions are close but not exact, and may fit at a pinch.

You may need to replace the runner, or at the very least the rubber channel in it - there are two runners, one on either side of the glass, that it runs up and down in. Not a difficult job once you actually get access... door innerhandles and door cards off, plus the plastic weather curtain if you have one, and you'll be able to see what's amiss. Or, you can just squint down the door from the top with the glass down and see what moves about that shouldn't.

Sometimes you can, but not off the shelf. This is most likely why they don't offer a 'like for like' policy. They'll pay out based on what experts say a car like that is worth, which I suppose is the best they can do. What most companies won't do is pay out for the ancillaries or upgrades unless you have specifically listed them in the policy application, so if you have a state of the art sound system or Formula 1 suspension, they'll only pay out for standard unless you have notified them of the extra equipment or expense. It can be a difficult one with our cars as they can't easily find a standard one for comparison, so it all comes down to a good AIV that covers all of the expensive modifications and add-ons (so you must notify the Club when applying, not when claiming!) and a good company that will pay out when you need them to without quibble. The old 'leather jacket and expensive laptop in the rear seat' dodge is well known by now..

Too many fitters these days are used to bonded screens - stick in place and leave to set. There's nothing difficult about fitting a screen, but use two people, one to press from the outside and one to pull the cords and seat the rubber on the inside. It's the late-model chrome c-trim that causes a lot of bother.

The entire underside of my Herald was coated in underseal (and if you've seen any of my other posts on the stuff you'll know it was over the entire engine and suspension too). My only option, as a lot of it is impossible to remove, is to sandblast the bits I can and recoat the rest in underseal - wheelarches, rear spring and propshaft tunnel etc. where the metal in behind is still good and only the MOT man will ever see it. Hours of scraping, grinding and rubbing with petrol has had a very limited result - see photo. It's handy for a one-coat-and-forget job; plaster it on thickly, coat everything and never look at it again. You certainly won't get it off again without a lot of effort and mess. If it cracks, splits, or misses any seams, water gets in behind it, and you're sunk. That's why people favour the wax treatments, they're softer, apply better, and flow into crevices more easily; but being softer they wear off more easily and require regular recoating. I'll coat mine in wax, even over the underseal, and some places inside the car like the insides of the rear wings. Ian - you'll find they're all inert wax products with some rust treatment added so won't react with each other.

I thought robots built them?

Something like 5.7 million barrels of oil went up in Saudi Arabia a few days ago... so I don't think the heat from one Vitesse will make any overall difference.

Isn't that assisting Global Warming? Keep it in the car and save the planet!

Clive, I'll appreciate that and will take you up on your kind offer... if someone reminds ME....

There's a long thin strip of angled metal that bolts to two of the screws on the spring plate cover and acts as a stiffener for the lower edge of the panel. Easy to make if you haven't got one.

I'm being unfair to Halfords given that my Metric socket set is celebrating 25 years of hard use in my garage, but like Clive I'm down to one screw out of three on the original ratchet. Is there a proper name for this type of screw so that I can order some? It's 18mm long with a threaded section of 7mm. I know it's a countersunk flathead socket screw, but it's also shouldered, so asking in the hope someone has the exact name.

GT6 is 137482; NLA from both. I wonder how it differs from the Spitfire version?

Halfords... don't they sell bicycles and tents? (and for the really mechanically minded - air fresheners) We have some real timewarps over here, and it's a great thing too. Up until a few years back we had a great garage run by a real gentleman called Isaac McKnight, the storeroom of his premises was like going back in time. He was able to sell me Herald parts straight off the shelves. I think I bought his entire stock of Stromberg diaphragms. Sadly after he passed away the place changed hands and I've no idea of where all the stock went but the building was flattened. In Fermanagh the preferred garage was run by a man called Dessie Woods and his wife could quote you sparkplugs and oil filters for almost any Triumph model from memory, and pick them straight off the shelves - he may still be there; certainly the garage still is. Currently we have another good one in Banbridge where one of the counter men is Polish and he's an absolute mine of parts and alternative fitments, but sadly only for cars from about 1990 onwards. If you ever find a good local place like that, do anything you can to keep it open, as you'll miss them when they go.

Same as the MK1 GT6 and mine is far too light, so the pedal is much too sensitive. There's an 'S'-shaped metal sort-of-extension piece between the spring and the chassis which I'm hoping is still there on mine - too lazy to run out and check - but as the originals are unavailable if anyone has a suggestion for a good replacement spring, I'd love to source one.

Ya'll callin me me a LIAR? Draw, mister!

It seems to be the theme on a number of historical websites and is currently being taught in schools - my other half was studying WW2 with the children and told me that it was an exercise to make people feel like they were 'doing their bit'. Although records were shredded soon after the war, the National Archives states: Posters, information leaflets and slogans persuaded and reminded everyone that they had a part to play in fighting the war on the 'Home Front'. 'Saucepans for Spitfires' was one of the most famous campaigns. People were asked to give their aluminium pans so that they could be melted down to make parts for aircraft. In fact the government did not need any more aluminium but it believed the appeal meant people felt that they were doing something to defeat Hitler and helped to keep morale up. Lord Beaverbrook himself claimed we have more than enough aluminium, we need pilots! It's rumoured that a lot of the railings and things donated were dumped in the Thames estuary from barges... some have claimed that low-grade metal from railings etc was used in bomb casings but not aeroplanes. It's nice to think that the metal played more of a part than just a morale booster, but it seems the donations were just never used.

My local Car Parts Shop - High Street thumpitty speaker and air freshener standard - actually had male brake pipe ends this morning and more importantly in M10 long. It was an amazed rather than blank stare; he says it's years since he sold any of those; they also have imperial spanners and sockets if you look hard enough so some tools are still available offline. Amazing!