Josef

Hopefully these give you a bit of positional context.

I know it’s not that close to you Colin, but the closest place I know will give you a good knowledge backed opinion is Southern Triumph Services in Bournemouth. I would at least consider making the journey if I were you. Another option: How close are you to your local area meet? There hopefully will be a local member who can have a look and at least give you an easy/medium/hard level opinion of the work that might be needed. Only so far we can go with photos. I’d happily take a look in person if I wasn’t about 6hrs away! Oh and Pete’s photo is the drivers side front a post as if you were looking up through the chassis. The rightmost bracket in the photo bolts to where the front outrigger and side rail join.

I’m sorry to hear the work has not turned out as you expected Colin, I know it’s frustrating (been there, done that, decided to do it myself in future!) To start with, you can’t buy panels / repair sections for the rotten areas you show in your video. Difficult to say without poking at the car, but even if you could get a replacement panel, looks like this garage’s suggestion of ripping out the whole floor is overkill… Also, looks like they’ve welded your sill tabs to the chassis!? Not pointing at a lot of familiarity with the Herald range. What exactly do you mean by front body mounts? The two per side under the bulkhead section? They might just be doable with the bulkhead on. If that is the a post area is intact. However if they’re in a state bad enough to need replacing, there’s a high chance the rest of the a post is in trouble too, and that would be hard-to-impossible with the bulkhead on the chassis. I’ve just done this job on my 13/60, it’s been a lot of work even with the bulkhead off. While I completely understand that a fixed price would be desirable as a customer, having now done a reasonable amount of rust repair myself I can see why a business would not want to offer that. It’s a real time sink, and there’s always more than first impressions suggest. So I’d actually be slightly wary of anyone who thinks they can quote for it rather than estimate.

My photos are of a dash mount switch, so it’ll look pretty much exactly like that! Short answer to the second question is I’m not sure. Some thoughts though. The choke cable boss is smaller than the ignition switch fitting if I remember correctly. I don’t know how the choke cable is routed from the dash to the engine bay on the Vitesse, you may find you’d need to reroute it to cope with the move. You may also find the wiring for the ignition switch doesn’t reach to the lower position.

The reason any key will work is cause the body of the switch is made of some fairly soft casting. The tumblers in the lock wear away at this with the result that the key is less and less necessary to make it turn. Probably made worse by someone putting the boot key in the ignition which will then cause extra wear by turning the barrel with the tumblers protruding somewhat. Anyway, a new barrel most likely will improve things as chances are it’ll be operating on less worn parts of the ignition switch. It’d be worth extracting the barrel and having a look first though in case the inside of the switch looks completely knackered.

I’d give Fitchetts a ring for that sort of thing, they’re the most likely of any of the suppliers to have an odd partial set of pistons kicking around!

I’ve seen somewhere today that GA80001 (engine, not commission, number) was the first Courier van. So that matches your thought on the chassis changeover (I think?) but still, 1962 ish does seem very early.

I’ve been watching the 1300 engines going on eBay recently. You should expect to get a runner for approx £200 if you’re careful. That ‘rebuilt and dry stored’ Spit Mk3 engine is imo way over priced, given how rusty it is it has not been dry stored! I’d expect internal rust too given it looks to have been stored open. Unless it’s known to be running, anything you get second hand you should expect to have to rebuild (as you say, you may get lucky, or you may not!)

I happened across the answer to the question of which width rad was originally fitted to the Herald 1200s this morning. Wide rad up to GA80000, narrow from GA80001 / GB1.

The 13lb cap may be right for the very last 1200s, it was switched late 1969 for the 1300 engined cars. I have a 69 built Spitfire and 69 built Herald 13/60, the Herald is slightly later and has a 13lb cap, the Spitfire a 7lb. Given a cooling system in good condition I can’t see why you wouldn’t be able to use either pressure though, as they all use the same hoses etc.

Before playing with the mixture again, have a drive and try pulling the choke a little and seeing if the problem improves. This’ll give you an idea if a richer mix does make the issue better (after all, a richer mix is what the choke achieves!) and inform you if it’s worth adjusting the carbs again. Given you now need full choke to start I would suspect it is a little lean. The Triumphs I have driven have only needed full full choke when it’s really cold out. But as I think I said before, they’re all different after 50+ years alive!

Pretty sure I removed what I thought was an over size bolt from this position when swapping my Herald or Spitfire box. So will have to check and replace. I know the set of new bolts I had from Paddocks were all 5/16”... Do we have a reference for this bolt being larger? I can’t find any mention in the parts catalogue or the factory WSM. Not in doubt, just hoping that if it’s important then Triumph would’ve written it down somewhere!

The Herald / Vitesse latches do wear, and need adjustment to work correctly. I also suffered on my 13/60 with the anti burst catch screws continuously coming loose. This meant the catch would move and make the door hard to close!

Hesitation when you hit the accelerator hard can also be the car running too lean, so it’s also possible you went too far the other way!

Ethanol in fuel eats the original brass needles in the float chambers too which can lead to leaks, you can get viton ones now from Burlen and others.

No, but I’d be interested in seeing photos of what you’ve done!

Yes, it’s the way the loom is designed when two connections are needed to one wire.

The postage you’re seeing on eBay is likely down to eBay’s global shipping program. So the extortionate costs are eBay charging for handling the shipping outside of the U.K. As a seller you ship to their warehouse at normal postage costs, they charge the buyer on top of that. That said I just had to pay a £28 surcharge to have a Herald sill shipped to me domestically…

Brown/red to the master light switch, brown to fused switched power (probably purple), blue/white and red/white to the matching colour headlamp wires. Johny is right about the flash function. The linked Gt6 mk3 diagram shows what I’d expect but doesn’t agree with the colours. See this Spit mk3 one for a comparison which does match your switch colours https://gitlab.com/jovisg/SpitfireMk3WiringDiagram

I’m not quite sure what you’re asking as the split pin is the thing that prevents rotation of the castle nut? There’s not any rotational force on the castle nut just vibration and expansion/contraction of the bearings to guard against.

On a MkIV / 1500 you can presumably get a wider, or even dipping, mirror as supplied with the latest 1500s and a sun visor set to match if there is interference. I’d guess the same could be made to fit earlier cars if you were so inclined. No that personally I replaced the sun visors on my Mk3 as I didn’t feel they were much use!

I did find a possibility. A was used to differentiate the commission numbers of Speke built cars from Canley ones. 1969 was the year full 1300 Toledos were built at Speke, so maybe they also made a few Herald 1300 engines there? Fully speculative though.

If I was to do this, I’d probably make something that fitted snugly, or fastened, into the ashtray hole on the top of the dash and mount to that. For the actual mirror, I seem to remember big Healeys had dash mounted ones so places focussed on spares supply for those might be an idea.

Some thread necromancy here… Just been looking at my 13/60’s engine number and wondering about the A at the end. GE—-HEA is clearly the original stamping on the block. But the A is missing on both my V5 and heritage certificate! The engine is the original, it’s a home market car supplied to a dealer in Chichester and I got the DVLA history before that became verboten, so know it’s not had a sneaky trip to Australia

The standard thrust washer measures as still in spec which suggests all the fairly excessive wear has all come from this custom part. Too soft a material was used perhaps? I figure I’ll have to find an actual engineering shop to have a word with before doing anything else.