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I vaguely recall my old TR7 having very similar problems but I never sorted it so can't help you. Sorry.

Lotus Europa would make sense for Cosmic wheels - the ones I have were original fitment on some Lotus models of the time.

No, they're more similar to the TR7 factory alloys, but they aren't them either. However, they may be Cosmics (which was my immediate first thought - possibly as I have Cosmic Mk3s on my GT6 - but Google only showed very different styles of Cosmic) according to Quiller Triumph

If the valve was full of crud there's a decent chance the heater matrix is also full of crud. They're pretty inaccessible once the car's assembled but you may be able to flush it out through the pipework in the engine bay.

If it's very advanced it can cause the engine to kick back and refuse to start. My Spitfire used to do that when the mechanical advance stuck on. It sounds like a flat battery / very slow crank. I wouldn't expect 14 degrees to be that bad but it will change the response somewhat.

Those limits sound right to me, too, but they may be the original ones and they may have been tightened? Or the 3.5 extended back to 1982, prior to which the car doesn't need an MOT.

I'm with johny on this. The nylon pipe used on later big saloons is all very well if the routing is designed for it, but for a Herald you need pipe that can be bent to shape. Copper is easy to do (although I do use a proper pipe bender for the more dramatic bends).

Round here I'd recommend D S Thompsett on Fen Road, Chesterton, Cambridge.

Does it always do this after a week in the garage? Is it always the same cylinder? Something like johny's idea seems likely but I'd expect it either to move around the cylinders or only happen when it happened to stop with that valve open. Definitely try clive's idea of swapping the plugs - it may well be that the one in number 4 is a bit damp-sensitive and needs to be warmed up before it works.

That O-ring isn't a moving seal so it's probably OK to leave it. You only need to touch it if you split the caliper, which isn't necessary for seal replacement (or even for a fairly extensive refurb).

It does but I don't always trust the description. I've had things described (on Amazon) as "stainless steel" which turned out to be chromed aluminiun.

It does kinda look like a plastic tool painted up to look like proper cast iron.

I've never seen that on a Herald or Vitesse. They must have dropped the feature quite early on, probably as a cost saving, at which point they probably also deleted the hardboard panel from saloons as a further cost saving.

The tolerance band is pretty wide. I can't say I've ever had one fail on "too low", despite frequently thinking my main beams were dipped. I had one failed (once, many years ago) for aim too high, but that was a Vitesse inner and it was illuminating the tree tops. Find a nice level parking area with a wall. Park up about four car lengths from the wall, facing it. On dip, you should just be lighting up the bottom of the wall. On main, the centre of your beam should be at headlight height.

The 100V above earth (approximately) comes about with "double insulated" electrical equipment that has a two-pin or two-wire mains cable. Because this equipment has no connection to earth, and nearly always has an isolating transformer in it (which, in modern stuff like the CTEK, is probably a high frequency SMPS unit), the low voltage side floats, as Clive says. But, there is still a shared PCB between the mains input and the low voltage stuff, and PCB substrate is not a completely perfect insulator. The result is that, in the absence of any reference connection, it all floats towards the mid-point between the two mains wires. That mid-point is 120VAC, since the neutral wire is earthed at some point near your incoming supply.

I have a SIP 50L twin cylinder. It's approaching 30 years old and has been dropped on its side in the past. One of the cylinder heads got cracked and had to be repaired (it's an obsolete model so no spares availability). It still works fine, even if it's a bit loud.

I'm not familiar with the 1200 but on Vitesses and Spitfires the headlights have a black wire that goes to the bundle of bullet connectors in the nose cone, which connect to a black wire in the loom. The most common fault here is that one of those black wires isn't making proper contact in the bullet connector.

The column switch should be supplied through the dash one, otherwise the headlights will come on without the side lights when the dash switch is off. The wiring diagram in the official WSM shows this as a "NR" (brown with red trace) wire. For the 1200, it shows a red wire spliced off this mid-way, to feed the side lights. The brown/blue wire to the master light switch is the main power - direct from battery via the dynamo control box. The output of the master light switch should be brown/red. The stalk certainly should not have a brown/blue connection. If the wiring sounded anything like correct, I'd say that points to a grounding problem on the headlights. However, with all the wiring colours being wrong, the possibility that it's all just connected up bass-ackwards can't be ignored.

It's not the "Triumph way", it's the 1970s way. Nearly all cars with OD in the '70s adopted that same Lucas switch in the same gearknob. The "Triumph way" was a properly proportioned column stalk that you can operate with both hands on the wheel.

You said it works on the bench but did you try all combinations? In particular, try powering the tail light pin while grounding the brake light one, as that's what it should be seeing in the condition where it doesn't work on the car.

It's actually quite hard to see the difference made to a 5W bulb by the presence of two 21W bulbs in series. The 21W filaments don't get enough current to make them hot, so their resistance stays really low. So I think your observed behaviour is exactly as expected. However, this does leave a question over: My best guess for this is that the LED bulb you have is simply the wrong type. If you fit a "single filament" bulb in a stop/tail fitting, you normally get the front side lights coming on with the brakes, as well as the other stop/tail light being the same brightness as either stop or tail. Were you doing this test with the engine running? I wasted many hours chasing down a problem with my Vitesse's front side lights not working with the headlights on (but fine with them off) until I realised the battery was a bit low on charge and the LED bulbs just don't work below 9V.

Indeed. I was actually rather confused as to where Peter found an OD-type gearstick without the hole. Completely agree. Especially on a round-tail Spitfire. I tolerate my GT6's gearknob one only because it's what the factory fitted.

No, it's a Herald. Why do you say that? A fuse will blow if a LOT of current flows. Too thin a wire gauge will not increase current! It may reduce it, if the wire gets hot.

Like Josef, I refurbished my Mk3 one (which I believe is the same as the Mk2, while the Mk1 is like a Herald) although I went a bit more aggressive with a bit of blasting to clean off the years of crud, followed by black paint (sprayed) and finally cutting back the highlights to polish them. There's a picture on my old LiveJournal

Brake lights, indicators and reverse lights are all powered from the "green" circuit (from ignition switch via the top? fuse) Sidelights and dashboard lights are fed off the master light switch through the middle fuse. Note that the fuse is after the switch, so will only be live when turned on. It's also the only thing connected to that terminal of the switch, so could be a loose wire there or a faulty switch.