mpbarrett

drove the herald down the A14 M6 to the Triumpfest yesterday, very heavy rain on the way there and back (and at the hill). Just a very wet sort of day. First time ever I had rain coming in under the front header rail (its a convertible) dripping down onto the steering wheel and gear lever, maybe time for a new seal there.... OT how easy is it to fit a better wind screen wiper motor some thing that would give a faster wiping speed? Any ideas? mike

are the front side lights working? I think the front and rear are feed from the same feed. mike

Pete you might be right there are a lot of speed bumps around Cambridge! Mike

Just seen this for sale on a local FB group. "2004 Nissan X-Trail £650 MOT till April 2019 - perfect for someone that can fix cars as the rear shock has gone through the u...pper mount see pictures. No warning lights and runs fine." So its not just Triumphs that rust but I don't think I seen a case where the rear spring support has broken away due to rust and popped into the boot !! enjoy. Mike

great summary. Really enjoyed the pictures and trip reports, now looking forward to your next trip . Mike

Pete that's very interesting. I have had a similar problem with my new gearbox, difficult to engage third gear once its hot and has been run in fourth for a while. Can you describe where the vent hole should be ? Is it close to the end of the ali housing where the 3 shaft are supported and does it vent to the outside of the gearbox? Will pull the gearbox cover off and have a look around at the weekend. cheers mike

Found a metal one very similar to the one from the USA see https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/16mm-5-8-Heater-Control-Valve-Push-to-Close-Kit-Car-Classic-Car-Taxi-TX1/201955250144?_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIM.MBE%26ao%3D2%26asc%3D52543%26meid%3D5d2acb0adb984f3f9d86c0252a2e85e0%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D12%26mehot%3Dpp%26sd%3D352400202677%26itm%3D201955250144&_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851 Took mine to bits and the rubber diaphragm has split. Have ordered a standard replacement but will look at making something better in the future that I can bolt straight onto the heater matrix. cheers mike

there estimate "Estimated Sale Price £3200 - 3750" seems a bit low! I would expect it to go for much more than that. Mike

watched some of the Goodwood live stream yesterday, faster cars up the hill were 2 electric sports cars... Impressive speed but missed the sound of a full bore V8! mike

thanks for the suggestions. It was the Jeep one that I remembered. for a fiver might buy the Polo one and have a play. cheers mike

My heater valve suddenly started to leak yesterday while I was out in the Herald.... Its a Smith heater and I think the old diaphragm valve, which I think is not serviceable? Before I buy a replacement, I seem to remember reading somewhere about a better quality replacement (It was either on here or one of the better forums...), I think based on a normal ball valve and commonly used on US cars. Any ideas or shall I just get a standard replacement? cheers mike

looks like a great trip, thanks for sharing. You stayed in some nice places, did you pre book them or just found them when you arrived? mike

we have recently sold our old Rover 75 diesel and brought a Golf GTE. This is a hybrid with a range of ~30miles. If we use around town or locally we do so mostly on battery power. I set it up to charge over night but as the weather has been so sunny been charging in day time from our solar panels. Great car nice combination of motive technology and very very quick! Range is optimistic, if you put the A/C on the range drops by 4miles! The technology is amazing, in hybrid mode you cant tell when it is starting and stopping the petrol engine. In GTE mode it uses everything and goes like any Golf GTI. Is it the future? probably but there are problems. We can charge it in our drive but the rest of our road the cars all park in the road, so that's lots of extension cables! And all you are doing is moving the pollution from the car to the power station (and yes there is a real problem whether there is enough capacity in the system to recharge lots of cars..). I cant believe the car will last more than5 years as there is so much technology in it will become impossible to maintain it (electronics become obsolete very quickly). So you can have a fun hybrid car but from an overall environmental lifetime pollution point of view it does not make sense. mike

I do know the calibration of the two dials as I used a pulse generator (and scope). Its fairly linear so just needed a multiplier value for the Megasquirt tacho output. Interested comments about the metal tabs I did wonder what those were for, I guess they shape the magnetic field to ensure the response is linear. for the original scale (0-7000 rpm) tacho the measurements were Frequency RPM 0 0 29 1000 112 3000 188 5000 cheers mike

just one more picture. The rev counter meter movement is very neat, its a moving coil around a magnet. To get the connections to the coil they feed the voltage thru two opposite direction wound hairsprings! There is also an adjustment which I think helps set the zero rev position. Sometime its nice to admire the neatness of 1960's engineering.. mike

that cct looks very similar to the one in my Rev counter but does not have the variable resistor. I have calibrated it by scaling the tacho output from the Megasquirt ECU so didn't have to adjust the circuit components. Got it finished and fitted to the car, better match for the speedo but not perfect as the font is slightly different from the speedo. At the needles match! The high beam 'jewel' is lit by a small blue LED with a connector on the back of the rev counter body. Need some White Lectraset (can you still buy it) to make a label for the indicator. Cheers mike

yes it is voltage sensing and has an IC rather than discrete transistors.

One last thing... Does anyone have a cct diagram for the electronics in the rev counter? I could reverse engineer it, it seems to be a ceramic substrate with resistive elements on it and a selection of capacitors and a 8 pin DIL IC. Plus a large electrolytic capacitor that looks like a late 'fix'. Cheers mike

well that's didn't go so well... The spindles on the electronic rev counter are 0.5 mm dia and the mechanical rev counter about 0.8mm. So had to drill out the old boss and machine up a new boss to fit the needle and glue it to the needle. Drilling a 0.5mm hole in a big lathe was interesting, glad I brought plenty of 0.5mm drills... Pics below. I have drilled the new fixing holes for the dial but am now thinking about adding a tell tale light that I can use for the full beam (on the original Herald instruments this was in the combined fuel and temp dial). I have a couple of old speedos that I can robe for bits. Will play with it tomorrow morning before watching the GrandPrix, cant drive the car as I realised that the insurance ran out on Thursday! Had a reminder in June but we were away and I forgot to renew it..... Mike

got the needle off. the trick was to hold the drive to the shaft (metal disc) and then twist the needle slightly and then it came off very easily. this was on the jaeger so not worried about tis position, will mark the electronic one when I do it (thanks Pete). Might have to drill new holes in the face and use the old screws to block the unused holes. Mike

Thanks Didn't know they were all from Smiths industries! will try a bit more force to get it off! mike

In my Herald I have a Smiths speedo (original) and a Smiths electronic rev counter which I think was from a Spitfire 1500. I also have a mechanical rev counter made by Jaeger. The dial design of the Smiths electronic rev counter does not match the Speedo. What I want to do is to remove the needle and dial from the mechanical Jaeger rev counter and put it onto the Smiths rev counter. I can adjust the calibration in the drive software to the rev counter to match the new dial. I am assuming the shaft diameter are the same on the smiths and Jaeger gauges. I have tried pulling the needle on the Jaeger gauge but it does not want to move. Before applying more force do they come off the shaf and if so is there a trick to getting them off? Pictures below showing Smiths Speedo and Smiths Taco and Jaeger mechanical tacho. cheers mike

Nick fiddled with the maps to improve the tick over. Also realised that I had the wrong calibration for the AFR signal so have fixed that (don't understand how I had got it wrong, thought I had checked it...). I think it needs some fine tuning it once I have got some miles on the new engine, its slightly rich at the moment. It works very well and is so much better than when it was on carbs but its not perfect yet but I am resisting doing too much fiddling at the moment. Also the throttle cable is making the throttle stick so the tickover is either 900 or 1400 rpm! Just need to work out how I had it routed before doing the work on the engine, I hope I took a picture before taking all the injection stuff off. Been out today down the A14 (very hot and busy) to a craft fair at a NT house (about 60 mile round trip), car pulls very well, even being gentle with it seems to have much more power than before and is much smoother with very good pickup from 1500 rpm onwards. For what I want to use the car for I think the PH1 cam was the right choice. Good bores, working piston rings and a decent cam do make a difference..... Temp gauge has gone mad reading almost to the red but the actual engine temp is fine and its not overheating even sitting in the drive ticking over, don't know why it has changed? Fuel gauge is ok so the regulator should be ok. Temperature on the Megasquirt is reading correct but is from a different sensor so maybe the new sensor feeding the gauge has gone mad? The gearbox has been rebuilt with a set of GT6 gears, so much closer gear set than the original herald but does make the first gear a bit high geared. Lovely having working synchromesh again and a very crisp OD. So overall so far really pleased with it, a few things to fix but nothing serious yet! I am thinking about going up to Lincoln for the TR Triumph day tomorrow, but its a bit of a slog up the A1 to get there from Cambridge and today its been almost too hot for a convertible... wonder if you can fit A/C to a Herald Mike

Finally got the car out of the garage and took her out for a run today, did about 30 miles and all good. No leaks, seems to go very well, although I haven't taken her over 3500RPM, and overall very pleased with the engine and gearbox. Its lovely having synchromesh back on 2nd gear! Still double declutching when changing down... She running a bit warm but I guess that because everything is a bit tight. BTW How many miles should I do before re torqueing the head? cheers mike

yes a bit of tappet noise but different from the clattering noise with the old shaft. I am using the Newman PH1 cam, I went for low speed torque rather than revs. I wasn't sure if the gaps numbers were for hot or cold at the moment I have set them cold. I expect they will need adjusting as everything settles down. Out of interest I tried to measure the wear on the old shaft it varies from 1.5 to 2.5 thou but is very uneven wear. I cant measure the bore in the rockers but know they are worn as well. mike