Tom Hartley
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Posts posted by Tom Hartley
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We have now finished the first pass through the membership to set forum members up with the TSSC Membership icon, based on email address matching. There are a couple of dozen who have kindly entered their membership number which will be allocated shortly when they've been checked off against the club database.
We hope all the club members enjoy their TSSC badges and that the lack of one doesn't damage use of the forum by others too much.
The intention is primarily to keep discussion of the club's events, products and decisions for the members only, who have every right to take the Club to task on things they see as not quite right, but perhaps not to extend this courtesy to non-members, to avoid unintentional (or intentional) abuse of this. There is also an intention to give our members a distinct benefit on the forum from their continued membership.
It is the club's view that we will continue to keep the technical discussions open to all, regardless of club membership or not
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The phones and network are back online at the club HQ, thank goodness.
The CoM will be looking into how to provide some resiliency in the phone and network solution we have from BT.
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Phones are still down
A recent powercut in the area of our HQ blew one of the boards in the BT distribution units in the street that supplies the club
BT Engineers are working on it but are hampered by delivery of the replacement part
Phones and internet access in the club HQ may well be out of action for two more days
Whilst the club has a lack of connectivity it is unlikely to be able to send parts out or progress member matters very quickly
Please bear with us as we wait for BT to fix this
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Fri 10th March 10:45: I've just heard from the club that the phone lines and internet are down at the club, which is hopefully temporary
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This is intended for Area Organisers only
AO's are invited to an online training session on all things club and IT on Zoom, at 8pm On Monday the 20th
AO training on IT - All Area Organisers welcome, Monday 20th at 8pmMeetings TSSC is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.Join Zoom MeetingMeeting ID: 853 3487 4460Passcode: check emails, WhatsApp or Facebook or call Tom on 07795 436149Or dial in+442080806591,,85334874460#,,,,*863209# United Kingdom+442080806592,,85334874460#,,,,*863209# United KingdomDial by your location+44 208 080 6591 United Kingdom+44 208 080 6592 United KingdomMeeting ID: 853 3487 4460Passcode: 863209 -
The telephone lines at Club HQ in Lubenham are down
BT Engineers are working to restore them
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My front springs on my mk2 Vitesse are sagging I think.
I've had the car 35+ years and have replaced the shocks and bushes but not the springs.
Having had her resprayed the occasional graunch when the offside wheel hits the edge of the wheel arch particular grates and it is time to do something about it.
I considered whether to uprate/downrate/mess with the springs and have decided that I love her as she is and Standard Springs are the ones for me.
Having seen horror stories of front spring pairs of different sizes and the wrong strength, I thought I better ask those who know:
Where is a good source to buy standard front springs for a Mk2 Vitesse?
Also, what should the gap be vertically (and horizontally for bonus points) between the wheel and the wheel arch?
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Just to let you know the club's online shop will be offline from 10am for about an hour (so I've added an hour in the warning to noon) on Monday the 13th
This is just for a spot of scheduled maintenance; applying the latest security patches, upgrading bits etc. You can still ring Angie and buy stuff over the phone during this time of course
You should notice that we've been upgrading by adding missing photos, slowly slowly, and we hope to turn to the TD Fitchetts ones too soon.
tom
CoM member with the website portfolio -
I am pleased to report that Turning Circles are now listed on the Courier Technical Index under each model and are available online:
https://www.tssc.org.uk/tssc/courier_index.asp and
https://www.tssc.org.uk/tssc/courier.asp at the bottom
They were there before from links in some of the index results, but it wasn't clear how to find the individual Turning Circles
They are now there explicitly - there are a couple at the top of the page that don't fit under specific car sections and then the car model specific ones are mentioned in each car's section (so Turning Circle 1 is at the top of the Herald section, No2 is at the top of the Spitfire section and so on)
tom
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11 hours ago, PeteH said:
I noticed that a simple search facility of the shop appreared to be missing?
There IS a search facility on the shop site but I think it is off the right hand edge of the screen on most phones. Try the site in landscape (sideways) to see it, then switch back once you press search. It is there on a tablet and laptop I think.
I will ask the shop website guy if this search box can be made more visible
Tom
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Update: area venue page now has a Last Updated on the bottom which we can use to chase AOs who don't get round to updating/confirming details regularly.
Here is Cambridge's for example:
It'll say 'never' for most as this is a new feature
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Hi guys. Sheepish CoM member responsible for the website, forum and online shop here.
The website person to report stuff like this to is me; the upshot is that if it isn't up to snuff then I'm the one who has dropped the ball and you need to give me a nudge (or a kicking - depends on how bad it is 🙂 )
The online shop revamp has also been mine and I help the forum technically, but not really with posts, replies or even enough visits, if I'm honest
Word reached me and I had a good read through of what you were saying and I think the vast majority of it is fair comment and/or great ideas and I should do something about implementing it
From what I have seen I think the main things to work on are:
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The Area details are not felt to be up to date.
Perhaps we can add a 'last updated' (or last confirmed correct) date on the area details and use this both for visitors to know how up to date the info is and to use as a list to remind AOs to update their details (even if it is just to tell me to do it for them; not all AOs are technically minded). I think the covid uncertainties / changes has impacted here (our regular pub for meetings now only does table bookings for food, for instance) but we could do more to get them up to date, even if it is just to say 'no meetings yet'. -
The club shop lack of photos has been going on for TOO long.
This is mea culpa - my fault. This has been on my todo list since I started doing this and I haven't made any progress. I failed at the stage of trying to get a list of what items had or didn't have photos.
I will finish this and improve this woefully poor situation (and think about description etc quality at the same time) -
The website forms should be easy to find and I like the idea of there being an online fill-in-able form.
We already took on board the message about the Direct Debit being a terrible paper form and made that an online form recently so this is just an extension of this idea. -
The website, shop and forum should work as easily on a smartphone and tablet as on a big screen PC or laptop.
We have made great strides forward on this, particularly with the online shop on mobiles, but it seems we should take another look at this
There are some do-ers who make the stuff happen but I liaise, as someone put it. I bear responsibility if your experience is shite - if it is, tell me and I'll do what I can to make it better
So, yes, you're right about your moans and gripes above and I like that you care enough to say what's bad or needs fixing, and not just what's good
And yes, it is down to me - let me know about stuff like this and I will fess-up that its me and put-up a solution or a plan for one at least.
We have a CoM meeting coming up early next week which will give me a chance to leverage some help from the other CoM members and the staff and make some progress; it will be a week or two before you see any progress though I'm afraid
Tom
CoM member for websites, forum and online shop-
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The Area details are not felt to be up to date.
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19 hours ago, Badwolf said:
Hope it updates all the AOs details along with correct details of the meeting venus, when they atart again... I live in a forlorn hope!!
I checked them all against the first page of the Courier Area Directory and they all seemed correct, with one exception where West Yorks had moved recently to the New Inn. All of the area organisers had been updated and the locations checked and postcodes updated so they show on the natty Areas map on the website
The others all seemed to be spot on. We went through a process about six months ago to get them all up to date so I think they are all correct
If anyone spots any that are wrong, let me know and I'll get it corrected sharpish
tom
PS yes, I know we're not using most (any?) of the venues at the moment, but I'd like to get them as accurate as we can -
4 hours ago, dougbgt6 said:
I'm the only AO whose venue doesn't have a post code. We're just "Near Maidenhead" don't ya know.
The Shire Horse, near Maidenhead is SL6 3QA
The website already has that postcode - unlike the issue BadWolf was reporting in your area's case it is the Courier which needs updating.
I'll pass it to Nigel to get updated
Tom
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Thanks for the heads up.
I shall review all those against the Courier today - might take a while, but worth it
Tom
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A scheduled upgrade of thew club's main website is due to start imminently.
It should be transparent and not affect anyone visiting the site (except perhaps for ten seconds or so) but there is a chance that the site may be affected for a slightly longer period of a ten to twenty minutes or so
The club website https://tssc.org.uk upgrade should be finished by 3pm today, Tue 9th September
Thank you for your understanding
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Thanks so much for all your learned experiences.
After disappointingly learning that there wasn't an easy fix to be had or stupid oversight by me earlier, I was inspired to open it and have another look.
Sure enough, there was a section about two inches long that was twisted by 90' when I put it in. Twice, I might add.
With lots more light and lots more checking I managed to get it back in without the twist and lo and behold no leak.*
Thanks guys
Tom
* although it's early days and it may yet come back of course. Fingers crossed
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I have the original oil filter setup on my Vitesse, with the canister inside the metal housing and the long bolt through the middle.
It leaks.
Not badly, except when you first start her up and reverse out of the garage. A little black line of drips about half an inch apart.
I've done the bolt up as tight as I dare - it'll shear or strip something if I do it any more.
I removed the old seal and fitted the new one when I changed the filter. And refitted it again after I first spotted it leaking.
Still bloody leaks.
It's keeping the chassis from rusting, at least
Any top tips?
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I wasn't party to the initial postings on this thread (apparently that's a good thing as some people were being utterly nasty and narrow minded I understand) but I campaigned to the CoM to make these available and I can let you know the CoM's view:
The printed magazine is one of the crown jewels of our club and will continue. Past issues will be made available online to everyone, the public included, as it demonstrates why this is probably the best Triumph club and certainly one of the best classic car clubs around to prospective new members. The CoM would like International Members to get the ability to view an online version of the magazine at publication point as geography often delays them from getting their hands on theirs, but this would be behind the 'login here' member's only bit.
So, we will probably end up with the courier archive available online for everyone but that recent copies will only be available to club members online. This will be in parallel to, and subserviant to, the printed magazine continuing to be sent out to all members.
It is early days on the online Courier and it isn't as sexy and easy to search as it could be yet, largely because of the sheer weight and volume of the back copies. It is the intention that searching and indexing access will improve over the coming months
tom
CoM member-
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On 04/05/2019 at 08:39, Badwolf said:
Sorry if I opened a can of worms but I didn't understand the maths regarding the savings from tax and still don't.
Here's my two-penneth as I understand it (and I use that term very loosely - finance is not my strong point :-)
This isn't about profit tax, this is about Value Added Tax. Your subs pays for your membership and for the Courier magazine. The face value of the magazine is £3.50. Every magazine sent out is free for members, as they've already paid for it. As this is a printed material, like a book, it is VAT free. That means that the £3.50 x 12 should not attract any VAT. So of your membership subs each year, £38 is VAT free and the club can claim that part of the VAT we'd otherwise have to pay back again. Obviosuly all that too-ing and fro-ing of VAT all comes out in the wash, but if the club didn't produce the mag we'd have to put the subs up because the tax man would take 20% of all of the subs in VAT, rather than a much smaller percentage
tom
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Nothing as fancy as an alarm, just a crooklock.
The wiring _may_ have been played with when it was resprayed but I doubt it.
Everything works as it should, and it's a simple loom in a Herald and without much modification so I can't imagine why it's sounding the horn.
I know you can get lights flashing other ones because of a bad earth. Could it be something like that?
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I have fitted an aftermarket hazard light switch to my Herald which wires to the indicator feeds, 12v and 0v and interrupts the feed to the normal indicator flasher unit when pulled.
When I pull it on the horn sounds!
I'm nowhere near the purple earthing wires in the steering column or the permanent feed wires to the horns.
WoThFk is going on?
Can anyone explain what might be happening?
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We used the 'autoslaaptrein' from Hertogenbosch in the bottom right hand corner of Holland all the way to Alessandria which is €359 for the car and €109 per person for the couchettes (posher options are available; also, we got a reasonable discount on this list price because we had 16 people and 8 cars). Dinner in the dining car was superb.
Could it be scalable to Spa sort of numbers? Yes, but we'd have to drive back (like we did). Basically the train is fully booked going down at the start of the summer and fully booked coming home at the end (when we went) which means they are desperate for bookings the other way, like we did.
Because we drove back there was 2000 miles of petrol, hotels, food, more than the occasional beer and bottle of wine etc and a ferry back. It was definitely over four figures per car and was probably more than a 10CR trip (if you've done one of those) but I'm trying hard not to add it up
Access to the Linghotto roof was a mixture of concerted effort, extreme attempts at charm (google translate was my friend; the attempts at italian were warmly received) and a huge dose of luck. I refused to take no for an answer, basically: I was told it was not possible by the hotel and then building security people who they put me onto, and then I heard that another Triumph group were attempting it and they couldn't get permission. I found that the decision is made by the security people (we found later that they're not your UK security types - these guys have very snappy uniforms and GUNS). I befriended one of the guys by email and discussed what was and wasn't possible. When we left for Italy it was not possible, but we thought we might try one last attempt with a few well placed gifts. Note that this WILL NOT WORK unless you're more canny than I as I now know it may well backfire in your face - the guy who helped us almost reached for his weapon when I insisted, after the event, he take a small gift we'd offered him! The decision was actually made by the security boss the evening we arrived when we tried to sweet talk the security guys; they rang him and to their obvious surprise (and ours) he agreed. I can only put this down to the reasonably long exchange of emails I had had, and the fact that I'd taken the trouble to translate it into Italian (he didn't speak any English - why would he need to).
Is access to the roof repeatable? No, probably not in the way that we did it because, as I say, a huge part of it was pure luck (even if I did have to work hard to make a fair bit of that luck). Have other car clubs tried and failed? Oh yes - we had our photos taken by a German guy staying in the hotel who had tried with his car club (Alfa Romeos I think) to get on the roof and wasn't able to - there were almost tears in his eyes as he told us - made our success feel all the more special. Could it be managed by the club? Yes, just possibly, but there would probably be a fee to make it above board; I got the feeling the guys who took us up were doing this because the boss was doing us a personal favour, and this would probably not work for a larger group. However, a fee would be managable if split between a fair few cars.
We went on from this extreme highlight of my driving days to wander past the Italian lakes (we SO should have spent more time there) and on to Bormio for the Stelvio (again, we rather rushed that bit) and a fabulous private tour of a private motor museum in Basel that was organised by one of our group. Rush rush rush - I have huge respect for the guys from the other club who sort out the 10CR - we underestimated most journey times and left the wives and girlfriends with very little shopping/restaurant time. That was basically the deal they'd been promised and was the deal we'd actually planned and looked forward to: leisurely gadding about in the alps, but we ballsed it up. Fantastic driving; awesome driving; memorable driving; cars cars cars. Don't get me wrong: it was truly great. But we didn't manage the leisurely trip we'd been after; one that might entice the girls into coming with us more often.
I'm happy to relay my knowledge and experience to anyone who's planning this sort of trip, whether it's just you, a group of mates or the whole club, so please feel free to message me if you want
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Eight Triumphs set off for a trip to Italy (one died with a blown up engine before we went and was substituted by a classic Mini)
We went down by sleeper train with the cars on board, dashed down for a swim in the Med then up to Turin for the first night at the legendary Linghotto ex-Fiat factory hotel with the equally legendary rooftop test track
I am afraid I cannot go into details of how we managed to coerce our way up there but we managed to get a drive on the roof (photographic proof that I didn't just dream this is attached, as even I can't really believe it really happened)
We then went on to do the Lake Como, Stelvio, classic car museums, wicked driving roads that it would have rude to pass up on, but the rooftop drive was the highlight
tom
PS more photos will, I'm sure, follow
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TSSC Members only areas of the Forum now setup
in Forum Announcements
Posted
Just to update that all forum users who were kind enough to put in their membership number that are still members (there were a handful who werent') have now been updated too
Everyone who is a member that we can find easily has been updated on the forum now
Sadly not everyone who is a member will have been found; the beauty of a forum nickname is that only close friends know who you really are, but the downside is that I haven't been able to track everyone down, sorry. If that includes you, please email your username and membership number, if you know it, to info@tssc.org.uk and it will get updated