Steve C

Hi Dave I swapped my Herald rack earlier this year for a recon unit for its MOT, and yes, they can be a bit of a B to extract! I would imagine it is worse on a Vitesse with the longer block and deeper radiator. I found it useful to undo the offside engine side plate and lift it to give me more "fiddle room", and taking the track rod ends off also helped. On refitting, I found getting the pinch-bolt and nyloc nut which secures the column on to the rack splines on first, rather than bolting everything down also helped. Don't forget the earth wire for the horn or the earth strap to the rack U-bolt on re-assembly (which is, as Mr. Haynes always says, the reverse of disassembly! ) Regards Steve

It was mounted on the bobbins, on the N/S rear inner wheel arch, complete with neatly mounted regulator and pretty Aeroquip hoses, and it still sounded like Woody Woodpecker on speed, and tried to do for me! The underlying, and rather more serious point IMHO is that there is any amount of shiny stuff on the market out there, purporting to be "improvements" to our cars, much of it costing a small fortune, and some of it is cr*p. External Rocker oil feed pipes, Flintstone-hard suspension and those "essential" oil coolers, to name but three. I am not against mods per se (Lord knows, I have done enough of them) but surely half the point of classics like ours is their essential simplicity, and it is easy to modify what made the thing a classic in the first place out of it! Steve

Hi David I rebuilt my Herald 1200 heater this year, so this may help: As Pete says, check the stat is working and the right one for the car. The traditional method is to dangle it on some wire into a Pyrex jug or dish of water straight out of the Kettle, and if it does not open, it is stuffed. Cheap enough to replace from Canley, Rimmers et.al. I think it is probably a Smith's heater in your car as original equipment, and it should say so on the front plate. If not it may have been swapped, but I thought Delaney units tended to be found in earlier cars (Pete will correct me if I am wrong!) The valves can get full of solidified crud, in which case both Smiths and Delaney are available from Rimmers, but the latter are pricey. Don't forget to order the O ring seal as well. Matrixes can be flushed as Pete says, but it pays to remember they are all now getting pretty old. I bought a new one from this guy, and his service is excellent: http://www.demisterman.co.uk/ If you do fit one of his, the centres on the inlet and outlet pipes on the repro item are about a centimetre further apart, and you may have to enlarge the holes in the front plate with a small grindstone on a drill to get the plate to slot over cleanly. Don't force it, the matrix is delicate! Demisterman supplies self-adhesive foam strip for sealing the matrix correctly into the box, and the principle here is that you are trying to avoid giving your newly-heated air anywhere to leak out other than where you want it to go. It is not necessary to remove the heater box to do any of the above, and if you do, the gasket sealing it to the flap box inside the car is NLA, so you will be making one or using silicone sealant. Thus rejuvenated, your heater should be surprisingly powerful, if not up to Volvo standards. Mine is in a convertible and it is surprisingly toasty around the toes even with the lid down on a cold day. They can be uprated further by fitting Nissan Micra or early VW Golf fans and motors (see various t'interweb threads) but you are then into modifying the box, and the wiring for multi-choice switch gear, and losing originality. Good luck! Steve

So much for EFI being the panacea for all ills then... and they made it all sound so easy in the programme! I am reminded of the old adage, if it ain't broke, don't fix it! Steve

I have said this before on the old forum, but my personal view remains that the Courier is a tangible benefit of membership, and I prefer mine in printed form. I know it is expensive to produce, but for me it says to the world we are a serious, professional club, with a long history and it is a quality product (take a bow Bern..) and a good shop window for our club. I am not an IT luddite ( the mere fact of posting here proves otherwise) but I spend most of my professional life in front of a VDU and I just don't want to do it off duty. The tax issues are already well covered here by Mike as well. Regards Steve

If you really are besotted with the idea of the larger tank, then I have a good Vitesse tank in the loft which was sandblasted, painted and sealed with Frost tank sealer.( I did this because of pitting around the drain plug neck as a precaution, it was not leaking). It even has a new reserve tank transfer and fuel sender, and I am in Liverpool, so not far away from you. Before you do the swap though, check that you have the locking ring type sender on your current tank, which is compatible with your 13/60 fuel gauge - if the sender is the earlier 6-screw type then fitting the locking ring type is not compatible with your fuel gauge. From memory I think this difference only crops up with 1200s, but it is an easy visual check. Regards Steve

Is your fuel tank able to breathe? Simple test is to remove the filler cap and run your engine on the path to see if the problem recurs. If it doesn't, the cap is sealing the tank so tightly that the fuel pump is fighting a vacuum. Think about what happens if you try to drink from a plastic bottle without letting any air in - it will start to collapse. Good luck! Steve C

Personally, unless you are going racing, I don't see the point of electric pumps. I ran the small square-top Facet in my 1500 Herald for a while, and not only did it sound like I had demented woodpecker locked in the boot, it also overwhelmed the twin SUs. Fuel pouring out of the vent holes in the float chambers right over a hot exhaust manifold was not clever, so I duly fitted a Filter King regulator, and reduced the pressure, which required the adjusting screw being most of the way in before it stopped over-fueling. That fix worked for 6 months, before, when backing out of the drive one day, strapped in to the car, the other half screamed "stop" while making frantic slashing gestures across her throat. I did, and baled out in jig time only to find petrol pouring out of the grommet hole in the spare wheel well. After applying a hosepipe to the drive and the underside of the car, and extracting the (sodden and ruined) boot mat, I discovered that the gasket on the filter king had deformed and blown out of its seating groove, dousing everything in petrol. At this point I decided I had had enough, and stripped out the electric pump and regulator, and ordered a stock pump from Rimmer's. That worked, until it became evident that it was repro, and started leaking at a rally. Inspection proved that the fibre sealing washer from the top had been assembled on the inside, and our attempts to get it to stop leaking stripped the thread in the monkey metal it was made from, with only gentle tightening. I went to out local Triumph Breaker the next day and bought a S/H stock 1500 pump for a fiver, cleaned it and fitted it, and it is still there 3 years on. Moral of this sorry saga - Triumph knew what they were doing in the first place, and if it works, don't fix it! I now have the Facet mounted on a board, with a couple of leads, croc clips and lengths of fuel pipe. This slots on to the front wishbone, and I use it to draw fuel through the system at the start of each season, and to drain the system for Winter. The only thing to be said for electric pumps IMHO is that they don't flatten the battery getting modern (volatile) unleaded through a dry system after a lay-up, but to each his own! Steve C

Hi John See around 5:40 onwards here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weGSN_OZDbs Neat or what? and of course, in a narrow cockpit, Chapman not only saved weight but created elbow room! The nose aperture looks perfect, and the way you have rolled it over is so right. Just like a D-Type! Best wishes Steve

Hi John Still following your "adventures in aluminium" project with great interest! Lexan is an interesting idea, although I think it is probably OK in a race car, but less satisfactory in a road car where it would scratch quite quickly in any set-up where it is sliding against a seal. Sliding windows like an early Mini are another option, but the overlap looks like a vertical glazing bar, and you have put a lot of effort into making this car look beautiful. Have you considered the Lotus Elite option? (the original gorgeous monocoque glass fibre one, not the wedge-shaped horror..) On those the side windows unclipped and went into neat pockets in the seat backs, saving the weight of all the door gubbins (typical Chapman).There would be nothing stopping you using Lexan in that set-up either. Just thoughts... Regards Steve

Hi Terry To add to the many useful tips on here, yes they are really worth having, but the pipework and fittings are delicate and require care, and are easy to strip or split if you overdo it, and they can leak hot oil on to your leg/carpet if you leave any sealing washers out. If the worst does happen and you strip or damage something, Europa Specialist Spares does a useful range of fittings and pipes here: http://www.europaspares.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=oil+pressure As the gauge I used was a German-made item from a car I broke for spares, I used the five-foot copper pipe from Europa and put a couple of coils in it against vibration damage. As a precaution, I stuffed a clean rag behind the dash under the gauge and fitting for a short while after I installed it to check for any oil leakage. Good luck Steve

Amazing workmanship John, and you have done that rare thing among special builders, in achieving a look that is even better than the original - the back end looks fabulous. I look forward to seeing the finished article! Best wishes Steve

I too have used Silicone DOT 5 in my car for 6 years without problems, and it stops very well. I made the choice because classic cars, by their nature, tend to spend long periods not being used, and conventional DOT 4 is hydroscopic, and that way lies rusted caliper pistons and all the rest of it. I also did not fancy a fluid leak wrecking my painstakingly-applied paint. I do agree that changing from one to the other without rebuilding the system is probably not a good idea. I started with a completely dry refurnished brake and clutch system before I put the silicone fluid in. Regards Steve