Waynebaby

I was like a kid on Christmas morning today when the refurbished cylinder head for my GT6 came back (via the club shop) from Ivor Searles. Imagine my horror then when on unwrapping the package I found that there was a large chunk of cylinder head missing from the gasket mating face at the front LHS of the head - big enough to be able to look down at number one cam-follower from outside the engine! It transpires that Searles noticed the damage after washing the head but considered it only cosmetic and so went ahead and refurbished it anyway (d'oh!) They couldn't find the missing bit of the head in the washing basket and so I have to assume that the damage was done in transit between my house and the club shop or between the shop and Searles. Either way, as I packaged up the head the liability appears to be with yours truly and since the club shop and I used different carriers for the two parts of the journey I can't see either accepting any responsibility. That's £380 I'll not see again! The moral of the story seems to be that if you are sending rare/expensive bits of Triumph away either make sure you pack them very securely (I was sure I had) or deliver them yourself. Does anybody know where I can find a recessed cylinder head for a GT6 Mk3 please? Wayne

Thanks for all the very useful feedback. I'll most probably be generous with the squirty oil can and take the approach suggested by Richard when I first start up.. Best Regards Wayne

Hi folks, I'm getting ready to refit my GT6 Mk3 cylinder head and rocker assembly, freshly back from Ivor Searle's ministrations. Does anybody have a view on whether I should bother using "assembly lube" on the rocker assembly or if it will be adequate just to drench the rockers/shaft with standard engine oil? The top end will be starved of oil the first time I start the engine and I don't want to undo the work of the engine remanufacturers in the first few seconds! Regards Wayne

Thanks for your response Gully. I read the same in the handbook and was puzzled by the reference to body mounting bolts w.r.t. the rear wheels because as far as I can see there are no body mounting bolts back there which are accessible to a scissor jack. Wayne

Hi All, It struck me that I'd only ever lifted my Mk3 GT6 using a trolley jack and so I thought I'd practice with the scissor jack to make sure I knew what to do if I ever needed to change a wheel at the road-side. The handbook provides a picture to show where the front jacking point is (the outermost body attachment bolt on the front chassis outriggers) but is a bit vague about where to place the jack at the rear. The Haynes manual is equally useful as it simply say to place the jack, "in front of the rear wheel" Can anybody tell me where I should locate the scissor jack to lift up the rear of the car? The radius arm attachment brackets look like candidates to me, but I don't want to experiment and end up with a dented tub! As ever, all suggestions gratefully received. Wayne

Thanks Dave, I'll give that a try

Hi All, Can anybody give me a clue as to how to remove the inner two bolts which hold on the front bumper of a Mk3 GT6? They're partly hidden by the bonnet hinges which makes it nigh on impossible to get a spanner or socket on them and I can't figure out how to reach the nuts. I'm guessing they must be somewhere inside the over-riders but can't see out how to get to them. Does anybody know if they are captive nuts? Cheers Wayne

According to my Haynes Stromberg CD carburettors manual (£1.95 in 1976!) the metering needle marking for all GT6 in the UK 1972-1974, running carb reference numbers 3507RH/LH and 3432RH/LH (which is 150CD-SEV and SEs respectively) is the same - B5CF. Hope this helps Wayne

Thanks for the advice Pete. I think I'll just put the old ones back in. Cheers. Wayne

Finally got the head off today after buying a chuck type stud remover and a mains powered impact wrench. I wish I'd bought the wrench ages ago - what a great piece of kit. Thanks for the advice Pete. I'll be calling Garth tomorrow and see about getting the head refurbished via the club shop. I have a related question about the push rods, each of which has a small abraded area at the very bottom (presumably where they bear on the tappets) Does anybody have an opinion about whether or not the wear marks justify splashing out on new rods? If I do go for new push rods is there any advantage in splashing out still further on the "uprated" rods that Rimmers sell? Wayne

I've got 12 of the 14 studs out now using the double nut technique but two of them don't seem quite long enough to let me do this (the top nut only gets a couple of turns of thread) Off to get an impact stud extractor tomorrow. Hopefully this'll get the last two studs out of the way and I can try the sledge hammer and 2x4 approach to get the head to move. If this doesn't work I'll attempt the rope trick. The head is certainly getting looser - turning the engine over by hand produces fountains of oil/water from some of the empty stud holes. Wayne

Thanks for the suggestions and pointing me in the direction of the rough running thread (although I have to admit that if I'd read that particular saga first I may not have started down this route!)

Hi All, Does anybody have any good tips for getting a stuck cylinder head off a GT6? I've taken the stud nuts off and the head is "loose" enough to allow water/air up the studs and air into the cooling system when I turn over the engine by hand but despite bashing away with a rubber mallet and nearly giving myself a hernia tugging away at the head it is showing no sign of budging! I've used plenty of plus-gas on the studs which seems to be getting down where it needs to be All suggestions gratefully received. Wayne

Hi All, The replacement Lumenition power module arrived in less than 24 hours from Merlin Motorsports at Castle Coombe despite me ordering it after their 15:00 next day delivery cut off time. For future reference the module when bought stand- alone has the parts identifier of LUM-PMAZ and when bought with the optical switch has an ID of LUM-PMA50. The good news is that having fitted the new power module the intermittent misfire/engine dying has gone away (at least it didn't show itself during a 50 mile test drive) and so I hope that the fault was simply down to a sickly power module, although now I know that the original coil was correctly matched with a "hidden" ballast resistor (and therefore not producing a primary winding current of 8 amps - higher than the Lumention module specification), I'm not sure what it was that made it sick. Various web searches under "Lumenition Optronic Problems" suggest that this isn't an uncommon fault which may yet return so although I'm no longer pensively scanning the road ahead for emergency pulling in places, I'm not uncrossing my fingers yet! The bad news is that the test drive has convinced me that the tell-tale sound of a knocking off-side UJ isn't my imagination! There's always something isn't there? Wayne

Thanks Pete, The wrinkle about testing for an in-line ballast only when under load from the coil had passed me by. I tested the switched supply side of the coil to earth and got battery volts, so mistakenly assumed I didn't have a ballast resistor in the circuit. I've just repeated the test but with the negative side of the coil earthed and hey presto - 6-7 volts! It seems there was a ballast in the circuit after all so I'll be running my nice new Lumenition MS4 coil without the accompanying ceramic resistor in series (because 3-4 volts in the primary windings might just take the edge off performance) This discovery of course blows out of the water my original theory that running a 1.5 ohm coil without a ballast has done for my electronic ignition and was the cause of a scorchingly hot coil and intermittent engine dying. I'm going to push ahead with replacing the lumenition power unit since it's now in the post and see if that helps things. Wayne

Iain/John, The power module is a sealed unit so I can't open it up to see what, if anything, has been going on in there. I have ordered a new unit from Merlin motor sports and will see if the intermittent fault disappears when I've fitted that. At John's suggestion I'll do a double check to make sure there isn't a ballast resistor wire still lurking in the loom - I was pretty sure it had been removed by a previous owner of my Mk3 GT6 but I now have my doubts. Wayne

Hi Pete, Thanks for the prompt response. I've concluded that there's nothing for it but to buy another power unit and see if that resolves the problem. If I get a moment I might sit down and calculate how many sets of points I could have bought for the cost of trying to chase down a (putative) fault with a piece of "fit and forget" after-market kit. Ho-hum. Wayne

Hi, Can anybody tell me whether it is normal for a Lumention optronic power unit to run hot to the touch? I've been trying to track down the cause of a intermittent miss-fire/conking out at the roadside and noticed that the coil and Lumenition power unit were both getting very hot. It turned out that the 1.5 ohm ballast coil was running without a ballast resistor and so I've changed to a Lumention MeGa spark coil and resistor set up as per Lumenition's recommendation so the combined resistance is now ~3 ohms (I also changed the rotor arm and distributor cap for good measure) The coil is now running cool and can be touched without risking burns! By my reckoning the Lumenition power unit should now be switching half the current previously being demanded of it and so it should be running cooler, but it isn't and the miss-fire/conking out symptoms are still there. I'm now concerned that the power unit has been damaged in some way by it's over exertions. Views anyone? Waynebaby

Following Clive's message I've just checked the hose fitted to the car and it seems I'm using R6 spec hose. Many thanks Clive.

Many thanks to everyone for their help. I'll probably start with John's suggestion of checking what my fuel hose is made of. It is new only inasmuch as it has never been on a car before, but as it has been sat in my garage for some time it is of doubtful provenance! My float valves are 1.5mm although when I got a carb refurb kit they came with 1.75mm valves. These stuck open just like Simon's and so I've refitted the old valves. Wayne

I am struggling with repeated flooding of the150 CDSE Strombergs on my Mk3 GT6 (one or other of the carbs gushes fuel at least once a month) and on every occasion the culprit seems to be black particulate material jamming the needle valve. I've fitted an in-line filter just before the copper fuel line bifurcates at the carbs and so I'm pretty sure that the source of the material must be the short lengths of rubber fuel pipe attaching the copper pipes to the carbs. I've changed the rubber piping but to no avail and so I'm beginning to wonder if what passes for petrol these days is attacking the rubber. Has anybody had experience of fitting teflon lined fuel hose? Any other suggestions for dealing with this problem would be gratefully received (I've fitted new needle valves, the float height is correct and the floats aren't leaking).