Australia

looks like the herald is heading for Australia.... news at 11

The Herald is For Sale ( sold)

Sadly i think i need to sell the Herald to help fund my reletivly recent self employed status, if your interested email me

1965 Triumph herald, uprated,alloy wheels less than 10k miles on a spitfire mk3 spec engine, fitted with a John Kipping unleaded late mk4 head( bigger valves), twin Dellorto lotus turbo spec 40 DHLA carbs( the best sidedrafts you can get!)Aldon distributor with electronic ign, magnecor leads, new starter motor, full width radiator, canley stainless 4 branch exhaust manifold fitted with take off for a lambda probe. electric fan. spax adjustable height and ride front shocks with uprated springs, recent 3.89 diff, J type Overdive gearbox, GT6 brakes front and rear, Vitesse dash, Jaguar XJS front seats. Solid car with loads of goodies, body is solid, needs tidying,, It would cost almost the asking price for just the bits, so think of it as lots of goodies and a very cheap car!

RIP URK 550F

well i sold the spitfire, to a person in Edinburgh, it looked like this when it left:
Sadly After about a month the new owner crashed in the wet on a bend, spinning off and hitting a tree. Police accident investigators concluded it could have been desiel oil on the road or similar that caused the car to loose control, but would never really know. The new owner was badly injured, suffering from a severely broken leg, deep leg wounds and a disolacated arm, and had to be cut free by the fire brigade. He was very lucky to survive. A very sad end to my many years of ownership, however I am just so glad the guy is relativly ok. Get well soon!

tristan roof

for the summer while i fix up a 1250 sunroof

air filters

heres the car with the air filters fitted, 82mm deep, they clear the inner wing ok, need to fit my electric fuel pump and regulator now, i notice the stock pump pulses a bit on tickover

Dellorto's

I was going to put the twin 45's from the spitfire on the herald, but as the herald engine is basicly in stock mk3 spitfire spec, i decided to use smaller twin 40's instead, they are still turbo spec carbs though ;-). In my opinion Turbo spec dellorto's and C prefix dellorto's are the closest thing to fuel injection you can get with carbs, they were the last made by Dellorto, finding these spec carbs is quite hard as they are not common, C spec carbs even less common! I prefer turbo spec over C spec because they have all the extra seals etc, maybe i will put the supercharger on the herald...

Jaguar XJS Seats!

Well i have been looking for some replacement seats for the Herald that would be in keeping, and decided that Jaguar XJS seats would look ok in the herald. Seats are often overlooked i think, you spend most of your time in them, so to me, a comfy seat is a high prioity! Red jag XJS seats are not very common, most being tan or grey or beige or black. i did find some red ones that were the same colour as the rest of the interior, but they were in need of alot of attention, so, i ended up getting burgundy ones, not a perfect match put better than grey! I though i may use some pro leather dye at some point in the future if i can be arsed! this is a 3 stage process of cleaning the leather with special stuff, then applying the new colour then finally applying some dye fixer sealer type stuff! the seats went in without too much fuss, i had to cut off the seat mounted seatbelt thinggies with was a shame as i would have liked to have used those. I made up some seat brackets to fix to the floor out of some old alloy stuff i had previously got from a rubbish pile, i think the alloy used to be part of a patio door...
The seats have heating elements and electric lumbar supports too! hehe maybe i will get round to wiring them up one day!

here you can see the seat bases i made up, the jag seats bolt on to these

And here is what they look like in the car...

The seats have heating elements and electric lumbar supports too! hehe maybe i will get round to wiring them up one day!

clutch cylinder

clutch master cylinder has decided to leak, so i replaced it with a new county one i have had for ages, last time i used a repro county one it died after a few weeks, I spoke to Max at totaly triumph about it and he reckoned they arnt properly cleaned of swarf befor being assembled, so i stripped and cleaned it befor i fitted it, have to see how it goes.

The Black Art Of Differentials!

Hooray for Smallfry from the Club Triumph forum! thanks to his input regarding diffs i have reshimmed the carrier on the origional rebuilt diff that was in the herald. i ignored backlash tolerances the workshop manual gives, and concerntrated on getting a good mesh 'footprint' this meant moving the crown wheel very slighty from the pinion gear by swapping the skinniest shim from one side to the other. backlash went to 5 thou out of tolerance, but it less than 10 degrees, and the footprint was much better. The result is a much quiter diff! you can stiill hear it but it so much better, the gears are a little worn so i guess some noise is to be expected. I think i could have got it perfect if i had played with the pinion shims too, as i reckon it sits a little low, moving into the diff a few thou would be the ideal solution probably, but iwas fed up arsing about with diffs! great stuff! moral of the story, a good gear mesh footprint appears to me more important than getting the the backlash super low!
below is a picture of the Herald with a stock spitfire swing spring

Swing Spring Conversion

put a swing spring and spitfire 1500 antiroll bar on today, improves handling no end! i seem to have gone full circle with diffs, i tokk the origional one out as it was whining, i then put one from a vittesse in, that whined, then promtly went snap! i just put a third diff in, and that whines about as mush as the origional diff, if not more! trying stuff!

Diff Broke!!

I put in a vittesse 3.89 diff in a couple of weeks ago as the 4.11 in was whining, well today the vitesse diff let go big time, the carrier that holds the planetary gears just sheared in 2!
















i also found out that there are 2 types of large diameter stub axle, i would think the one without the reccess just after the splines would be the stronger of the 2! ( the one on the right)

Starter motor

an old back injury has come back to hassle me and its quite debilitating, especially as i need to be doing alot of lifting for my house move, and i thought this is the last thing i need! i was going to pop over to stafford in the herald but this morning it died,, the engine was completely locked up, back wheels skidding along the ground when i tried to rock it, crank pulley jammed solid, anyway i
took the starter off and the engine is fine,, i have put an old one in with remote solenoid and its ok now, the one on was a more modern type with the solenoid on the starter motor body.

Sticking accelerator cable

So i see a question on the tssc herald bit about sticking cables, and as i have just sorted this on my herald i wanted to let them know what to do, so i signed up for a guest pass thinking i could post a reply, but no, the guest seems to offer no more admission to the site than not having one!

anyway the guy is having problems with a sticking cable after putting twin SU's on, his problem is that the triumph cables you buy now are a bag of shite, what he needs to do is get a bike brake cable with an inner sleeve that goes inside the metal outer sleeve, its quite easy to see if the cable has one as its usually an opaque white tube within the spiral metal outer sleeve, the triumph ones you get now dont seem to have the inner sleeve ( at least not the ones i have seen)the one i took off had short lengths ofthe inner tube at either end, but not all the way along, most odd! not having the inner tube with the metal cable sleeve means the cable snags against the metal spiral of the cable sleeve, making a totally horrible driving experience!

I got the metal bit off that is clamped to the triumph cable, its the bit that goes to the bulkhead to stop the cable sleeve being pulled through when you press the accelerator, it has a rubber seal and a crappy grippy lock thing that you push on to it from within the floorwell, I then put it on my bike cable by carefully making the inside of it round again by tapping an old drill bit through it, I then re-clamped it with the cutty bit of my pliars in the correct position along the cable, and hey presto lovely smooth accelerator cable!

Diff Change

Well i think i have got on top of the front wheel camber by adding a shim to the inner turret bolt (easier said than done!) still not perfect bit better. I decided to move to the rear of the car and change the howling 4.11 diff, i procured a decent vitesse 3.89 diff from Karl Dandridge and fitted it, I noticed most of the bolts used to attach the diff flanges to the shafts and prop were the wrong type, being threaded along the entire length as apposed to having a shank, several of the bolts i removed had the thread worn off where the shank should have been, not good as it can cause vibrations and bolt failure. The custom made prop is being a pain, it was really difficult to get the uj clips in the prop yoke when i changed the flange for the larger 3.89 diff, never had such a hard time with a uj before! i dont think the prop is right, Karl said he may sort out another one for me, which i think is a good idea

road trip

Took the Herald for a trip round the long Mind today, really hot day, steep hills, twisty roads, a great drive

Thermostat.

I changed the thermostat today for an MGB one, they open at 74 degrees instead of 82 which i think is better to keep things cooler engine wise, its a straight swap and easy to do. I also serviced the startermotor as it was sticking due to lack of use i think.

DIY Camber Checking

this is how i do the camber, incidentally a flat surface is needed for both camber and tracking! I use a long spirit level and a short spirit level to get a good virtical line. parallel to the centre line of the straight wheel.
Once i am happy its nice and virtical i measure the distance as shown below..
I then measure the distance at the top of the rim making sure not to knock the spirit levels, its a bit fiddly and i usually have to do it a few times before im happy
I then subtract the lower measurement from the upper one and use this site http://www.engineersedge.com/calculators/triangle_solution_3.htm
inputing the length from the top to the bottom of the measurement, ( which is close to the rim size) and the result of the subtraction sum i did, this gives us 2 sides of a triangle, from this you can calculate the third side, and then the angles! et voila! heres an example: length from top to bottom of rim at the points we are taking the measurements from =12 inches, result from subrtracting the bottom measurement from the top measurement = 0.21 inch, input the data and we get a result of just about 1 degree of camber! if the top measurement is bigger than the bottom measument then you have negative camber, if the top measurement is smaller than the bottom then you have positive camber!

DIY Wheel Tracking Tool

ok this is how i do the tracking, above you can see a long bit of alloy angle, (from an old patio door i think!) either end has a right angle upright with movable prongy bits attached to each upright...

you slide the tool under the car and line up the prong half way up the wheel, this side has a prong that moves in and out.. you do the rear of the wheel first usually
This side has a prong that can swing so you can get it up to the wheel rim, you but this side to the rim first then move the prong on the other side up to the rim ,You then carefully slide the tool out from the car making sure you dont knock the prong that moves in and out, then do the same on the front, lining up the in and out prong first.

Then on the side with the swinging prong you use a feeler gauge to see what your toe in is. If its toe out the swinging prong will touch the rimhope that makes sence!

Current Engine Spec

here is the engine bay, The Previous owner, Nick Jones Looked after the car and did lots of mods, He's a very inventive chap, here is his site: http://www.tengaston.plus.com Mods include alternator conversion, full width radiator, electric thermostaticly controlled radiator, twin 1.5 SU's, 4 branch exhaust manifold, Aldon distributor and electronic ignition, John Kipping unleaded 218142 head, mk3 spitfire camshaft to name but a few! i added the 330lbs lowered front springs

angles

Had a look at these turrets on the herald today, the drivers side appears to have a 60 thou spacer under the inner bolt. thats confused me as i was expecting a spacer on the other side as its the passenger side that needs more shims to get the camber right,, or am i getting things arse about tit as they say up north!

differential

I'm picking up a diff for the herald tomorrow, I went over the bodywork on
sunday, put some jenolite on all the rust spots, does it let in water in the
rain? I'll take a look at the turret spacers when i do the diff

Hello

right then, entering the world of blogging for my new car, a 1965 triumph herald, family owned for a very long time, pretty good overall condition with a few mods to make it go, stop and drive better,