Its been a good day

Two things to report on today, the first is the TR4A passed it's MOT with flying colours. After an anxious wait the tester said those 2 words we all like to hear "it's passed" that's the 2 words classic car owning males like to hear anyway! The only follow up jobs that need attention are a bulb blown on the number plate light and a slight weep on the rear brake drum, as I explained to the tester I have only just changed the wheel cylinder so the dampness could be leftover form the previous leak. While I was there I had a good look under the car and was pleased to see no unseen nasties lurking.

The second report is on the Club Triumph Eastern fun day and picnic. The picnic was held at the country park on Mersea Island. We all met up as usual at the services at Boreham on the A12 at about 10.00 am and then drove in a convoy down to Mersea Island. On the way we passed through Maldon, Goldhanger, Tollyshunt and various other pretty villages. In the main the journey was uneventful apart from a stretch of newly re-surfaced road which had loose chippings for about 2 miles, this would have been no problem apart from the 4 wheel drive cars traveling in the opposite direction at about 50 mph throwing chippings up everywhere. Once at the country park it was all hands to the pumps to unload the cars of all our picnic equipment, food and of course games. There were more kites, badminton racquets, baseball bats and balls and of course that old favorite swingball's than people to play them. It was all good fun with kites divebombing the unsuspecting picnickers (Jaime you must learn to play nicely) and sponge rockets flying all over the place, still boys will be boys even when their all grown up. After all the fun with the games we all settled down to a nice picnic lunch, some of us that is, Adrian seemed to think a picnic consisted of a full seven course banquet, that's what happens when you let a man go shopping. We stayed until around 2.00pm, and as our country needed us, or at least the England football team did as they were playing at 4.00pm and we had an hour and fifteen minute journey home we daren't leave it any later. It was a good day out and as Jaime said " it was nice to go out to a social event rather than another car show."

Spitfire manifold

I put the new exhaust gasket on the Spitfire today. I used a bit of exhaust assembly paste on the face of the gasket to help seal the gasket. When I started the car I can't see any sign of the gasket blowing. I took the car for a spin and the engine sounds a little quieter than previously. I think I might take it along to the club triumph eastern picnic at East Mersea island tomorrow.

MOT time

Well I have booked the TR4A in for its MOT test on Monday so I thought I had better get my act together and have a look at a few jobs that need doing. The first was to sort out the main beam on the headlights. The main beam was making the ammeter swing right over to -30 amps when I operated the dip switch, indicating a short circuit, after removing the the dip switch and taking off both the headlamp units I put the multimeter from the blue/white wire to earth and it showed a short circuit, so the short must be in the wiring to the lights, i then took the wire leading upto the switch off and lost the short circuit. So at least I had isolated the problem to the wiring leading to the column switch. It turned out there was a break in the wiring on the main beam wire that was going down to earth. I had to solder another wire to the light switch and re-route the wiring to avoid it chafing on the steering column. The other job was to bleed the brake circuit as the brake pedal was still a bit soft after i changed the rear wheel cylinder.

It's been a some time

Well It's been quite a while since my last blog. I have been busy with work and other commitments! well that's my excuse but really I have just been enjoying driving the TR4A. I have not got around to drilling the inlet manifold for the spitfire as of yet. I must get my finger out and take it into work to drill the old water pipe out. On a brighter note the TR4A is running well and we have enjoyed quite a few outings lately. Apart from the disappointment of going to the Enfield pageant and finding it had been cancelled all of our trips out have been good ones. We recently visited Audley end house near stanstead and had a great day looking around and to top it all there was a meeting of the Morgan owners club holding a picnic in the grounds. I will sign off for now and hopefully it won't be so long to my next installment