1972 Triumph TR6 looking for a purpose

Today's task was to improve the alignment. Here's what I have now.

Camber:

LF -2.3

RF -2.4

LR -3.0

RR -2.3

Front toe: 1/16" in

Rear toe: 1/8" out (should be 1/16" in)

The LR camber needs correcting.  I have three notch brackets on the inner mounts which put the pivot low.  A two notch bracket would raise the pivot and decrease camber.  I can either order fixed brackets or Richard Good's adjustable ones, but this is one rare case where I think the stock parts are more robust.  After correcting the camber, adding or removing a single shim should fix the rear toe.

I can also measure caster using the camber gauge, but didn't get that set up today.

I finally got around to measuring the caster.  It's good at 3.2* on the left and 3.0* on the right side.  The 2 notch trailing arm brackets are in the mail along with a spare alloy wheel.  If the trailing arm brackets can't be made to work, I may just send Richard Good some more money for his adjustable ones.

BTW, I just applied for my previous job yesterday.  Since COVID, they have learned how to do software development remotely, so I will soon have much less time to work on cars.  Good thing this project is nearing the mostly sorted phase.

Good luck on the job front!

AxeHealey said:

Good luck on the job front!

Thanks.  I should be starting June 6.

The trailing arm brackets showed up from TRF and look really good (already powdercoated).  I put the rear end up to improve the LR camber.  Doing so added something else to the punch list: Fix the differential oil leak.  Oil is accumulating on the muffler and trunk floor.

It appears that oil is weeping out of the rear cover flange and not the shaft seals or vent.  So while it's up in the air, I'll drop the diff and reseal with The Right Stuff instead of a paper gasket and aviation #3.

In other news, I also got the spare wheel.  It looks nice, and I'm almost tempted to order 3 more.  Maybe if the car was a lighter color.

I finished the alignment today.  Swapping the 3 notch bracket for a 2 notch bracket moved the inner trailing arm pivot up about 1/4".  That and lifting up on both trailing arms near the pivots while tightening the bracket bolts decreased the camber on both sides.  The LR is now -1.5* and RR is -1.7*.  While the left trailing arm was loose, a shim was removed to make the total toe 1/16" in.  This is very close to the autocross TR6 I used to drive in Virginia, so I'll leave it there for a while.

Congrats on your new old job. 

I mounted a Vredestein Quatrac in 195/60R-16 on the spare rim.  It barely fits under the gas tank and scrapes quite a lot on the fibreboard trunk liner, but it's in.  The cover over the tire is jacked up about an inch, but I can live with that.

I really just need a jack (on order) and a lug wrench to be ready to travel, but I also like to carry a tire inflator, a plug kit, and some other spares parts.  I'll put that together tomorrow and call this one done.

Yesterday I put a 12 volt power outlet with USB charge ports under the glove box, using up the last fuse position.  With that, the nuts and bolts on this project is done.  To celebrate, we took it out for a 70 mile loop that included a curvy, hilly road against the Front Range and returned on a two lane, 65 MPH highway along a high plain where you can see mountains all the way up to Rocky Mountain National Park.  This road points towards Pikes Peak much of the way.

I may post some more about the fine tuning, especially if I get some dyno data.  But for this summer, I'm just going to drive it and take a break from restoring anything.  If my memory is correct, I started working on this project exactly eight years ago today by dusting off some old boxes from the pile of parts that I had bought years earlier.  The car itself was sitting in the same shop when I finished restoring my earlier TR6 in June of 1995.

What's next?  Probably getting my Dad's 1968 Triumph T100C motorcycle into better mechanical condition so it can live again and I can do some riding before it's too late.  Maybe if a clean early '70s Capri becomes available, I'll put it into storage as a retirement project.  But for now, it's back to the grind of working and enjoying what I have.  Later.

Looks great, Joe!

I've read through this build twice Joe. Great read both times. Brought back so many memories. And learned a few things too.

Now we have to find a way to reunite both of your builds! 

Happy to see this on the front page again. Congrats and I hope you're enjoying it!

TRSteve said:

Now we have to find a way to reunite both of your builds! 

I think the new TR6 is ready for a longer road trip, so Knoxville is a possibility.  My problem now is leave from work.  Maybe VTR Nats or 6-Pack trials next year.

AxeHealey said:

Happy to see this on the front page again. Congrats and I hope you're enjoying it!

I've been driving it, but not enough.  It's been a wet summer in Colorado.  We had afternoon showers almost every day for something like three weeks. Maybe when it cools down next month, we want to take it up to 9500' for some altitude tuning.

Not up here has it been a wet summer.  We had a bit of rain last week but otherwise it's been super dry.  My lawn looks every bit as bad as I would have anticipated.

Good to know the car has been running pretty well.

In case you thought I was making up the rain comment, here's proof.  We took the TR6 out for a 40 mile loop.  It was just sort of cloudy when we left.  Two hours later, we were dodging between thunderstorm cells.

We got home with just some lightning and light rain.  To the north, there was a plume of smoke from most likely a fire started by lightning.  And towards Pikes Peak, it would be a bad day to be up on Devil's Playground.

I cleaned up the TR6 yesterday for the British Conclave Motoring Something Something car show in Denver today.  It made the 140 mile drive there and back averaging 70 MPH with no issues.  Nice park, sorry about the oil on the grass, but lots of cool cars and people.  My favorite car might have been a well-used early Land Rover that just oozed character driven by a 75+ y.o. gentleman.  My wife and I met TVR Scott and his daughter and enjoyed salivating on some rather nice cars.

I guess we can forgive Scott for taking a break from working on the TVR.  But they need more TVRs (at least one) at this show soon.

We had a great time!  Thanks for the suggestion.

I think we can both agree that there's something compelling about manual-trans Aston Martins.  Especially several of them in a row.  That and if we had the money, we'd each be buying a Lotus Elise.

TVR Scott said:

I think we can both agree that there's something compelling about manual-trans Aston Martins.  Especially several of them in a row.  That and if we had the money, we'd each be buying a Lotus Elise.

I like and respect the Astons, but do not crave one.  Something about maintaining that makes me sweat.  But an Elise is a possibility, and I'm kicking myself for not picking one up back in 2009.  My MSM would be worried about getting sold if an Elise wasn't a $45k+ car now.  Then again, nice ones probably aren't going to get any cheaper.

In reply to JoeTR6 :

I believe we discussed that the Aston was a thought exercise with other people's money.  Yeah, I wouldn't want to get cosy with the service department at that dealership.

We'll just both have to save our pennies for a Lotus, I guess.

The last time I drove the TR6 at night (the only time) was about 6 weeks ago coming back from a date with the wife.  She was uncomfortable with the lack of lighting on the road, and something needed to be done.  So I ordered a set of Holley RetroBright LED headlights.  They installed just like the halogen bulbs, are much brighter with a better pattern, and consume less power (2 amps vs 6 amps each).  I'm pretty happy with the upgrade.  The one on the driver's side is the new one here.

I'd like to try them out driving, but there's snow on the road and I'm still running 200tw tires.

Very cool.  I saw that thread on the RetroBright lights too, and that looks really nice.

It's been a while, so time for an update.  We took the TR6 out today for about 80 miles.  At first it ran great, but after a lunch stop it was running very lean, around 20 AFR.  After opening the hood to let it cool, it improved enough to limp home.  That's when I remembered the drive two weeks ago where it got hot (for here, 90 F)  and I played around with the air density adjustment.  After that drive, I had to lean it out when the air intake temperature was above 110F to help an over-rich condition near idle.  This apparently was the wrong thing to do, as changing it back made it right as rain.  So I still have the over-rich condition when it gets near 90F.  I'm going to play with the lambda correction to see if it can adjust this out.

The new speedometer crossed 1200 miles today, so with the 800 on the old mechanical speedo we are over 2000 total miles.   It's been a wet, busy spring around here, otherwise that number would be higher.

Beautiful car!

Great picture. Great color.