Okay, I've got one, but it wasn't a triumph. It was a Jaguar. I bought a
420 cheap a long time ago (btw, cheap is the only way to buy one--not a
great car. If you look at the prices in the blue book you see a huge dip
between MK II and XJ6--that would be the 420). It smoked quite a bit and
didn't shift well, so I decided to tear down the motor and rebuild the
trans. When I unbolted the rod bearings I found all the caps on the wrong
bearing--they were put in no particular order. I pulled the crank, set it
on the floor, and it fell into three pieces.
All the rod bearing caps were wrong too, and the bearings were well into
the backing metal, nearly all the piston rings were broken, and they
looked nearly new--I think they were broken during assembly. Two pistons
were seized badly, two had broken skirts. the oil pump had visible
clearance--I didn't even measure it. the distributor bushings were so bad
I could wobble the points open or shut from any degree of rotation. I
drove the car for three weeks before I tore it down. I never put it back
together and sold it as a parts car.
-----Original Message-----
From: BillDentin@aol.com [mailto:BillDentin@aol.com]
Sent: Friday, May 24, 2002 9:54 AM
To: whitedog72@hotmail.com
Cc: fot@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: distributor cap mystery
In a message dated 05/24/2002 10:34:37 AM Central Daylight Time,
whitedog72@hotmail.com writes:
> but I will throw this one out there that I have not been able to
> identify the cause of and why the car still runs with this condition.
> The rotor hits the distributor cap!! And the car still runs. Pretty damn
> good as well.
>
Yeah! They continue to run TRIUMPHantly.
When Mike Belfer was still alive, he used to say, "Bill, people drive
their
TRIUMPHs over to my garage because they are not running right, and they
want
me to work on them. I take them apart and find horrible problems you
would
not believe. If I didn't see them drive up, and you told me they drove
up...I would not believe you. But they did! These are incredible little
cars!"
I think we all could tell stories.
Bill Dentinger
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