When I bought my TR3A new in May 1958, it had been "born" on February 14th -
St. Valentine's Day (a Friday by the way). All the very early 1958 TR3A's
with the wide grilles left Coventry with no air deflectors between the new
grille and the radiator. Later during the summer of 1958, S-T got lots of
reports of overheating and came up with the air deflector.
During the first 80,000 miles, my TR3A had no air deflector and it
overheated a lot, especially when I was driving up Whiteface Mountain near
Lake Placid in upper New York State. I can't remember how many head gaskets
I blew. I always torqued them down, then about 300 miles later, I would
back off about 1/4 of a turn, then re-torqued them up to spec again.
In 1990 as I was finishing my restoration, I put in an air deflector and
before torquing down the head, Ken Gillanders sold me a set of 7/8" high
nuts that give me 14 threads instead of the standard 10 threads inside the
nuts which hold the torque on the head bolts much better.
Since 1990, in over 70,000 miles of hard driving and long distance high
speed touring, it still overheated numerous times in traffic and on slow
hills, but I never blew a head gasket since torqueing and re-torquing down
the head using the higher nuts. The studs in the block are still the
originals with over 150,000 street miles on them.
About 1993, I installed a 12 inch diameter electric fan which may have
helped as well.
Don Elliott, 1958 TR3A, Montreal, Canada
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