[TR] FW: 73 Triumph Stag for sale in Virginia USA

[John Macartney]

Further to Randall's detailed response on this issue, it's certainly true
the factory undertook some detailed investigation about Stag reliability
problems in the US - but we had much the same difficulties on overheating in
the UK and Europe as well, with very much the same results.
While Randall
covered some points that were remedied for the Mk 2 Stag V8, he omitted to
mention (maybe he was unaware?) that the prime reason for cylinder head
distortion falls at the door of Standard-Triumph's purchasing department and
not that of Engineering. Purchasing, in its never ending pursuit for economies
of scale specified a lower grade alloy from Birmid and it did this without
recourse to Engineering for its prior approval. I've known of this fact for a
number of years but it was confirmed when I recently met and had a long
discussion with Gordon Birtwhistle who was S-T's Senior Test Driver. Gordon
drove several of the very limited Stag prototypes for several tens of
thousands of miles in a number of different climatic conditions without any
cooling problems at all.
One of the points Gordon did raise in our discussion
was that many of the cooling problems in later production cars were the direct
result of blocked coolant passages in the cylinder block caused by chunks of
the original casting cores still in there and not removed by production
operatives! That in itself is more than convincing proof as I know several
owners who have discovered the same when rebuilding their engines. On top of
that, when Joe Pawlak was rebuilding the engine for "uncle jack," he removed a
small 'tree' of core which he showed me when I visited his home mid-way
through the Trans-America Charity Drive last year. At the time of "uj's"
engine teardown, there was evidence of overheating and a blown headgasket on
the same side of the crankcase as Joe found the sandcore! Perhaps it's worth
mentioning that throughout that 15,000 mile trip last year, there were only
two occasions when the engine temp gave me cause for concern and that was
only
 when it was 3/4 across the scale. The first was on a stinking hot day in
early July when I was stuck in a queue to cross into Canada and the second was
in heavy traffic on an even stinkingly hotter day in San Francisco. But
throughout the drive itself and especially in the southern states - Florida,
Alabama, Texas, New Mexico and California, the engine temp stayed stubbornly
at mid-point on the gauge - even when we were climbing Pike's Peak, CO at full
power and at +12,000 feet ASOL. Perhaps if we'd had an electric fan with more
'scooping' on its blades, those two isolated problems at the Frontier and in
S-F might have been avoided?
Finally, "why didn't the Stag sell well in the
US?" Quite apart from the coolant issues aforesaid, it was just too expensive
and having been on sale in the UK and Europe a year before US release, too
many of its early and copiously repeated problems were already known and
widely reported in the press, so probably the car didn't have a chance against
the Benz Coupe at which it was aimed for the US market? FWIW, the Stag and its
two saloon counterparts (2000 and 2500PI) are still my favourites and IMHO,
the best cars the company made post-war. They're certainly the cars that
generated the most pre-tax profits for the company after the demise and sale
of the Ferguson tractor business to Massey Harris.

Jonmac