OK, so I've calmed down a little now!

As you may have guessed from my previous post we have acquired one of the most famous Spitfires ever built, 1965 Le Mans class winner ADU 4B! It's now been back home in Coventry for a couple of day's (but not at Canley's site yet) but I'm still as excited as a dog with two do-da's! Thanks to the excellent custodionship of it's previous keeper Vernon Brannon, and those that preceded him, 4B is in remarkably original condition, much, much, better than I could have ever hoped for. Bearing in mind it had a bit of a bump in its early life in Switzerland, witnessed by some repairs under the bonnet, it has survived with so much intact as it left Triumph's gates all those years ago. Large areas of the car are still in there original paint, touched up here and there admittedly, but it is 40 years old after all, no more debate now about what shade of green the Le Man car's were! It's even fitted with an original lightweight (20 guage) chassis, allthough it has lost it's quick lift brackets at some time. Vernon had raced 4B a selected historic race meets in the States, so he had replaced the long range tank with a small sealed racing variety. He had also replaced the seat and steering wheel for more modern items, but packed in the shipping container were the original seat and tank etc, wonderful. As the most original unrestored 'works' Spitfire left, it now falls to us to continue the good work of 4B's previous keepers, what a responsibility!

Guess what we did today?

Two pictures for you to ponder. The first taken at Felixstowe docks this lunchtime (courtesy of James Carruthers). The second taken at the TSSC HQ on the way back to Coventry this afternoon. Full report later.

Dodge the issue!

This was supposed to be a daily diary of the comings and goings of the Canley workshop's, I sort of wondered off track recently and waffled about any old tosh! So if it is a workshop diary back to the issue it is. With no access to the workshop for over a month now (remember the car park re-surfacing going on) the only cars we can work on are the ones that have been marooned since the doors were last opened. Which is sort of great, I think, as we are now finishing some of the longest term residents with us. This includes a GT6+ that has been here for some considerable time, neither us or its owner (a good friend in the trade) were in any rush to get it finished, well its nearly ready for MOT now! Retrieved from a Californian scrapyard 5 odd years ago, our brief was to remove it from its chassis, shot blast paint/powdercoat/replace worn bits, and generally make pretty the underneath bits before bolting the body bits back on and making legal. The car is going to live in France when we have done our bit, so all we have to do is MOT and get a UK identity, so that it can be driven over and finished in the owners own workshops. Everything else in the way of customers cars presently in the workshop is now finished awaiting collection come the glorious day when the car park is done. Well almost, there is a Lines V8 saloon that needs bolting back together, and then there's the MK1 PI saloon that also needs finishing off, and I nearly forgot the GT4 that needs a couple of days work, and, and! Oh bugger, it seems this enforced closure of the workshop came just in the nick of time!

Development

With things slowing down for the winter, its time to look at picking up on the research and development into new products again. We are quite rightly known to be at the fore front of new parts development for our range of cars, something we are keen to promote and blow our collective trumpets about! We have concentrated on performance parts for the past couple of years, and this has born fruit in many new lightweight aluminum products available through us or our agents. Things that have been on the backburner over the summer are now ready and waiting to be picked up and looked at again. One panel in particular that we are keen to sort in the next couple of months is the Vitesse bonnet front panel, the tooling for which has already been started. When available this would again allow for the fairly easy complete rebuild of Vitesse bonnets, indeed we hope to offer completely rebuilt Vitesse bonnets on an exchange or outright basis. Did you know that we now have produced for us every bit of chromework fitted to all Herald/Vitesse/Spitfire/GT6? That's quite some investment on our part, but most of it gets sold to other Triumph traders? If you have bought a new bumper, or over rider for your Triumph recently from anywhere else, then you indirectly bought it from us! Anyone for aluminum panel work for late Spitfires/GT6's? We have a complete range of affordable aluminum panels in stock for these cars, any other panel not in stock up to complete alloy bodyshells can be supplied (at a price!). We have supplied alloy panels to owners of 4 of the the original 'works' Spitfires, and several replicas including Mark Fields (Jigsaw) Spitfire. With access to the only two genuine Leman Spitfire type bonnets in the UK we can also produce perfect alloy/glassfibre composite replica's (the original Leman bonnets were alloy and glassfibre composites, not all alloy). It's not all about the performance and racing stuff though, we are as keen on the day to day bits that keep your car on the road. We have been busy for the last 6 months or so re-sourcing, re-manufacturing many hundreds of nuts, bolts, and fixings that used to be sourced from a company that unfortunately ceased trading last year. This has bought the added bonus of being able to reduce prices on nearly a thousand product lines whilst maintaining or improving quality. What about a new catalogue did I hear you say? Well with supplies of our temporary 2003 price list dwindling (the one with the Macau Spitfire on the front cover), it's time to put renewed impetus into it's replacement. This will be a true successor to the old John Kipping Triumph Spares catalogue you have been hanging onto all of these years, and at nearly twice the number of pages it's guaranteed to be compulsive reading! Exciting times for us, and watch this space for the most exciting news yet, details in the next week or so of our most recent purchase!

Throw it away!

Due to staff holidays and or sickness I have more or less had the workshops to myself this week. In between getting one or two jobs done on my own motors I've been having a bit of a tidy up. Well more like one of those life laundry things that are popular on the telly at the moment. In theory if you parked them close enough together you could get upwards of sixty motors in our workshop, so its quite large! As I'm sure you are all aware though it don't matter how much space you have (even when having the luxury of a lot of it) it still gets filled to its extremites with 'stuff'. Well this week I took a long hard look at some of this stuff and how long we have had it, and how useful it may be in the future, and what it might be worth, and then I started to bin it! What a great feeling, I even got the steam cleaner out last thing today and attacked the years of encrusted engine oil, brake fluid, and other nasties that had built up on the floor. Sod's law say's I will need something next week I chucked out this week, something that had sat on a shelf for 15 years collecting dust, but hey ho, the place is looking much better for it!

Anti climax!

Well that's it, another RBRR come and gone and only a few shows left this year. Not that the shows really do it for me anymore, I would much rather be out driving my Triumphs than stuck in a shed looking at a load of inanimate shiny garage queens! As one who visited more than his fair share of Triumph/Classic car shows in the past 30 odd years, I must say the novelty has worn rather thin. No, for me its all about the driving and using, after all that's the reason these car's were built. I can still just about remember the thrill I got the first time I drove my TR5, I was 15 at the time and my father had stopped in a layby on the way back from buying it and said fancy a quick go, what? Let me think, shall I? To bloody right! Don't worry it was more than safe in those days to let 15 year olds drive on the public highway, after all the roads were uncrowded in comparison to today, with only the odd horse and cart, or charabanc to worry about! Anyway is it just me that still gets that thrill when I jump into my Triumph, even when only going backwards and forwards to work? This is the main reason you won't catch me in a modern car if I can help it. I can't deny that car's nowadays aren't fast, reliable, economical, but by the same token they are mostly dull, boring, and souless, even some modern 'sports cars' I have driven.
So events like the Club Triumph RBRR, and the Ten Countries Run are right up my street, use your Triumphs, don't be frightened about getting them dirty once in a while, and get back to the fundamentals of motoring for pleasure, while you still can!

Triumph Museum closed!

Just a quick reminder that during the car park works that are going on here at Canley the Triumph Museum is unfortunately closed. This is mainly due to the fact that the main power cable that supplies the museum buildings has been dug up! We have had one or two people turn up over the last couple of days who were unaware of the work going on, quite a suprise for them to turn into our drive to be faced with a water filled hole where our old shale car park used to be! Normal museum service will be resumed as soon as possible, as soon as we have tidied up, and cleaned away the mess.

RBRR, Sorted!

Well we did it, after all the usual pre event panic, we sailed around the Club Triumph Round Britain reliability Run without a hitch (ignoring a small ignition warning light bulb failure at the start, which led to a flat battery!). What a wonderful event, it just gets better, thanks to the organizers, specially Tim Bancroft, and the many volunteers who came out in all weathers and times of the day and night to help with road book signing, food, etc. The V8 is now relegated to just another of the every day Canley fleet, although it still wears its event stickers with pride, The TR5 still wears its 6 years after it completed the RBRR, and the Chicanes were only removed during the course of its last respray, otherwise they would still be on there! Well done to my crew mates, Jason Chinn, and Jerry Mallon (all the way from the USA specially for the event), we worked well as a team, with very few fraught moments! Well done to all the other successful teams, and commisartions to those who didn't get round, there's always next time!
Wasn't the bit through the Scotish single track road bit bloody great, wonderful driving, chasing a 2.5PI done up like a Police car!

MOT!

The Canley entry for the Club Triumph RBBR is a runner! A fully legit, kosher, all above board, genuine, paid for, MOT was gained at the local MOT station yesterday. The only comment raised by our examiner was a slight imbalance in the handbrake, and a exhaust leak where the tubular manifolds bolt to the head. The V8 was also in need of a bit of remedial tuning as it struggled to get back up Fillongley hill on its way back from the test. Exhaust leak was cured within 20 minutes (after letting the headers cool!) with a new set of flange gaskets. The brake imbalance had sorted itself out on the way back from the MOT, the automatic adjusters having adjusted on the new shoes/cylinders etc on the 2 mile trip. The 'to do' list has now shrunk to 23 items, and we still have a whole morning to work on it! To be fair, the 'to do' list is more of a wish list, none of it being super important. It would be nice to swap the rear springs as the back end is sitting a little high, but that's only a 15 minute job on a 2000/2.5/3.5! This is the most prepared I've ever been for a Round Britain, I even had an early night last night after the obligatory curry shared with team member Jason Chinn who stayed over last night.
See all you fellow RBRR's later today at the Plough.