After 20 months, my '62 Herald, GA41328LCV is street legal, and On the
Road Again. I just passed NJDMV inspection (at a gas station, for the
information of my NJ brethren).
The first road test was just an hour before, after some annoying
problems earlier in the day. Thanks for asking, I WILL go into them.
Went to set up the engine this morning. Timing was first. It felt
retarded. Loosened the nut to turn the distributor body, and while I was
rotating it, the engine stalled. Then it wouldn't crank, and after a few
choice words, I went in to get my multimeter. The battery on that was
dead, too, so it was off to the local drugstore for a new 9V. Grrrr...
I needed the motor to run before I could adjust the voltage regulator,
so the dizzy came first. Before it stalled, I noticed that I couldn't
advance the timing far enough to run decently, because the vacuum
advance was already pinned against the generator. So out came the
distributor, and the distributor pedestal, and finally the drive gear.
Then it started to rain. I pushed the car into the garage. By the time I
was done, so was the rain. Double Grrrr.
A little wrestling, and a partially stripped pedestal stud later, it was
all back together, and ready to be timed. The vacuum advance was
pointing in the proper direction, straight out from the block, when I
did the static timing. Clamped it down loosely, then I started my TR250
(it wanted to be run for awhile anyway!) and hooked up a pair of jumper
cables between the two Triumphs. Vroooom!
Let it warm up, then disconnected the cables and shut down the TR250.
Took about 2 minutes to time it and adjust the idle mixture on the
little Solex (I've done _that_ before!), a few more minutes to raise the
regulator voltage to 14 Volts (it was 13.2 - should be enough to keep
the battery charged, at least in summer. Battery might be going bad.
Then again, it hadn't been much above idle for awhile).
Finally around 4:30, the road test. Felt like there was some dirt in the
carb at first - it ran a little jerky - but that seemed to go away after
awhile. The new front pads squeal like pigs against the freshly turned
rotors. There's still that rubbing noise (I think it's driveshaft on
sheet metal - differential mount?) And one of the universal joints
knocks going from forward to reverse or vice versa. But the engine
purred - no more piston slap from an earlier amateur rebuild. The
gearbox shifted crisply and true, and it didn't pop out of Reverse no
matter how hard I pushed it, and no more grinding noise from the worn
syncros on 2nd and 3rd, and that noise it used to make when I let out
the clutch in neutral is gone, too.
Thanks to all for the help you've provided over the past 20 months. The
knowledge flowing into my inbox every day has been indispensable in
getting this far. Special thanks to Bill Birney, Andy Mace, Tony Cotton,
Dave Eaton, Leon Guyot. Please if I forgot somebody, flame me publicly!
There's plenty left to do on the car, so you'll be hearing from me.
Bill Kelly
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