Having the last of the Spitfires, an 80, constantly gives me sources of
strange things going on at the end of the Triumph era.
The short version of the tale is thus: Metric threads on part of the
master cylinder and brake light thingie, and reversed plumbing.
Now the long version. Rebuilt the hydraulics a few months ago, but the
master cylinder didn't take. Noticed a few of the hydraulic lines took
metric wrenches, but as a newbie to Triumph, I dismissed it to strange
british tolerences.
So the other day, I swap out master cylinders from my 84 parts car.
This is where the fun began. Swap out master cylinders, cuss up a storm
that the line reaching back to the fire wall end of the master cylinder
won't reach. Go back to parts car, pull line. Come back to 80, and
discover that hey, this sucker is plumbed up backwards! No kidding,
it's *reversed* from the way the manual's show it to be. Back to parts
car, pull other line so that I can plumb it up right according to the
manuals. Which, btw, is backwards to everything I've ever seen or done
before. Cuss up another storm, lines won't thread into the 80's brake
light thingie. Study this a bit (especially after cracking 80's unit),
and what do I discover, 1/2 of the unit and the 80 master cylinder is
tapped and plumbed...METRIC! Good lord, this is bringing back the
horrors of the mixed hardware games I had to live with in my 79 Ford.
Back to parts car, get it's brake thingie, install, cuss. Now I've got
to replace the lines going from it down to the frame rails. Then, and
only then, was I finally able to install the 74's master cylinder into
the 80 Spitfire.
Fascinating! Everything was marked Gurling (gerling, girling?), nothing
showed any signs of alteration, no strange mismatches of hardware ends
or fittings. Nothing seemed to have ever been touched or replaced prior
to my wrenching on it. The metric's and the reversed plumbing seem to
have come from Triumph on this car. Again, Fascinating!
I also replaced a wheel cylinder with a gen-u-ine Gurling wheel
cylinder. The bleed nipple for it? Takes a 10mm wrench, and the nipple
will *not* interchange with the other wheel cylinder.
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