Evening all,
On Saturday a local car club member and I changed the front oil seal on the
differential of the '3. After getting it out, well the pieces anyways. We
noticed it was a leather seal! I can only just imagine how long that has
been there.
We then went to install the new seal and found that the clearance between
the seal and the casing was so close that the seal had to go in perfectly
straight. Hmm, nothing seemed to work, then had a thought, drilled a 1" in
the wide side of a 2x4. This allowed the center spline to pass through and
we had a nice surface to "gently" seat the new seal. This did a couple of
things:
- the length of the board allowed us to realize quickly then plum of the
seal and could correct easily
- the wood surface was soft to not mar the seal
- once "bottomed" out the 2x4 prevented the seal from going any further
cause the wood block rested against the outer casing.
All in all a good learning experience and fairly easy to do. We also took
the opportunity to replace the oil and grease all of the nipples.
Later that day, feeling really good I figure I would also tackle the second
job I wanted to get done. Take the SU's apart and replace all of the seal
and clean the components. Starting with the front carb, the dashpot and
piston all came out. got it all cleaned and thought "hmmm, these would look
really nice with a quick polish". So, out came the polishing wheel and 30
minutes later the cover had a near mirror finish. The next thing was the
float bowl assembly, after catching all of the gas in rags :-) The float
bowls were taken apart and cleaned. Boy, modern gas leaves a lot of varnish
film ( or whatever it is ) when allowed to air dry. New rubber seals
installed and all cleaned up.
50% done, the next was to take out the jet unit and take that apart to clean
( I counted the number of turns on the mixture nut to ensure it go back
together right ), replace all of the seals and washers. Put all the pieces
back together and tested to see if everything moved smooth and nice. It
turns out the jet assembly started to stick when moved, probably a film from
the carb cleaner, so took out the metal polish and lightly polished the jet
assembly shaft, just enough to be clean, very smooth operation now :-) Put
the needle/piston back in and it also "sticking" when the piston was fully
down. Again a light polish on the needle and everything moves perfectly.
The "polishing" was very light and I believe it only took off the residue
from gas and cleaner. The main body got a wipe down with cleaner on a rag
so it was a clean.
Front carb done then did the rear one in much the same method. In total,
the dashpot polishing and replacing all of the seals took about 4 hours.
Now everything is back together and time to prime the carbs before cranking,
3 presses on the fuel pump lever and drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip,
drip, drip, drip, drip! The front jet assembly was leaking gas! So, it
looks like I will have to take it all apart again and make sure I did it
right.
There is a large cork washer on the jet assembly, someone in my car club
stated he replaced his with o-rings, has anyone heard of this. This is not
the small cork ones inside the assembly but the large one on the outside?
I think it was a good day and with only a minor setback, lessons learned.
Just had to share the experience in case someone else decides to do these
jobs :-)
David Templeton
'59 Triumph TR3a - Couple less leaks :-)
'74 Triumph Spitfire
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