I did a lot of work on the front end over the winter. I replaced the brake
calipers and pads, brake hoses, the rotors, the wheel bearings, the tie
rods, the A-arm bushings, and the ball joints. It really paid off, the new
parts coupled with last year's anti-sway bar installation, finally tightened
the car up so that corners nicely.
Then there was a feeling of real drag on all the wheels, and after a joy
ride or two, the brake shoes and calipers were smoking hot. With a little
investigation in the Archives, I found that there was a primitive device in
the brake line's 5 way connection called a restrictor valve. The
recommendation was to remove the guts and I did. Problem solved, the brake
pedal travelled just a little bit longer, but top speed in my car jumped
from 72 mph to 88 mph!
After that last speed run my car wouldn't even start the next day. I
fiddled around a bit, cleaned the rotor and re-gapped the points but it was
definitely time to do the tune up, postponed since I bought the car in 2005.
The postponement was out of fear of failure, but now since I had won the
V-21a Snap on tools valve clearance adjuster on eBay, I was clearly enabled.
I replaced the points, the condenser, sparkplugs, distributor cap, the
wires, and the coil. I pulled off the valve cover, and gapped the
clearances on the rocker arms using my new found tool. Voila, I was running
again, it did start right up and ran like stink.
This weekend I might experiment with the timing of the distributor, maybe
play with the vacuum advance, and the finer adjustments of the carburetor
tuning. I think there are few more horses trapped inside that need to be
freed!
Will Daehler
63 TR4
HVDA 5 speed
** triumphs@autox.team.net **
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