This car was brought into Tiger around a year ago for a full paint job. Paul in paint put his usual great finish on the car, the customer then took the car home and left the seats with Laura here to restore back to greatness! Mid June the Triumph was back in our workshops for some finishing fitting doors – glass – some trim and of course the new seats.
On dropping the car off our customer mentioned that the car would not start now, actually when it first came for paint it run quite badly we though nothing of it as it was going to be checked over in his garage at home. Anyway we new it had been standing for quite a time so went through the usual checks – fuel pump OK – spark = no spark so new points/condenser we have spark.
We did not initially think of a compression test as the car was a very low miles classic but backfire was basically what was going on.
Removing the almost brand new spark plugs we noticed that three of the plugs although looking new had “rust” on the end of the threads ? this brought up some comments “did we have rust on the bores”? “what were the valves looking like” first thought was off with the rocker cover lets have a look at the rockers. Found it !!! two of the push rods were not doing their job they popped off and were jammed between rockers and shaft – two valves stuck partly open. Strip engine head off.
With the head off it was plain to see that most of the valves were very tight in the guides probably because of standing such a long time without the engine being turned over, we stripped head and reground the valves – replaced an exhaust valve, rebuilt the engine reset the tappets.
Re-timed the engine, stripped the carbs, set the float levels – fired her up sounds like a smooth sewing machine – HAPPY customer!
