Dented the bloody Herald again

Its About time

2008-04-07T13:24:00.002+01:00

I cannot beleive it has been 18 months since we planned to get the Herald back on the road.

As you can image the plan never came into fruition. Instead the garage just filled up with more crap, however, an end is in sight..........

A new shed was delivered and erected last week and the new plan is (sorry I think I will call these visions from now on as plans dont seem to work) to clear all the gardening equipment etc around and on top of the Herald into the new and existing sheds, so that space is made to work on the car.

This will not happen until early may at the earliest as I am going on holiday this week.

I am going to post a photo in the next couple of days of the state of the garage before starting, so that you can appreciate how I have neglected the car.

I must take thjis opportunity in thanking the readers of this blog, for their emails and comments in the last year.

Here we go for another round ................

New Beginnings

2005-11-10T12:22:00.000Z

This week, along with my friend Paul (used to own Heralds in his youth) decided that I should really get the car up to scratch for daily use and that this should be doable on Wednesday evenings instead of going to the pub.

The plan is that we would spend a couple of hours each wednesday, taking on a small task and have a couple of beers out of the home stock.

Wednesday just gone and has planned, Paul came round. I think is was one of the coldest evenings this autumn so far.

Whilst having our beers, we planned the work ahead and the tasks to be completed are:

Before any work can commence;
1) clear sides of garage of garden equipment - Steve
2) Install portable heater in garage for cold nights - Steve
3) Install small fridge for beers - Steve
4) Buy more beers - Steve (Paul you can contribute here, but no stella crap please)

Jobs to be done (these will planned before work commences and we can try out beer stash)
1) Bleed Clutch system
1a) Drink Beer
2) Recover existing drivers seat or replace with tastful seat
2a) Drink Beer
3) Complete service
3a) Drink Beer
4) Empty Herald's boot of all crap and stop using it as a dustbin
4a) Drink Beer
5) Sort out Fuel Gauge
5a) Drink Beer
6) Make car weather proof from extreme weather conditions
6a) Drink Beer
7) Install a working speedo
7a) Drink Beer
8) Try and sort out door closing mechanisms
8a) Drink Beer
9) re-Lay car carpets and install car mats
9a) Drink Beer
10) Tune engine
10a)Drink Beer

History - Part 10 - End of the History

2005-11-02T13:37:00.000Z

Well after renewed vigour (3 blogs in the last day), I thought it was about time to bring you all up to date with the latest status.

After the Summer of 2003, I drove the car a couple of times during the bleak months whilst the sun was shining and then laid the car up for the winter and true to form that is where she stayed to this day.

During this time another problem developed, the drivers seat collapsed and to keep this going for the summer I tapped the base of the seat with black duck tape to try and prevent any further loss of foam.

I still go into the garage at least once a month and start her up, which she still does, no problem. However, I do have the car connected to one of those Draper trickle chargers all the time.

I thought I would get another MOT this summer, but when I went to get the car out of the garage, the clutch pedal went straight to the floor. There seems no visible evidence of fluid anywhere, but someone as suggested that the slave cylinder may be leaking, any further advice here would be helpful.

As if I didn't need it, another reminder that this car is meant to be driven.

I have decided this autumn/winter to complete the service that I started in summer 2003 and basically do a general tidyup, sort out the clutch slave cylinder and drive her daily in the spring and summer (even in the wet - gasp!)

I do need to sort out the drivers seat though, so if any one, has a spare going cheaply, please contact me.

I will need to take some more photos in December for the insurance. When this is done I will post them on the site.

History - Part 9 - Some photos for insurance December 2002

2005-11-01T16:44:00.000Z

History - Part 8 - Prove to work colleagues that car does actually exist

2005-11-01T16:35:00.000Z

I was like a boy with a new toy the first time I showed off Hattie to my work colleagues and promised that they would be seeing more of her in the car park during the rest of the summer.

Catastrophe !!!!! only the very next morning I went to get the car out of the garage and whilst reversing out of the garage I depressed the brake pedal and it went straight to the floor, pissing brake fluid over my trainers, but the car was still rolling backwards down the small slope towards a neighbours fence. Fortunately, I forgot about the wet trainers and pulled on the hand brake. Bloody master cylinder !!

You can imagine the family's joy when I dragged most of them out onto the drive, still in their night clothes to help push the car back into the garage.

To my credit and against everyone's advice, I purchased a master cylinder repair kit. With Sean's help this was successfully repaired and the car was able to be driven again.

I did drive to work a few more times that summer, noticing that car was boardering on overheating on the 20 mile journey, but I had also by the end of the summer had also changed the spark plugs and the HT leads.

History - Part 7 - Isn't about time you moved that skip from the garage

2005-11-01T16:13:00.000Z

God doesn't time fly - not only have I not posted for 6 months but the car sat in the garage until the August 2003.

It was during this summer that I discovered a neighbour (Sean) owned a classic car workshop and was willing to take on some of the tasks to get Hattie back on the road.

He also offered a corner of the workshop and his tools and knowledge at my disposal to check out and refurbish a spitfire gearbox that I have sitting in the garage also. To this day I still have not taken him up on the offer and the gearbox is still sitting there ready to 'smack' your shins every time you need to get at the house fuse box.

So after charging the battery, making sure there is sufficient fuel, oil and water sean took the car for a week.

He completed the following;
1) Replaced Heater valve (goody, I can now turn off the heater without pissing water all over the place)
2) Replaced Starter solenoid (this fixed the problem, that everytime I turned off the engine, I had to wait at least half an hour before the car would restart, this was particulary amusing when I stopped for petrol)
3) Replaced nearside Universal Joint
4) Refurbished Propshaft
5) Replaced very noisy straight through exhaust pipe with a stainless steel semi sport exhaust from triumph six club
6) Added 2 lap belts to rear seat (Liz will now allow the kids to sit in the back.....bugger)
7) Get brand new MOT !

All I had to do now was complete the normal service items and Sean would then tune the car for me. See further posts as this has not happened to date.

I think the car is ready to drive to work (on dry days of course)..................................or so I thought.

History - Part 6 - Xmas 2000

2005-05-04T13:24:00.000+01:00

Scene Setting:
It's Christmas morning the kids are opening their presents. I'm sitting on the floor, watching the kids through bleary eyes and Liz hands me a christmas card (I was rather pissed off with her at the moment, because I had given her, her card a couple of weeks ago) .

Smiling sweetly, I opened the card and a MOT certificate fell out, this confused me no end (apparently my face was a picture which was caught on video, which incidently will never see the light of day).

Examining the certificate further, It had Hattie's number plate on it. What ? How? For god's sake, the car does not even move, let alone pass a MOT.

I of course accused her of buying an MOT on the black market, but apparently, with the help of my brother in law, the car had been removed from my garage and taken to the local reapir & MOT centre, and with a few minor adjustments a MOT was granted, apparently it was touch and go, as the MOT Inspector had to push the manual window washer at least 30 times before he got a dribble of water on the screen.

What Joy, I got dressed and rushed to the garage.

The car was still MISSING !

You can imagine my relief when I was told the car was in My Mother In Laws garage and I could go and fetch it.

That to this day is the one only time I have driven the car in the rain.

The car was then driven for the next year, notching up a fantastic 700 miles

As I thought December was a bad time to renew an MOT, I decided to garage the car for the rest of the winter and get the MOT in the spring, when I could do any repairs in a bit of warmth and dryness.

When I get round to doing the next installment, you will see things did not really go to plan

Intermission 2 - Rocky's Link

2005-03-18T08:52:00.000Z

Whilst searching the web for anything Triumph (that in itsself produces some interesting sites), I located Rocky's Triumph from New Zealand. If you are not a purist, have a look http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/lghrnrm/

New history of my Triumph will appear very soon

Another Intermission

2005-03-11T14:53:00.000Z

Whilst looking at my adventures, why not give my friend Andy's Blog a view at http://www.tiz.st/MiniBlog/

Intermission

2005-03-10T08:44:00.001Z

Check out the new site link - Car Ads (These are very much 'Tongue in Cheek')

Thanks for the material Ian

If anybody has others like this please contact me

History - Part 5 - 2nd Catastrophe

2005-03-08T13:39:00.000Z

House Move July 1998

As our family had expanded, Liz & I decided to move house. After a few months of searching we finally found our current house and we eventually moved 30th July 1998.

Whilst moving, we needed a storage space to store the packed boxes and the garage was deemed the best place, the only problem being that the herald sat there doing nothing.
However, a friend kindly agreed to house the Herald as she had an empty garage. (Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I should have left the car there until I was ready to do some necessary work)

The house move was successful and before I moved the car decided to install some wall cupboards to so that any tools, parts, manuals, Junk etc. was out of the way. The garage looked tidy, I spent many a weekend in there complete with portable TV and beer fridge making a nice home for 'Hattie'. Liz calls this 'Caving' and the male species has to do this in some guise to survive. I call this 'getting away from the kids bickering and wife nagging'.

A week left on the MOT, during August 1998, I decided to move the car into her new home.

'Hattie' was happy for a few weeks.

Liz & I was watching TV one night and heard what seemed like someone, breaking in through the back door, obviously, I sent Liz to investigate as I was well into watching one soap or another. She found nothing !

A week a so passed and one of my pet hates happened, a light bulb blows, which in turn takes out the rest of the lighting circuit. Why does this always happen, when its pitch black and you trip up on one of the kids toys, that they have strategically placed.

So, to the garage I go, to reset the fuse box, and you can imagine my horror, once the lights come back on, to find that one of the cupboards that I had put on the wall, had fallen and embedded itself firmly across the bonnet, and the petrol can, I had put on top the cupboard and leaked its contents over the bonnet and the paint was bubbling.

After shouting a few explitives, I closed the garage door and thought I'll deal with that another day.

The following weekend, I recovered, the car from the garage, replaced the wall cupboard with stronger screws and plugs and wheeled the car back in and that is where she sat for just over 2 Years.

History - Part 4 - Obvious Way Forward

2005-03-04T23:16:00.000Z

Problems so far;

A very noisy straight through, twin Exhaust pipe
Windscreen wipers that don't work
manual washer pump in efficient
Fuel gauge starts from half full and moves towards full as the petrol diminishes
When turning on the heater, the car pisses water over the floor
Speedo Milometer doesn't move
Speedo shows you are doing 30 miles when you are parked
Doors fly open, going round corners and roundabouts ( However, cured the right hand door - With problem No 10.)
Dented Bonnet
Twisted Bonnet Stays

The obvious thing to do was leave the car in the garage, let the MOT expire and hope the problems rectify themselves.

Did I do this ?

You bet I did, however, I also wheeled the car out occasionaly to tidy the garage, but with the hood down, the car made a perfect store cupboard.

Bring on the quotes from Liz (my Wife). If I wanted a skip in my garage, I would have only forked out £80.00

La La La La La was my response for months.

History - Part 3 - 1st Catastrophe

2005-03-04T00:35:00.000Z

May 1998

I was backing the car out of the garage, I caught an old door which was being stored with one of the bonnet catches, which was sticking out.

The door came tumbling down and the handle hit the top of the bonnet, making a small dent.

I continued to reverse (god only knows why) to free the car from the door, but the bonnet catch was still firmly embedded in the door.

The final result was :

The car was free from the door (yippee !)
The car had a small dent in the bonnet (not so good)
In my stupidity to carry on reversing I had twisted the bonnet stays and I now have a gap of approx 5 millimeters between the bonnet and left hand door and the bonnet rubbing on the right hand door (put your own swear word in here)

History - Part 2 - Discover what the gleaming paint work hides

2005-03-03T23:40:00.000Z

After getting the car home and 'showing off' to the neighbours, I find the following problems on the car;

Windscreen wipers don't work (how did it get through the mot)
You need to press the manual washer pump at least 20 times to get the smallest of specs of screen wash on the windscreen
Fuel gauge starts from half full and moves towards full as the petrol diminishes
When turning on the heater, the car pisses water over the floor
Speedo Milometer doesn't move (Great if you are on a limited mileage insurance)
Speedo shows you are doing 30 miles when you are parked
Doors fly open, going round corners and roundabouts (Other road users find this alarming)

Welcome to the new Money Pit

History - Part 1 - In The Beginning

2005-03-03T19:23:00.000Z

Hattie (Family name for XKF 947J) & I was united on 2-10-1997, my fortieth birthday.

I was given the choice of a scanner, a party or a Triumph Herald for my birthday and of course I chose the latter.

So my wife Liz and I scoured the local papers for classic cars and found the new addition to the family, only 3 miles away in Haywards Heath, West Sussex. I Immediately fell in love with the recently restored 1971 signal red Triumph Herald 13/60 Convertible, which came complete with a new white hood - Cost £2,250.

I was going to have this car at all costs and It did (see later posts to see why) as the colour was perfect (matches my favorite football's team colours - see my profile).

So XKF 947J & I was one driving down the Country Lane (Rocky Lane - for any one who knows the area) with the biggest grin on my face, showing off my new pride and joy.

It really was (still is) a header turner, especially as the previous owner had installed a straight through, twin Exhaust pipe, which was louder than any Status Quo concert I had been to.