MadaboutKitcars

Fantastic day at Goodwood today, I could've spent all day just looking round the car park.

Bumped into the Andys P57 &85, and had a nice chat. It was good to see them again.

Another day at the event tomorrow, then I'll be able to post some pictures on Sunday. I went and forgot to bring my SD card adaptor to upload them here

have been on utube live link to goodwood it was on for 8 hrs have seen some of the qualifing and the race to night ...looked wet mate it on all weekend utube goodwood live hd

Had a great day too, but a slow drive home in the dark, under an umbrella!!!

Great last race, finished early in pouring rain and the dark. Not that it slowed them up one bit!

Will be bringing the kids just to the fair tomorrow. Where are you parking Towed?

Wasn't the Canberra.... Awesome!

I'm in Car Park 'B' - I was near to The Wall of Death yesterday, which was a bit ominous!

I missed the last few races as I'd checked the weather forecast so I knew it was going to throw it down and bottled out at 4pm. I managed to get back to my hotel in Crawley and get the covers on before the heavy rain set it.

I did watch the Canberra display, but as I used to work on them it was a bit of a Busman's holiday. The Spitfire and Mustang flying together was the highlight for me.

I'll be meeting up with Slarti outside Tesco at 11 this morning, apparently he's got some black market goods for sale, so if any other Sammio types want to say hello that'll be the time and place.

Should be a dryer day today hopefully

Congratulations Mr. Towed on getting to the Goodwood Revival. Is this possibly the longest journey in a Sammio yet?

We found your car yesterday eventually, the car park collection of stunning classics was just unbelievable!

The Sammio looked wonderful and was certainly attracting attention.





Have a great day today & enjoy the racing.

Cheers,

Paul D, Matthew & James.

Towed

Brave man and in this weather as well, however it takes a lot to wipe that smile off your face, I remember in the early days of the revival in my 289 cobra with no wet weather gear.

I am lucky as I only live 6 miles from Crawley, which way are you driving to Goodwood good routes are:-

1. down the A24 to Findon and acrooss the Findon Valley
2. West Grinstead, Pulborough, over the downs to Arundel best view in the UK from the top of Bury Hill down to Amberly.
3. West Grinstead, Pulborough, Petworth (great road for bends) and up over Duncton Hill flat out overtaking!

Good luck with Journey home, your are welcome for a tea break on the way back if you have time and see a G46 under contruction.


Peter

Arrived home safely at noon after a three hour run up the M25 and M11. Lucky for me it stayed dry until I got within a mile of home

My Spyder has run perfectly for 463 miles since Thursday without missing a beat. I've driven it at 60 to 70mph for three hours non stop on the motorway, enjoyed back road blasts between Crawley and Goodwood and even been stuck in a traffic jam in the rain. It's not going to set any economy records but it's averaged 32mpg, which isn't bad for an old bus.

Without the slightest hint of irony, when I got home and needed to move my modern car out of the way to put the Spyder in the garage, my tin top wouldn't start I had a few choice words to say about it but nothing repeatable in polite company.

I've had a brilliant time at Goodwood and I'd recommend building your own car and driving it there in the rain to anyone!

Charman, I'd have loved to have stopped in for a cuppa and a look at your G46, unfortunately I didn't pay for internet access last night so I didn't get your message until I got home. I'll drop in next year though, do you think it'll be finished?

Paul, sorry I missed you and your family, but at least you found my car. Hope you enjoyed the show.

Lunch now, some photo's later...

Few taster photos/videos for those that weren't able to make Goodwood this year, first shots are just typical of the type of cars that followed/led me in to the car park -







I do love that rat look 356 coupe, it took decades to perfect that patina.

Next shot is of yours truly (shortass in the tweed jacket) with Andy's P57 & 85 checking out a potential donor at the show, I think P85 probably could've picked it up and carried it away on his own -



And here's a couple of vid's of the racing/paddock, hope they play ok...





More later

Glad you had a good time Mr T and that the car ran as good as it looks.

Godwood Revival

Great to meet up with you Mr T and be introduced to 602.
You certainly gave me a lot of inspiration but I don't think my technical ability stretches to your sophisticated fuel injection system
Sunday was the only day I realy got to watch some racing. At 3:15 on the dot, the rain poured down, the actors were all stood down and I had a chance to see some rather WET racing and some pretty twitchy rear ends coming out of the chicane.
Back to work on the Sammio next week end. More photos to follow.
Yo; Slarti

It was nice to meet you too Slarti.

Glad you got the chance to watch a bit of the action, it probably got a bit tedious for you having to share a changing room with the GlamCabs girls...

Keep plugging away at your build and you'll be on the road sooner than you think.

As for the technical side of the build, don't be afraid to ask questions on this forum, we're a friendly bunch and someone is bound to have an answer/solution/pithy remark.

Looking forward to seeing your build progress and meeting up with you in your finished car

So, after the excitement of Goodwood, which was a fantastic show I shall endeavour to visit again next year, and a near 500 mile round trip running my Spyder at high speed it's time to start the inevitable tinkering process.

First job was a wash. On Friday the route into the classic car park was via a short gravel lane then straight onto some aluminium sandwich plate before pulling off onto a nicely manicured meadow where we all parked our pristine pride and joys.

On the Saturday, however, the parade of multi-million pound classic Ferraris/Astons/Jaguars/Me was diverted across the world's muddiest field where we all collected half a ton of mud on our cars' undersides. It was so bad I was actually glad I'd fitted mud and snow tyres, and it took four buckets of soapy water to get it all off today

The process of washing my Spyder for the first time threw up a job that'd been lurking for some time. Shortly after I fitted my recessed battery tray some very wise builders posted pictures of the drain tubes they'd built into theirs to stop the tray filling up with water. I made a mental note to fit one but never got round to it, so my battery tray was full of water when I opened the bonnet to clean underneath. I'll fabricate something in a day or so.

Having said that my Spyder ran faultlessly at high speed for three hours solid, I now find that this wasn't quite true. My old Triumph six uses a bit of oil, going from just below the max line to just above the min line after 460 miles at motorway speeds. When I took the oil filler off to top it up I found the tell tale mayonnaise that indicates head gasket failure

No big deal really, I have a spare gasket and it shouldn't take me more than half a day to replace. But I have a hunch that it failed due to the engine running rather hot. Usually, my temperature gauge doesn't shift from between the two central dots unless you're stuck in heavy traffic, when the electric fan quickly brings it back down if it rises. After an hour and a half on the motorway though, the needle was moving up too close to the red mark for my liking. It didn't actually overheat, and reducing speed to 50mph cooled it down again, but I want to be able to drive my car to Scotland on the motorway without having to constantly stare at the temperature gauge.

I guess the problem is that I've installed a smaller, modern, Honda Civic VTi aluminium racing radiator, assuming that a modern rad would be more efficient than an old Triumph one. This is probably true, but I hadn't allowed for the fact that modern engines are also more efficient than my old lump, and produce less heat. So, the plan is to fit a second radiator at the back of the car. I'll post some more information when the parts arrive...

I'll also be softening and raising the suspension at both front and back to give a less punishing ride and a bit more ground clearance. Once again, more info and pictures will follow once I receive the parts.

I'm also considering fitting a louder exhaust, mine sounds nice but it's not quite as spine tingling as the racers at Goodwood...

That's it for now, more later

I'd love an exhaust note somewhere between the Scream of the Austin Healey 100 S and the Thunder of the Ford Galaxie 500

Hello Towed,

I had to enjoy Goodwood behind a laptop. But hopefully I'm there next year with my Spyder.

I appriciate this thread sharing an honest experience with your car. It's an illusion to make the perfect car. And certainly, not at once without improvements on the way. But we can learn faster because of you telling us what to avoid.

I hear about your heating problems. I wonder, where does it say that aluminium is more efficient then Copper? Aluminium has a warmth guidance coefficient of
237 W m-1 K-1, while Copper has allmost double (390 W m-1 K-1).
Or to put it more simple: this is the reason why professional kitchens prefer to use Copper pans instead of alumiunium.
The thickness of the radiator is also important to increase contact surface with the air. (besides the hight and with offcourse). Perhaps the aluminium is less thick then the original Vitesse rad?

well done towed love the pic.s

Glad you like the pictures Phil, maybe you and Barry will join me next year?

That's interesting information about the thermal efficiency of the alloy radiators being inferior to copper Michiel. I hadn't really thought about it, but in my case the Vitesse radiator was simply too tall to use. If I'd lowered it far enough to fit under the bonnet it would've fouled speed bumps

The alloy racing radiator I fitted is about the same thickness as the original Vitesse one, but has about five times as many channels and fins. I probably would never have known there was a cooling issue if I hadn't run it down the motorway for three hours at a time at 70mph. In normal use it stays well within limits.

So, an MR2 roadster radiator is on order, which is short and wide at 320mm high by 650mm wide and under £50 new, and I'll be mounting that in the back end and plumbing it in between the front radiator bottom hose and the water pump inlet.

Not sure if it'll need its own fan, but it'll be easy enough to retro fit one if I feel it's necessary.

That should provide enough belt'n'braces cooling for high speed runs at Bonneville salt flats. Now there's a thought...

Tough old job, but someone has to do it
Thanks for your words of encouragement .... we'll no doubt meet again sometime.
Hope to be able to fully rebuild back suspension this week-end. photos to follow.
Slarti

Its interesting to note your slight over heating problems. My GT6 radiator was knackered so I scrapped it with the intention of using a MK2 golf radiator as they are cheap, and it seems plenty of other GT6 owners have fitted them successfully.

The only thing I would suggest might help is standing your electric fan off the core so that you maintain flow without too much restriction. Have you got space between the rad and the engine?

Hi Adam, no space to stand the fan off I'm afraid, I've had to tilt the radiator forwards slightly just to get the fan housing to clear the front pulley as it is.

The second radiator arrived this evening, but they've sent the wrong one and it's far too big Waiting to hear back from them tomorrow, hopefully.

Spyder Softail

Started stage 1 of my 'improvements' today, the conversion to Softail spec. With the car jacked up and the wheels off, access to the top of the spring clamp is pretty good (note the liberal covering of Goodwood mud still spattered on everything) -



It didn't take long to whip the spring out complete with the 75mm lowering block -



A couple of seconds with the old angle grinder and I'd separated three more leaves from the spring stack -



After a bit of rooting around in the scrap metal box I found a suitable bit of galvanised 40mm box section to turn into a not quite as low lowering block -



As you can see the new block is about half the height of the old one.

The whole thing is now bolted back in place, but with the car still up on axle stands I've no idea what difference it'll have made to the ride height yet. I'm hoping it will sit about an inch higher and be a bit more forgiving over the bumpy stuff.

I'll be swapping the front arb for an uprated one tomorrow to compensate for the reduced rear roll stiffness, and I'm hoping that the 150lb Spitfire front springs arrive so I can make a start on raising and softening the front end too.

More tomorrow, hopefully.

Uprated front anti roll bar now fitted -



You can see how much thicker the late Spitfire arb is compared to the Vitesse one. It's an essential upgrade if you go down the swing-spring route and recommended by a lot of Triumph specialists (including Phil J) even if you keep the swing-axle setup.

No sign of the new front springs yet so I put the wheels back on and took the car down off the axle stands to check what's happened to the ride height at the back.

This is the 'before' shot -



And here's the 'after' (sorry they're not from the same angle but it's raining heavily) -



The result of removing three more spring leaves and taking about 40mm out of the lowering block was a rise of no more than about 10 - 15mm. That's fine so long as the shocks don't bottom out over bumps, so I went for a test drive in the pi$$ing rain to see what effect the changes have had.

The back end now feels more compliant. The difference is quite subtle - you wouldn't call it soft - but you can feel the back suspension absorbing the bumps now rather than crashing over them. Even from a short test drive I can feel that this has effectively improved the handling. I was able to push it round a roundabout much faster than I could before as it doesn't feel like it's going to step out of line if the back hits a bump, which it did before.

I want to take a full sized adult in the passenger seat for a run over a bumpier road to make sure nothing bottoms out before I can fully recommend this mod, but the early signs are positive.

As I rather like the stance my car has I'll be looking to get a bit more ground clearance by raising the front about an inch or so (the chassis is visibly angled down towards the front at the moment) and by modifying the exhaust (which is what fouls) to a side exit one that won't have to go under the diff housing. More details to follow next week as I'm back to work tomorrow

It was great to see you at Goodwood T,

I am still blown away by it and look forward to next years Revival!

First test fire of the side exit cherry bomb today. Should be ready for a road test tomorrow afternoon, once I've drilled a hole in the bodywork

sound'sand looks very neat towed..

Towed does the piece of box you have used to lower have any reinforcement inside it? If not then you may want to check it after some miles have been put through it to check it hasn't started collapsing?