TR6

Trailing arm frame repair

admin — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 01:34:31 +0000

Trailing arm frame repair

The last time i repaired the TR6 frame, i just focused on the repair in the front and cleaning up what i could reach. I could see some small holes on the trailing arm mount tubes, but the frame generally looked solid enough to not worry about it.

While getting ready for the Waumandee Time Trial (hill climb), i put the car up on a lift (thanks, Brandon) to do some maintenance and give everything a once-over. Those little holes in the frame had gotten noticeably larger.

Not only was the hole larger, it was disturbingly easy to poke a screwdriver through a couple of other areas of that lower side. It was time for a proper fix. It's unlikely the trailing arm would rip out of the frame, but it would be a real bad time if it did.

These trailing arm mounts are a notorious weak spot on TR6 frames. They can collect water inside of the rails but don't drain properly, so over time rust sets in.

I scheduled a tech session with the Triumph club, and a dozen guys came over to help remove the body.

It's a drastic move, but the only way to do the repair right. It might even get me to start body work for a repaint. Later. Much later.

With the body off you could see frame rot on the top side too, that indicates some pretty advanced rust inside.

The repair for this is to replace that section of the frame with new metal. It's a common enough problem that repair sections are easily available from the major parts suppliers. Before i started cutting i made a jig to locate the trailing arm mount holes in relation to 2 body mounts in the frame. This should help ensure correct alignment, or at least as good as it came from the factory (which was not a precision operation).

I got the plan for the jig from Elin Yakov's Rusty Beauties YouTube channel where made a similar jig. It's welded from square bar bolted into the trailing arm mounts, so it's rigid and strong enough for repeated assembly/disassembly, which will be very handy when i get to fitting the new parts.

Before cutting out the bad sections, i welded in an additional tube from the center tunnel to the outer rail on each side. This replicates an addition that Rat-Co has on their new TR6 frame replacements, and should hopefully add some stiffness to the frame.

I used 2.25" square 14ga steel tube. It's a good fit within the inner flanges of the frame rail, and just a bit heavier than that original frame steel. I added a hole on the bottom of each for a vent while welding, then access for internal paint coating and a drain afterward.

I used a sawzall to cut out the rail section and then the angle grinder to cut apart the welds at the end junctions to peel apart the overlapping pieces.

You can see the inside of the removed section and how rusty it is. Those inside plates are baffles to reinforce where the mounting bolts go through. These are not providing much support. Another rusty area is under the lower reinforcement place, known as the t-shirt area.

With the plate removed, you can see the rust through the bottom side of the frame rail, with rust through at the trailing arm mount junction. The inside top and sides of that rail are surprisingly clean, showing some original paint.

I cleaned up the inside surface rust and sprayed in some rust converter. I generally cleaned out the rail interior everywhere i had access, to scrape and blow out any loose rust or dirt.

New bottom section tacked on, and then fully welded and ground smooth. The side patch is for the junction, oversize so the new section welds to new metal. All of the new metal is 14ga steel. I started the project cutting everything with an angle grinder and cutting disk, but later got an electric shear that's much nicer and quieter to use.

You can see the upper t-shirt peeled back. I didn't find anything worse than surface rust there, so i cleaned up and converted rust for everything i could get to but otherwise left it in place. That flap gets welded over the cross section once it's welded in, replicating the original setup. The bottom plate is similar, i'll be installing an all new one.

Fitting in the new frame section. It comes in 2 pieces, a large deep section and shallow inner section. I drilled out holes and plug welded the sections together after initial fit. The jig helped to keep the mount holes aligned, and doubles as a nice handle to move the section around during fitting.

The inner rail ended up tight on one side with a small gap on the other side, when it fit correctly on the jig. I trimmed the acute side just enough to fit correctly and filled in the gap with a narrow strip for a solid connection. The outer rail connection took a fair amount of trimming and fitting to get the alignment right too, plus some new metal to replace some thin or missing areas.

This was all for the driver side, that whole process repeated on the other side. The passenger side wasn't nearly as rusty but it got all the same repairs and new metal as the driver side. As long as i'm already elbow-deep, might as well make both sides equal. Apparently i didn't get a photo of installing the new lower t-shirt plate.

I also gave the frame a good inspection for any other repairs. I didn't remove the engine or front suspension, so i couldn't easily flip the frame, but everything from the gearbox back was stripped off. I found a small crack in a weld at the steering box mount in front, the exhaust mount had broken off at the rear crossmember, and cracks around one of the front differential pins, showing that repair was certainly done with the body on.

(crack fix photo from after paint)

With the repairs done i did a thorough round of degreasing and sprayed in 2 cans of internal frame coating from Eastwood. It's thin, green paint that should also encapsulate any rust i couldn't otherwise reach. For the outside i brushed on 2 coats of Eastwood chassis black. It's also fairly thin, would probably be better to spray, but i didn't want that level of mess so i ended up each painting session with a completely black hand from the brush drips.

The finished frame looks great though, and the paint seems pretty durable. I let it dry a few days then started to reassemble, getting as far as a rolling chassis before the garage was too cold for more work.

It's unfortunate to end the year with the car in multiple pieces and no way to get the Honda in the garage for the winter, but i'm really pleased with how solid the frame feels. With any luck this is the only time i'll have to pull the body off like this, and i'll have it back together in time for summer driving again.

admin Tue, 11/12/2024 - 19:34

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TR6

Getting low(er)

admin — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 13:25:10 +0000

Getting low(er)

When I first got the car, it still had the original style (maybe original?) springs, which seemed to be tired, along with the rest of the suspension. I tossed those springs, but probably should have kept them for reference. They were replaced with standard height but stiffer springs, the rationale being we were big dudes and stiffer springs might help keep the ride reasonable. I had also read about the acceleration squat of original rear springs and wanted to avoid that.

Lately I've been feeling like the car is standing a bit tall, and especially with the Waumandee hill climb coming up I decided to try a new set of springs to improve the car's cornering.

Because they're cheap and ship fast, I went with these 1" lowering springs from BP Northwest. They're rated at 400# front and rear both, which is different from the original setup of 305# front, 350# rear. Other uprated springs have different rates, and maybe that's a better way to go, but I figured these would be close to the spring rate I had, just a bit lower, which seems like a safe bet. It's also close to what others use for their uprated springs (Good Parts version is 390/470).

I did the rears first and was really happy that I had previously installed the adjustable swing arm brackets because the camber went from about 0 to -3°. I was able to adjust that back to neutral spec, and the brackets are still well within the range of adjustment.

The fronts were a real mess at first. I took the trunnion apart while removing the old spring and had a terrible time getting the new spring back and everything lined up. I actually gave up on the conversion because of the short time before the hill climb, but after sleeping on it I realized I was way over-complicating the process.

For future reference, get the front end up pretty high for plenty of working space below, DON'T undo the trunnion, just unbolt the pan and lower it with the spring compressor. The spring compressor along with the floor jack helped compress it back into place to re-bolt the lower pan. Much easier and quicker. The front wheels measured at about the same camber after, so I didn't make any adjustments to the a-arm shims.

The first attempt with new springs and standard pads was too low; I got tire rubbing in the rear on moderate bumps with 2 people in the car, and even on hard acceleration. In the front I actually took a few slices off the corner of one tire while backing out of a driveway at an angle. I added a 1/2" spacer in the rear and thicker poly pads in the front, and it seems to be more usable now.

Measurements, floor to fender arch:

	FL	FR	RL	RR
before	27.75"	27.75"	29"	28.5"
after	27.25"	27.25"	28"	27.5"

Ground clearance before was about 6" before at the lowest points at the front frame, 7.25" for the lowest point on the muffler. After, it's 5.5" at the front, and 5.5 for the muffler at the rear.

I'm not sure whether I’ll keep this setup for normal daily driving use. I think having it this low would be totally fine with stock wheels and narrower (original 185 size) tires, but with 205 width tires on 16x7 rims borders on overfilling the wheel wells. It looks great, but if the tradeoff is having to drive it more carefully all the time it may not be worth it. I’ll give it a few weeks of driving to decide.

March 2024 update: i removed the springs and reverted to the previous "stock height" setup. The wheel/tire combo i have on there are just too big to lower the car even an inch, i was getting chunks out of the front tires on tight cornering and even with 1/2" spacers the rear tires would sometimes rub on hard acceleration or even a moderate bump. The relatively small change in look wasn't nearly worth having to baby the car over every off-kilter bump or turn.

admin Tue, 10/10/2023 - 08:25

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TR6

Frame repair and misc updates

admin — Mon, 19 Sep 2022 14:28:29 +0000

Frame repair and misc updates

While cleaning up the frame and preparing for the welding work, I decided to take advantage of the generous loan of a Quickjack from a club member to do some other updates.

First, I cleaned up and painted sections of the frame that I hadn't done during the earlier floor pan repairs. I can't fully paint the frame with the body in place, but it's at least more uniform and better protected until I can do a full refurbishment (or frame replacement).

Next, I replaced the differential with a hopefully better used unit. I picked up 2 diffs from a guy who had them left over from a TR6 he owned years ago; one of them is rebuilt but has the 3.45:1 ratio that was used in the UK cars, and the other a standard spec 3.70:1 that just needed new seals. I opted to use the 3.70 diff to keep the same drive ratio. The lower cruising RPM would be nice, but I would be giving up some acceleration, and that's part of what I like about the car. I wasn't able to split the output shafts to replace the side seals, but I installed a new pinion seal (new rubber to replace an original leather seal) and it feels a bit tighter than the diff I pulled out of the car.

The last update was inspired by having to tow the car home, and I reinforced the tow loops that are part of the radiator protection shield at the front of the frame. I added 1/8" steel plate on either side, slightly more than doubling the thickness of the original metal, and made the holes a bit smaller (though this was in part because I couldn't make them any larger with my step drill).

This is my first repair using my cheap TIG welder, and I'm happy with how it came out. The TIG welds along the edges are solid and clean, needing very little cleanup just to smooth edges. I used the MIG welder around the circle of the loop because it was too hard to get that area clean enough to TIG. That area isn't super clean looking, but it's plenty strong.

Finally, on to the frame repair. I recruited a highly experienced welder from our Triumphs club to do this work so I don't have to worry about my own welds in a safety-related space. Knowing how to weld also means knowing limitations.

I ground out the old weld snot and made sure the new bracket would fit correctly. We needed to replace some missing metal along the top lip of the frame rail where the bracket fits as well as fix areas where the rail had cracked. With the top of the rail repaired we could tack in the new bracket, just above where the clamps are located.

Once we confirmed that measurement, to match the location on the other side, the bracket was fully welded in. Then an extra plate over the outer frame rail where the previous gusset had started puncturing through. This fully resolved the damage to the frame rails and it's at least as strong as original.

After a bit of fine-tuning to the fit we welded in the side gussets, so it's fully up to the standard of the later reinforced frames. The driver-side bracket already had the correct main gusset installed, no idea why that one was done correctly while the passenger bracket was a mess. Anyway, welding all done.

I did a bit of cleanup grinding to make sure the a-arm mount fit correctly in the bracket, then cleaned and painted everything we had welded. After reassembly I did a quick measurement of the front-end toe-in and camber, and both measured within spec, same as it was the last time I aligned it. It test drove just fine too, no pulling or odd sounds, just back to where it should be.

Three days later (after a couple more test drive and re-checking fastener torques) I drove the car 150 miles to the Waumandee hill climb and did several runs up the hill at speed, and everything held together perfectly.

admin Mon, 09/19/2022 - 09:28

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VTR trip and a broken frame

admin — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 19:22:41 +0000

VTR trip and a broken frame

My wife and I drove 250 miles to the 2022 VTR Convention in Galena Illinois in late August, joining about 20 other cars from the Minnesota Triumphs club. This was the longest trip away from home in our TR6, but I was feeling pretty confident about it after last year's engine rebuild, this year's gearbox rebuild, and a few hundred miles of driving this year already.

We were also driving down with 2 other cars, a TR3 and TR4, both driven by long-time members who have dealt with mechanical issues on the road. I loaded some tools and spare parts in the trunk, so even though our cars didn't share many parts we could fix things like leaking hoses or ignition issues.

Our group had a broken fan belt in the TR3 that we fixed quickly on a side road...

...then an uneventful trip until my engine quit just under a mile from the resort. The engine lost power and sputtered to a stop, acting exactly like it has when I forgot to open the fuel shutoff valve. As guessed, the fuel pump had broken, the diaphragm disconnected internally. The top of this post should have a distinct T-shape at the top, to fit into the pump lever.

In hindsight, we could have gotten a tow in from any number of people arriving with trailered cars, but we pulled the TR6 the last mile with the TR3 now sporting a replaced fan belt. Within 5 minutes of arriving in the parking lot we had the first of several offers of a replacement fuel pump that smarter attendees had brought as spares.

I got the fuel pump replaced before breakfast the next morning and we enjoyed 2 full days of driving around Galena. We joined the funkhana, winery tour, breakfast run, the poker fun (collecting an ace-high straight), and dinner on a patio where we had the best sunset view I've seen since my last visit to the west coast.

While backing out of our parking spot from that last dinner, my front tire was rubbing oddly. We got home fine, but when I investigated in the morning, I found trouble.

Right below the bright area of the photos you can see a break where the lower a-arm bracket is pulling away from the frame. The driving portion of our trip was done.

We were able to attend the next day's car show thanks to club members loaning us their tow vehicle for the day. We got home thanks to other members who towed their TR4 and offered to drive it home so we could use their trailer.

It wasn't a sad end to the trip, despite the breakdown and tow. We made it home safely. We were surrounded by the support and hands-on help from members of our Minnesota Triumphs club as well as many others who attended VTR from across the country. Ted Schumacher of TSI Automotive, who was a vendor at the conference, arranged to have a fuel pump shipped to us at the hotel so we could replace the spare so generously offered by Tom from Vermont. We had a wonderful time with everyone there, and arrived home determined to both fix the car and get to the next Triumph gathering that we can.

admin Thu, 09/08/2022 - 14:22

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TR6 steering wheel

admin — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 21:59:59 +0000

TR6 steering wheel

The original 1969 steering wheel was a unique design for that year, with a different center hub than later years, and a series of holes similar to racing cars and Jaguars of the period. Here's my original wheel with a black leather cover and some excellent patina.

The problem, for a tall driver like me, is that the original wheel is also huge. It's 15" across, and while I love the proportions of the wheel I don't love that my right leg is constantly against it while I'm driving.

There are plenty of replacement wheels available, though all of them cost $200 and up and require replacing the center hub. I like the unique look of the center pad, and I like the idea of only replacing the wheel, so I decided to just make my own.

I made a CAD drawing of the critical dimensions to replicate the center structure of the wheel and laid it out on a piece of 3/16" (7 gauge) 6061 aluminum. I got it from a local metal supplier as a cutoff for $24.

It would have been a lot clearer if I'd sprayed dye or something first, but scratching it out with a protractor and caliper worked just fine.I started with the mounting holes, the only measurement that really matters, then started drilling out access for a jig saw. The base of the jig saw made a mess of the surface, but that's easily cleaned up later.

With the rough cuts done I started drilling out the spoke holes. I used a large bit for the smaller ones then switched to a step drill for the rest.

I decided to do a quick test fit to make sure I was on the right track before getting too far into shaping. So far so good, but still feels a bit dangerous for a drive. I didn't mount it firmly, just confirmed that the mounting holes are right.

Then the filing began in earnest. I made quite a pile of aluminum bits of much filing.

This is when I seriously wondered why I didn't look for a water jet or laser cutter to make a cleaner blank earlier. I eventually ended up with a decent shape

The original wheel is slightly dished. Since I'm making this from a single piece it seems difficult and maybe risky to form this 6061 aluminum without cracks. To help account for that, I thought a spacer would help bring the wheel forward a bit.

It's time for a real test, but I ran into a snag. You can see from this view that the wheel mounts on the hub with a nut and bolt. I bought longer bolts to account for the spacer, but the nuts are slightly too large to fit into the slots in the back of the hub. There's no room for a socket, let alone a wrench, so the hub has to hold the nuts to be able to tighten the bolts.

After filing down opposite flats a few thousandths the nuts fit perfectly. You can see it's tight against the flange here.

With the fasteners working I taped on a temporary foam grip for a test fit and drive.

I could immediately tell the difference in space around the wheel - there's a gap above my legs, and the difference in steering effort seems negligible. The rim size felt good, but overall the wheel looks small to me. I decided to thin the outer rim, and that made it closer to the right proportion. I also painted it black like the original.

I thought for a while on what to do about making a round grip. Most similar steering wheels use a wood rim, but I'm planning to use a leather cover on the wheel, so it doesn't seem worth the trouble to make the right shape in wood. I looked at several options for different foams, but nothing seemed like a good fit or easy to work with. In the end, I was inspired by the cork grips on one of my bikes.

Cork is easy to shape and has a little cushion while staying firm. I got a roll of 4mm sheet cork from the craft store and cut out some arcs then glued them on with high-strength adhesive spray.

Then I trimmed away the big pieces with a utility knife and started sanding with 50 grit paper. I protected the paint with some masking tape.

The cork sands easily, so I focused mostly on making good curves and bringing the size down close to the (new) thickness of the rim. I switched to 120 grit to smooth out the surface.

It's still a bit squarish, but I'm keeping it like this for a bit to see how I like the shape before I order the cover. I'll likely round it a bit more but I think the size of the rim is good. Here it is fully installed.

The wheel seems visually larger with the thinner edge, and it helps a bit to see the gauges, which are partially blocked with the smaller wheel. The horn still works fine with the spacer in place. The cork feels great, but I'm sure I'll take a chunk out of it sooner or later, so it'll get a black leather cover like I have on the original. The cover will double the cost of the project, to about $120 total, including metal, cork, and new bolts.

It was a lot of work, but I'm happy with it, and love that it looks like it could be original to the car.

Update: I repainted the center to flat black and installed the new black leather cover using a cross/corset stitch.

admin Thu, 07/07/2022 - 16:59

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Sun visors

admin — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 02:19:27 +0000

Sun visors

The sun visors that came with my car were, like many of the interior pieces, obviously home-made. You can see in this photo of the interior, they're oddly puffy and warped.

They were a layer of soft foam and vinyl on each side of the wire visor frame, sewn together and a vinyl binding sewn around the edge. While I appreciate the charm, they look messy with everything else getting updated. On the other hand, I wasn't excited to pay $150 for a pair of brand-new ones, and I'm sure that any originals I might find will be a bag of crumbling foam that wasn't much better.

I figured I could make something similar to the original style with pieces I have around the shop.

First I removed and stripped the passenger visor as a test.

These are the pieces: the cover on top, frame in the middle, and mounting post on the bottom. The post has a slight bend in it which creates the friction to hold the visor in place when flipping it up and down. I cleaned up and painted the metal parts, though the frame was originally just bare steel.

I'm not even sure what the new visors are like exactly, but I wanted a visor that is padded but thin and firm, and covered in black vinyl to match the interior.

Digging around, I found some 5/16" thick closed-cell foam that seemed about perfect, so I cut out a test piece in the shape of the old visor.

I'm not sure if the visor is supposed to be the size of the frame, but the ones I had were larger, and an extra inch of height seems useful when I'm tall enough to almost look above the windshield.

I like the thickness of the foam, but also didn't want to have the frame showing under the vinyl, so I split the foam along the edge so I could encase the frame.

I installed the frame into the foam.

I used a little contact cement to seal the edges together to make the foam and frame solid.

For the vinyl, I decided to use pieces cut from the old soft top that I just replaced. I tried a couple of tests with some water-based contact cement, but ended up using the same 3m spray contact adhesive that I used for the main soft top gluing.

I didn't really have a good pattern for the vinyl, so I just glued one side and started working around the curves. If I had a better form I would have use a heat gun to stretch the vinyl for smoother curves. I'm not sure if the contact cement will hold these fiddly pieces, so I decided to sew along the edge to make it more secure. It also helped to smooth out the pointy curves.

The result isn't quite a slick as I was aiming for, but I like them a lot better than the old ones.

They fit in the space great and in use you don't see the sewing and extra seam along the top edge, so I like them.

admin Tue, 06/14/2022 - 21:19

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Soft top installation

admin — Sun, 05 Jun 2022 02:26:05 +0000

Soft top installation

Well, a new-to-me soft top. A member of our local Triumph club replaced the top on his TR6 with a fancier cloth version, and his old one was still in pretty good shape, and I was the first to respond. The only 2 problems with it were a small hole in the rear corner and that it had been installed a little too tight on the previous car. So this isn't a new top installation, it's really a re-installation of a used top that's still a lot nicer than the one I'd patched and repaired several times.

The VTR installation instructions are pretty good, if lacking in photos. Ed's TR6 restoration site has a good page on his his new top installation with photos. I don't think there's much unique about mine other than reusing a top, and I found the installation easier than expected, but I thought a few picture of some details might be helpful for others.

I started by removing the old top, sanding a few spots on the frame with surface rust and painting it. I let it dry for a few days before starting on any gluing steps. In hindsight, I should have given it a couple more coats and let it dry longer, as I dinged up a couple of spots during the installation. Powdercoating is probably the best way to go if you have the time and money for it.

With the frame installed I did a lot of test fitting with the door windows, the top needed a bit of tweaking to align correctly to the windshield top. One of the hinge pieces also seemed a bit bent, so I realigned that to match the other side. I wanted the mount holes to align with the frame sitting naturally, without needing to flex to fit, so there wasn't any built-in tension before mounting the straps or vinyl.

In my previous patching of my old top, I replaced the shredded velcro on the side rails with new pieces bought from one of the usual vendors (I don't remember which), but the velcro was 3/4" wide - too wide for the rail edge, so the vinyl didn't wrap around the rail cleanly and ultimately came loose again.

I tried using a water-based contact cement on some test pieces to see if that would work. I've had good luck with using that for the vinyl covering on my speaker cabinet project, but it is not a good choice for this. WBCC is thinner, so you need to add several coats to get a good base of adhesive on porous surfaces like the cloth lining of vinyl. It also take a long time to dry, so you're waiting 30-60 minutes for a coat to dry in good weather. And after all that, it didn't stick as well either. I ended up using standard solvent-based brush-on Weldwood contact cement for the side rail velcro and 3M 90 high-strength spray adhesive for the front rail. You could use the spray adhesive for both, I just found it easier to brush that area rather than mask off so much.

I sewed my own side velcro pieces from heavy-duty sew-on velcro trimmed to 1/2" wide and sewn on to some black automotive vinyl bought at the fabric store. Very little of that vinyl shows after everything is done, so there's no reason to get fussy about the specific vinyl pattern. I could have cut up pieces of the old top for the vinyl base under the velcro, if I'd been planning ahead better.

I made a new foam wedge for the front of the rail, it's a little bulgy here, but works fine with everything installed. The wedge was missing in my top, but it looks like the goal is to make a smoother transition between the side and front rails.

Laying out the new straps, I left the rearmost bow down while fitting the strap to the front bow. By attaching the front end of the strap and then raising the bow, I was able to add more tension to the straps without pulling as hard on the strap while marking the front mount.

When attaching the front end of the strap, it gets looped around the hold-down plate. This puts it closer to the top fabric and gives extra clearance around the levers. I haven't trimmed the excess strap yet in this photo.

Once fully installed the straps are tight enough to make a fairly high tone when plucked, but it's still fairly easy to align and clamp the frame down.

I was doing the install on a moderately warm day, but in direct sunlight, so the vinyl had a good amount of stretch. Since I knew the top had fit a bit too tight on the previous car, I aligned it about 1/4" looser along the front edge than the previous line showed. This seemed to pull the top smooth without being too tight.

I masked off areas that shouldn't get glued and used 3M 90 spray cement on the front rail and front edge of the vinyl top. Unfortunately, since it had previously been trimmed to fit the old setup, installing it a bit more slack means that the edge of the vinyl doesn't extend under the riveted-on seal channels. I trust the glue will hold well enough.

On the inside I replaced the mostly broken plastic studs on the rear bow with new metal ones, and added studs to the 2nd bow rather than rivet the top directly to the bow.

This is the best way I've found to install the difficult front seal. I sprayed the bottom of the rubber with some soapy water, pushed the far edge into the channel, then used a short flat-blade screwdriver to poke in the remaining edge. It's tedious but took maybe 5 minutes to finish.

The final installation turned out smooth and fairly tight, but not too tight to latch down in front. It takes just a little extra grunt now, but I think it'll be fine after a few days in the sun to stretch and settle in.

In the rear the side snaps line up well enough that I didn't have to remove and reinstall any of them, but one was a pretty tight pull at first. The rear window is not very tight, but after being up for a day the quarter windows have straightened out quite a bit.

On the first highway drive, it's obvious that the new top is better sealed than the old one, and there's almost no creaking or rattling from the top. And even with the waviness of the plastic it's sure nice to be able to see out the back now.

admin Sat, 06/04/2022 - 21:26

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2021 Waumandee Time Trial

admin — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 13:46:47 +0000

2021 Waumandee Time Trial

I'm not building this TR6 to be a race car, really more of a summer around-town cruiser that's reliable and ready for moderate road trips. But, in that process, the engine is a bit hotter, and the original point of the car was for spirited driving, and they didn't take much prep to be a reasonable weekend racer, so it's totally in the car's spirit to do some zippier events.

This past weekend i joined the Waumandee Time Trial, a hill climb in the driftless area of southwestern Wisconsin. It's been running for several years in a couple of different locations, but for the last few year at a twisty 2.3 mile course with 430 feet of climbing. It's run on a local road that's closed for the event, but being a remote farm road there's no guard rails or any kind of shoulder or runout area.

The course also has 9 chicanes made of hay bales plus a series of chicanes at the end to limit the overall driving speed and make it safer, though a few cars still manage to get sideways or slip a bit off the road. Happily nobody took the long slide sideways down the hill, which has apparently only happened once (the first year at this location).

This is a video of my fastest run of the day, from my phone on the dash:

The car ran great all day, no mechanical problems at all. The new wheels and tires were very grippy and the engine was strong. I was definitely the limiting factor in overall speed. What i lacked in pure power over many other cars i partially made up for by carrying pretty good speed through the chicanes, and i probably could have been faster and still plenty safe through a few of the other corners where i was feeling more cautious.

I ended up 34th out of 50 drivers, which is about what i was aiming for. I drove my car 2 hours there, and it was also my way home, so my main 2 goals were to not break anything on the car and to not get hurt myself. I'm fine not being near the fastest of the day, and happy to have beat a few friends and potentially faster cars.

I had a great time, and plan to do it again next year, and hopefully some more on-track time to get a better feel for the car. I did one other track day at the beginning of August that helped a lot, even though the car wasn't running 100% that day. I may try out some autocross too, i think it would help a lot to feel out the limits of the car to have more confidence with it.

admin Tue, 09/28/2021 - 08:46

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Adding aux-in to an old car stereo

admin — Mon, 12 Jul 2021 02:22:01 +0000

Adding aux-in to an old car stereo

It's a bit pointless trying to have a decent audio in a convertible. If the exhaust system isn't loud (mine is stock, but not quiet), the wind noise will overwhelm basically anything that isn't ridiculously loud. A radio is a bit more usable when the top is up, even with the rear window down, and it's really nice to have in a modern drive-in when you have to tune in a local station to hear the movie.

Anyway, my car came to me with this sweet vintage tape deck:

It's a Kraco, model KID-585. These were pretty low-end universal replacement units from the i dunno, early 80s? It has a working cassette deck and AM/FM radio, connected to a pair of 4" Sparkomatic speakers mounted along the outer kick panels.

Like most people nowadays, i'm spoiled by using my phone for GPS directions when traveling someplace new, and wanted to have this option built in to the car instead of having to use earphones every time.

There are a limited number of modern options to replace a 2-post car stereo with a retro-styled unit, even with Bluetooth connectivity, but none of those are cheap, and i'd rather not spend much on something i'll barely use. There are easy options to add an aux-in port to head units with CD changer ports, but this radio was made before CDs existed. Happily, i found this link during my research: https://www.caraudionow.com/installing-an-aux-in-port/?unapproved=91168&moderation-hash=e4ab6db7bcae2087921228a5844fb7e4#comment-91168

So i opened up the radio.

From the article and an image of a schematic for my radio in an ebay auction, i was able to parse out where the signal inputs go in to the volume (lower post in the above image).

In this closeup, there are 4 rows of connectors for the volume potentiometer. The top row is the on/off switch for the main power. The 2nd 2 rows are the audio input for each channel. I don't know what the lower one is.

The very fine wires seemed to come from the radio selector, so the far left terminal in each row seems to be the input, and the 2nd terminal is maybe the output. I decided to start with them.

The key to making the aux-in work is a 3.5mm input jack with 2 switches. I got this one from DigiKey (and a couple of spares in case i wrecked one).

The way these work is that each channel has 2 connectors that go to a normally closed switch. By redirecting the input signal through these switches before it gets to the volume pot, the radio will be on (since the switches are closed) until an audio jack is plugged in, which opens the switches and takes in the signal from the plug.

The image shows the pinouts for this particular switch, it's best to use a meter to figure out the connections for the one you're using. You want the tip and middle segment of the stereo cord to connect through when plugged in, and the radio input switched off.

My first test was successful, but the thin wires are from the cassette, so i'd need to have a tape in the deck to enable the aux audio input. I'd rather have the aux input switch from the radio, so i changed to using the larger light and dark blue wires instead, and gave it a test.

Everything seemed to check out, so i knotted the wire bundle as a strain relief, and happily there was already a hole in the case where the wires could come out. The ground wire is brought up from the jack to make a common ground on the back of the radio case.

I installed the jack on the passenger kidney panel, right next to the USB charging port i'd added earlier. I even sprang for a cheap of new co-axial 4" speakers for marginally better sound.

The new setup works great, i have normal radio when the unit is turned on, phone audio input when the 3.5mm jack is plugged in, and it still switches to cassette when a tape is put in.

This was a fiddly project, but cost all of $2.50 for the input jack, and $25 for new speakers. I modified the kidney panels i had made earlier and used the spare wire from the speaker set for the input jack wiring. Between this and the USB, i feel better equipped for longer trips and navigating when i'm driving solo.

admin Sun, 07/11/2021 - 21:22

tag

TR6

dummy pedal footrest

admin — Sun, 04 Jul 2021 13:58:10 +0000

dummy pedal footrest

Nobody would call a TR6 a roomy car, and when you're over 6 feet tall, it can be a rather snug fit. Add in large feet, and the driver's options for positions get even more limited. It's a good thing i like wearing converse all-star shoes, because i would be hard-pressed to work the foot pedals with shoes that are at all larger.

This is a problem no matter what your height or foot size, because in stock form, there's really nowhere to put your left foot while cruising on the highway, You don't want to rest it on the clutch pedal and risk burning out the disk, and with the early cars (like mine), you can easily hit the high beams switch on the floor.

Some sporty cars fix this with a dummy pedal, a place to put your foot to the left of the clutch, so i thought i'd make my own.

It seems to have been a somewhat common thing to try to squeeze large speakers in the car by cutting out the kick panels, one of the few larger expanses of space available. This was done on mine as well.

That's the passenger side showing how the hole was covered with thin galvanized sheet. Here's the hole on the driver side, in all it's hacked-up glory.

It's a mess. I think they drilled out a series of holes and then i dunno, cold chiseled them apart? I wanted to put the foot rest about in the middle of that hole, and the very thin galvanized cover was not going to hold up, and i don't want to tear down the fenders to replace those panels just yet. So i started by making a new cover out of 18 gauge steel.

This shot also shows the basic foot rest and the braces i'll add for strength. The foot rest pieces are 14ga steel i got a while back from the metal supplier scrap bin for practice.

The new steel panel will need some additional trimming, but it's using mostly the same mount points as the old version. There's a slight bend in the panel, so i put a slight bend in the foot rest part as well. I probably didn't need to do that, since there will also be a carpeted panel between this steel sheet and the final foot rest, but oh well.

Here's a view of the welded footrest fit to the panel. Ignore my 3/4 terrible welds.

I installed threaded inserts to mount the foot rest, both for better strength than sheet metal screws, and because it'll be easier to remove and replace in the future if needed.

This view shows the back of that plate - i doubled the 18 gauge across where the foot rest mounts by plug end edge welding it in place. Between that and the slight bend in that area, it should be plenty stiff for all but intentional destruction.

Test fit in place with final trim, and adding a couple more mounting screws to the plate.

Hard to see at this angle, but the foot rest sits just slightly above the plane of the clutch pedal. With size 13 shoes, the ball of my foot just hits the bottom of the rest, with plenty of room below to hit the light switch, and it doesn't interfere with the clutch pedal at all.

Here's the final installation, with the kick panel carpeted. Rather than carpet the foot rest, i finished it with 3 coats of rubberized undercoating, which doesn't give a ton of grip, but will hopefully hold up well over time.

I've been wanting to do this for a while, and installing new carpet was the excuse i needed to get it done. I like having a stable place to put my left foot, and it's going to make longer trips much nicer.

admin Sun, 07/04/2021 - 08:58

tag

TR6