2025-12-01 Valve Cover Revisited

I am waiting on parts to arrive and procrastinating doing the rear brakes.  Decided to deal with the valve gasket.  It was leaking like crazy.  I was intending to refurbish a spare cover ( see Valve Cover ).  But I got stalled when pulling the filters inside for the media blasting.  I ripped the welds, and they need to be Tig-welded.   I kept putting it off.  

This leads to where we are now.  I have a spare cork gasket and figured a small job to clean the current cover and install the new cork until the spare can be refurbished.  

And we went off the rails at this point.....

Not bad condition for 45 years old

Looking at the seal, yes, it is toast.

Since the cover is off, looking at the cam, I don't see any major issues

A closer look at the cover, it could do with a quick cleanup 

Ok, it is going into the sonic cleaner.  Unfortunately, it doesn't fit, so one side goes into the tank, then it gets flipped around.  While that was cooking, time to go and clean up the fasteners.  Again, the stainless sieves hold the fasteners and blow the media through the mesh.

After cleaning the inside, etc, of the media, a little polishing is done.  

After cooking for about an hour, I pulled the cover from the tank, and the paint had started to lift

This was a bit of a shock. Let's see what happens with the wire brush.  After about 15 minutes, this is the result 

Okay, this changes things a lot.  This is on the way to a full refurbishment.  Time to take this all the way.   After a Dremel brush to get the leftovers and into the nooks, then a scotch bright and parts cleaner, the cover came out squeaky clean  

After masking the openings, time to shoot paint.  A special paint, black wrinkle paint!!   The method I used, 4 layers of paint with a five-minute flash time between each coat.  Then leave it for ten minutes and use a heat gun to heat up the paint.  After about five minutes, the paint started to form.   Moving the heat gun around from the wrinkle part to the "wet" part.  

Now leave it for twenty-four hours to fully set up.

Tonight, with it coming out so well, going to use the new silicon gasket from 

Triumph TR7 Gasket, OEM Valve Cover

This is the third one I have, one for the TR3a, one for the GT6 motor, and now this one 

After allowing the high-temp silicon to be set up, reinstall it on the engine.

And yes, the oil cap got polished as well

It looks good.   New spark plug leads were put in to replace the original green ones.  That exposed the need for a dizzy cap.   LOL, one thing leads to the next

2025-11-24 Longer Is Not Always Better OR Size Matters!!

Need to have fun with blog title titles LOL When I got the car, the shifter bushings were screwed, the gearbox mount was screwed.  There was a lot of slop in changing the gears.  When I pulled out the gearbox mount, I needed to pull off the shifter.  Seen on the workbench

NOTE: When you pull the shifter, there is an anti-rattle button (the white thing in the next picture) and a spring at the front of the shifter.  Before releasing the last bolt, wrap a rag around the front to hold the released plunger in place.  Otherwise, a good chance of going ping 😛

And this is what the shifter and knob look like

I had another shifter, and a friend of mine cut it down 2".  I picked a cheap molded knob off Amazon.  I have a similar shifter knob on the TR3a.  

Now, the comparison between the original and the modified one. TADA!

At this point, I didn't comprehend just how short the new shifter was going to be LOL. Time to reinstall in the car.  The centre console assembly is a whackload of screws and parts.  Always fun, take pics as each part comes off.   Don't forget to bag and tag the parts and screws LOL  

With the shifter boot, it was a tight fit.  But I made it work.  Look forward to running with this.  

2025-11-16 Catch up

I just realized that I have not posted since October 23rd.   There have been several updates.  Also included were the Toronto Blue Jays' post-season games.  That was a great reason to not post.  

The areas that were touched

The nose wiring harness

The completion of the fog light connections and installation 

The left engine mount 

The Nose Harness

When I was fixing the front indicators, I noticed some other taped areas on the main harness.  The left headlight pod decided it didn't want to drop.  The high beam on the right side didn't work consistently.  I tested the resistance between the headlights; there should be no resistance, since the lines are being fed from the same source before the fuses.  

Some of the connectors that are in the engine bay for the pod, indicators, and headlights showed corrosion, are dirty, and some are damaged.  It is very tight where these harnesses are located in the engine bay for working on.  So, when doing any work, the harness needed to be freed.  Also, I noticed that the harness grommets were toast.  On the list to replace.  

The right pod on the bench.  This was actually pretty easy to pull out of the car.  The upside was that the brackets left a mark on the bulkhead, which meant that getting the proper alignment was pretty easy when reinstalling 

The connectors from the pod, you can see the corrosion on the pins.  This is not great, since it creates a resistive point

With the pod out, I fished the harness out.   

Some items to notice: the brown/blue wire, which is part of the control of the pod. Has no connector. The ground connector is 'dirty'.  The connectors have overspray and are dirty.   Below is the section of the wiring diagram for reference.  It is easy to see the 'main' beam circuits and the connection before the fuses.

With the harness hanging out of the headlight opening

With the harness spread apart, the issues are easier to see.

One of the connectors 😞

When I was at the U-Pull, I grabbed some connectors and could replace some of the more damaged ones.  Like this one 

Just needed to pull the pins and put it in the sonic cleaner.

After some cleanup, such as 'polishing' the pins when they were pulled out of the connector,  and some heat shrink tubing for additional strength, where some chaffing occurred.  They were put back together.

In preparation for pulling the harness from the nose, the right-hand harness was pulled through the bulkhead.  It didn't look great either.  

On the right side decided to remove the harness tape.  To check the state of the wiring.  

For the most part, this looked fine.   But the ends still need to be fixed.  After cleaning up and re-taping, I thought it was ready for service again 

Moving over the left side harness, it was 'bulging', so I pulled the electrical tape off, and this is what I found 

This is not good.  Need to pull the harness since these repairs are so close to the edge of the nose.   And this 

Taking off the tape, and well, it looks like a mess.  

Here is the leap of faith: I am going to put as much of the harness in the sonic cleaner.   I needed to move the cleaner to the front of the car.   Here is the cleaner ready to go.

 

After a couple of minutes, it was showing what was coming off.

After about 30 minutes and heat the harness came out much cleaner

Having the wires being much cleaner, it is much easier to assess the damage that needs to be repaired.  

Time to go through the wires one by one and do the actual repair.  I have found the best, most reliable connection is to tin the ends of the wires, then use heat-shrink solder connectors.  This provides the electrical connection, but it doesn't provide mechanical strength.  For that, dual-wall heat-shrink tubing is used.  The clue will seal the connection from moisture, and the tubing itself replaces the original insulation.   An example of the chaffed wire

After cutting and tinning, the heat-shrink connector is added.   It may not look perfect, but that is okay 

The dual-wall heat shrink makes sure the connection is good.

In the end, the wires got fixed.   Checking the resistance, in most cases, it is now 0.00ohms. A couple of them are 0.01ohms  

My workbench while doing this 

Once all the wires were repaired, they needed to be rewrapped.  

Foglights

One of the tasks was to clean up the OE foglight wiring and add foglights.   The switch was pulled apart and cleaned.  The wiring, red/yellow, was still in place.  The original connector was a BL bullet connector.  Not good enough, it got replaced with a Deutsch connector.

Plug it in

WE HAVE LIGHT!!!  This is the factory harness and switch.   Now, there is a concern about running these lights and the amperage draw.  These are LED, so they will be a lot less than the original lights.  Looks like I need to find a rear fog light as well 

Wiring Routing 

With that test done and other tests, it is time to put the harness back in place.  The best surprise was that the harness is pretty easy to route to the left side.  The nose in front of the radiator can be reached to fish the harness across

Then the harness is fished through new grommets ( absolutely essential ).  Ready to be plugged back together.  The feed comes through one grommet, and the accessories come through another to meet in the engine bay

Lights!

Besides mounting the foglights, I wanted a set of auxiliary driving lights.  I wanted a set of lights that other drivers can see.  It seems all LBCs are too small, and in Canada, all new cars have DRL, Daytime Running Lights.   And people do not see cars coming towards them without lights.  

That is nice, but FIRE IT UP!

DAMN!!!!!!

Moving to the next items