Fireindc

iTrader: (13)

This is the only forum I'm on and I've long abandoned social media, so here you go! The car is a 1973 Triumph GT6. It has a 2.0L straight 6 with a 4 speed manual trans.

Backstory: My dad picked this car up for me in ~2004-2005-ish, as a father/son project. I grew up around LBC's (little british cars), he used to have MGB's, midgets, spitfires, etc. and restored them in our garage. The GT6 used to be white, we went through the body work on it when I was ~14-15, barely got it running enough to say "it kinda runs", and dug into the bodywork. Then we moved from Texas to New Mexico, I found other interests (Snowboarding, women, motorcycles, and started building my miata, etc.) and life just moved on. It has sat without moving (sans a few feet here in there when I had to drag it around) on my property since mid 2006 when we moved here.

Long story short we never finished it, it did get a paintjob at the time and looked killer. Wish I had pics from that era, if I find some I'll ninja them into this thread. I used to have a geocities page about it, I wish I could dig that **** up (I tried), but oh well.

The only real pics I have are from this year when I finally found the motivation, time, resources, and garage space to work on it. Goals are simple, not a full resto or anything like that, just get this thing running safely and rip it around. And eventually I'd like to re-paint it with my pops, so that's the end goal. When I was younger I always wanted to swap it, do some crazy custom suspension on it, etc. but now that I'm older I just want my groovy old antique car to work. It's a straight 6, with double stromberg cd150 carbs on it, and frankly it sounds awesome.

I'll start off with a pic from the first time I drove it after getting it running:



There's more to come, just kicking this thread off.

Fireindc

iTrader: (13)

Here it is sitting in the project car pile. The mustang is my brothers (he's gotta come pick it up, I'm running out of room!). It's a sick 68 fastback, he's had that since highschool as well, I'm sure it will live again one day he'll never sell it. The white car is another 323GTX that I have big plans for eventually, but for now it sits.




Drug it out of the stack, unloaded the fully packed full of parts hatch, vacuumed it out.




Sprayed it off, put some mystery oil in the cylinders before attempting to turn over by hand.




Assessed the situation. At this point the engine appeared to be free (as it should, new mexico deserts and all), I had no brakes or clutch, flat tires, etc.

I wanted to start by hearing it run, even if just a little bit.

Fireindc

iTrader: (13)

At this point the goal was just to get it to run. Dug the carbs out of the pile of parts. They are a bit crusty, but all there!



Rebuilt the carbs, with my old man, which was a good time. Never really messed with carbs like this before, just CV motorcycle carbs. They are really pretty simple, I like them.



The original isolater gaskets were made out of asbestos, are NLA, so I made some out of a cutting board:




They are a bit thicker, but the studs have plenty of room and everything fits:


Bolted them on, and proceeded to attempt a fire up:



It of course ended up needing a fuel pump as well, easy enough:

Fireindc

iTrader: (13)

And with minimal effort, we got it to run! Of course it's running off a 1gal jug jammed in the wheel well, and needed some starting fluid to start, but it's a runner none the less.

First start:


After some carb syncing and some timing tweaking:


It definitely wasn't running perfectly (some steady state throttle misfires, among other issues), but it ran pretty well and sounded mean! This gives me the motivation I need to keep going.

Gee Emm

As a long-term, sadly now ex-Bugeye owner and sometime driver, I look down my nose at these swing-axle junk heaps. As a car guy, well done, great job just hanging on to these non-runners, let alone getting it fired up from a box of bits!!

The family backstory gives it some added significance, and I hope this is also one of those genuine 'nevergunnasellit' cars!

I am starting the effort to track down the 'barn find' condition Bugeye I sold 10-15 years ago after last driving it in the '70s - not going to buy it, just hoping it is now loved and going again.

Fireindc

iTrader: (13)

I see what you did there

Thanks! Just doing stuff like the u joints on the axles, and working on it in general, I've never experienced such atrocious metal quality. I swear you can bend some of this stuff with your bare hands.

LOL. I'm not offended by the swing-axle comment, but I am aware of its shortcomings and will be addressing some of them. Fortunately for me this is of swing-spring vintage, which had much better axle-tuck characteristics than the early cars.

I have other cars that are actually good, and some of them even fast, so this thing doesn't have to become anything that it's not. It looks cool, people have no idea WTF it is, it's fun to drive (more on that shortly), it has family history, and I like it! Which has been enough for me to put some decent hours into it so far.

And this is definitely a "nevergunnasellit" car, though I have a few of those at this point

Z_WAAAAAZ

Sub'd for updates. Love seeing old cars resurrected from the dead!

My pops is big into cafe racers and rebuilt/restored a handful of Triumphs and Nortons when I was a kid. The most notable of these was a 1972 T100, which despite not being very fast, sounded mean as hell. He'd fire that bike up on a Saturday morning and I'd wake up to the sensation of my bedroom walls rattling. I learned what tiny bit I know about carburetors from working on that bike with him.

I feel like this is a larger scale version of my relationship with that T100 haha. Can't wait to see what you do with it!

Fireindc

iTrader: (13)

Thanks for the kind words! My dad always had HDs growing up, but in his youth he rode Nortons, Triumphs, and BSA's. He always told me about a Norton commando 900 he had with a "combat engine", good stuff.

Anyways, at this point we had this thing barely running, but still sitting there on flats. Next step I cleaned up the wheels and painted them, got tires mounted, and got the wheels on.




Color turned out pretty nice. I kept the TINY *** 155/80/13's on it. The guys that mounted them didn't believe they were for a car, and asked me to "bring whatever the hell car that is by" once I get it going. I'll have to go there, it's the same shop that does my race alignments, and is the only in town that will align anything to my specs.



Lookin pretty. This pic was actually from the first drive, so a little bit in the future.


So next to try and drive it, I needed brakes and a clutch. Neither master held any fluid at all, so I went the easy route and replaced both.. Parts for this thing are surprisingly available and cheap. Cleanup/painting on the firewall would have been nice.. but at this point I don't even know if this thing has any gears, and again I'm not going for a restoration.




With this the clutch slave actually came to life, but I still couldn't get it into any gears. It just felt like stirring a bowl of mashed potatoes trying to find a gear. So I pulled the linkage out to asses and all the plastic and rubber were gone, So I rebuilt that!



Basically it was some nylon washers, and more importantly some nylon cups that completely disappeared. I didn't take very good pics of this, but you get the point. Easy stuff so far.

Fireindc

iTrader: (13)

Re-installed the shift linkage, and sure enough she had gears baby! And they felt good, solid engagement, the transmissions felt tighter than expected I couldn't wait to drive this thing, but still lacked brakes.





I have no good pics, but basically went to bleed them with the new master and go fluid out of the fronts, but the rears I could not get fluid through. It ended up that the rear brake lines had swollen internally and wouldn't pass fluid, so I replaced those. After that, as well as adjusting the rear drums, I was finally able to get a bleed on this thing. At least enough to take it on its maiden voyage. Of course my wife wanted to ride in it, so I handed her the fire extinguisher and she hopped in. She also took a video which is pretty funny.

So we're in this thing, with seats not bolted in just sitting in there, and a 1 gallon jug jammed in the engine bay to drive it down our dirt road. We didn't get it on the main road, but it made it all the way down the dirt road and back, doing its first mile or so in 20 years! Brakes still barely worked, but good enough.

Fireindc

iTrader: (13)

The next hurdle was to get it running off its own tank, because that sketchy jug jammed into the engine bay technique was terrifying. No good pics of this process, but basically I pulled the tank, soaked it in your basic everyday household vinegar for a little over a week, and then flushed it with baking soda and water. I read about this technique on a forum somewhere and it worked great. The idea is that the diluted household vinegar won't eat away metal or anything, just the rust, with the downside of needing to soak for a while to work. When I poured the vinegar out it was straight brown/blackish, and I wish I took pics but the bottom of the tank was perfect looking after that. I then neutralized the vinegar with some baking soda+water, and let it dry out in the sun before installing it.

Once installed I ran some new fuel lines:






And she was now running on her own. Still not quite right though, a pretty constant miss at part throttle and at idle, but more notable at constant part throttle. It already has an electronic ignition setup, the ignition timing didn't seem to affect the misfire, it was pretty constant. I decided to replace the old plug wires, cap, and rotor and plugs. Funny enough the rotor itself was a completely different shape, the same one they sell for the Delco distributor and mine has the Lucas. So I think it was actually the wrong part altogether, the new one is much bigger and has a longer contact time for each point on the cap if you will, so it makes sense that it's a better spark.




Which fixed the misfire! To check I swapped the cap rotor back, and the misfire came back, so the issue was definitely with one of those components.

At some point I also wired in a new ignition, since I was just starting it with a screwdriver. That felt good, keyed baby!

Fireindc

iTrader: (13)

At this point it runs well off its own fuel tank, shifts gears, and has brakes. I gave it an oil change at some point there as well, topped up the diff fluid, and took it for a drive.


The next major issue is a massive vibration that happens over ~45 MPH. You can hear it in that video, and just see how the whole thing shakes pretty well. The speedo is off in that video, BTW, which I later discovered was due to a diff with with a higher ratio than stock having been swapped in. I drove it on its maiden voyage to get coffee. The seats still aren't bolted in, and no seatbelts, it's literally a death trap and not legal but hey, New Mexico. Gotta test it out somehow.



It felt good to drive it. It's already really fun and exciting, even just cruising it.




I always said when it can power itself to get into the garage, that I'd pull it in and work on it there. So I pulled it in to asses the vibration, I thought it was a U Joint judging by how it felt. In the garage for the first time:

Fireindc

iTrader: (13)

Some mocked up ideas I had for the rear end, just playing around, but I always hated the taillights on the mk3 GT6 and mk4+ spitfires. Really rough idea, the lights will actually be recessed with a finish panel to cover them. And clearly she needs some body work on that rear quarter as well!





And my dad hangin' in the car:

Fireindc

iTrader: (13)

With it in the shop I started to diagnose the vibration. At first I found a sticky u joint, which I thought was (or likely is?) related, but once I got the rear end in the air I found the diff bushings as well as some of the lateral arms of the suspension completely shot and decided to just drop the diff and assess. You could literally grab the diff with your hands and move it around a few inches in any direction, and with how this suspension works the upper A arm is the swing spring which is mounted to the diff itself, so the rear suspension was SUPER wonky with those bushings all blown out. Any of these things could explain the vibration issues.





Soon enough I found myself with a pile of parts like this. The car does come apart really easily, and doesn't have too many pieces, at least!

HarryB

Looks great already; looking forward to updates. There's a guy from Canada building an LS-engined one on YouTube; but watching his episodes might be a slippery slope (never-ending projects and all).

Z_WAAAAAZ

What was the timeframe on all of this? Seems like you went in on this project hard and fast!

Garage looks killer as well haha.

Fireindc

iTrader: (13)

Oh yeah, I follow his build. It's insane, he's basically rebuilt the entire frame with modern suspension and steering geometry, slammed an LS in there and some huge tires, etc. A total rabbit hole, and the antithesis of this project.

I'm trying to keep it "period correct", with some upgrades from period correct racecars of the era, etc. I want the vintage experience with this one, no need to make it fast or anything like that (maybe some extra compression and a cam later?) it is what it is for the most part!

Thank you! The garage is still a work in progress, but soo psyched to have it. The time frame for all the pics I posted here start in June 2023, though most of the work was done July thru now-ish. The goal is to get it actually drivable, then switch gears back to the miata racecar as I have some big plans for it too. The idea was to turn it from a lawn ornament back into a car, if you will, and it's getting close.

Fireindc

iTrader: (13)

So with it torn down I was obviously still looking for anything that might contribute to the driveline NVH, which again was really bad and shook the whole car.

I did find a sticky u joint and was hoping for the best, but with it torn apart I was able to spin the differential by hand and found that it had a "notch" in it, or a spot that was really hard to turn past by hand. So apart came the diff, and I found carnage:





Missing teeth on the pinon, metal ground up everywhere, generally completely toast. I think this explains the vibration. I'm glad it didn't lock up on me, that would have been a wild ride. These diffs are known for being garbage. I briefly contemplate the subaru r160 diff upgrade that people do, but it requires custom driveshaft and axles and **** all that noise, I'm only going to be making 120-140bhp at best. And again, not trying to rabbit hole this build.

I calculated the diff ratio, and found the one in the car to be a 4.10. The GT6 originally came with a 3.3 in my non overdrive car, so this has definitely been replaced before, and explains the massive miscalibration of the speedo. Some shopping shows the 3.3's rare/expensive, and I don't need highway gears in this car at all, so I start looking at spitfire diffs. Some research shows that 3.3's are super weak, extra load on them due to the gear ratio and less material on the carrier due to the smaller ring gear. Out of the more common available diffs, it seems that a 3.9 from a later spitfire is the strongest drop-in replacement with a reasonable gear ratio. There are a few on ebay, so I snag one and hope for the best.

New diff was immediately disassembled to check it out, pinon and axle seals replaced, as well as the axle output bearings.

Fireindc

iTrader: (13)

With the diff out things did rabbit hole a little bit, but I kept it reasonable.

First the spring came apart. I wanted to put a new poly spring pad in, and replace the old/gone plastic spring "buttons" with new more durable Teflon ones. I've never rebuilt a leaf spring before, but this was super easy. Because it's a "swing spring" type, apparently there is much less tension on these, so it came apart and went back together pretty easily:




With the spring apart, I went ahead and wire wheelend and painted all the things:



Including the wheel wells, floor pan area:



I didn't touch the frame, or any of the rest. Just wanted to clean and prevent rust here, again not a restoration! Next I re-assembled the spring with poly bushings, new hardware, and a lowering/camber block. That 3/4" lowering block you see there gives you 3* of negative camber, and is one of the old racecar tricks to help the rear end. I plan on lowering the front to match when i go through the front end, so I expect a bit of a saggy tail look as-is. I also have some corvette air shocks going in with this that allow height adjustment via the air bags, so if it's too low I can pick the *** end up with some pressure.






Everything else got some "SuperTriumph" poly bushings as well. No, that's not the real name, but I've been making jokes with my miata buddies since everything is orange.



Everything was ready to go back in.:

jacob300zx

Triumph crew checking in with a 73 Stag, 3.0 V8 and 4spd with od. I actually drive this thing in good weather 4-500 miles a month. There are so many fake "car guys" theses days that driving a weird obscure car is kind of like a F U to all the chumps. Its a 1 of 1 everywhere I go haha Good luck on the GT6. I like the idea of the Ferrari style tail, change the mouth/grill from square to round, and covered headlights, maybe a budget engine swap to something in the 200hp range. That would be fun. Like a poor mans 250 GTO. In college I had a 954RR and a spitfire for a rain car. Watch the rear end in the rain it likes to snap slide.

Fireindc

iTrader: (13)

At some point I got some pod filters for it:




Started putting the diff back in. You can't see them, but the diff bushings are poly as well.




Also got the driveshaft back in, started re-assembling suspension parts: