Adoom's 1972 Triumph 2000

[Adoom]

Finally put one of the steel blocks in the mill.

At least 2 hours of face milling later, I faced all the long sides and got it down to the starting dimensions. It's pretty hot now.

I took about 6mm off the face and one long side. I still need to mill at least one short end flat because I need to use it as a reference surface.

I also made a mess. And melted some new holes in my gloves with hot swarf.

[Adoom]

Made a couple of holes and a slot so I can cut the corner off so I've got space to fit the long 13mm drill.

Here it is with the alloy prototype.
I've drilled the pilot hole for the balljoint tapered hole. And milled the mounting faces to the right heights.

Cut a corner off because I no longer need that bit as a reference surface. It takes aaaaaages to cut on the bandsaw.

Buuuuuut, this one might be scrap  When I reamed the tapered hole, it made an octagon and I'm not sure why. It worked fine on the softer aluminium.

I suppose I could try build up the walls of the hole with weld, then re-drill and try cut the taper again. At least it wouldn't take as long as starting again.

[Adoom]

This is the one for the left side. I'll try weld up and redrill the hole in the right side one to try do the taper again, before I go making a replacement.

I used the drill bit in the chuck to line it up on the table and clamped it down. The reamer just sneaks in.

I put the mill on the slowest speed, 100rpm, used a bunch of lube and gently penetrated the hole. No problems with the taper this time. 

[Adoom]

I procrastinated until 15:30pm before going out to the shed.

Milled the mounting faces on the left side arm.

I drilled a couple extra holes in the corners to make it easier to cut the profile on the bandsaw.

But now it's time to make dinner.

I'll probably do more procrastinating tomorrow.

[Adoom]

So the left side one is done. And it fits, thank fuck.

The ball joint is not quite binding, there's a little left. The inner tie rod joint is binding, but this is at full droop and I intend to reduce the droop travel when I get around to making coil overs.

 

I'll have to get on to trying to weld up the taper I messed up on the right side and try drill and ream it again. THEN I can see if I got the height right to fix the bump steer. If it needs fine tuning, I hope it can be sorted by spacing the rack up because I've got a little room there.

[Adoom]

Turned the mig up to 11!..... or like 5, cause that's how far it goes. And installed the 0.9mm wire. Used a chunk I'd cut off to practice on.

So, lets do this.

I was concerned that the 20mm stick out would cause me issues getting penetration, but it was okay.

Did some swirlys until the hole was full. Then flipped it over, ground it back a bit to clean it up and welded the other side too.

Mill that weld off. This side is the important one because it's where the nut goes.

Drill the hole again. Starting with a spot drill and working my way up from 5mm to 13mm. No issues with the weld being hard.

Use the 13mm drill bit for "precision" alignment when clamping it down for reaming. The table is locked in position.

And reamed it down just as far as the other one. I do have to use a washer with the nut, it seems that depending on which tie rods you get, the thread stops in a different place.

This little black divot is the only imperfection in the hole from the welding.

 

[Adoom]

And the right side one is finished!

It also fits!

Both installed. This would be where full droop needs to be, any lower and the inner tie rod ball joint binds. There's another 60mm of travel to get to ride height.

I guess I need to sort out doing a bump test now.

[Adoom]

Using stuff I already had, I made some bump steer testing arm things. They are based on the LVVTA ones, but due to a lack of material, I made mine shorter, so you have to measure in front and behind the wheel rather than way out in front of the car.

I have 2mm holes drilled 575mm apart on the blue rods, this gives 1 degree per 10mm of toe. You measure the distance in front and behind the wheel and the difference between those numbers is the toe. The blue bars must be horizontal, you can see my spirit level on the other side.

You start off at ride height, adjust the toe until the front and rear measurements are the same, so you have zero toe. This is the stage I am up to now. 

Then you move the suspension through its full travel(both sides evenly) and every 20mm, you record the distances for the toe measurement.

With my prototype welded arm and single sided bump steer gauge(which was quite hard to use) I got no worse than 8mm/0.8 degrees right at the end of travel.

Unfortunately, I don't know what the factory bump was, but I suspect it was quite bad. 

 

 

 

 

[Adoom]

I emailed LVVTA with my bump steer results and Greg the Technical Advisor replied that it looks good with or without the spacer under the rack.

 

 

Milestone passed!

[Adoom]

Tried a 5mm spacer under the rack. I think I'll leave it there, the rack tube is about 5-6mm away from the sump now. 

[Adoom]

So I thought I'd look into getting two new coilovers for the rear because the Teins I mocked up with were old and knackerd.

I went with BC racing because they would sell me only the rears and they were just barely affordable but still decent quality.

The subframe is from an S14 Silvia, so I'm like "sell me S14 Silvia rear coilovers", assuming, these fit, so those will fit. Not stocked, order from Taiwan.

"I'll put them in today. these will be the easy ones".

They were a little longer than mine when the strut body was adjusted as short as it would go. "It'll be fine, a little more droop is not a problem".

Oh, damn, maybe the teins were from an S13....

 

The Teins are 79mm pcd and the BC are 116mm. Those big top plates also don't fit in the strut towers I made.

"No worries, I'll just make new stud holes and turn down the plate".

The extra holes are because I didn't notice my 11mm drill was bent and because I had to clamped down in the mill, it made a 12mm hole. 

Well, that problem's fixed. Now to install the coilover.

This is where I plan for ride height to be. The wheel center is actually the same height as the top of the sill, but the photo angle.....

Buuuuuuut, to get to that ride height, I had to wind the spring platform right down...... and the coilover is basically out of travel and on its bumpstop.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.

So I was thinking that I'd have to look into different BC dampers that are shorter. The damper body is LONG, more than twice the travel.

How much was this mistake going to cost me???

After working on the mini instead, so I could feel I had achieved something on the weekend. 

I realised.... my strut towers are totally custom fabricated, I could just make them taller! 

There's at least 80mm there that I can raise it and still get to the adjuster knob.

The idea I had so I don't lose the reference of the strut tower top plate is to bolt spacers to the existing bolt holes, then build a new top plate off the top of the spacers as well as the top portion of the strut tower that would slide over the top and overlap the existing strut tower top. I'd then use tek screws or something to attach the new top to the old top. Then I can cut the old top off, refit the new top, using the tek screws for alignment, then weld it inside and out.

Wheew!

I supposed I should work out if 80mm is going to be enough.....  

[Adoom]

I split this up because I couldn't fit all the photos in one post.

I also thought I'd get some weld-on coilovers or the front struts.

Through pure random guessing, the first strut I looked at was for an AE86, I found out the od of the AE86 strut is 51mm. I measured the od of the Triumph strut with a micrometer and got 50.85mm.

So the weld-on coilovers should fit my strut tubes.

So I asked the supplier if they could get the id of the weld-on bit and the length from the top of the mounting plate to the bottom of the weld on bit when the body is adjusted as short as possible. "I need to to be no longer than 460mm". They emailed the supplier, BC in Taiwan I guess.

The id is 51.1mm, so that's all good. And the shortest length was 459mm.

Not stocked, order from Taiwan.

But something must have been lost in the translation. The shortest length was 480. There's no way to make it any shorter. Where it welds to the original strut tube, the weld must be at least 10mm from the casting and at least one diameter length of the original strut tube must be up inside the weld-on bit. That's ~51mm, but with the damper screwed all the way into the weld-on bit, there's 55mm left for the original strut tube. I thought I could maybe turn the thread off the bottom of the damper, so it would fit down past the threaded section and into the original strut tube. But on inspection of the damper, that's not an option.

Here it is with the original strut. Like this, it's actually 10mm shorter than the original strut at full droop, but on the car the original strut needs to be 30mm shorter to prevent the inner tie rod on the rack from binding. So it's 20mm too long.

I thought I could probably use the same solution for the front as the rear. I'll have to modify the top plate of the strut tower to allow for the camber adjustment to clear anyway.

So I chucked the bonnet back on to see how much room there is.

40mm is how much higher I could go before those nuts hit the bonnet. Will that be enough?

  

 

[Adoom]

I stripped the spare set of front struts so I can get them ready for welding.

I suspect these last turned in 1971. They were EXTREMELY reluctant to turn. I had to use a punch and hit it really hard with the hammer.

[Adoom]

I needed to make the strut towers taller so they would work with the coilovers.

Not shown in the photos is how I partially fabricated the new top and held it in place with wooden spacers and tek screws. Once I had it tacked together I could cut the old top off and use the teck screws for alignment.

I welded the joins inside and out with it removed to make it easier on myself.

I left one side off so I could see to do the indie welds joining it to the tower.

Do the inside welds.

Close the hole.

The access to see wtf I was doing was real bad, but I also welded the back of the closing plate.

 

No pics, but the coilover fits now and I can adjust it so it's at ride height when the spring is compressed. There's plenty more adjustment left to fine tune.

 

Got to do the other side now. 

[Adoom]

And the other side is done.

I took it down off the axle stands to see how it looked. The subframe MIGHT, be 5-10mm closer to the left side..... or it's a 70's British car and it's not symmetrical. I have allowed for some misalignment by not welding the mounting studs in, they are just clamped by those two cap screws. So they can be moved around a bit when it's on a wheel alignment machine, then they can be welded solid.

The front is supported by the jack, no springs or coilovers up there yet.

The front arches are just SO ENORMOUS. I've measured the ground clearance of the front cross member and it's 180mm........ factory height.. .. But the sump is another 50mm lower. I'm not worried about the sump since it's it's in line with the wheels.

The gearbox cross member has 130mm clearance, I'm a little concerned that it might catch on those really tall speed bumps like they have in Upper Hutt. I could probably trim it down by 20mm, but the only way to make it any lower profile is replace it with a heavy bit of 10mm flar bar which just seems so crude.

[Adoom]

Making a jig to align the flange on the coil over tube. Fortunately the left and right sides are the same, so I only need one jig.

I'm hoping I can stand the jig on it's end in the mill and use a hole saw that is the same diameter as the tube to cut the middle out of the flange.

The flange still needs milling flat, and it's 2mm too thick.

 

[Adoom]

Well, the holesaw in the mill kind of worked, right up until I tried to push it too far and it jammed, chipped a tooth and bent the holesaw shaft.

I finished it off with the vertical bandsaw and powerfile.

[Adoom]

I sent in my design approval forms for the LVVTA Technical Advisory Committee in late Dec. Their next meeting wasn't until Jan. Late Jan. 
At the end of Jan it was posted back to me and the design was approved.

So THE NEXT DAY I went to may certifier's favourite welderm Graeme Kidd in Upper Hutt.

A couple of weeks later, he'd done it.

AS SOON AS I got in the gate at home.

I put them in the lathe and sanded off the burnt sticker and powdercoat.

They still need to get NDT tested in Wingate. Graeme says it's a crack test.

But I could not wait to try fit them.

I had already modified the top plates and the strut towers the previous week.

Using a straight edge and the angle thingy in my phone, it's got 0 deg camber at ride height with plenty of adjustment in both directions.

They ended up 10mm shorter when installed than I'd calculated. So that's a bonus, the adjustment won't be totally bottomed out at ride height.

On it's own wheels and suspension! I can push it around! It's 10mm lower at the front here than the back. I may raise it up that 10mm so there's a bit more travel.

The springs are 6kg I think. I was expecting them to be WAY too hard, but If I bounce on the guard it doesn't feel massively stiff.

The engine needs to come back out now so I can redo the engine mounts on the chassis in thicker steel like the cert man said. And to weld in the lower steering column mount.

I should paint the exhaust manifold while it's out, it's getting surface rust on it.

And one of the front split rims has a leak, so the tyre needs to come off to redo the sealant.

[Adoom]

Albert the NDT man in Wingate has tested the welded struts for cracks. Took 10 minutes.

He has an electromagnet and a solvent containing iron particles dyed with a flourescent dye so they glow in a UV light.

He puts the magnet across the weld and sprays it with the fluid.

The magnetic field aligns the iron particles which you can see under a UV lamp because of the dye. Any cracks will cause misalignment because the field goes around them.

So I've got a certificate that says it's passed. YAY!

 

[Adoom]

I had planned to have to weld in the front portion of the yellow guard because I deemed the panel damage beyond my skill to repair. The step thing on the corner had been totally flattened by someone else's previous attempt. I had a go at it myself maybe a year or so ago.

But then the other day, I thought I'd have one more go, if I fucked it up I could still weld in the other panel.

So I just hit it much harder... 

I think it's acceptable now, I reshaped the step and didn't fuck up the two... ridge line things. Should only need minimal filler.
I also trimmed the doner front panels so I could trial fit them. This car had run into something and pushed in the front panels, folding over the lower front seam. I was unable to get the panels the budge with a slide hammer, so I decided I'd use the front panels from the yellow one, which were surprisingly rust free, unlike the rest of the yellow car.

Front panels look like there will be no issues fitting them.
I'm not ready to weld the panel back in, I still need to prep behind it for epoxy.