Pearce and Joan Bowman’s lovely Stag . . . at this year’s NSW Nationals, Kangaroo Valley.

GT6’s ready for battle! Rod Carey, Roger Lange and Trevor Lindsay – Wakefield Park

Kevin McEnroe’s tough looking TR3 – real wind in the hair motoring! Provided you have some left of course!

Geoff Bills and Neil Martin admire Geoff’s lhd TR3A at the 2010 Day of Triumph – what a character! (the car of course!)

Greetings from Medford, OREGON USA where Cherri and I are staying with our friends Rob and Anne Duncan. Rob and Anne lived in Adelaide way back in the 70’s and we have enjoyed their friendship ever since.

Rob has been a successful business owner since returning to the States, and being a man of many interests has turned his hand to all sorts of things over his lifetime, including gaining his pilot’s licence and then becoming an instructor, studying to become a Master Brewer and setting up a micro brewery, bee keeping, wine and spirit making, home renovator, electronics wizard, senior school science and math teacher and many other achievements and activities.

Following a serious flying incident, Rob retired from his aircraft interests and then pondered what future challenges he may pursue. Rob had been one to admire my car interests during the many visits down under over the years, so he bought a Porsche 911. Then he found a better one – a Carrera S4 Twin Turbo that had been suitably enhanced – I have driven this thing and take my word for it, it GOES!  But Rob needed something to do other than drive.

Much to my surprise, I received an email from Rob a couple of years ago, advising that on a recent trip to New Mexico he had found a car in a barn for restoration. Of course I expected maybe a Corvette or similar, but lo and behold, the photos attached showed a white Triumph Stag. Of all the projects Rob could have picked, he chose a Stag!
Rob’s restoration experience is detailed within the Photo Gallery of the website so if you are interested, have a look. Needless to say, during our current visit with Rob and Anne, we have enjoyed many outings in the Stag – it is a real head turner in these parts, and Rob gets lots of admiring looks and comments from the locals.  Another project that Rob has recently completed (he needed another challenge after the Stag was done!) is the conversion of a VW combi to accept a Subaru 2.5 litre boxer engine. This thing is a hoot and as you could imagine, goes pretty well.

Rob, myself, Rob’s son Matty and friend Jim (Jim has a very nice Corvette) have spent many hours in Rob’s man cave working on small projects or just emptying the fridge – blokey stuff, and a great way to spend time with an old friend.

We have enjoyed shopping at the hardware store where I found several really neat tools that I couldn’t resist, particularly at the prices, plus shopping at the Sportsman’s store where you can buy anything from the usual sports equipment to guns, ammo, crossbows and fishing / camping stuff. We went fishing on the Rogue river and I caught a 30lb salmon that took around 20 minutes to land . . . . what a Triumph! but that is another story.

We will see you soon . . . . Roger and Cherri

Phyllis Rutter with the 2nd Outright and Class Winning Spitfire from Day of Triumph – great Spitty Tony!

Noel Schmidt’s Concours winning TR3A from the 2010 Day of Triumph . . . .What a TRIUMPH!!

As many of you may already be aware, Cherri and I had some problems with the TR8 on our recent trip accross the Nullabor for the WA Nationals.

We endured a very hot day travelling from Eulca to Norseman, with the temperature gauge virtually off the scale, even with the air con off. There was nowhere to stop – no shade, no emergency help . . . nothing really, so we pressed on and hoped for the best. On arrival at Norseman, the radiator boiled as soon as we slowed down to enter the first servo in town. It was clear that the thermo fan was not working at all and clearly this was the main cause of our problems.

Their equivalent of our RAA were very efficient – the local guy was there within 10 minutes and his garage just a few blocks away. We got the car there after it had cooled down sufficiently and after a coolant refill, allowed it to cool overnight, and scheduled a review of the problems first thing the following morning.

Nothing would get the thermo fan to go, so a new one was needed. Luckily, the only fan that this place had in stock was exactly the same as the one fitted to my car. How lucky was that! This was fitted with consumate ease, and given that it is a “puller” rather that a “pusher”, care was taken to ensure that the polarity of the motor was reversed.

We also took the opportunity to check the thermostat, and even thought his seemed okay, we replaced it with a new and cooler one. The water pump appeared okay, so after settling up the bill, we were on our way to Esperance.

For the following week, the car behaved reasonably well, but on the hotter days, or when sitting in traffic just idling, it still sent the temp gauge way past where it should have been.

On getting the car back home (covered transport from Perth) I set about considering what else could be wrong that would cause the car to overheat. All sorts of theories were considered, such as was the timing out? If the timing is too far retarded, this will cause the engine to run hotter than it should. I had the gauge checked – no problems with that. So, looking for some divine guidance, I called Ian Wilson who agreed to have a look, and possibly get the car onto a dyno to check the E.F.I. settings under load and see what the cooling system was doing.

First thing we found was the gauge was clearly not reading correctly. But why? It checked out fine by the VDO gauge shop. Ian put a temporary earth cable between engine and body . . . . an immediate reduction of 15 degrees at the gauge! Now I am at best an amateur about car electrics, especially Lucas. But my understanding is that there is a voltage stabiliser gizmo installed in these things that may not necessarily work with after market accessories. This may well have been the reason that the VDO Oil Pressure Gauge also seemed to provide odd readings and had already been removed in favour of the standard oil warning light.

So the solution here was to remove the VDO gauge and go back to the factory temp gauge that had been previously disconnected. Ian stressed the importance of a factory sender unit – nothing else would do. So back in my garage, I set about connecting another earth strap between engine and body, and reconnecting the factory temp gauge.

But here is the scoop . . . . as I had just been reading the instructions for the installation of a puller fan in a Datsun 240Z that I am helping to build for a friend of mine, it occured to me that the guys who installed the fan to my car way back in Norseman had not reversed the fan blades. I do remember them saying, make sure that the polarity of the motor was reversed, but no mention of changing the fan blade around. So I took out the thermo fan and sure enough, the side that said “This side of the fan must face to the rear of the vehicle” was the wrong way around.

Now I must confess, I was of the opinion that when installing these gadgets as a retrofit, all that neede to be done was to reverse the polarity of the motor. Clearly, this is incorrect. After turning the blades around, the additional airflow was astonishing. Interestingly, the previous airflow sort of seemed to be okay, but as is now clearly demonstrated, it was producing just a fraction of the flow required to cool the engine properly.

So there you have it – all very simple in the end. Stick to the factory gauge and sender unit . . . there is nothing wrong with them. Make sure the engine is really well earthed, and follow the instructions when retro-fitting a thermo fan.

Oh, and as an aside, I had noticed that the cold start was not as instant and smooth as I remembered from my previous ownership of this car. Previously, it would start first time every time no matter what. Now it was taking sometimes three goes before it would assume an idle. But after installing the additional earth strap . . . guess what? Instant start up has resumed! So perhaps the voltage drain and insufficient engine earth was causing a bad reading in the computer? Ah, the mysteries of older cars will keep my brain active for many years, I’m sure.

See you soon in my “cooler” TR8.

Roger Lange

Neil Martin looking cool alongside his TR7V8 – no helmet required for this outing Neil!

Steve Ferguson poses with his beautiful TR7 V8 dhc – don’t ya just love it!