OT: cheapest way to get 17yo on the road

[geoff]

In message , "dennis@home" writes

Top down doesn't necessarily mean soft top, half a dozen bolts and the hard top just lifts off

[Invisible Man]

Not sure my Spitfire's hardtop had as many as 6 bolts. Both of them had good visibility with no top. Current MX-5 has good visibility and is reasonably safe with a good body and DSC. Spitfires had por handling and a chassis that went down the middle of the car so if you were hit in the side the door could end up against the gear lever. Same with the herald.

[dennis]

Weren't the spitfire and the herald the same chassis? I know they had different rear springs as you could fit the sliding spitfire one to the herald to reduce the tendency to go around corners (or not) on three wheels.

I don't recall them doing a hardtop for the convertible herald but I expect there were third party ones.

[Adrian]

"dennis@home" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Yes. As with many recent cars.

Clue: The "glass area" you see from outside is not all see-through.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No.similar, but not the same boot support outriggers absent on the spitfire. IIRC.

the spitfire did not have a sliding spring. Did not and does not.

The rear suspension is pretty much identical. Maybe stiffer shocks and a slightly saggier spring.

[dennis]

Probably correct.. it was the vitesse that originally had the sliding spring and people fitted them to spitfires and heralds.

And an anti roll bar on some.

[geoff]

Ok ...

Teach me to be lazy

Three bolts at the back, two (one each side ) mid position and two cross headed screws at the front

IIRC

Which is half a dozen +/- 15%

approximately ...

And when you have a thunderstorm overnight when you were going to drive to the coast the next day, you just remove the rubber plugs in the floorpan ...

[Jules]

And 5 on the Stag - or rather four levers and a cable-driven catch (pray the cable never breaks). Hard tops were surprisingly heavy! Much preferred the visibility on them to most modern cars that I've driven TBH.

Didn't the Herald have a rep for the back suspension doing interesting things if you ever managed to get it airborne? (and ISTR Spits and TR6's were prone to folding in the middle due to insufficient chassis strength :-)

cheers

Jules

[Adrian]

Jules gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Hark! The Herald axles swing...

[dennis]

Yes and it didn't take any effort to get the inside wheel off the ground. It was a cr@p car really but it was cheap and easy to diy.

[Tim Streater]

I say do you mind? I learnt to drive and passed my test first time on one of those. In St Albans, too.

[Tony Bryer]

All true. My mum had a Herald estate at the time I learned to drive. The instructor ran a Morris 1300 which was nice to drive; I remember the Herald for the over-light steering and its inability to be driven in 4th at 30mph.

Back when I was a schoolboy with an interest in cars I was impressed by the Herald having a real chassis. The books on my shelf now reveal that this was forced on them as there was no capacity to build monocoque shells available to Triumph.

[Adrian]

Tony Bryer gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Small problem with that theory is that Standard-Triumph had already been doing precisely that for three years by the Herald's launch, with the Vanguard Phase III - and the 2000 was also monocoque when it was launched four years after the Herald, as was the 1300 two years later.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "dennis@home" saying something like:

And the SAH Tite-A-Turn modification kit, as advertised in CCC of the day.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember geoff saying something like:

So it fill up and sinks more easily. One way to get rid, I suppose.

[Tony Bryer]

"... [a separate chassis] would make the building of the bodies in the UK easier for Standard was having big problems with body suppliers. Fisher and Ludlow had been taken over by rival BMC and were thus presumed to be lost to the company as body builders, while Pressed Steel Fisher did not have sufficient capacity ..."

- Triumph, Sport and Elegance, Piggott, Haynes, 2006. Same book says the 2000 shell was built by PSF, 1300/1500/Toledo/Dolomite shells mainly by Triumph themselves at Speke.

[Jules]

Old cars and rusted-out floorpans... BTDT more times than I care to think about ;-(

My truck ships water in a similar way during storms, but the floor at least isn't recessed (it all leaks out again around the bottoms of the doors) and there are no carpets to trap moisture...

cheers

Jules

[Invisible Man]

There was that glorious hot summer when I was 40 miles from the car when thunderstorms struck. Car had been left with top down. I remember driving home once I got back to the car. Every time I braked water poured across the top of the cross member on which the fronts of the seats were mounted.I think that was the f reg one rather than the k reg one. Carpets took along time to dry. Not as expensive as leaving the sun roof open on a cavalier CD. Guess where all the electric window switches were mounted!

[Mark]

IIRC it was down to the unusual design of the rear "swing" axle which allowed the camber angle to change and a sudden loss of grip resulted. Heralds, Vittesses, Spitfires and GT6s were all like this AFAIK.

[Invisible Man]

Yes my spitfires swapped ends at least twice when I was driving like an idiot and when I came over a rise having missed a roundabout warning sign. Nothing like as bad as a hillman imp with a half race head, twin carbs and lowered and negative cambered front suspension. Those were the days. I often wonder how I lived to be able to reminisce.