83 Triumph Acclaim Sprint

[logicaluk]

Well it's been a lot of work but with help from Barry with out whom id never have got this far and rich who saved me from a long drive with only a seat and a dash in the car. MOT passed with no advisorys

First start up 3 turns of the key to get fuel up from the tank and

Starting frank for the first time by logicaluk, on Flickr

By this time i realized there was noway id be able to paint the doors wings and boot lid in time so we pulled a complete set of doors wings and boot lid out of storage and bolted them on temporarily.

20170702_073000 by logicaluk, on Flickr

Sunday evening Rich came and helped Barry put the interior back together whilst i swapped out the carbs and finished if lights ect

20170703_184656 by logicaluk, on Flickr

Monday evening was club triumph night and i managed to squeeze a couple of jobs in before hand, Tuesday morning was a complete rush with a list of things to finish before but frank made it and passed and i even remembered the obligatory first fill up photo.

2017-07-06_08-25-32 by logicaluk, on Flickr

Tuesday morning before the funeral changed the oil, plugs readjusted the ride height and tweaked the damper settings. Before leaving, after a couple of miles i had to pull over and stiffen the car up a bit more and in fact have done after every time iv'e driven the car. I'm amazed at how quick it feels it pulls from 2.5k to the red line and goes round corners like its on rails.

Frank drew quite a few comments and was christened the harlequin acclaim, i have to say its quite cool looking in 4 different colours bit its way to eye catching for me so the patch work quilt effect will have to go very soon.
Dan

[johnthesparky]

Can't see the photos, (but that's not unusual at the moment) looking forward to seeing it though

Well done on getting it on the road in time!

[79cord]

Glad to hear everyone's efforts got it ready on time (& look forward to continued progress one you have recovered!).

[logicaluk]

don't understand why the pics don't work there hosted on Flickr.
Been on the road 5 days and clocked up 450 miles sofar, the first 250 got 34mpg kicking the out of it, only to find some numpty (me) had set the tappet clearance with an imperial feeler guage using the metric measurement oops, i did think the engine was a bit noisy. Tappets reset and the engine has gone back to running like a sewing machine.

Ive got it setup using as much static advance as it will take but its limited by the automatic vac advance diaphragm, ive got a manual one ive rebuilt and haven't tryed yet wich hopefully should allow another 7deg of advance to be dialed in.

The bc racing shocks are better than i ever expected them to be, its taking a bit of time to get the damper settings and tyer pressures set up just right, but ive decided to go back to the acclaims normal rolling radius tyers and buy some 165/50/15s to replace the 175/65/15s that are on the mini rims at the moment. Which should improve the handling even more.

Today i tidied up the garage put a load of unused parts away, tools and removed 3 bin loads of rubbish. The painted both front wings and the inside of the bootlid. And keyed a load of crome/stainless trim ready for painting black.
Dan

[logicaluk]

Yesterday was spent building the 2" stainless exhaust and today might see it taken down for tig welding.
No pics as thers not alot of point taking them when i cant post them.
Dan

[MiataMark]

Jul 13, 2017 7:48:12 GMT logicaluk said:

Yesterday was spent building the 2" stainless exhaust and today might see it taken down for tig welding.
No pics as thers not alot of point taking them when i cant post them.
Dan

Just drag and drop them into the post (unless you're using a phone).

[79cord]

Jul 6, 2017 7:32:08 GMT logicaluk said:

Not sure how Flickr works,

"https://flic.kr/p/VeJYxM" it provides to share certainly doesn't seem to work except as a link to open the flickr page,

BBCode version it provides :

[url=https://flic.kr/p/VeJYxM][img]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4240/34942408083_6fb45d6162_z.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=https://flic.kr/p/VeJYxM]2017-07-06_08-25-32[/url] by [url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/150663976@N03/]logicaluk[/url], on Flickr

Copied straight in without 'insert image' seems to work.

2017-07-06_08-25-32 by logicaluk, on Flickr

" farm5.staticflickr.com/4240/34942408083_6fb45d6162_z.jpg " being the relevant bit to insert the old way.


Glad few additional problems have arisen for fettling.
2" exhaust sounds impressively large & has me wanting larger for some of mine.

[johnthesparky]

Is the lady in the pink top giving you s funny look?

[jamesd1972]

Well you would wouldn't you !
Great to see this up and running.
James

[vulgalour]

That looks great just the way it is right now.

[logicaluk]

Cheers guys. Ive reedited the top post on this page to show the link to the pics,
As for the obligatory first fillup pic most of you seem to find nice quiet filling stations, me on the other hsnd head straight for asda at lunch time, in a car with a coat of many colours then proceeded to stand well back and take a pic of it, I'm not suprised she was giving me odd looks.
I agree it does look very good in its harlequin panels but it stands out way to much for my liking and the vision has always been of a sleeper, so no the multi coloured panels have to go no matter how cool they look.
Dan
Ps ill get some pics for ghe next post.

[logicaluk]

This morning shortly after my last post the was a knock and DPD delivered some lovley nankangs send all the way from Germany for the princley 150 quid

20170714_100826 by logicaluk, on Flickr

having given this alot of thort they seemed to be the best option at 165/50/15 there only slightly smaller rolling radius than the option tyer for the top spec cd acclaim, which should give it some good acceleration.

20170714_101235 by logicaluk, on Flickr

We have the new rubber bandy 165/50/15, the option 165/70/13 from a cd acclaim, the 155r13 from the rest of the range and finaly the bini 175/65/15 that i have been driving on for some time before frank came off the road.

The Bini wheels and tyers made a huge difference on the stock suspension but when i fitted the coilies the felt fine when pressurised to 32psi but the tyers wernt gripping and would spin up fairly easly which stopped whenthe pressure was dropped to 26 but now the side walls seemed to be bouncing and the ride felt appalling. Hence the low pros. They are booked in for fitting next week.

the exhaust is now all tacked up and fits quite well.

20170714_174104 by logicaluk, on Flickr

20170714_174157 by logicaluk, on Flickr

20170714_174142 by logicaluk, on Flickr


Frank has been running on a triomatic vacuum advance unit as i don't have any good manual ones, but with some work i managed to get a lucas one to fit, hopefully it should give a bit more advance, have to see when the exhaust gets finished and can be tested.

20170714_201651 by logicaluk, on Flickr

[logicaluk]

As iv'e had craptop out i thought id treat you all few to an update.
tyers first

20170718_131946 by logicaluk, on Flickr

yep they tick the rubber bandy box, so i did what any sane and sensible person would do and wound my coilys right down.

20170720_171328 by logicaluk, on Flickr

20170720_171705 by logicaluk, on Flickr

and thats on full droop, which resulted in a few scrapy ground clearance issues

20170720_194334 by logicaluk, on Flickr

but it did look rather cool

20170720_212841 by logicaluk, on Flickr

Funnily enough slamming a car as low as it will go completely rogers the suspension geometry and it handled like a kwiksave shopping trolley,this car has never been about the show so it was wound up a bit

meanwhile i had the exhaust finished and Ben did an awesome job, cheers mate.

20170727_092931 by logicaluk, on Flickr

and it was all forward and trust in the loud.

20170729_194348 by logicaluk, on Flickr

the boot spoiler was fitted with 5 pop rivets and some double sided body trim tape, that alone seemed to make a huge differance not only to the look but the aerodynamics too, i have a standard test there's a long hill with a 30 mph limit and i know a standard acclaim will roll about 1/2 way before it needs some assistance, my slippery ep2 civic needs brakes a couple of times on the way down, frank needs a touch of brakes and needs power almost at the bottom.

the rest of the doors were assembled and fitted

20170801_132631 by logicaluk, on Flickr

I spent some time trying to work out what to do with the suspension, after much careful study i came to the decision that the front suspension was the limiting factor and that had to be set up around max camber, so out with the string, axle stand and tape measure. i spent the best part of a day setting the ride height and front and rear toe, it handled much better but didn't feel quite right, so took out my wallet and in among the moths found enough to pay for a proper 4 wheel laser alignment, which showed the back to be as good as it could be passenger side has toe when it shouldn't but the adjuster is maxed, (i have a cunning plan, just haven't executed it yet) and the front was close but not good enough. wow that was worth the money now with another play with the damper settings and tyer pressures its balancing out nicely corners very well, there still may be a rear anti roll bar in its future.

it was finally as good as it was going to get for a damn good spanking around the countryside with a few friends, and what a weekend it was.
Dan

[logicaluk]

the weekend away showed up one major problem the exhaust firstly it decided it wanted to rotate banged on the body and scraped on any loose gravel that happened to be laying around(easily fixed once id worked out the exhaust hangers weren't in quite the right place) and secondly and defiantly by no means least it was loud, not just loud but ear bleedingly loud, from 2500 rpm to 4000 rpm it boomed so bad i had to wear in the ear headphones that blocked out most of the noise just to drive on the motorway and i had an appalling headache after driving it all day on A roads.
the weird thing is it doesn't sound too loud from outside the car, just inside.


so as a temporary measure iv'e deleted the center box and for now its much quieter inside the car, just not outside......

[johnthesparky]

Loud pipes save lives

[logicaluk]

next job microsquirt.........

[vulgalour]

I guess you must be getting some weird resonance issues with the exhaust if it's putting more sound into the cabin than outside the car. Is part of it touching the bodywork, like a centrebox against a floor pan or similar, and turning the cabin into a speaker box perhaps? I'm just guessing on this one.

Spoiler looks good and it's looking smart as you get the panels all uniform. It does seem like there's something missing on the sides, other than the rubbing strip. I wondering if it's just because I'm expecting it to have racing stickers or brighter coloured wheels than it has that's throwing me. It's smart, no doubt about that, but it just seems to need... something. I just don't know what. Does that make sense?

[79cord]

Lower profile tyres certainly make the wheels look far more desirable. Agree it would be interesting to see them in dark grey rather than matt black & a pinstripe round the edge for contrast. Still want to make up a nicer centre cap than BMW offered for the set I have.

[logicaluk]

Aug 25, 2017 23:11:08 GMT vulgalour said:

I guess you must be getting some weird resonance issues with the exhaust if it's putting more sound into the cabin than outside the car. Is part of it touching the bodywork, like a centrebox against a floor pan or similar, and turning the cabin into a speaker box perhaps? I'm just guessing on this one.

Spoiler looks good and it's looking smart as you get the panels all uniform. It does seem like there's something missing on the sides, other than the rubbing strip. I wondering if it's just because I'm expecting it to have racing stickers or brighter coloured wheels than it has that's throwing me. It's smart, no doubt about that, but it just seems to need... something. I just don't know what. Does that make sense?

the exhaust doesn't touch the body i think its coming from the space around the exhaust can amplifying the sound.

i had thort of putting a white roundel on the side but i love the sleeper look, also another reason id like to quieten the exhaust down.

Aug 26, 2017 1:56:16 GMT 79cord said:

Lower profile tyres certainly make the wheels look far more desirable. Agree it would be interesting to see them in dark grey rather than matt black & a pinstripe round the edge for contrast. Still want to make up a nicer centre cap than BMW offered for the set I .

another cunning plan is awaiting me to be bothered there as the original centres wont go in the back wheels due to the grease cup for the wheel bearing, I'm going to cut off the original mounting clips and replace them with a plastic screw ive looked and it should work have to have a better look probably when i repaint the rims.

Dan

[79cord]

I can't help but think the original MINI wheel center caps are no great loss... though looking at your longer wheel nuts some holes drilled in the caps to expose your chrome nuts might improve them, certainly easier/quicker than my initial thoughts of a new cap design for more depth into the wheel.
Original chrome Triumph wheel bearing caps fit? They'd give a more finished yet retro look, but maybe I just like a little chrome.

Looking forward to seeing the more refined look of fully painted panels to complete the miniature E30 BMW style. But hope frustrating need for revisions to your beautiful new exhaust system make it nicer to use first.