1967 Triumph GT6 (Smith4)

[smith4]

Mar 5, 2018 19:37:22 GMT ivangt6 said:

I really like that!

I have many questions;
How did you do it
What wheels
What colour are you going etc etc

Need more info!

So, in a nut-shell:

How did you do it?
- Banded 13" steels
- Low profile 13" tyres
- Custom (adjustable height) Gaz coilovers front and back with custom tiny length spring
- Camber spacers (home-made from aluminium) for the lower front wishbones (idea courtesy of Steve A from the Triumph world) 
- Shortened upper front wishbones
- Cut-away inner front arches for tyre clearance
- Rear leaf spring de-cambered by 3 and 3/4" rear leaf spring
- Re-drilled rear up-rights


What wheels?
- They are the wider 5.5" 16 oval hole Dunlop wheels that sometimes come on GT6s. (Some people say the 5.5" were optional extras, and some say that they weren't). The 5.5" have a nice bit of rim, and by having them banded on the inner of the rims, it gives that stepped rim look, and also saves a bit of weight over having the band on the outer rim.


What colour?
- It will be the white based pastelly '60's looking yellow you see on the rear and front wing. I've tried a few yellows and not being a yellow fan, this is the one that goes really nicely with the black centred wheels with silver rim and red tyre lettering.

I love grey, but as the GT6 is only marginally bigger than an MG Midget, it needs to be a noticeable colour so that it is noticeable on motorways.





Thanks all for your comments, more photos and details to come. 

[smith4]

[smith4]

Camber spacers.

[smith4]

Mmmm, camber

[mdh]

Them rims are sexy AF! Who did them?

[smith4]

Thanks Mdh, it was James P, back in 2012 ☺ they still look good!

[strikey]

3 problems at play here.

#1 I don't like spitfires/gt6's.

#2 I don't "get" the crazy camber thing.

#3...#1 & 2 have been smashed out of the ball park because I totally love this!! (I am now officially confused)

[smith4]

Strikey, I love your honesty!

I didn't used to like/understand stretched tyres, but in some cases they just work for me.

[strikey]

Mar 8, 2018 21:11:16 GMT smith4 said:

Strikey, I love your honesty!

I didn't used to like/understand stretched tyres, but in some cases they just work for me.

problem is I'm just a sucker for different....and boy oh boy will this be different!!

[smith4]

😊

[vulgalour]

I'm hoping that yellow is going to be the final colour. This car can definitely pull off something that loud.

[Davey]

There must be more on this by now! Such a great looking thing.

[edwardbear]

This needs a V8!

[smith4]

Vulgalour - yep, it's going the '60's yellow of the front and rear wings. The white is a gloss and the yellow is going on top of it.

Davey - it's a slow project so nothing newer than the first pics, but more historic details on the way ☺

[smith4]

Edwardbear - have your been in my garage . . .??!! 😎

[smith4]

The first thing i did with the GT6, was primer the bare metal on the bonnet and lower it.

To see how low it could go, I chopped the front springs so it would give about an inch travel before the shocks bottomed out.
The tyres it came with were huge, 185 70 13s, so the car didn't go down very much and the bonnet wouldn't close.

[smith4]

So next I looked for another tyre size to try and get the front down - 165 55 13s, which made it look like a hot-rod!




Trying to lower the back end was more difficult, as it is a fixed leaf spring mounted transversely from one rear wheel to the other. I got some ratchet straps and tied them around the rear vertical links and tightened them - brought the car down about 1", so about the same as the largest lowering block Triumph places do which is a 1" block.






Didn't look much different to me, so I needed to work out how to get it lower.

[smith4]

To get the back end really low, and to see how the rear suspension would cope under various heights, I loaded the back with lots of large ornamental rocks that we had in our garden.

It didn't look great with the 5.5" wide wheels ...




I knew it needed wider wheels, and I liked the original lines of the body, so I measured up to see what would be the largest wheels I could get inside the standard wheel arches, and got in contact with the infamous James P to widen the wheels.

Excuse the poor quality photos, but here are the banded steels:

[smith4]

So, after the rock-lowering tests, I measured how much lower the rear spring needed to be de-cambered and found a company that would de-camber it for me.

Working on the same basis as the shocks, which is for every inch of shock absorber travel, the suspension goes down approx. 1.5", I go the spring de-cambered 3 and 3/4 inches. However, when I put it back on the car, it wasn't low enough.

It turns out that the rear leaf spring has a linear measurement of lowering, which is not the same as the shocks!! So, I looked round on the internet and referred back to my helpful book (A Guide to Racing your Triumph Spitfire or GT6 by John Wolfe) which gives loads of tips for prepping your car for racing, and I found that you could re-drill the rear suspension vertical uprights where the leaf spring bolts to it, which basically lowers the rear end some more.

2x things to think about here;
1) The GT6 Mk1 has swing axle suspension, so the more you lower it, the more negative camber you get - perfect for me, one of the very reasons I wanted a Mk1 GT6.
2) There are 4x joins/connections on the rear vertical uprights - the leaf spring, the brake pipe to brake cylinder, the axle, the trunnion.

The leaf spring is at the top, then the brake pipe to cylinder, then the axle. The amount I needed to re-drill the leaf spring location holes lower was just in the way of where the brake pipe met the brake cylinder, so I had to drill the upright slightly lower than this. Therefore, the car without shocks would sit with the rear part of the chassis on the floor. It looked awesome! But just not moveable!

Here's one of my fave shots with the rear sitting literally on the floor as we were dismantling the old garage around it - looks like a barn find here!

[smith4]

Some time later, came the coilovers. After lots of measuring, I got Gaz to built me some custom shocks which would take some short stiff springs. The front should hopefully give me just enough lift at full height for M.O.T.s, and the rear at full droop allows me to just about get the rear wheel off.

Once I find the photos of the shocks I will update