1969 Triumph Vitesse *Megasquirt EFI on motorbike ITBs!*

[luckygti]

Oh yes those wheels look brilliant! What arches are you thinking of fitting though? Don't think I've ever seen arches on a Vitesse before. Got to say I'm loving the current look, it's such a good looking shape, the bonnet just looks brilliant the way it frames the lights

[Seth]

Now that is a good look

[sowen]

Feb 15, 2011 16:43:34 GMT MrSpeedy said:

Well.........

I HAZ NU RIMMMZZZZ

^ Those wheels look awesome

[Deleted]

cor... those are some good looking wheels, shown off even better by the tatty bodywork. Noice.

[MrSpeedy]

Feb 15, 2011 20:06:57 GMT luckygti said:

Oh yes those wheels look brilliant! What arches are you thinking of fitting though? Don't think I've ever seen arches on a Vitesse before. Got to say I'm loving the current look, it's such a good looking shape, the bonnet just looks brilliant the way it frames the lights

The only Vitesse I've ever seen is this one from the U.S. with subtle bubble arches



I've currently got a set on order from RangerBob off of here, so we'll see what I can do with them.

I'm hoping the reason no-one puts arches on a Vitesse is because they haven't got the minerals, rather than they look cr@p !!

When the weather picks up the bodywork is gonna get a spruce up. Front end is ready to go on and gonna tidy the rest and blow it over.
I don't want a particularly good paint job, because I don't wanna be scared to use and abuse it !

[stealthstylz]

I though there was a way to ajust Herald rear ends to give negative camber at ride height? I reckon that would look better than arches, its quite flat sided. Prove me wrong though!

Matt

[BenzBoy]

As far as I know, the only way to alter the camber on the back is to lower the car. A 1in lowering block (the most you can do really) gives a nice amount of negative camber but not masses of it.

I reckon the arches on that Vitesse look VERY cool! Quite subtle really - not huge blisters but enough to make it look purposeful (and enough to cover the tyres... which I guess is the main reason for 'em! ;D)

[mdh]

PHWOOOOOAR!

How did you get those monster tyres to fit under the back Mr Speedy?

My old 175's used to touch sometimes!

[mdh]

BTW Ive seen a few 'arched' Vitesse's and they looked awful.

One had Mexico bubble arches, yuck.

The other had the wings pulled/bent/whatever to bea bit like x-pack arches. Also yuck.

Those racer ones don't look bad though.

[mdh]

These'd look good too

[MrSpeedy]

Well, as you can see, they don't really fit as such, but they don't catch yet.
The suspension needs to settle a bit more as it's been on stands for a year and it has a 1" lowering block so the steel work will need some shaving !

Plenty of clearance on the inside because I didn't touch the inside portion of the rim when i banded them out so it has factory clearance.

As for the arches, if they look curse word, then i won't be using them. Just means a whole lot more work to recreate summat like that racer above !!

I'm hoping 'll be able to pull it off tho. If you think about it the shape is rather similar to the 105e at the rear and the older Skylines from the front, and both of them wear arches well.

[MrSpeedy]

I already have something very similar to those you've just posted;



Starco Steelsport

In fact, now i look again, I think they are the same !

[mdh]

looks good like that, shame youve gotta cover that sexy bit of tyre!

How about a touch of lip, like this...



Theres a company called arch enemy that does this without damaging the paint. Although that might not be too much of a concern..

[MrSpeedy]

It's a possibilty, although it'll mean welding in an arch lip from something else as there's just nothing there to stretch or roll on the original design. Not the end of the world tho tbh.

And tonight, I've been mostly machining my cylinder head to increase the compression ratio.



All the combustion chambers have been equalised for volume.

[MrSpeedy]

So.........
After the excitement of silly wide wheels, we get back to the nitty gritty.

I've dragged the fibreglass front end out of storage and loosely fitted the subframe, in readiness for fitting it to the car. (Maybe in the morning?)

I'm also waiting for a set of double valve springs to arrive, so I can assemble the cylinder head now that all the machining work is finished. Compression ration is now at 9.8:1.

Now, if you were following earlier on, you may remember that I had 2 (not a pair) of CD175 carbs and needed to come up with a throttle linkage to work them.

Well, I had a little tinker this evening and made this;



Which clamps to the end of the throttle spindle like this;



I then 'adjusted' an original saloon mechanism and re-bushed the main pivot;



And then assembled the whole lot on the manifold, along with some new adjustable linkages with ball jointed ends;



All in all, I'm very happy with how it all works and both carbs open at the same rate, so I must've got the geometry correct !! Just the chokes to sort out now but I think I'll simply use a twin cable setup.

[BenzBoy]

Nice linkage! With my choke I've only got the cable working on one carb. It's OK (and used on some Triumphs from factory apparently!) but I'd like to do a twin cable set-up for better on-choke running.

What do you plan to use to get the two cables to work together?

[MrSpeedy]

Cheers!

I'll either make a splitter/linkage type thing or rob a motorbike one. Early twin cylinder twin carb bikes (eg honda cb250 etc) have a duel cable splitter on the throttle cable ;-)

[Deleted]

If I were to do anything with those arches, I'd make the bodyline that marks out the arch as far as needed to clear the tyres.

Something like this, but following the existing line so it's not so chunky.

[yantorsen]

I agree with the previous post. anything else is going to look to tacky imo.

[mdh]

Feb 19, 2011 3:09:53 GMT @volksangyl said:

If I were to do anything with those arches, I'd make the bodyline that marks out the arch as far as needed to clear the tyres.

Something like this, but following the existing line so it's not so chunky.

Seen it done and it looked bloody awful!