1967 Triumph GT6 (Smith4)

Thanks all again for your comments and likes



Nick - thanks for your info..

Bump steer - yep, will be bad. Some cars (eg: MGB) you can bolt the tie rod ends/steering rods upside down to decrease bumpsteer, but I don't think this is so easy on the small chassis Triumph cars. I am looking into a way of decreasing the bumpsteer. Sadly the rack cannot be made higher as the replacement engine won't allow that so I can't use that solution.

Rear track and toe changes will be minimum due to the much reduced suspension travel. The main problem here is the connection of the leaf spring to the vertical upright, and even using poly bushes, there is still a noticeable twisting motion, which is where the toe changes are noticed. I have an idea to minimise this twisting motion to hopefully a more acceptable amount, but it won't be fully removed until I can achieve a rear CV/wishbone setup at some point in the future.

Driveshaft stresses - I knew about the wheel bearing wear but wasn't 100% clear on the oil seal lips. Even Summer Brothers 'un-breakable' race axles I believe have snapped on one or two race Spitfires, so the only way to really remove the chance of this happening is a CV/wishbone set up. Until then, regular rear wheel bearing changes will have to do

So, finding some photos of the shocks, they are from Gaz, and out of their catalogue but they have to build them when you order.

The front ones are wider and made so they can take really heavy springs, and the rears are narrower as they don't needs to take the same heavy spring rating.



I got the springs made up from a place in Sheffield as they had good reviews and were very reasonably priced. Here's a rear shock with spring:




The bushes were sadly the wrong size, so I ground down some poly bushes to fit as a temporary measure to mount the shocks until I can get some proper bushes made up.

Edit: Rood should be Roof!

On GT6s, or at least the early ones, the steering column is adjustable slightly for length and height. But to get it in the best place for me, it needed to be made a little lower. To do this, I bought some high tensile threaded rod to replace the long allen bolts that hold up the column into the under-dashboard mounts, and made up some aluminium spacers to space the column lower.

I need to neaten up the spacers, but they are solid. I also needed to re-drill the bulkhead with a lower hole for the column.

NON-HISTORIC UPDATE!

Got a miraculous bargain of an original aluminium GT6 grill for £2!

It was all matte black, so I cleaned the matte black off the horizontal bits and gave a light sand and from a distance they look chrome.

Also, I taped in the headlamps for a quick looksee.




Looks like GT6 is happy with it's new grill!

Back to historic updates . . .

So, I thought the sills were okay and just needed a little welding on the bottom and inside to join them up, bit after my maye so kindly came to do that for me, the sills were found to be a bit too dead.

So a sufficient piece of metal was tacked into place across the door gap and the whole inner/outer sill section cut out 😲



The A post was a 'bit' dead too, so that also had to come out!!




A new piece where the bolt bolts through the floor to the chassis here had to be made:





Now nice and solid . . .

You're tackling the exact bit I left off with. I think that sort of inner lower a-post bit is available. It had already been replaced on my car. There is also a stiffener that attaches where the chassis mounting bolt goes through the outrigger and sort of curves down inside the inner sill. Very neat work, looking forward to the next update and that grill is a great find!

(Edit)
should have waited 5 min longer to post

New sill looks goooooooood

Rear and rear valance area were really bumpy, really noticeable with the etch primer . . .





So I bought a large tin of light-weight car filler and begun:

Wow you work fast. What sort of setup are you using for paint?