Bonnet centre trim clips for Herald and Vitesse!

We've been trying to get these made ever since setting up Rarebits. At last we've taken a delivery of a substantial quantity of these, and they are very good indeed!

There have been some odd alternatives available on occasion, including reproductions done in mild steel. Our new ones are made from proper spring steel, just like the originals.

At £2.50 per set of 5 they even cost less than any of those alternatives which have been sporadically available. Here's one of the new ones next to an original, still attached to a Herald bonnet.

Classic Cars For Sale - April 2008

Well I can't blame anyone but myself for this one.
I placed an advert on page 135 of this magazine, with the wrong price stated for our 471C oil filter conversion kit. The correct price is £32.50, as stated in all our other literature.
Sorry for any confusion.

Good work fella!

I've just received the first production batch of oil filter adaptors, part number 471C, to fit Heralds and other Standard-Triumphs with the 948 and 803cc engine. There's more detail in my earlier post, but to summarise, these will allow the smaller engines to use the readily available GFE150 filter, in place of the rare and expensive Crosland 471 or AC SA filters.

I'm delighted with these, the production part has a nice radiused edge where the prototype had a square cross-section.

All customers who've pre-ordered will get theirs sent out this week, with stock available for regular mail order and show sales.

As you'll gather, I'm very pleased with the work done by this machine shop. There will be more to come from the same source through 2008.

Electric Washer Conversion for my Herald

I should soon have one of my Herald 948s back on the road. This one hasn't been in use for some time, and always had trouble with the screen washers.

The car hasn't been on the road for a few years, the washer system was substantially rebuilt but was always slow to prime after standing for any length of time. Having been idle for a few years, I can feel pressure but there is no movement of water, I suspect the non-return valves in the jets have become stuck in the open position.

The first picture shows the original type installation, albeit with a non-original knob on the pump.

I've never been too happy about fitting a modern replacement electric screen washer system, so I used some spare components to produce my own drop-in replacement.

The switch mounting bracket is an original one, albeit turned 180 degrees. The mounting hole has been opened out to fit a momentary contact switch. The switch itself is one commonly used as a button starter - well over-spec for driving a washer pump! I would prefer something which more closely resembles the original plunger arrangement, but I've not found anything through my suppliers yet. When I find something more appropriate I will replace the bracket with another original one, turned back to it's correct orientation.

The washer pump is currently mounted on a hand-cut piece of flat aluminium sheet. That's not pretty, but it will mount using the same holes as the switch bracket, placing the pump out of sight behind the dashboard.

The ground connection to the pump is made with a ring terminal to the bracket mounting screw, which locates to the lower dashboard's metal rail - a good ground point!

The live feed uses a piggyback connector from the heater blower switch. I need to check the current rating on the switch feed before installing the assembly.

At the moment it's snowing, and the car which is receiving the pump conversion lives about four miles from here along a single track road! When I get the kit installed I'll post an update.

Herald 948 Oil Filter Conversion

I've had this project on the back burner for a while. With the original bypass filters for the 803 and 948cc Standard-Triumph engines selling at upwards of £20 - IF you can find them at all - I needed to design an adaptor to accept a more readily available oil filter.

The same filter is also in demand for some Stuart-Turner small marine engines, so we have some competition in finding them!


Oil filtration on the 803 and 948cc engine is implemented as a bypass system. This means that a small quantity of oil is diverted through the filter as it is pumped around the engine. By comparison, the 1147cc and larger engines in this family have a full-flow filtration system, so ALL of the oil passes through the filter as it is pumped.


The full flow filtration system is obviously better, but changing this really isn't an option here. The best we can do is make use of the latter system's readily available filter.


After a few months of stop-start activity, I now have a working product.




With the prototype adaptor now fully tested on one of my own Herald 948s, I have commissioned a batch of adaptors for sale. These will be available during the first week in January.

The adaptor has a retail price of £32.50, however I am accepting pre-orders paid through Paypal before December 24th, at £28.00 each, plus carriage. Carriage is £3.00 in the UK, £6.50 overseas.

Please contact me for ordering details.

A modern Triumph!

Well everything's relative! I can't say I was looking for a Spitfire 1500, my own tastes lean more towards the earlier roundtail Spitfires, so this is a modern car in my world.
Nevertheless, I found myself enquiring about this one, after it was mentioned on one of the mailing lists I subscribe to. Sometimes you get a gut feeling about a car, and this one turned out good.

Having spent 14 years in a nice dry garage, the tyres even hold air. The mechanical condition is unknown, the rockers are completely dry so I have not tried turning the engine yet. The car has been well looked after and shouldn't need any structural repairs before returning to the road. An overhaul of the braking system looks like the most complicated work needed, so hardly rocket science. Nevertheless I won't get too excited in case that engine needs serious work.

Fibreboard Fun!

Owners of late Heralds don't have nearly as much fun as those of us with the early types. True, all Herald dashboards are made of substantially the same pressed fibreboard material. What's different with the early ones is that there's no vinyl covering, just a thick coat of "Portafleck" paint, a black finish with grey flecks in it. This means that any water getting gathering on top of the dashbard makes it warp, and ultimately decay.
I've planned in my mind how to fix these dashboards properly for some time, but there's always been a long list of other things to be done. Then along comes a paying customer who needs his dashboard repaired, so time to put the ideas into practice.
First job was to strip all the paint off the dashboard to see exactly what I was working with. Stupidly, I didn't take any photographs at this stage, possibly because I had doubts in my own mind that any of this was going to work! Initial surface removal was done with Nitromors stripper for wood, however I had to tread carefully for fear of the paint stripper soaking into the fibreboard beneath the paint. Most of the work was done the painfully slow way, with sandpaper and a delicate touch. Interestingly, sanding revealed what appeared to be body filler in the corners. This appears to be part of the original construction, though I find it hard to believe.
To remove the warpage, I reasoned that locally wetting the board with warm water would soften it, so this is what I did. Adding a drop of washing up liquid breaks the surface tension, helping the water to penetrate the board. Once I was happy that the board was sufficiently pliable, I clamped the affected area between two strips of thin plywod to hold it in shape while the board dried in it's new (old!) form. So far so good, several minor bulges have already been taken care of, in the pictures I am dealing with a substantial dip in the top surface.
There are a number of small angled blocks of wood which are intended to prevent the lipped edge of the dashboard from collapsing. In practice, these only support the immediate areas where they are located, so big dips form between these areas. I will be adding extra blocks to maintain the correct shape once I am happy with the profile.
Once this stage is complete, I need to restore the damaged areas along the back edge where the dashboard meets the bulkhead. Screws have been pulled through some of their fixing holes here, while the areas around the demister vents have been quite badly torn. I have made some preliminary repairs to restore the structure using nothing more exotic than PVA glue, however I have a more unusual approach in mind to regain strength in these areas.
Cheers,
Bill.