There's Ajax Custom Plating in Denver. Small outfit that does more the artistic stuff not the industrial. They might do bumpers. I've never used them but they have a good reputation.
I've had some chrome done at industrial places in town here, but not stuff where the aesthetics is critical.
I just now got caught up on your build post. I had forgotten I had a logon to GRM and stumbled on your build thread while browsing. My Avatar is still my old 73!
Anyway, Car is looking good.
I'm going to call Tri-Cities Plating tomorrow and see if they can chrome the gas cap and tail lights. If that comes back good, I'll send them the bumpers. The funny thing is that they are now in Elizabethton TN where my mom lived until a few years ago and I use to drive by there every several months.
This week has been a do over of the vent flap paint. I screwed up the primer two years ago when I shot it and the paint cracked over time. So new compatible primer was ordered and I took it back down to bare metal. A new skim coat of filler, primer, some glazing putty, more primer, base and clear coat all went fairly well. It just needs a little wet sanding and polish.
Here it is after wet sanding, polishing, and installation.
I reused the same hardware to mount it. If you remember, I failed to weld nuts inside the scuttle to mount this, so had to use loose washers and nuts. This time around, I glued the washers underneath with Hylomar then glued the nut to my finger to fit it. This took 5 minutes instead of 45 mostly because I wasn't chasing down non-magnetic hardware dropped into the scuttle.
Scuttle flap looks great Joe!
I’ve been looking at making up a specialty cover for mine, but have not had the time to focus on that.
Btw, I hope you find success on the taillight frames. I’ve not found anyone that will touch them due to their base metal.
In reply to oppositelocksmith :
I really like the flap. It seems to collect more air when open than the always open grid on the '73, and I like that it can be closed. I wonder if Triumph dropped it as a cost cutting measure?
Paul's Chrome did my taillights and gas cap 25 years ago, and they turned out great. I didn't get around to calling anyone today, but will hopefully find out tomorrow.
So what's left? I still haven't called any chrome shops, although Tri-Cities Plating doesn't do pot metal according to their website. I may try Paul's Chrome as an alternative. I'm not really in a hurry, but would like to have shiny bumpers before next spring.
Besides that, there is the under dash ducts that need to be installed. I only have three of the eyeball vents, and really only one good one for the dash. But I mounted the wide-band O2 gauge in the driver's side vent hole and may just leave it there. The vent stuff got lost for several months as it got buried under a bunch of plastic grocery bags waiting to be recycled cleverly disguised in a garbage bag.
Convertible season is just about over here in Colorado, so I suppose I should winterize the car and get it ready for a few months of slumber.
I might have an extra eyeball vent if you decide you need it.
I just priced out stainless bumpers. They are less than I paid to have my current bumpers chromed 30 years ago.
In reply to oppositelocksmith :
We'll see about the vent. Once tuning is further along (you are never done), I may move the AFR gauge to the glovebox.
My brother (TRSteve from earlier) ran into someone around Knoxville that had the stainless bumpers. The quality is supposedly good and they can be polished to a nice finish. I'm still gnawing on that decision.
I took the car out for a short drive yesterday and filled up the tank. Gas mileage was near 26 MPG over the last 160 miles. Total miles since first start is 725. I'm thinking that next spring may be a good time to find a dyno shop to do some real tuning.
One detail missing is a rear license plate light. For '72 and earlier, this is an assembly on the bumper. Mine had seen better days, but was complete and in need of chrome. Instead of sending this off for chrome, a whole new assembly was ordered for $109. Here it is compared to the old one.
Most of the new parts are on the left. But the new base is actually the broken mess on the right. I've never seen such a crummy job of casting pot metal. It broke in half just removing the cover, and an end broke off removing the rubber gasket. I snapped the other end off just to see if it was any better. It wasn't. So I reinforced the old base with some JB Weld and used it to reassemble into something usable.
Tim Suddard apparently ran into this issue on his '69 TR6.
I decided to fix the wonky speedometer by replacing it with an electronic one. RevingtonTR sells one that is fully electronic. It resembles the stock gauge, but the face is completely flat. Here it is mounted up with the stock gauge for comparison.
Close enough, and it allows for exact calibration that can be changed if/when I swap tires. The pickup and wiring still needs to be done.
I like that unit. What does it take its signal from?
oppositelocksmith said:I like that unit. What does it take its signal from?
You can use a low-voltage 2 wire sensor on the driveshaft or a 3 wire hall-effect sensor that goes on the speedo cable drive. I'm using the latter.
I had a slight problem yesterday driving the TR6 to the wine store about 3 miles away. It drove fine, but when I turned off the key it ran on for a second. I noticed the SD card light stayed on for a bit, so the Megasquirt still had power. When I went to restart it 10 minutes later, it cranked faster but didn't want to fire. It eventually sputtered, so I assumed it was flooded and held the throttle open to clear it. This worked, and it ran fine going home. It has done this once previously with roughly the same distance and interval between stop and start.
Thinking about it, the problem might be that I powered the coil from the stock wiring harness. This shuts the ignition down immediately after turning the key while the Megasquirt stays powered up until the main relay closes. In that interval (less than a second), fuel is still flowing. So I'm going to run a wire from the new fuse block to power the coil pack. Should be easy.
I put the TR6 on stands this morning to see whether it would be possible to swap the speedo cable for the speed sensor without removing the tunnel. I can probably get the sensor screwed onto the drive, but would need to leave the cable attached to the gearbox. It's also possible that the sensor wire could be slipped through the hole with the other gearbox wiring. But the exhaust mid-pipe mounting bracket will need to go.
So maybe I'll tape the ends of the cable to keep them from rattling and zip-tie the cable out of harm's way until there's a better reason to remove the tunnel.
As you can see from above, the overdrive is starting to do what it does and leak oil everywhere. But the front of the gearbox and oil pan are much drier than they use to be. This is after a few hundred miles with no wiping.
I got most of the wiring done today, but didn't have enough time to finish wiring the speedometer. The speed sensor wire came up through the tunnel cover and behind the dash. I had a GM Weatherpack connector on the coil power wire, so just ran a wire from that under the master cylinders and through the firewall. This tapped power from after the fuel pump inertial cutoff switch. I should have done this originally to make certain the ignition is cut in an accident.
We're going away for a few days, so hopefully the glaciers don't descend while we're gone and I can get this finished and tested.
We're back home, so I'm back to finishing the TR6. I just had to solder the speed sensor and speedo wiring together with a power and ground wire then set the calibration before it was ready to test. That done, I backed it out and drove around the neighborhood, but no speed was indicated. I need to check whether the speed sensor signal is reaching the speedo, but ran out of time to diagnose the issue.
One interesting discovery. After powering the coil from the fuel pump circuit, the ignition switch no longer shuts off the engine. Even pulling the battery ground cable didn't work. Alternator power must be getting to the Megasquirt, fuel pump, and injectors some other way than the main relay, or the main relay is stuck. That explains my flooding issue as the engine was being shutdown only by the coils losing power.
I had a couple of hours to look at the wiring today. The speedometer looks to be wired correctly and the speed signal is a 12v square wave as it should be. Unless something is buggered in the plug that goes into the speedo, it should be seeing the signal. Maybe there's some noise in the signal because it's drawing power from the Megasquirt fuse block. I could try running power directly from the battery cable or try using the 2-wire sensor connection that has more signal filtering.
As for the run-on issue, I looked at the Megasquirt wiring to see if anything obvious is feeding power to the circuit. Everything but the Megasquirt and wide-band controller get power from a fuse block controlled by the main relay. The main relay itself is controlled by a wire from the ignition switch, and this works and is completely separate. When the ignition is turned off, the main relay opens. There is a separate relay to control power going to the Megasquirt (drawn straight from the battery cable), and that relay is controlled from the same fuse block. The only thing I see that's wrong is that the Megasquirt and wide-band controller share a power wire. I'm going to split those up to eliminate potential noise coming from the wide-band controller. But this doesn't explain how power is getting to the fuse block after the ignition is off.
At least one problem got solved today. After rechecking the speedometer wiring, I just didn't see anything wrong. So I took it back around the block and noticed that the trip meter read 0.1 miles. Huh? Going again a little faster showed the needle budged just a little bit. Checking my math on the calibration made me realize I forgot to divide the calibration number by 6 (which is the number of complete tire rotations used when calibrating). Doh. Fixing that got it within 5%, and it's now dead on and working. Man I'm glad I was careless and don't need to send that speedo back to England.
I still haven't tracked down the run-on issue. It's going to take pulling wires off one at a time and checking for voltage where there shouldn't be any.
In reply to JoeTR6 :
It's not always easy to troubleshoot wiring in person, almost impossible from across the country. The fact that it kept running after disconnecting the battery must mean the alternator is feeding power back, right? My simple mind goes to racecar cut-off switch wiring where you need that resistor going to ground to short the thing out.
AxeHealey said:In reply to JoeTR6 :
It's not always easy to troubleshoot wiring in person, almost impossible from across the country. The fact that it kept running after disconnecting the battery must mean the alternator is feeding power back, right? My simple mind goes to racecar cut-off switch wiring where you need that resistor going to ground to short the thing out.
Because remembering what was done two years ago is now harder, I'm going to work on a accurate wiring diagram and put more labels under the dash. I'm also going to power the wide-band controller from the fuse block in an attempt to clean up the Megasquirt power. DIYautotune's wiring diagram has the Megasquirt powered from the main fuse block, but I wanted it to be powered directly from the battery cable with it's own relay.
In reply to JoeTR6 :
I have a fancy wire-label-maker, if you would like to print custom fancy wire-labels. Just let me know if you want to borrow it.
In reply to TVR Scott :
We have a label-maker that has been put to good use. I also now have an accurate wiring diagram of the new wiring.
I found some time yesterday to experiment with the run-on issue. Measuring voltages while occurring, I found that the wire from the ignition switch controlling the main relay had 5 volts. Here's the apropos part of the factory wiring diagram.
The wire in question comes from terminal 2 of the ignition switch. I completely forgot about the alternator warning light connecting the switched white circuit with the alternator. Removing that bulb fixes the problem. How simple. I should be able to eliminate this connection by powering the alternator warning light from the Megasquirt. An output will be set up to turn it on if the Megasquirt voltage drops below some threshold, say 12.8 volts. There's only one medium current output left (the tach signal), but the wire is already hanging out right where it needs to be. The mechanical tach is working great, so I won't miss that wire (hopefully).
I am familiar with the engine not shutting off with MGBs. It is usually a bad diode in the alternator that allows current to backfeed into the ignition.
Check the white wires at the fuseblock where they meet the green wires across the fuse. There should be no power at the white wires with the key turned off.
It's kinda weird that it's only showing 5 volts at the switch. Maybe there's some built-in resistance (the bulb?). I thought that the alternator was supposed to show output voltage at that connector so that the lamp stays off unless the alternator is putting out much less than the battery. In any event, I left the bulb out and wrapped up that socket. It was replaced by another bulb holder wired to the Megasquirt tach output wire, and that was setup to switch the bulb on when battery voltage drops below 12.8v. This should give a good indication if the alternator stops alternating.
I also connected the speed sensor wire to a digital input on the Megasquirt MS3X and configured that to indicate speed. It was sometimes useful to be able to log speed, and that also allows other values to be calculated such as instantaneous MPG and gear.
But the main thing is that it shuts down cleanly now.
You'll need to log in to post.
