Register badge proudly displayed. Number plates are reproductions, but as original. The tyres are Goodyear GT2 175/80 14 (same size as original).
This month I’m featuring the car owned by yours truly, i.e. me, Allen Walker, the Triumph 2000 Register webmaster. My car is far from pristine, as you will see from the pictures, and some classic car fans will howl with dismay at the way I’ve neglected certain things. I haven’t even bothered washing it for the photos. My excuse is that I’ve spent what time and money I have on the oily bits of the car. Whilst I could never say the car is ‘sorted’, mechanically it’s pretty damn close.
I bought the car, after a short search, at the end of July 2005. The car was advertised on the Register website, I went to view it near Stockport, Cheshire and purchased it there and then.
The original Leyland keys and the dealer keyfob. In the right light you can still just about make out the Dutton-Forshaw gold foil lettering on the leather.
The car came with an almost complete history, dating back to it’s original purchase. Born on the 12th July 1976, the car was despatched from the factory on the 16th August and sold by Dutton-Forshaw, Kettering to a Mrs E. M. Cory of Porth Navas, Cornwall on the 17th September. A Cornish registration number was assigned to the car at her request.
I have the original ‘Passport to Service’, the dealer key fob with original key set and ID tag, the dealer tax disc holder and some receipts for work done by the local Rover agent.
Clearly a meticulous lady, she kept detailed records of her expenditure on the car, including every fill-up and the mileage obtained. Doing some calculations I was able to work out that the car achieved a fairly poor 22 mpg in her ownership.
Every single fill up from purchase to resale. Columns from left are: date of fill; cumulative mileage; quantity of fuel; whether the tank was filled; mileage since last fill; and miles per gallon. Average MPG during this owner's time calculates to around 22, with a best of 31 and a worst of 14. Not what it said in the brochure, methinks.
As I had copies of the previous V5s, I decided to do a bit of Googling. I discovered that someone with the surname Cory still lived at the same address indicated on Mrs Cory’s last V5. I sent a speculative letter together with a photo of the car asking for some information. A bit cheeky, but if you don’t ask, you don’t get…..
It turned out the current resident of the house was her son. He took the trouble to ring me and fill me in on some of the history. His mother bought the car in Kettering because her brother had a shoe making business there. He remembers going to pick the car up and driving it back to Cornwall.
His mother did mainly short trips around and about her locality, which goes some way to explain the poor fuel consumption. At some point, late on in her ownership, she had a minor accident where a truck glanced the side of the car on a busy road. I believe she was advancing in years at this point and her son explained that she just lost confidence in driving, which led her to the decision to sell the car in March 1992 having owned it for over twelve years.
The next owner did around 5000 miles in about a year and this represents the only period of the car’s life where I have no service records at all.
The Triumph 'Passport to Service' booklet, handbooks and wallet. The service book is fully stamped up to 1989 and 27910 miles.
Having by now probably reached the age where it could be properly considered ‘a classic’, the car was bought by its next owner who was (or became) a Register Member.
An enthusiastic tinkerer, it was he who did some of the more expensive modifications, most significantly having the head worked on by Chris Witor which included unleaded valve seats, skimming to 9:1 compression ratio, stainless steel valves, etc. This was reinstalled into the car complete with an early PI cam. I have very detailed records from this owner detailing every single piece of work on the car. There were some body repairs including the driver’s footwell and the nearside wheel arch, the addition of electronic ignition, a Kenlowe fan, spin-off oil filter, solid jets in place of waxstats on the carbs, solid throttle butterflies (discarding the anti-run-on valves) and much, much more, together with meticulous and very frequent servicing.
The radio is original from new, but fitted with FM internals. Rarely used.
Something I did glean from his notes was the frequency with which he had his wheels balanced, far more than should have been necessary. I got the impression he was chasing the ‘vibration problem’ that these cars can sometimes suffer from. It didn’t seem he ever truly resolved it before he passed away sometime in 2000.
The car then made its way North, when it was sold from his estate to another Register Member, from Dukinfield near Stockport in Cheshire.
This chap was very much a show-car person and did a lot to improve the fabric of the car in general, doing some more body repairs and repainting certain parts of the car, having the bottom end of the engine rebuilt and changing the suspension set-up, incorrectly as it turned out.
When I bought it, it had lain unused in a dehumidified garage for over a year, the MoT and tax had expired but the car was in very good bodily condition. The main fault he reported was a significant vibration from the front of the car. When I drove it home it manifested itself straight away, coming in quite severely at about 55 mph. It was intermittent, though – sometimes going over a rut in the road would realign something and the vibration would disappear for a moment, then it would come back after the next rut.
The oft-seen Chris Witor rear silencer is complemented by the semi-sport centre section. Sounds mighty fine.
Over the years of my ownership I, too, have chased the ‘vibration problem’. The severe shudder already mentioned was traced to a badly worn bottom ball joint (at the very least), but there were numerous other worn or incorrect components. It turned out that although on the surface the car and been looked after very well, the fact that it had been chronically underused over the last few years meant that wear in much of the mechanical components had not been noticed and attended to. Certain modifications had also been carried out which were not quite right. For instance, the rear suspension comprised pre-facelift (i.e. lower) trailing arm brackets, Mark 1 springs and post-facelift configuration differential mounts. I have reworked this to the correct pre-facelift configuration (which of course is a modification to this post-facelift car).
I’ve ended up replacing all the springs, the dampers, the track control arms and bottom ball joints, the steering rack including new rod-ends, the front and rear wheel bearings, the half-shaft UJs and the front and rear brake pads, cylinders and springs. I have replaced the standard half-shafts with new GKN alternative items, which has proved a good purchase. The bushes and insulators are almost all Superflex. This programme of replacement and upgrades eventually eradicated all vibration – at this point in time!
In a quest for more power (more! more! more!), the main things that have been done are:
- Electronic ignition (Newtronic/Piranha)
- Unleaded head by Chris Witor, skimmed to 9:1 compression
- ‘Early’ PI cam
- BCM metering needles in the carbs (currently)
- Rebuilt and recalibrated distributor
- Chris Witor semi-sport exhaust and sport silencer
At a recent rolling road session, this setup yielded around 115bhp at 4000 RPM – quite a measly increase considering those mods equate to around £1200 worth of parts (mostly spent by the POs I hasten to add). The operator reported that the very slim ‘S’ air box was responsible for significantly restricting the performance of the engine and preventing the use of a richer needle, hence the relatively benign BCMs. The car is torquey and smooth, and hopefully as economical as it can be at the moment.
A recent frenzy of work saw the standard exhaust centre section replaced (because it was shot) with a stainless CW semi-sport job. It makes a great sound, especially with the windows down.
Not overly keen on the big, clunky rocker cover, but loathe to change it at the moment. A recent rolling road session identified the super-slim 'S' airbox as being primarily responsible for strangled performance. May swap it out for some K&Ns but we'll see.
I keep having problems with my manifold-to-downpipe gaskets, which seem to blow rather easily. I noticed during the last swap out that there was very little pipe protuding above the flange, about 4 mm or so. By comparison I have another downpipe in storage which has about an inch. I’m not sure how much is ‘correct’ or ‘desirable’, I just know that the copper gaskets are stretching under the force of hot gases, making the hole a gradually more distorted teardrop shape which eventually gets big enough to fail. The last gasket I put in was not the copper type, so we’ll see how that one fares.
I also removed the rocker/head oil feed boost pipe. There is always much discussion as to whether they are beneficial, make no difference or are in fact detrimental to the engine – I still don’t know, but I’ve removed it anyway and will monitor things with regard to oil consumption, rocker wear, etc.
Current projects include installing Jaguar XJ-S front seats into the car – don’t panic, originality fans! The seats are almost exactly the same colour as the current corded bri-nylon ones and everything is being installed ‘non-destructively’, i.e. no cutting involved.
If I was to develop the power plant further I’d probably look at improving the breathing with some high-flow filters and perhaps some work on the inlet manifold. Maybe I should look at uprating the brakes as well….
They all work. Circa 84,000 miles to date, verified by paperwork.
The car had 66,000 miles on the clock when I bought it, and it now has 84,000, an average of about 3500 a year, but that includes a protracted spell of about 18 months when the car was off the road. Since getting the car back into regular use I have covered about 6,000 miles in a little over a year. This use will continue and culminate in October’s Club Triumph Round Britain Reliability Run, 2000 miles in 48 hours. After RBRR, the car may well be retired for the winter to undergo body rectification.
As for me, I live in Chester with my wife Lynn and our two boys, Fergus and Ewan. In true Northern tradition we have a whippet called Billy. My day job is that of an in-house graphic designer with a good chunk of my duties taken up by creating and maintaining web sites. Just the other week I was painting logos on tents though, so it does vary.
I have always loved cars, of all sorts, and love older ones especially. The 2500S is my daily driver, and in this day and age, with fuel prices on a permanently upward spiral, it’s getting harder and harder to justify using on a regular basis. I try to intersperse my commuting with some cycling during the summer months, but whatever happens in the future I really couldn’t bear to be without a classic.
