By Ken Edgar
The readership may very well have remembered my acquisition of a Triumph TR7 a few years ago as a pile of parts. I returned the car to the road in November of 2014 and presumed to place it in service as my new work hack. I ended up being delayed somewhat.
Most people in this hobby who are familiar with the Wedges know all too well the stories of blown head gaskets and other ills. While I had the car apart I took a good look at the engine’s internals. According to the odometer the car had only 20,000 miles so I wasn’t expecting anything odd inside. Removal of the sump and inspection of the big-end and main bearings showed minimal wear – indicating the mileage was most likely accurate. A peek inside the spark plug holes indicated very little wear as well – no deposits or scoring on the cylinder walls. After buttoning the engine up with new gaskets I installed it and filled the cooling system. No leaks; it looked like I was in good shape.
I drove the car to work a few times, just to wring everything out. A few times I thought I smelled antifreeze but couldn’t find a leak when I checked under the hood. There was no evidence of white smoke in the exhaust or overheating – although the temperature gauge would read just below halfway with the headlamps on but just over one-fourth of the way with them off! Double-checking with an IR temperature reader allayed my fears, giving a full operating temperature of 185 to 190° F. The antifreeze smell continued to perplex and taunt me with its presence. One morning before setting off I checked the antifreeze level and found I needed to add about a pint. Then I saw it: a thin stream of coolant running down the edge of the head where it and the block meet.
Noooooo! Why Me!?
As it turns out the gasket would start to leak as the engine cooled down and seal back up as the engine warmed the next morning. The leaked antifreeze would evaporate on the hot engine, enabling the nefarious leak to evade detection. The leak, fortunately, only appeared to leak to the outside. I steeled myself for the inevitable ordeal of pulling the head and was informed by several members of the Wedge community that I was in for a time of it: stories of horror and woe were to be found on the forums. Having dealt with several Jaguar XK heads in the past I figured it couldn’t be any worse than that. I was somewhat wrong.
Luckily I was able to rent the Head Honcho, a head puller from the Triumph Wedge Owners Association (TWOA). The Association has several tools, developed by club members, to assist in certain tasks that a wedge owner may encounter. The head puller reduced the job from a potential hours-long oath fest into a one hour job worthy of only a few colorful metaphors. Inspection of the gasket indicated it was fixing to blow big time. What had killed it was corrosion slowly eating away the gasket and head surface due to lack of use.
The machine shop I employed to rework the head called me to see if I had another head as they deemed the corrosion around some of the valve ports was excessive. Luckily for me I’d picked up a spare engine some time earlier with – you guessed it – a blown head gasket. I still had the Head Honcho so off came the spare head and it was taken to the machine shop.
The spare head cleaned up with no issues and went on with a new gasket and head studs. After an initial run with no leaks I once again deemed the car ready for work-hack duty.
The car has logged just under 6,000 miles since March of last year and has proven to be very reliable considering it is four decades old. The news people said 2015 had been one of the hottest summers on record in the Southeast but the TR7’s temp gauge indicated no problem in dealing with it, whether sitting in traffic or running at interstate speeds. The comments made as to the color were positive; the screaming purple color got attention, although some drivers still can’t see me because they are paying too much attention to their phones. At work the TR7 raised a few eyebrows as most of my coworkers drive pickup trucks. One wise guy dubbed the car “Pimp Juice” after a purple low-rider car from a hip-hop video. I don’t know the video and don’t personally like the name but the name has stuck. Griping to my co-workers will only provoke them.
Winter 2015 brought another test for the car. As anyone who has dealt with 1970’s BL cars knows full well there is a plethora of silly devices under the hood that BL used to help their cars meet increasingly restrictive emissions standards. Once such lash-up was called the FASD (fully automatic starting device). I’d call it two lies in one: it’s like the S.U. starting carburetor used on early Jaguar XK engines but less reliable. When a FASD works it is a beautiful thing but, in cold weather, a petulant FASD will give new meaning to the misery of cold starting and running. With the tendency of stock Strangleberg (Stromberg) carburetors to run on the lean side one begins to pine for the mindless turn and go simplicity of a modern boredom-mobile – almost. The fitting of a set of U.K. spec S.U. carburetors solved the problem as well as making the car much livelier.
Aside from the annoying tendency of the right-hand light pod to cycle up and down several times when I shut the lights off when outside temperatures are below freezing the car has proved to relatively free of vices. The heater works well and the car is comfortable. The handling is predictable, if somewhat squirrely in snow. The antifreeze smell reappeared, this time emanating from the water pump weep hole. The water pump is doing the same thing the head was; it leaks when cold and stops when the car warms up. I have a new pump assembly on the shelf to replace when the leak gets worse. This, of course, means the original pump will probably continue on forever.
I have a few things on the car that I still want to upgrade but, overall, I’m happy with my “new” work hack. It sees me to work and back most days – I have to drive the Spit and the E-type sometimes. My experience has shown me they get jealous if one car gets all the use (especially the E-type).
