By Dean Sprague
It all started when I was attending a governmental conference in Tampa Bay Florida. I was presenting a paper I wrote about Florida’s New Growth Management Act to fellow public sector practitioners. While I was working my X-wife was sitting on the beach drinking Pena Coladas with our friend Harry who was a county attorney from south Florida. When the afternoon ended they were so inebriated that somehow I became the proud owner of his 1971 Triumph Stag. The provision was I would get the car for nothing if I agreed to restore it using the original engine. All I had to do was give him right of first refusal when finished if I decided to sell. I had always wanted a Stag since I saw James Bond driving one of the 007 movies: “Diamonds Are Forever”.
Triumph Stags are rather attractive cars and quite well appointed. Unfortunately they became Triumph’s failed attempt to enter the mid-level luxury sports /touring car market. They competed with cars like the Mercedes Benz 450 SL and Jaguar XKE. While they were in the same general price bracket they lacked reliability and some quality control. The engine was the real problem. The factory service requirements were inadequate; radiators clogged easily if the fluid wasn’t changed annually and were a bit inefficient plus the oil HAD to be changed at least every 3K miles. The engine was a single overhead cam (per bank) cross-bolt head design, which would not tolerate much overheating. When this occurred the usual result was a blown head gasket and then the overheated thinned oil did little to prevent bearing and crankshaft failure and further damage. This became the common fate of most Stag engines. Initial sales were very strong until the word got out about the engine problem then sales plummeted; particularly in the North American markets where ambient temperatures and highway speeds were generally higher. Dan Neil a Pulitzer prizewinning author of automobile books, described the Stag as “one of the 50 worst cars of all time”. Despite that, the cars were so well loved by some of their owners that they replaced the engines with the Rover 3.5 or the GM 350 on their own so they could keep driving them.
I once met a person who worked with the Rover Group back then. He shared this story with me and while it may be urban legend it sounded plausible. The story goes Triumph had just become part of the Rover organization. They offered to let Triumph use the Rover 3.5 engine in the Stag. The engineers at Triumph refused since they already had their engine well into test mode. Then someone at Rover “borrowed” one of the Stag test mules and put a Rover 3.5 in it. Then they brought it back to Triumph to show them how much better the car could be and it was. This became a turf battle and of course with a “stiff upper lip” Triumph continued their resistance. It has been said that if the Rover engine had been employed in the Stag the car’s popularity and current value would have increased significantly and maybe changed Triumph’s future. Fortunately Triumph never used this engine again even though they later used the right half of it for the problematic TR7 (more head gasket problems). I think we see a pattern here. Finally they did put the Rover 3.5 in the TR8. It was the right thing to do but too late for Triumph.
Now getting back to my acquisition. When I got the car home I crawled through it to determine its equipment and condition. My Stag had the 4- speed gearbox with overdrive (no automatic - thank you, thank you), optional chrome wire wheels, factory air conditioning and steel hardtop. What more could you possibly want plus the color was right, it was the rare BLVC #55 Laurel Green (a dark green) with black coachwork.
I discovered the body was quite good. It had a few ping dents and very minimal rust but no evidence of any collisions. Of course it needed a complete refinish. The original interior was in amazing shape and only required new carpeting and brightening up. The wood trim was basically solid but needed to be restored. Most of the bright work (chrome) was not pitted and would clean up. The car appeared to be complete and very doable except for a frozen engine. I found out later that Harry had tried to get the engine overhauled several times. He had a couple of offers to swap it for a GM 350 V8 but no one (in the know) would guarantee a rebuild of the original factory engine.
Despite all this valuable information, which I combined with my poor grasp of reality, I donned my rose colored glasses and began undaunted to restore this Triumph in its original form. After all how bad could it be when you get a car for nothing? Let me tell you how bad. Today you can lick most of the engine problems with some re-engineering and expensive upgraded parts (like a hardened crankshaft) but when I did this restoration in the early 1980s little was known. Tearing down the engine was my 1st priority. This took awhile; you have to remove the cross-angle head studs completely before you can lift the heads. Since the studs sit in the water jackets they are usually heavily corroded and these were. This required soaking/torqueing and lots of patience, as was the case with the frozen pistons as well. While this was going on I took the carcass (body) to Charlie. He was the panel beater I worked with for several years to “try” and learn how to do paint and body repair properly. We made this car partial payment for my services. That way we did it for materials costs about $600 I think. I began ordering parts, lots of parts. It seems when you tear a car down there is a process of discovery that always results in a multitude of things that looked OK but now must be replaced, repaired or refurbished. Projected restoration costs escalated from hundreds to thousands of dollars as the car slowly came together. I put new Dayton chrome wire wheels with high-end tires on the car, upgraded the air-conditioning, repaired the original Smiths radio, rebuilt the hard top, replaced the soft top in canvass etc. When finished the car was beautiful. I had about $12,500 in it not including 3 years labor. Its important to note in the early 80’s top money for a perfect Stag was about 10.5 to 12K, not good.
Of course, it still had engine design issues. Everyone in the know said: “Don’t overheat it, not once - not at all!” I had replaced everything in the engine and I was meticulous in the assembly but that won’t compensate for poor engineering. I ran the engine about 20 minutes to settle in the cams etc. Then I checked the head torques. They had already moved so I re-torqued them again. I ran it again and this time laser checked the head temperatures across the cylinders and found notable variances between the two inside and two outside pistons. The water jackets were engineered so poorly they didn’t cool evenly. I put about 150 miles on it chased gremlins, changed fluids and re-torqued the heads again. It was a shame as it really was a nice car to drive. The 145 BHP free revving 2998cc V8 engine propelled the car quite spiritedly but I developed intrepid fear every time I started it. I became so fixated on the temperature gauge I couldn’t enjoy the car. This was not a keeper!
As promised, Harry stopped by to drive the Stag. He was thrilled at how good it looked and drove but didn’t want to compensate me for my restoration costs. Who could blame him.
Undaunted I took it to the annual Winter Park, Florida British car show (as a trailer queen) and put a small tasteful “for sale” sign in the corner of the windscreen. I asked 13.5K but was receptive to all offers. When the show ended I got a trophy for 1st in class and a final offer of $12,500 (after some extensive negotiation), which I took! Lesson learned, be careful of free gifts, nothing is for nothing.