TRF Summer Party Adventure

["The Browns" <thebrown@domain.elided>]

Hi all of you fellow Triumph friends.
Well, I just returned from our trip to the Summer Party in Armagh, PA.
There were four of us traveling together from Central Florida.  The group
consisted of two TR4's, one TR8 and my Stag.  We planned a combination of
high speed Interstate highways, country and mountain roads to make the trip
interesting.   I need to report that the two TR4's made it roundtrip without
any problems.  My Stag, as all of you know, who read my wife's message,
broke down just outside of Savanna, GA.  The distributor points broke, and I
did not have a spare.  I found out after we went though all our spares, that
these point are unique to the Stag.  Since we broke down on Sunday
afternoon, we had to wait until Monday to get in contact with a parts house.
Nobody carried these points.  If it had not been for a fellow at Road
Savanna, who called to his source in NJ, we would have been out of luck.  We
received them the next morning and were back on the road by noon.  For those
of you who don't know, the correct Lucas P/N is DSB112C.  Also, they don't
look anything like the old points, but the fit and work very well.

I also had put new tires on my car before I left.  This also came back to
haunt me.  The tire dealer didn't have the correct tubes and put in
universal tubes which said that they fitted 13", 14" and 15" tires.  Well,
they don't.  When they were installed the tend to fold over and when
inflated, they pinch and after 800 miles, the friction wears through the
tube and they go flat.  This happen to three tires before 1200 miles.  It
was a good thing that I found a little country tire store, who had 5 correct
radial tubes.  The charge was $12.72 for each wheel.  This included new
tube, and rebalancing.

The next problem was with the metal tube which connects to the bottom of the
radiator and the water pump.  On the Mark I, there is no bracket to hold it
in position to prevent it from rubbing against the fan on the alternator.
On the Mark II, this has been fixed.  You guessed it.  It decided to rub and
create a terrible sound, which if left alone would have worn through and
dumped all of the cooling fluid.  I fixed this with a piece of wood, slid
between the engine block and the tube and two plastic ties to hold it in
place.

The last problem I had was 16RA relay.  This relay cycled causing my lights
to grow dim and them back to full brightness.  After replacing it,
everything seems to be OK.

After that, the car ran great with no other problems.  Total trip of 3750
miles.  The Stag is a very comfortable car on a long distance trip.  I have
no regrets taking this over my 1965 TR4.

The TR8, on the other hand broke a valve spring, causing the valve to strike
the piston.  We had to leave this car behind in Harrisburg, VA.    Other
than that problem, the TR8 performed very strong.  I guess, metal fatigue
finally caught up with us.

The TRF Summer Party was a great success,  They had a great turnout.  82
TR8's, 10 Stags, Many TR6's and TR3's, and a good number of TR4/4A's and
TR250's.

I met a number of fellow list folks and many new friends.  I also felt that
I met several folks along the way, who went out of there way to help us with
our LBC problems.  No one took advantage of us, all charge us fairly.  It is
great to know that there are so many good folk out there willing to help.

Darwin Brown