Hi, intro from Steve in the uk. I have a small collection of cassette players, including a fabulous kenwood in my old Triumph. I need some advice for my sony units.
Welcome to the forum, feel free to post photos of your Triumph, I used to have a Spitfire that I rebuilt after pulling it out of a farmer's field. I loved it but when I moved I didn't have anyplace to put it.
Hi, I had many small chassis Triumphs including Spitfires, great little cars, my Dolomite is my daily driver for shopping etc, it's no show car, but great fun.
Wow, I really like those and non-existant here. The collector's word is that everyone trashed the "daily-drivers" and some of the cars we used to see all of the time are gone now. Those have classic lines, is it Italian Designed? There was a Stag for sale here about 10 years ago, mint condition because nobody drive them in the winter, I didn't have the room at the time.
By Giovanni Michelotti, same as the Stag , GT6, Fury , etc, luckily the parts are available and cheap so they are easy to keep on the road if you can stop them rusting.
I haven't seen one of those for years. In the early 1980s a friend up the road from where I lived had a 1500 or similar which he was trying to turn into a Dolomite Sprint. Many a Saturday morning the doorbell would ring and there would be Paddy asking "Can you take me to the scrappy to get some parts for my car." I recall we once brought a bonnet (hood) home in my MK1 Escort once. He also had a Honda N600. Neither ran properly for long. Back then you culd buy cars like that for far less than it would cost to repair them which is why so few are left. p.s. Regarding the infamous Triumph Stag. When I bought my Escort it came with a third party warranty. Among the list of exclusions "Rallying, Commercial use" etc was "Triumph Stags".
Mines a 1500HL, reliable now it has electronic ignition and fuel pump, The Sprint's were a bit fragile, the Stag had a bad reputation but properly sorted they are lovely cars, and sound great.
I just found this explaining the reliability problems https://driving.ca/auto-news/entertainment/triumphs-v8-the-worst-engine-ever-made Of course some people in the USA claim the Northstar engine is the worst. The problem with those is getting the head studs to stay in the block.
That's really worst case scenario. The design wasn't perfect, but production problems caused a lot of the issues. Once properly sorted they are fine. oddly I worked at a Triumph dealership from the late 70s and I rarely saw one in for repair.
So many issues but a lot of engines do, like steve.55 says, most of the time it doesn't effect them but sometimes it seems like all of the issues hit at the same time, the high water pump would have drove me nuts. I still love all of those cars, maybe it was the Triumph Dealership down the street from my house, it only last a few years in the mid-70's but I remember the line of Spitfires out front on the street. We had the same problem with rust, maybe worse, nothing was the same after three winters.
The issues only seemed to be on the V8 engine. Last week I watched an interesting video which explained that Saab used the four cylinder Triumph engines very successfully As for rust that was what finished most cars off in the U.K. even though to the 1990s. A friend had a Triumph Acclaim (U.K. built Honda AKA) which got scrapped at about 15 years old and at 70000 miles in perfect mechanical running order. The problem was all the rust holes in the body.
My first Dolomite was scrapped when it was 9 years old due to rust. Most cars of that era left the factory with no rust proofing or underseal, the UK saw worse rust as we use salt on the roads unike Japan etc, mine has only lasted as I don't use t when the roads have been gritted, once it's rained to wash the salt away I 'm out again. Italian cars seemed to use thinner steel, they were fine in Italy, but rusted like crazy in the UK.
