True Confessions

We all have a great story to tell about our cars. Some are funny and some aren't but somehow you always manage to get to where you are going in a Triumph ...the question is...... do you make it back?

I acquired my 1954 short door TR2 in Feb 1976 from a car dealer in Sydney. I lived at a Navy base at Nowra, about 160 kms south of Sydney. So, on the Sunday evening after I picked up the TR I had to drive my first old sports car to Nowra at night with no idea of how it all worked.

I set off about 6.30pm and by the time I got on to the freeway it was dark and had started raining. Not to worry, the car had won the Triumph Sports Owners Association concourse the year before so I asumed it was all in good condition. On with the wipers and found that they had little to no rubber in them.

Not to worry, if I go fast enough the water will stream off the windscreen with the slipstream. I wound her up to about 60-70mph and was able to see where I was going sort of, the glow worms that powered the head lights were adequate except when a car came the other way and the contrast was lost.

I still wasn't worried. Then I heard a pop and wondered what it was. It was black as the ace of spades inside the car and I couldn't see anything. Water was streaming in from between the side curtains and top, under the windscreen and between the windscreen and the top. I have learnt that they only direct the water into your eyes. Now I was getting angry and wondering why I had given up my warm, comfortable if rather sterile Toyota Celica that I had traded on it.

At about 70 mph my discomfort went off the scale as I heard a series of little pops and all the Tenax fasteners securing the top to the windscreen came of and I was exposed to the elements with the top flapping behind me in a 70mph slipstream.

I refitted the top, the rain eased and I was off the freeway and on a two lane country road. Then I heard a knocking and thought the diff was packing up. Later I had the diff replaced to find the rear brake drums were a bit loose.

Nothing I could do but keep going, nearly in tears for the heap of rubbish that I had bought. It got me to Nowra soaked and angry.

Well, I still have the car and it has travelled with me a lot of places, I have done around 90,000 miles in it. I gave it a body off restoration in 1980 to 84 and it has done the trip to the Navy base from Sydney, and other longer trips, numerous times. I used it to weekend commute between Sydney and Canberra and Sydney to Nowra for years. Since that first night of frustration it has provided years of pleasure, helped acquire my wife of 22 years, is loved by the kids and only not got to its destination twice and both times I knew it was hurting before I set off but went anyway.

I purchased my 1961 TR-3A in 1967 for $500 U.S. dollars while stationed at the Naval Air Station Alameda when in the Navy. I still own the car...believe it or not, it has a CD player with a pair of 3" speakers just aft of the roll bar...I should tell you the story of wiring and isolating the "Blau" but THAT'S another story.
The Naval Air Station repaired and painted U.S. Naval aircraft. I made friends with Louie "the painter" and decided to "moonlight" a couple of coats of A-6 Intruder white for my TR. The Navy was experimenting with ultra corrosive resistant paint (part A and part B epoxy) ....my TR took two coats! I just repainted the car last year (1997) with VW white. I recommend that every TR owner get the US Navy to paint their car. I digress....

After the Navy, I went to a Jr. College in Los Altos California (a two year school) and knew I had to transfer to a four year institution from the get-go. To my amazement, I was admitted to Stanford University! I did not get my acceptance letter until I came back from vacation that last summer...the final day to let them know I was accepting their invitation...it was the day I read the pile of mail in my mail box ! Soooooo....zooming onto the expressway....A-6 white TR-3 weaving it's way through Palo Alto traffic....on the way to Stanford before they closed...my car started to smoke!...but not from the exhaust....from the back seat near the floor....I had NO time for such distractions!....so I zipped into a gas station....pulled the water hose from the receptacle and flooded the back compartment! You could image my fellow "patrons" scrambling to get the hell out of the way, yelling for me to get out before the entire gas stationed blew up! Quite a scene! Well, I calmly waved, hopped into the car and off I went to Stanford with self assuring water sloshing sounds keeping the smoke down. As it turned out, I developed a hole on the top side of the muffler which "cooked" the carpeting to the point of smoking...there was no real fire but who knows...if I wasn't as fast as a jet...??? This is just one of many episodes of my TR-3 life. - Joe Garcia

When I had almost completed the frame off restoration of my 59 TR3A I decided to drive it the 4 miles to my bodyshop to have some minor paint imperfections retouched. It was my very first outing and I labored to have everything just right. The feeling of exhilaration as I backed the car out of my driveway was incredible and as I proceeded to the service road of the expressway I had visions of the open road and wind running through my hair. At the first light I heard a slight grinding coming from the front end, stopped the car and jumped out to see what was wrong. Everything looked great. Jumping back into the car for the light change I continued on to the next traffic light whereupon as I stepped on the brake the grinding reappeared. Once again I hopped out for another inspection but found nothing wrong. Thinking that perhaps it was a braking problem I proceeded further exercising caution in the event that I had a brake failure, my right hand at the ready on the parking brake handle. As I approached the 4th traffic light, suddenly the left front end of the car dropped to the ground and my heart nearly stopped as the car ground to a halt and my front wheel rolled merrily along until it came to an gentle stop about 300 feet away on the expressway.

To my chagrin, after close inspection I discovered that the splines on the wheel hub were worn down and instead of the wing nut tightening , the freeturning hub actually loosened the nut every time I had stepped on the brake.

Luckily this did not happen on the open roadway at a much greater speed! The moral of the story if there is one is to check out those wheel and axle hubs and make sure that they are not worn. Also a very good idea is to verify the tightness of those wing nuts from time to time as well as the tightness of the spokes or you might one day find one of your wheels passing you by. - Barry Shefner

Another wheel loss horror story!

A while ago there was a discussion string on the Triumph list asking if welding rear wheel hub studs can be done. Take it from someone who lost a wheel, hub and all two times, don't weld them.

It's a long story beginning with a rumor that the DPO had lost the driver side, rear wheel during a demo drive when he was trying to sell the TR3 some years before I bought it from him, advancing through the time when I lost the same wheel, hub and all, in July 1996, (coincidence?), and continuing through the third wheel loss in September 1996. I still don't have a guess what caused the PO's wheel loss and the first time that I lost the wheel and hub, a number of members from both the St. Louis Triumph Owners Association and the St. Louis Healey Club, were mystified. Various theories were advanced ranging from "didn't tighten the hub nuts properly" to "the hub holes were enlarged over the years, which worked the hub nuts loose and caused them to shear off".

To reconstruct some of the contributing history...
Prior to my first wheel/hub separation, I had a machine shop use their press to remove the left rear hub in order to replace the inner oil seal. Three months of driving later, the left rear hub studs sheared off and the wheel and hub adapter separated from the car at around 25 mph. The common thought was that loose nuts allowed flexing which in turn sheared off the studs. Well, nothing to do but repair the damage. While doing the repair, we did the "while we are at it lets make sure that the *#&%* hub studs stay attached" thing and tack welded the studs. It seemed to make sense at the time.

After the second wheel/hub loss, and after reading a string of Triumph List comments on "how bolts loss their shear strength when heated", and remembering the machine shop technician's comments on how much heat they had to use to press off the hub, and that the last set of studs were tack welded, a light came on in our respective heads. We now think that the heating from the hub removal process and later, the hub stud tack welding removed the "hardness" from the studs, and after some miles, they snapped. Thinking back, I remember hearing a noise from the rear wheel at times, but I assumed the U-Joints were approaching replacement time. I think now, that I was hearing a stud snap, and later, after several more snapped, the few remaining let go all at once.
Mercifully, no one was hurt during the two incidents. But then again, the separations did not occur at speed, on an Interstate. So, it seems prudent to keep the heat torch away from high stress treated studs and bolts on your classic Triumph.. - Ken Dahman

I was finishing up the restoration of my TR3B a few years ago and had decided to run a set of wire wheels that I had. I had the hub adapters and knock-offs left from a cannibalized TR4. New tires and tubes and I was ready to go. I was familiar with the process of cutting about 1/4" off the studs, and soon was ready to bolt the adapters to the hubs. I decided to see if I could find something in the workshop manual about the correct torque for these guys. No way did I want any of my wheels coming off! I looked in the section on tires and wheels - nothing. Then I checked the pages on torque settings for various items - I was pretty familiar with this page - and again I didn’t find anything. Well maybe there isn’t any "official" torque setting. Maybe you just get them as tight as you can without wearing your gorilla hat, like every other wheel lug I had ever run across. I had never heard of a torque setting for a wheel nut and couldn’t recall ever seeing a torque wrench being used on road wheels before. I’ll just get them as tight as I can and that will be that. I soon realized that while normal wheel lugs can be gotten very tight very easily by using the weight of the car on the wheel to keep it from spinning as the lugs are tightened, the lugs of the wire wheel adapter must be tightened before the wheel is put on. The rear wheels are simple enough - you just apply the emergency brake. The front though was a little more challenging. I’m not exactly sure what I did to get the lugs on the front wheel tight. I think I just kind of held the rotor from spinning with my hand and then tried to get a little more by striking the butt end of the ratchet with my hand, which presumably tightened the lugs a little bit more. In any event I was anxious to see the car with wires on it and to be able to drive it with the new tires. Out I went for a spin and everything seemed fine.

Fast forward a few months......I decided to take my 3B for a short jaunt and maybe stop in at a store for something. Now there are some winding roads near my house before you get on a main drag. As I was going through the turns I thought I heard some unpleasant rattling coming from one of my wheels. I stopped, got out and checked the wheels but nothing seemed loose. So I went on my way on out to the six lane highway. I think I was doing about 35 mph when it happened - you guessed it - my left front wheel came off! The car slammed to the pavement and I remember seeing my wheel shoot up into the air and go bounding down the road, across the median and into oncoming traffic! Meanwhile the remainder of the car and the driver slid, ground or whatever to a rather anticlimactic halt conveniently into a left turn lane. After turning numerous shades of red from about a 50-50 mix of adrenaline and embarrassment, I got out to survey the damage and go find my errant road wheel. I found the wheel about 50 yards down the road. The wheel, knock-off and adapter were all still together. I rolled the bad boy back to the severely listing TR3. The front fender had been hit when the wheel came off and the corner just behind the wheel was bent rather badly. The frame paint and a few ounces of the left front frame were now forming a thin coating on the road behind my car. The disc rotor now had a "flat" spot. I must’ve hit the brakes. After calming down a bit I decided that I was actually quite lucky, all in all. The damage wasn’t all that bad considering what had happened. I got the wheel knock-off loose and found the four lugs inside between the adapter and the wheel. The studs looked a little chewed up but serviceable. I found my jack wouldn’t work as the jacking point was too low for the jack to engage it. Some Good Samaritan loaned me a scissor jack and I was able to get the wheel back where it belonged. After limping home I made a phone call to one of the tech lines of one of the major parts houses. "Excuse me, how in the world do you keep the lugs from coming off a TR3?" I asked. "Should you use loctite or something?" The calm voice on the other end said simply "No, you just need to torque them to the specified value. The torque setting is in the factory workshop manual - here it is - page 14, 45-55 ft lbs." Feeling a little sick I looked and there it was, on page 14, plain as day. "Oh. Yeah. I see it now." No way was I going to admit that one of my wheels had just come off but I got the feeling I didn’t have to. The person on the phone had obviously handled calls like this before."Well, thanks very much."

Needless to say I now religiously torque the wheel lugs to 55 ft lbs. minimum after I put loctite on the threads. I have found that a large C-clamp is handy for holding the front discs from spinning. That or a helper to operate the brake pedal. I am also happy to relate that the car recovered quite nicely and has not had any more wheels come off. Knock on Wood! - Ken Nuelle

If you have an interesting story to relate please e-mail it to me and I'll post it here Jacad@videotron.ca