Valve Bounce

How Many TRs Left??

Oh joy of numbers. I've just come across How Many Left. Kiss your afternoon goodbye and have a play. You can search to find statistics for every make and model of car registered in the UK. The data comes direct from the Department for Transport.

Here's a quick graph of the numbers of TRs registered over the last few years. The TR6 marches on but the TR7 drops like a stone, and the number of TR5s that have started to appear is interesting.

 

The spreadsheet is here

Don't clean the windows...

 

Two original stickers have survived in the rear window of a works Triumph TR4.

Hey Look... Beyonce's fixing my TR4

"That's great Beyonce! You get that water pump off and I'll go get some water..."

A few hours before...

 

Triumph TR3As and ASRA sports car racing in the desert

I've no idea where these films are from or who filmed them but they are very entertaining. There are seven films in all, and they feature a whole range of Little British Cars (LBCs) in various states of duress. They are all racers and were filmed somewhere on the coast near/in Mexico in the early seventies. There are TR3As, MGBs, a Datsun 2000, VW Beetles, a Volvo PV544, Mini Coopers, MG Sprites, Porsche 356, plus some Formula B/Libra cars.

Film 6 sets the scene nicely with some background and paddock shots and there is some great (and sometimes wild!) racing in films 3 and 4. There's a nice laid back commentary and some lovely warm colours from the old cine film.

Any more information on these gratefully received. Thanks @TRWLondon for pointing them out to me.

Triumph TR3A stars in pop video

Anyone remember Fantastic Something? They were two Greek born brothers that were based in the UK (no Wham! references please). In the early 80s they had a hit with If She Doesn't Smile (It'll Rain) on Cherry Red and then disappeared after a couple of other releases. 

Here's the long forgotten video for their hit. It stars a TR3A plus some walk-on parts for a Mini, Triumph Herald, Ford Zodiac MK1 and a Ford Zodiac Lowline all very twee...The world has moved on a bit in the meantime. Thanks to @tracey_thorn for the reminder.

TR4 Pedal Pumping

During a recent visit to the Ikon gallery in Birmingham I came across an art film featuring a Triumph TR4 and a very peculiar niche interest, Pedal Pumping. The artist Matias Faldbakken has an exhibition running until the 28 January. As they say...

'Untitled (Pedal Pumping) (2009, with Lars Brekke), one of a number of video pieces in the exhibition, shows a girl’s flip-flop-clad foot repeatedly depressing the accelerator pedal of a car. Having uploaded it to YouTube, the video was quickly viewed thousands of times, appealing particularly to the car-pedal-fetishist underground. Faldbakken’s interest lies in transforming defnitions of what is normative and what is marginal, subcultural or rebellious, reducing the distance between them.'

I never knew there was a 'car-pedal-fetishist underground' it takes all sorts...I hope you enjoy it.

TR Register North London Group – Rolling Road Shootout

What a great idea for a day out this was…bring a group of cars along to a local rolling road, we were at Enginuity (the TR and TVR specialist), and run them through the rev range to see what they’ve got. Rolling road shootouts are a new thing to me but apparently they are quite common in the hot-hatch community. From this experience I’m sure they would go down well with the classic crowd just as well.

All you need to do is find a suitable and willing rolling road owner, and get the owners to run it, then gather a few like minded car club members with their cars. Each car is put through its paces and the results noted and collated, it's that easy. We had 23 TRs attending, there was a good mixture of engine types; fifteen six cylinder cars, seven early four cylinder cars plus a four cylinder TR7; all in various states of tune, and it was wonderful to see 4 VC in the four cylinder group. To add a little spice there was a sweep-stake organised to see who could guess their cars ‘at-the-wheels’ bhp most accurately.

I took my TR4 to get its MOT recently and was embarrassed to see that we had only done 50 miles in the last year so was hoping to stretch its legs, it can’t be a good thing for the car to get out so little. The MOT did result in a couple of new Avon CR6ZZ tyres and I needed a little excuse to run the stickers off.

The interesting thing about a shootout like this is that you are comparing cars under the same conditions. It’s very surprising how different the results can be when you take the same car on different rolling roads. Everyone seemed to think that the Enginuity rolling road was giving low results, which I’m sure is normal! Here's the range of results;

I’m please to say the 7455 KX managed to record the top bhp figure of all the club cars on the day with133 bhp. This was way down on previous sessions but in line with everyone's experience on this set-up. It was certainly good to see a 4 cylinder  car coming out on top for a change, even though I’m sure some 6 cylinder cars were being conservative with their red line. It took the newly restored Enginuity project car to bring back the 6 cylinder pride! It managed a very health 142 bhp - it has a new cam profile that they have been working on recently and this was it's first time on the rolling road. They are hoping for more power in the future with some further development and tweaks.

The range of outputs was large with considerable overlap between 4 and 6 cylinders. Overall the average for the 6 cylinders came out on top if you include the Enginuity car.

	Max	Min	Average
6 Cylinder	142	93	116
4 Cylinder	133	76	104

But, of course, just remember that a good flat, and wide, torque curve is the thing you want for a drivable road car not just maximum bhp. Here's the chart for 7455 KX, not too bad I think (click for a full view).

Many thanks to everyone at Enginuity for letting us us their facilities for free, providing refreshments, and running the day, and also to Mike North from TR Register North London Group for organising the day. Overall it was a great day out and certainly a very good excuse to get the TR out the garage for a little shakedown.

Triumph TR5 - Hot Rod

An old clip here that I just rediscovered. Recorded from 5th Gear a few years ago it shows a very high spec TR5 from Racetorations being given a once over...

TR Register International 2008

It was the TR Register International meeting this weekend. There's not much to report on the car front. All the usual suspects were there with all the usual concourse shenanigans.

On the product front there was someone selling power steering for TR6s so now you can have servo brakes, an all hydraulic clutch and power steering. Why not just buy a MX5 instead?

A couple of cars caught my eye;

• A TR5 dragster - that has got to be a one-off!
• and a very neatly finished TR4 sprint car in white and black, very well put together.

There did seem to be a greater emphasis on competition cars which was encouraging and there seems to be a move to change next years venue for this event, I think that would be a good idea as it all is getting a bit samey...

Ally Pally Classic Car Show

We had an enjoyable few hours at the Alexandra Place Classic Car show last week. It's a small show and has been having a bit of an identity crisis recently. This year was enjoyable, not as busy as usual but all the non-car related stuff seems to have gone and there was quite relaxed atmosphere.

A couple of nice Mercedes for sale, a tidy manual 280SE 3.5 Coupe here for £35k  (!) the highest asking price I've seen for one of these. It looks like the market have realised what great cars they are to own and use. Also a very straight looking 230S for £10k a strong price but a very nice looking car.

On the TR front there was a very big TR Register stand and some decent looking cars. Star of the stand was a Blue TR4a modelled on Jack Drew's blue TR4 before he wrote it off. A nice fast road car was the result, some pictures below...

It always leaves me asking when will London get a show to rival Retromobile or Techno Classica??

I also found a completely wonderful LED light socket extension.