Resurrection of a Stag

Part 2: The "Stag"mire Strikes Back

The trip to and from Connecticut to retrieve the car was done in about 30 hours. I was too tired to do much of anything after the trip, other than to take the Stag off the trailer. Two weeks passed before I had the time to try to get the car started. Oh sure, there was a little poking here and there, but schedules prevented a significant effort to do anything. Well a weekend arrived that didn't present anything that was overly important. Besides, the grass mowing would just have to wait for another day. When the grass gets too long, a hay baler does a pretty good job on the lawn.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the acronym DPO, it basically stands for Dumb Previous Owner. Most often than not, prior title owners of your Triumphs can come under the classification of a DPO. Nobody knows how to service and take care of a Triumph better than yourself. This previous owner took DPO to a new level of incompetence, almost to an artform. I would like to expand DPO to substitute dumbshit for the D. Some people should not be around machinery. There is a silver lining to the DPO and his maintenance techniques. If it wasn't for all of the oily grime throughout the engine compartment and entire undercarriage, the body would not have been as well preserved as it was. When I do start to pressure wash the engine and body, the amount of oil will surely contaminate the surrounding township. The clean up process would have to wait until I could get a HAZMAT team out to my place. Nope, the priority was to get this bad boy cranked over and started. I suppose there is no set order in what items to attend to first when starting a car that has sat for years. I began with the carbs since they are one of the more prominent items in the Stag engine bay. The Stag has a pair of Stromberg 175 CDE's and while they are adequate in powering the SOHC V8, they don't work well with the dampers frozen in place, the choke cable stripped from it mounts and the throttle linkage all bound up. Removal of the carbs for a quick cleanup was easy since every breather tube was already disconnected and the fuel line broken off at the bowl. The dampers as well as most of the air flow areas throughout the carbs contained enough black soot that I had enough to create a new carbon based lifeform. The DPO had said that the car was running "rough" before he finally parked it. I'm surprised it ran at all! Each carb was broken down and cleaned thoroughly. A gallon and half of Gumount later, I was able to tell that they were actually silver and gray in color. Once reassembled, a few rough measurements and adjustments were made and the carbs were installed back on the manifold. Service manuals are sometimes worth their weight in gold!

Next on the hit list was the fuel system. The DPO must have thought that gas improves with age like a fine wine and the Stag tank was his oak barrel. I estimated and later confirmed that the tank contained about 7 gallons of 4 year old gas. I called Minwax to see if they wanted to send a truck over to start a new line of British car based varnishes. Well they declined, so I had to deal with flushing the tank of this mess. What an opportune time to test the fuel pump and some of the electric's of the car. The battery in the car had long died with its lead plates obviously fused together as one 20lb chunk of lead. I disconnected the Stag's battery cables and ran some jumpers over to the next best battery I had that was close and that wouldn't affect the Monday morning commute. Well my 65 Spitfire would help breath some "electrical" fire into his younger brother. With one end of the disconnected fuel line shoved into a gas can, the battery connected, the ignition switch was twisted clockwise one click and the dash lights as well as the fuel pump came to life. A steady stream of fuel did not flow into the can, rather out the boot all over the driveway. For some reason the DPO installed two fuel pumps for some ill conceived theft prevention system (pump switch under the dash etc.). The second pump had a crack in the housing which conveniently allowed the fuel to spray all over the backend of the car. I quickly shut it down and then returned the car to its original single pump design. By this time much of the spill was evaporating nicely as well as being absorbed into the fibers of my clothes. While a fuel pump would not be the first choice in delivering large quantities of liquid anywhere, it did empty that tank in about 15 minutes. It could have been longer but for some reason during the fuel transfer process, everything look distorted and I was dizzier more than usual. Once emptied, fresh gas was added and another half gallon of good fuel was flushed through the pump and lines. The connection was then made to the carbs and the bowls quickly filled and no other leaks made their presence known.

Oil and coolant were verified and topped off as necessary. Plugs were pulled, cleaned and regapped. Everything should be in place, gas and spark is all you need. I will give the DPO credit for removing the dual point ignition and replacing it with an electronic. I placed the 4 speed in neutral, pulled the choke on and with my heart rate elevated, rotated the key past the accessory setting. The starter engaged, the motor turned and within a three quarter rotation of the crank, the V8 roared to life! There was no sputter in this motor, she promptly came up to a steady 2200 RPM. As expected, she did wake up with a fanfare of blue smoke out the exhaust. Another good sign was that there were no abnormal noises coming from the engine bay. After a few minutes, the choke was gradually pushed in and we were idling at around 1000 RPM. Some minor adjustments were made to balance out the carbs and the motor continued to rumble as only a V8 can. The temperature gauge rose to about the halfway mark and stayed there so no major cooling system problems were evident. So far so good, but will she move on her own? I really couldn't go far since the 12 volt electrical umbilical cord was still attached to the Spitfire. Looks like a quick battery transplant is in order. If Triumph had gone with the 2.5 litre 6 cylinder engine, battery replacement is easy. With the much wider V8, the power steering pump prevents easy access to the battery box. The pump must be slid out the way. Fortunately the bolts are easy to get to and unless you buy cheap ass batteries, you only need to get to it once every few years anyway. With the battery in place, the motor easily fired up again and of course a nice puff of blue smoke. Looks like rings and valve guides, which will be tended to during the rebuild.

Now I'm ready to put the Stag in gear and take it for a quick ride. Too bad there isn't more sound insulation around the transmission. We ground into first gear, ground into reverse and went nowhere fast. OK no sweat, bleed the clutch hydraulics and we're ready to go. This was actually a good reminder since there was no fluid in the brake master cylinder. This alone would have made for an exciting ride. Now all the hydraulics are at least in a somewhat operational status. Start back up, still grinding when trying to go into gear. Still not totally discouraged, I figure the clutch plate has enjoyed its attachment to the flywheel so well, that it felt like staying there. I tried for an hour, rocking this car up and back to try to break the clutch free but no dice. Frustrated yes, but I wasn't going to let it win. The car was pushed in the garage and put up on blocks. Let the clutch removal process begin. I have never in all the years I have been working on cars been so greasy and filthy. That car contained 23 years of oily grime so thick that chunks of grime had to be removed to just see where the bolts were. You know the grime I'm talking about! It was so bad, that when I completed the quick outpatient surgery on the clutch, my clothes were beyond even "Goop" hand cleaner salvation. I looked like a sun bather on Prince William sound waving to the Exxon Valdez. The clutch is now freed up, transmission in place and the car off the blocks. Here we go one more time. Ignition, engine start, clutch pedal down, gear shift to reverse, no grinding. Cookin' now! Clutch pedal slowly brought up, little touch of the gas and we have LIFTOFF, LIFTOFF on Sunday at 1530 hours. Backing out the garage and down the driveway. Brakes work? Yes they do and I even stopped, albeit with crunching as the rust on the drums and disks start to break away. After I clocked several miles on the odometer 140 feet at a time going up and down the driveway, it was time to hit the county pavement. The Stag accelerated effortlessly through all gears down the road. This is one advantage to living in a rural area, no traffic. I stayed within a mile of the house just in case something didn't want to cooperate. Most everything was working, even took the family out for a quick ride. Once with the hard top on and of course another ride with the hard top off and the top down. I drove the Stag around here and there for the next couple of weeks before parking it for the complete restoration process. Everything went fairly well during those two weeks and I even broke an easy 95 mph at one stretch. Push it real hard and I left rubber down in first and second! This car is gonna be great when I put it back together the right way!

Part 3: Return of the Engi covers the complete overhaul of the Triumph Stag SOHC V8.