Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Feature Car of the Month - Triumph 2500 TBI Mk2


Thought I'd do a quick feature on each of my cars with a brief history, specification and current state of play.

Starting this series is my everyday hack a 1973 ex-2000 now 2500 TBI

Affectionately known as "Mabel" by my wife it used to be her everyday driver but it now serves as my everyday hack whilst the Stag engine is rebuilt.



It was bought to reshell a rusting 2500S for the princely sum of $1500 after being rescued from a scrapyard. The paint is mostly original and structurally it is wonderful. No nasty rot on this one.

The engine is basically a Mk1 PI motor bored to 0.040" running Duralite pistons. It is currently auto with a BW 65 box but will be converted to manual J-Type very soon. It has a Wade cam with 275 deg duration and 0.280" lift with Harland sharp 1.5:1 roller rockers

















The most non-standard mod has been the fitment of Throttle body injection using a GM ECM and custom injector adaptor and distributor from Rick Patton in Maine, US. http://www.pattonmachine.com/


The SU carb have prototype injector bodies and TPS developed by Rick last year and recently I have also installed his Lucas distributor conversion which allow fully programmable advance curves via the ECM. This has solved many issues that the original hybrid Jeep/Lucas dizzy had inherent from day one.

Twin injectors pretending to be HS6 carbs. Clutch master cylinder already installed and waiting for a gearbox!!













The dizzy conversion is extremely neat and uses a fabricated reluctor that sits on the old pegs that the advance springs used to use. The magnetic pickup is adjustable like points and is mounted on a fabricated stainless bracket that mounted like a baseplate .
Ignition module is just to the left. Must get round to binning that fuel pump

This car is currently used on a daily basis and does about 250 congested rush-hour miles a week. It returns about 23-24mpg with this use so hopefully a manual conversion will improve this to 27-28mpg
The interior has been improved with some lovely old Jag XJS seats... they are a bit tricky to fit as they are not offset like Triumph ones so when mounted they sit a little too close to the door... this has yet to be fully resolved but they are soooo... comfortable compared to Triumph's finest back breakers