It's all a matter of timing
The Triumph Acclaim has been sitting under a cover in the workshop for about 18 months now, not because there was anything fundamentally wrong with it, but simply because I didn't need it on the road and could use the money it would have cost to tax and insure it for other vehicles such as the Fiat Panda. I did like the Panda and it was a really sweet car to drive, plus after the amount of work we had put into saving it I had always planned to keep it long-term.
However, as the MGB project has shown, plans are only made to be broken! After a final fling for the feature in this issue, the Panda's tax and insurance were up for renewal. Initially I had planned to swap it over with the Acclaim – one into storage and the other out – but fate had other plans. When John Adamson bought my TR7 last year, he'd got a lift down from the north-east with his mate, Paul. While John was poking around the Triumph, Paul was having a casual look at the Fiat. To cut a long story short, instead of putting the Panda into storage, I agreed to sell it to Paul and off it duly toddled.
In the meantime, I had not been idle as far as the Acclaim went. During its hibernation, I had replaced all four tyres, partly because a couple of them were getting close to being time-expired but also because one had developed an air leak and it didn't seem worthwhile paying to have it removed, the wheel cleaned up and the tyre refitted in a bid to seal it up when it did not have many more months left in it. Ironically, one of the new tyres has a very slow leak too, so I may have to bite the bullet and get all four wheels professionally reconditioned and see if that effects a final cure.
I had also changed the oil and filter part way through the Acclaim's storage, working on time rather than mileage to determine when it was due. However, I had avoided another time-related task – replacing the timing belt. Really I should
“I had put off the task because I hate changing timing belts”
have done this when I first got the car because I did not know when it was last done, but I had removed the timing cover and decided that the belt itself looked in good enough shape to remain in use, especially because the Acclaim's engine is not an interference design so if the belt were to snap, it would be an inconvenience that left me stranded rather than a disaster that would see pistons clashing with valves. Mind you, as somebody once told me, a visual inspection of the back of a timing belt is rarely very informative as they crack from the inside, and a belt is either circular or straight – there is no in between!
I had put off the task largely because I hate changing timing belts; I don't suppose anybody particularly enjoys the task because it can be a knuckle-scraping experience in a transverse FWD application, and there is no margin for error. I'd also heard that removing the engine mounting bolt can be a pig of a job, so before breaking out the spanners I booked the Acclaim in for an MoT, just in case it failed big time. Of course it passed fine, with the handbrake reading being the only thing that was getting close to borderline. I suspect that this is down to too much dust in the rear drums after any surface rust from its storage had been rubbed off them, so I will clean those out shortly.
First though, it was time to man up and tackle that timing belt. I've done this job before on a Fiat 128 and a Nissan Figaro, and was pleasantly surprised at how much more access there was in the Acclaim's engine bay. In theory the job should only take a professional an hour or two at most, but I had set aside a whole day; in the event, it took me between five and six hours in total, going slowly and steadily.
The first thing I did was to see if the engine mount bolts would move, because if they were seized up solid then the whole enterprise could have been a non-starter – you need to move the nearside mount out of the way so that you can feed the belt through the gap this creates between the inner wing and the front of the engine. To my pleasant surprise, the bolts undid easily with just enough initial resistance to reassure me that they had in fact been done up tightly. With that, it was game on.
Surprisingly, there were two rather important omissions in the instructions contained in the workshop manual which I had open as my safety blanket. One was that it made no mention of the need to support the front of the engine when the mount was removed. Fortunately that is simple common sense, but I would have expected to see it made explicit. The other was that there was no mention made in the section on timing belt replacement that the Honda-designed engine rotates anticlockwise, which is the opposite way to most. This might have been mentioned elsewhere in the engine chapter, but again I would have expected it to be made explicit. To be fair there was a factory sticker on the rocker cover to make this point, and it was one I was familiar with anyway.
When removing this timing belt, there are three timing marks that you need to line up. Firstly, there is a notch in the bottom pulley that lines up with a pointer moulded into the plastic lower timing belt cover which indicates the pistons are at top dead centre (TDC). In fact there are three notches which are meant to be colour-coded: white for TDC, red for 5° BTDC and yellow for 11° BTDC, but no colouring was visible after all these years which is why you need to know which way the engine rotates.
There are also two notches on opposite sides of the timing wheel on the overhead cam, visible with the rocker box and upper timing belt cover removed. These need to be aligned so they are level with the top of the cylinder head. Generally I find this engine to be incredibly well thought out and user friendly, but I must say that all of these marks were a lot fainter than they needed to be. Cleaning up the wheels with a Scotchbrite pad helped make them clearer, but I also applied a little Tippex into the grooves to make them stand out even more.
I still found it hard to be sure when the timing wheel marks were perfectly level with the top of the cylinder head – there was not enough room to get my own head in there, and looking at an angle from above distorted their relative positions. In truth it probably doesn't matter too much so long as the new belt goes on in the same relative position as the old given that the engine was running well, but I do like to check and double check on something as critical as this. In the end, a metal ruler placed along the top of the head gave me a marker alongside the timing notch that was much easier to position accurately.
My next problem was to undo the crankshaft pulley nut. I struggled with access initially, until I noticed a big rubber bung in the inner wing. With that removed, I had direct access in for a socket and an extension bar. However, this bolt is torqued up to a high 85lb.ft. so the engine must be locked to stop it turning if you are to have any hope of undoing it without access to an impact wrench. The recommended procedure is to remove the starter motor so you can lock something into the flywheel's ring gear, but even with the help of Mrs G, we couldn't get it to lock and I was worried about chipping a ring gear tooth by accident.
So plan B was an old trick that I had used previously on the Figaro. I took out the spark
“So long as the Tippex on the new belt and the two wheels matched, I could be 100% certain that nothing had moved. Belts and braces.”
plugs to make the engine easy to turn, rotated it until the piston in No.1 cylinder was at the end of its induction stroke and then fed as much nylon rope into the cylinder through the spark plug hole as would fit. Then, when I tried undoing the pulley bolt, the engine only rotated until the piston had squashed the rope against the head, then it locked and allowed me to undo the bolt.
Note that I had chosen this point to feed the rope in so that when the piston compressed it, this cylinder was on its compression stroke and so both valves were closed and there was no chance of the pressure chipping an open valve. When I did the same thing later to lock the engine so I could torque the pulley nut back up, I inserted the rope when the piston was at the bottom of the expansion stroke, meaning that when it turned backwards as I tightened the bolt up in a clockwise direction, the valves were once again closed. If you were trying this on an engine that rotated clockwise in the more conventional manner, then you would have to reverse those two positions.
One final belts-and-braces step was that even though I checked the timing marks were back in position before releasing the timing belt's tensioner, I also dabbed some Tippex on one tooth of each timing wheel and the corresponding section of rubber timing belt. That way, I could count the teeth between the two marks on the old belt, count the same number off on the new one and put two dabs of Tippex on that too. Then, so long as the Tippex on the new belt and the two wheels matched, I could be 100% certain nothing had moved. As I said, belts and braces.
With everything reassembled, the Acclaim started up instantly and revved smoothly. Taking it out for a test run reminded me of why I love it so much, because it really is a wonderful car to drive. Not everyone will agree with that assessment of course, but for some reason it suits me perfectly. Next on the agenda is to tidy up some paintwork on the rear wing and the driver's door. I had planned to leave this until later in the year, but since 2023 marks the centenary of Triumph's first car, there will be plenty of celebration events and if I am going to take the Acclaim along to upset the purists, then I'd like it to look its best so this has moved up the priorities list.
Talking of driving, I took the Rover P4 down to the NEC to go on the Rover Sports Register stand at the NEC's Restoration Show at the end of March. I am really enjoying spending some time behind the wheel of this grand old lady, but a shoulder injury (ironically developed while it was being restored) does make such a heavy old thing rather painful to drive. I know I am not going to get back the £12,000 I have spent on the Rover so far, but if you were interested in taking it on with an asking price of £6250, then please do get in touch via email at simon.goldsworthy@ kelsey.co.uk.