Master of fate
Matt fixes his Triumph… at the second time of asking
Things have been quiet on the 2000 front for months now. Six long months in fact. With my broken ankle fully rehabilitated, it was finally time to rectify the situation – I really needed my trusty Triumph back in my life. I was especially keen as April 2017 marked ten years since I bought the car. In my most recent 2000 report (PC, January 2017) we’d just completed the 2016 Club Triumph Round Britain Reliability Run… but the car was a little worse for wear after its 2000-mile adventure. The clutch pedal was almost reaching the floor before the biting point could be found, which made selecting gears a tricky and somewhat synchro-crunchy operation.
I limped the car to the PC workshop and formulated the repair plan. All the advice I’d sought from friends in the Triumph fraternity suggested that the taper bolt that locates the release fork on the gearbox cross shaft was at fault. The bolt snaps and allows the fork to move on the shaft – the result being that when you depress the clutch and activate the slave cylinder, the shaft moves as intended, but the release fork (and release bearing carrier) stay where they are.
Boxing clever… or not
Given the problems we’d experienced in selecting gears, the taper bolt theory made sense, so there was nothing for it but to remove the gearbox and replace the bolt. Matt Tomkins and I got stuck into the task and after a sweary hour or so spent undoing the numerous bellhousing bolts, many of which are extremely difficult to get to if you have grown up-sized hands, the box was on the floor.
The moment of truth was upon us then, but there was a problem – at first glance, the taper bolt appeared to be OK. I removed the locking wire and began to undo the bolt, hoping that it would come out in two parts and
prove our theory correct. Unfortunately, it came out in one piece, meaning the issue lay elsewhere.
So after checking the clutch plate for wear and deeming it OK, we bolted the clutch assembly up to the flywheel, refitted the gearbox and put everything back together. But what to do next? Well at this point we did what we should have probably done in the first place and attempted to bleed the clutch system and purge any air that may be affecting its operation. Well wouldn’t you know it, but another issue quickly made itself known – although we’d been able to blow through the pipe that connects the master cylinder to the slave cylinder and therefore prove that it wasn’t blocked, the master cylinder was a different matter entirely. When topping up the master cylinder reservoir, the fluid wasn’t finding its way through the cylinder itself. Matt connected up an airline and managed to clear the blockage, but once everything was back together the master still refused to allow fluid to come through.
All becomes clear
With the master cylinder removed and sitting on the bench, it didn’t take long to dismantle the unit and discover the source of the problem. The return spring that lives within the body of the master cylinder fell out as soon as we removed the internal plunger, plus the spring was missing a number of coils, which were also floating around in the cylinder. The broken spring clearly didn’t have enough resistance left to encourage the plunger to return sufficiently, while the broken coils were likely jamming things up and generally not helping the situation.
Both the seals on the plunger and the bore of the master itself looked to be in good nick, so having dug a replacement spring out of the stores and carefully reassembled the unit, we refitted it to the car. Straight away the clutch pedal was putting up more resistance when pressed and, after bleeding the whole system to get rid of any unwanted air, the ability to select gears had returned. I’ll admit that I’m feeling a little sheepish about the whole thing, but at least I now know the clutch assembly is in good health from front to back. The repair had come in the nick of time, too – I needed the 2000 fighting fit to take part in our Britain’s Best Classic Cafe Tour, which was just days away!
matt.george@practicalclassics.co.uk