by David Mathias Over the decades I have owned literally dozens of British and German sports cars. I can’t say this without likening myself to a character in Aesop’s Fables about the grasshopper and the ant. The ant is wise. He works hard, saves his money and is both thrifty, conservative and probably drives a…
A Drive Through the Desert It started out as many driving adventures have – subject to precious little deliberation but with an ambitious goal to use a British sports car as regular transportation to get from one point to another just like occurred on a regular basis ‘back in the day.’ In this case, the…
Field of Dreams, Brian’s Song and Old Yeller make me cry. The late night commercial of various animals languishing in shelters while Sarah Maclachlan wails about something sad in the background brings me close. I am sure if the Chicago Cubs ever win a World Series in my lifetime I’ll cry like a baby or…
Despite the success of the Triumph TR4 and TR4A in sales and competition, as the end of the 60s approached it was clear that the company had to improve its performance with the introduction of a new engine that could offer not only greater horsepower, but also smoother operation than the relatively rough and noisy…
Puerto Rico Triumph By Germán Luis Collazo Tirado The story begins sometime around January of 1971. I was taking my girlfriend back to her house. We were both college kids, young and reckless, and chatting away, when a yellow streak in my peripheral vision caught my attention. That’s when I saw it, the…
There is something about wire wheels that says “this is a British sports car!” Years ago, when I was the proud owner of a disc wheeled Triumph, I discovered how easy it was to convert any TR2, 3, 4, 4A, 250 or 6 to wire wheels. It’s also a relatively inexpensive task and, as wire-wheeled…
Bill Burroughs and Paul Smock are two of the world’s biggest Triumph fans. Bill owns a TR6 and a TR250, and Paul’s family has a TR4, a Herald and a pair of TR4As. Together Bill and Paul own the TR4A vintage race car pictured here. Bill is one of the principal voices in the Southern California…
On the subject of HIF4 carburetor conversions to late MGBs, if you cut the insulator blocks in half to clear the brake power booster, you will find that you also have to cut two notches in the heat shield to compensate for the movement of the throttle shaft. The insulator blocks have a thickness of 1…
They say cars are “just machines.” They say that automobiles don’t have personalities. We tend to agree, but with a disclaimer. Not that we think cars are a lifeform, have souls, or something like that. We do believe that some cars elicit feelings that are more than mechanical. It is hard to explain the passion…
After installing the new clutch that I purchased from Moss Motors it was time to slide the gearbox back in. While trying to line up the nose of the gearbox to go into the clutch it became apparent that the rear of the gearbox would not drop down due to the front of the drive shaft. …
