Up and away!
Airborne Peerless reveals a few causes of vibration
Regular readers will know that I have driven my Peerless, but nobody other than myself knows just how noisy the experience is. Raw, and noisy. It’s early days, so refining the ride will come in due course. One thing I wanted to address sooner though is the amount of vibration felt when the engine is revved. It’s an exhaust touching the chassis kind of vibration. To date, I have never been able to raise the car high enough to have a proper ‘stood up’ look around underneath. The large bore exhaust definitely needs sorting and I have a recommended specialist in mind, some 25 miles or so away and they are aware of my intentions. I don’t have a four-poster ramp, and raising the car on my new single-post lift was always going to present an issue. The clever lift can cope with a mere 75mm ground clearance but the Peerless exhaust downpipe is lower still. I had to devise a system of wooden boards to drive the car onto and across the lift’s central arm, mimicking a raised ground level or sunken post lift if you prefer. That was the easy bit, for once raised, the mobile lift needed access for it to be pushed further under the car so the lifting posts could be positioned. That meant sections of the
wooden boards had to be dismantled after the car had been driven along them. What should have taken a matter of minutes became a morning of crude carpentry, but I got there.
Under investigation
Up in the air, I got the full view I’d been wanting. It was immediately obvious the exhaust was touching the chassis in a few places. The rubber hanger supporting the pipe under the rear seats was just too short, with the effect of pulling the whole run of the exhaust up and into contact with the chassis. I had a longer version, so that was fitted, which eliminated three points of contact immediately.
At the gearbox, the swan neck section was just touching a small ear of alloy on the bellhousing. I was able to remove a slither of the ear using a small hacksaw and this allowed the system to be independent of the chassis. Other areas checked were the runs of both handbrake cables, which only required securing fully to the chassis rails. It’s good knowing that I have the means to fully raise the car in minutes for further work as necessary.
While browsing online, I came across an advert for a Triumph Herald/vitesse seat re-covering service. The same ad popped up in my social
media feed some days later and curiosity got the better of me due to it being Bristol-based. I enquired about my seats and those of my customer’s Peerless. A few days later, I had a visit from a time-served trimmer who has worked on countless classics over the years and struck up an extremely informative conversation with him. My alternative seats trimmed to my design and choice of materials were not a problem and neither were my customer’s original seats. I’m hoping to show some of the work as and when it progresses later in the year, but just finding someone who understands and has the skills is satisfaction in itself.
Sitting pretty
That leads me onto why I have to refit my original, somewhat battered seat for the time being. The trimmer will take my passenger and rear seat for reference for my customer’s seats, plus my non-original seats, leaving me with my ratty original for driving. The upshot of this was the need to re-acquaint myself with the seat runners and risers. I’d removed them previously and squirrelled the fittings safely away. Luckily, I found and reassembled them in minutes.
To my shame, the Peerless has been literally gathering dust in my workshop due to other jobs being done, both inside and out. This has meant putting a cover or sheet over it has not been possible until all the dust has been removed. It received a thorough wash and dry, lifting my spirits in the process as the gleaming paintwork was revealed again. At a car boot sale recently, I bought a car cover from a Jaguar enthusiast who had stopped using it on his own XJ saloon. For a couple of pounds, I thought it was worth a punt, whether I used it on the Peerless or not.
The trial fit was going well until I tried pulling the elasticated rear end of the cover over the rear fins. Rip! Straight through. Indicative of the quality of the cover, probably, but also a note of warning for myself. A quick application of gaffer tape soon fixed the gaping hole and that got me thinking. I had some foam edging used to protect windscreens in transit and thought it would be ideal for softening the protruding fin profile beneath any cover in future. Oh, and the rev counter cable broke again...