Steve this morning showed me an article about cycle lanes in yesterdays newspaper. In todays show we discuss a Triumph Stag with engine trouble and daft cycle lane planning.

Andy: Steversquo;s rushing around like a blue arse fly this morning and I walked in and hersquo;s got a Triumph Stag on the rack with an over heating engine and hersquo;s already been to the car and got a newspaper out and hersquo;s ranting about cycle lanes.

Steve: Wersquo;ll come to the cycle lanes in a minute Andy, I guess we must get the garage business out the way first of all.

Andy: Yeah, whatrsquo;s the story with this lovely yellow Triumph Stag without an engine?

Steve: I said to a guy that owns the Stag that you know itrsquo;s loosing water; it was loosing it from around what appeared to be around underneath the manifold in the middle of the engine, itrsquo;s a V8 engine. Not very easy to actually see underneath the manifold whatrsquo;s going on, but when we took the manifold off we could then see that it was actually leaking from the sides of the heads, so we said to him right, itrsquo;s your loosing water from around the heads and obviously the heads need to come off. So he said OK, took the car away and I think it was about three days after that it decided to overheat and blow the hoses. Pressured up, blow the hoses and we recovered it, we got it back here now, obviously done a head gasket.

Andy: Yeah, I can see a mangled head gasket on top of it.

Steve: Yeah well itrsquo;s done a, I mean therersquo;s two head gaskets so you know. Itrsquo;s really a case on these, take the engine out. But this particular engine had a little bit of a ?[01:46] from the timing chain which theyrsquo;re quite prone for and also a little bit noisy on the cam shaft and when we actually striped it, one of the buckets or the followers on top of the valve was, the cam was actually worn through it. The cam on one of the lobes has worn square and one of the other followers is cracked so yeah. I mean this engine, according to the owner, was actually rebuilt two years ago so, I donrsquo;t know who rebuilt it but it hasnrsquo;t lasted very long for two years because it hasnrsquo;t done an awful lot of miles in those two years.

Andy: No but itrsquo;s now hanging on a chain and therersquo;s a young chap. Whatrsquo;s he doing painting it?

Steve: Yeah he is, I mean we said to the guy that owns the car you know whilst itrsquo;s out wersquo;ve got the blocks striped right down now, the blocks just hanging there on the hoist and we got young Richard there and hersquo;s actually painting it. Being a Stag, the car that it is, I mean ?[02:52-02:53] wersquo;ll give the engine bay a good clean out and probably even polish the engine bay for him. But yeah I mean it needs a full rebuild. Wersquo;ve made inquiries, I donrsquo;t doubt there are engines out there somewhere but it does seem like the best way to do this is to actually rebuild it and if we rebuild it then we know itrsquo;s going to be done right and done properly because if that engine, we donrsquo;t know the history, all I know is that it was supposedly a recon two years ago and of course itrsquo;s two years down the road itrsquo;s not in a very good state for a two year old engine you know, so yoursquo;ve got to sort of wonder what sort of recon did they do. Or was it just a con engine rather than a recon, I donrsquo;t know.

Andy: Well if it was a recon maybe it had been conned before and now itrsquo;s being conned again. Recon.

Steve: Yeah I suppose that it depends on the definition of the word recon you know.

Andy: So the blocks fine itrsquo;s just the bits that go on to the block need replacing is it?

Steve: Yeah the block itself is OK, itrsquo;s you know obviously head gaskets are quite prone for it. Timing chains tend to wear; this one was a bit chattery so wersquo;re going to replace all this. The heads have been sent away, theyrsquo;ve been tested, and theyrsquo;re OK. Theyrsquo;ve bee...