Postby Workshop Help » 27 Oct 2013 17:25
The magazine forgot the single most important item of all the recalls. Replacing the plastic/nylon thermostat housing filler plug with an aluminium plug. It was the installation of the cheapo plastic/nylon plug that was responsible for the anchor weight drop in popularity and used car values of the TR7 thru out it's production life and into the present.
The plastic/nylon plug couldn't hold the heated water resulting in a scenic geyser of coolant and a warped cylinder head. It didn't much matter what the thermostat rating was, once the engine got hot, it was like Ol' Faithful in Yellowstone Park going off. This miserable $.25 cent item is the single cause for our cars being so affordable today. The stench of unpopularity hangs on long after the fix was done.
Now, it's not like a simple cure wasn't around, it was. Right there in the TR6 parts box. The TR6 used an identical thermostat filler plug except it was made of brass. However, at the time, it was priced at $19.95 at the dealers parts counter. Even so, the retail customer who had been clued in, before the recall notice, was smart to fork over the cash to breath freely and sleep soundly knowing his/her cylinder head wasn't going to explode. Unfortunately for a lot customers and the Triumph Warranty Dept., many a plug was not replaced and many a warped head was paid for by British Leyland.
I still have that recall notice around here some place, probably in the file with the rest of the cars history documents.
Mildred Hargis
