Supercharge Your Car

I received an email today from someone trying to view a long defunct website of mine that featured an article regarding fitting the Shorrock Supercharger to a Herald. The article dates from a copy of "Popular Motoring" in April 1966. 0-60 times look very impressive when you compare the before and after figures, 26.5 seconds before, 13.8 seconds after. I'm not really sure how fast my old Herald used to be with the supercharger on - the one thing I remember was the speedo reading right round into the fuel gauge...

The restoration is still proceeding, and I'd like to congratulate restorer Paul and his wife Andrea on the birth of their baby daughter Jessica Louise last week!

Duo Tone

I've previously owned two white Heralds (one saloon, one coupé) and I have to say I'm not really that enamoured with the colour. Coupés look great in duo tone, so I was thinking of keeping the original white and adding a splash of colour. Thing is, there are a lot of duo tone red/white, blue/white coupés out there and I was after something a little more distinctive.

The previous aborted coupé restoration was jonquil yellow and white, but I kind of went off that once I saw the combination in the flesh so-to-speak. Last year I saw a duo tone cactus green and white estate - a combination I don't recall seeing before - but it looked good on an estate, and I'm hoping it will look great on the coupé!

Lucas 576's

I sold the Triumph Vitesse this weekend to Rich Philpot. It's served us well for the past 3½ years, nearly completing the 2004 RBRR, and finishing the 2005 10CR no problem.



I dropped the Triumph Vitesse off at Stafford and had a quick mooch around the autojumble and managed to source the Lucas 576's I wanted for the Coupé. The chromework and reflectors are in pretty good nick, and they seem to be complete with the necessary fixings. One more thing ticked off the list!



I have a spare fog light lens somewhere (yeah right), but I'm not sure if I should go with two spot lights on the front and the fog light on the back as a reversing light, or a spot and a fog on the front, and a spot as the reversing light. Decisions, decisions.

Geoff Mabbs' Tulip Rally winning Triumph Herald Coupe 111 LHW in 1961 sported Lucas SFT/SLR driving lights fixed not through the front valence, but sideways through the overriders. I'm in two minds to fit mine like this...

hmmm...

Shorrock Power

Over 10 years ago I bought a Shorrock C75B Supercharger and ran it for a while on my Herald 1200 Saloon. Ever since then I've wanted to fit one to another Herald - and this is it.

It's not necessarily quicker than well set-up twin SU or Weber carbs, but it does sound GREAT!

Problem last time was the insufficient clearance to fit the MkII Spitfire exhaust manifold. This time I'm looking to make a few modifications to the inlet manifold to overcome the problem.

Here's a few pics of the Shorrock in situ.











And here's a few of the rear tub...

Rebuilt Bonnet

The bonnet from my previous Herald was salvaged as that sported two Stanpart original wings. Unfortunately the wings hadn't been fitted too well, so Paul refitted them to another bonnet top, complete with new arches and D plates.



You can just about make out some damage on the NSF wing that occurred when some goon reversed into me while waiting on a petrol station forecourt. I couldn't reverse out of his way as there was a car behind me, and the horn was playing silly buggers refusing to sound !

Rear Tub Update

It's been ages since I first started this blog, so here's a few pictures of the restored rear tub. Paul Cull of Triumph Auto Classique here in Wiltshire is doing an excellent job.