1980 Triumph Spitfire 1500 Electrickery/Fuse Boxes/Fuel Pumps/Water Pumps (Ep8.Jun23)

1980 Triumph Spitfire 1500 Electrickery/Fuse Boxes/Fuel Pumps/Water Pumps (The Component Segments Are Mainly about Spitfire 1500 but with Some Content about/Relevant to the GT6)

Small Triumph Sports Library & Archives, Episode 8 (June 2023)

Discussion of a recent, unsolved episode of Spitfire electrickery, then several segments covering some related or loosely related (or unrelated) maintenance/replacement-part issues.

Initial notes/corrections, pedantic nonsense, and self-mockery:

As always, please let me know if I’ve missed/screwed up anything!

This video is far too long. I babble too much. I’m a windbag. I probably should have made two or three videos out of this material…but I didn’t.

That established, here are some adjustments and corrections to things I said on the fly:

0:42 The old man’s version of “fairly recently” (i.e. the past decade or so).

5:48 I might also mention that having such a father has probably led to a certain laziness on my part regarding electrical issues. (Do keep in mind that this video comes from the perspective of an English major with limited experience hunting electrical problems.)

9:40 In the factory parts catalogue, Triumph uses the term “nacelle” (and the odd application of the term makes me inclined to use it), but many vendors, etc., use other terms such as “cowling.”

11:08 Obviously the main problem is that I’m likely to get stranded somewhere.

11:58 Few electrical problems compared with what many others report, that is…

12:35 “in all that time” is a reference to the grad-school years. The undergraduate years with the car were slightly more eventful (though rarely because of electrical problems).

15:25 "Break" is a poor choice of words...and I generally muddled my discussion of the fuse box, as I was working from vague memories, something I should not do. The plastic in the fuse box is susceptible to melting/wear/breaking and the half-clips on the wires to the box bend/weaken and won't keep tension on the fuse. In that sense they "give up," although they might be salvaged for a while if you pluck them from the back of the box and bend them. While I stand by my "solution" (and therefore the video stands as originally posted), my overall discussion of the fuse box needs to be cleaned up--and I will do that in a future video.

20:42 See below for links to the fuse documents cited here. These are but two of numerous documents and web pages covering this issue.

27:28 flat and broad.

29:01 I meant “nuts,” not “bolts.”

30:00 Of course, the other big complaint is that they don’t work for very long.

31:00 I recently noted that RockAuto now lists only electric fuel pumps for the 1980 Spitfire 1500.

33:06 I don’t mean that in terms of basic function (i.e. I don’t mean “not working” in the sense of not moving coolant or leaking, etc.), but I decided that I wasn’t comfortable using the second for reasons I explain.

33:38 Here I’m confessing two embarrassingly ham-fisted operations. I’ve been known at times, mainly when tired, frustrated, or in a hurry, to take an ogre’s approach to whatever I’m doing. I try to keep those episodes to a minimum, obviously, but they do occur.

Works Cited

NOTE: Many of the images used are of original materials in my possession, but for some images I’m indebted to those out there who share photos and scans on the Internet.

Cited documents on fuses may be found at these links:

http://tr6.danielsonfamily.org/ForumI...

https://triumphtr6.info/Manuali/fuses...