Anything and everything Herald. Talk about anything from the first 948s to the last 13/60s.

Clutch, gearbox, overdrive, propeller shaft.

All,
Has anyone else visited the British Pathe site? Must be lots of gold in them thar hills.

There's a gem I found by chance - in fact by searching for "Triumph Herald". The clip is called "The Gearless Car - Glasgow", is dated 1962 and has the code no. 3044.15.
It shows a Triumph Herald - a 948? It has the handle on the bonnet - that has been fitted with an automatic transmission - with a difference. The film is silent and I can't read the diagrams shown at the beginning but clearly a hydraulic pump replaces the gearbox and drives two motors in the boot. A single left foot (!) pedal is rocked, heel 'n' toe, to drive the car forwards or backwards at will! The remaining, I presume brake, pedal is on the right.

You can find the film at http://www.britishpathe.com/product_display.php?se....
Pathe will let you download a low-res version of the clip for free.

Herald 619 CLW, where are you now?

John

PS There's probably two more gold mines from ITN. The latter has reduced the old Pathe news reels to INDIVIDUAL FRAMES as stills!!!!! A bewildering number of pics, almost too many to look at.
Have a look at:
http://www.itnarchive.com
and
http://www.itnstills.com
J.

Later:
PPS Perhaps not such a goldmine, except for ITN. They want Â£30 for a short clip and Â£25 for a picture, with no low-res free offer for private use as Pathe does. But Pathe was funded by Millenium Money so that's all right. J.

John, I remember the car being in the motoring press at the time and on TV. The main point of the exercise was that hydraulic transmision had greater potenital than the standard mechanical arrangement. The Herald being built on a chassis made it an ideal test plateform to promote the idea. I seem to remember it being a 1200, but I may be wrong.

As far as I know nobody took the idea any further.

I would have thought the efficency due to the conversion processes, mechanical to hydraulic and hydraulic back to mechanical, would not have been as good as the standard set-up. Plus I have some doubts as to the long term reliability.

Still its a nice piece of history and not a wind-up.

David,
Thanks for your memory! I did look for a date of this clip and wonder if it was a Panorama style, dead-pan, April Fool jape. From the location being Glasgow, I assume this was not a Triumph enterprise - Glasgow Uni?
John

John, it was for real not an April Fool jape. And no not a Triumph enterprise.

If I remember it was being developed by one of the companies that made transmission and hydraulic components.

Things like that happen in those days.

In 1993 I found an automatic Dolomite 1300 lying in a yard near Belcoo, Co. Fermanagh. The engine and gearbox were in excellent condition, the car having had a fire at the petrol pipe which blackened the bonnet. I often thought about retrieving it and fitting the gearbox to a Spitfire - but how feasible would it be for an automatic Herald? It wouldn't be THAT difficult to do...

I don't recall ever having seen details of an autobox Spitfire or Herald, but there was an article many years ago in The Courier about an automatic Vitesse, possibly even put together at Canley(?).
The shape and length of the gearbox meant that the main chassis rails had to be reworked around the back of the gearbox so it was no small job.
There would be more room in a Herald because there is space for the whole engine and transmission to be moved forward (not possible with a six cylinder engine on the front!), but again that would be a lot of work because new engine mountings would be needed, possibly a reshaped sump, new radiator mountings, as well as fabricating a rear gearbox mounting and arranging a suitable propshaft, as well as a gearbox tunnel etc.
None of this is impossible (not even the reshaped chassis) as either the Vitesse "precedent" or the methods used by kit cars cover most of what I have mentioned above.
Although there may be some subtle difference in bonnet slope in a Spitfire if the engine is mounted further forward, (which a GT6 bonnet or similar "power bulge" would solve) if the autobox can fit a Herald it will almost certainly be possible to fit to a Spitfire as well.
Not a job I would really want to do, as the slick change of the Triumph box is one of the nice bits of the Herald etc range, but an interesting "what might have been" exercise. I do not have the expertise to comment on whether the change would affect insurance and how any change in engine position or chassis reshaping would affect "type approval" type issues. There are probably ways round all these things as there have been much more drastci changes in kit car rebodying as well as engine (non-triumph) transplants.

Section : Gearbox

"Automatic" Herald

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