Triumph Dolomite Sprint

JYD 135T

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I bought my first Sprint back in the early eightys. Somebody told me they were really quick & came with quite a high spec. including alloy wheels as standard. So the search began. At the time you could pick one up for about £800 - £900. Up 'till then I'd only driven minis, escorts & the like. The first time I drove one I just couldn't believe the acceleration. I was hooked on that alone. Anyway, 5-6 Sprints later I bought JYD 135T from a chap in Kingswood, Bristol in 1989. The car was in average condition although not much sign of rust. He was selling it for £375 but I knocked him down to £325 (bargain).

I used the Sprint as everyday transport for about 4 years until I blew the engine up (can't remember the exact details) and so it was stuffed in my garage & left to rot, as it were, as I couldn't afford to fix it at the time. Several years & one house move later (about 1996) I started longing to get the Sprint on the road again. By this time a lot of the bodywork had rust spots which sort of spidered outward. I started gradually rubbing these down & found myself taking the whole car back to the metalwork. So out came the engine & gearbox. I stripped the engine & found one of the pistons was knackered so I had the engine re-bored & the crankshaft re-ground. I fitted oversize pistons and bearings to match and a new oil pump with an uprated oil pressure relief valve spring.

I then stripped all fitments & trim from the exterior & interior and removed all the glass. The shell was then picked up & taken to "Classic Restorations" in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset. A couple of weeks later it was returned in it's original "Brooklands Green" finish. Then everything had to be put back together without scratching the paint work.

I bought a set of Spax adjustable shocks & 175lb springs which lowered the car by an inch from Rimmer Brothers. I fitted a Pirahna electronic ignition kit & replaced the standard mechanical fuel pump with an electric one.

The whole project took me less than a year to complete at a cost of approx. £2800.