By Richard Truett

VALLEY FORGE, Penn. — Day two of the VTR convention started at 7:30 a.m. with me washing from the Dolomite Sprint a nifty collection of splattered bugs and other assorted road crud from Monday’s 620-mile drive from Detroit.

It ended 13 hours later with me laying under the car in the hotel parking lot with a coat hangar, wire cutters and pair of oversized pliers.

My mission: Do a quick, but effective repair of a broken rubber muffler hangar. Never in almost 25 years of Triumph motoring have I needed a coat hangar. That streak is over. But at least the Sprint’s muffler should stay put until I can fix it properly at home.

That minor annoyance aside, Day two was action-packed. Pat Barber, my friend from the Detroit Triumph Sports Car Club, did back-to-back rallies. Barber’s wife Tamara served as navigator for the first run, I rode shotgun on the second one.

Pat’s 1970 Spitfire was the subject of a very cool project not long ago. Pat invited a number of DTSC members and other knowledgeable Spitfire fanatics to his suburban Detroit home one weekend late last summer. Their mission was to build the Spitfire from a bare painted shell in 48 hours. And they did.

The car turned out so superb that Pat shipped it to England last fall and drove it in the Round Britain Reliability Run with friend Blake Discher.

So that’s the car we drove the Time/Speed/Distance Rally in today. Pat, an engineer who works for Ford Motor Co., doesn’t believe in treating his cars gently. He drove the Spitfire hard all day and the car ran superbly.

In other business: More Triumphs filtered in today. The parking lot has more than 325 Triumphs now. People are sitting outside in lawn chairs talking Triumph. It’s a great atmosphere.

I was little disappointed in the TR7 and TR8 showing earlier in the week, but a couple of nice TR8s came in today.

The vendor area is small, but there are plenty of great parts for sale. Ted Schumacher from TSI Imports out of Pandora, Ohio is, as usual, a popular guy. Ted knows about how to make TRs of all models handle better. His performance parts are first rate. I used them on my TR7 Sprint and they totally transformed the car.

The person whom I most looked forward to meet, Mike Cook, Triumph’s former PR man, is here. And he is absolutely wonderful to talk to. He worked for Triumph during the company’s best years in the USA. If you haven’t read his book, Triumph Cars in America, what are you waiting for? Every Triumph fan should have a copy.

More photos…