The Triumph Stag, An Independent Reference Archive

The archive itself

What this site is, and who writes it

Recently updated

• 14 September 2026Valve clearances and oil pressure published, with the inlet disagreement stated

  Both were missing from the archive entirely. The exhaust valve clearance of 0.016 to 0.018 in is agreed by the Repair Operation Manual and by Rimmer Bros. The inlet is not: the manual gives 0.008 to 0.010 in and Rimmer gives 0.006 to 0.008 in, and the two ranges meet at exactly one value, so 0.008 in is the only figure that satisfies both. That is published as a disagreement rather than resolved silently. The manual as transcribed does not say whether the engine should be hot or cold, and the archive says so instead of assuming. The page also now records that clearances are set by swapping selective pallets with the camshaft off rather than by a screw and locknut, which makes it a much larger job than most owners expect. Oil pressure is given as approximately 40 psi at 1,000 rpm with the relief valve opening at about 50 psi, and the warning light figure of three to five pounds is published with the point that the light goes out at about a tenth of running pressure and is therefore a catastrophe warning rather than a low-pressure one.

• 14 September 2026Cooling figures published, and the thermostat trap nobody mentions

  The archive argued that the Stag's reputation rests on a marginal cooling system and then published none of the figures a reader needs to act on it. The thermostat opening temperature of 82°C, the system pressure, the coolant capacity in imperial pints, the fan specification and the antifreeze standard are now given, with the factory General Specification Data and Repair Operation Manual named. The specifications page has gained a cooling table and a full capacities table, neither of which existed before. More importantly, the cooling upgrades guide now explains the bypass port and the blanking disc: a Stag thermostat has to close the bypass as it opens to the radiator, most thermostats have no blanking disc to do it, and fitting one of those gives a car a new thermostat and a worse cooling system with nothing looking wrong. Three units that do have the disc are named. The automatic transmission capacity now carries both the factory figure and the Rimmer Bros from-dry figures, because they are probably measuring different things and the archive is not going to choose between them silently.

• 14 September 2026Correction: the car was not collected and returned mid-restoration

  Two pages said or implied that the car came home part way through and went back again. That is wrong. The car stayed at Malton Coachworks throughout the restoration itself, was collected at the end of March 2026, and returned once in June for part of the top section to be resprayed. A passage generalising from the error, to the effect that a restoration never ends on the day you collect the car, has been narrowed to what the documents actually support. The correction came from the owner.

• 14 September 2026The restoration record gets its seat foam photographs and its ending

  Three photographs have been added to the seat foam section: the base cushion out of the car after fifty years, the rubber diaphragm with what was left of the original foam broken down to crumbs, and the original covers back in the car over new foam. Two closing sections have been added in the owner's own voice. The first sets out why a good car was restored at all, and gives the credit for its survival to fifty years of previous owners rather than to the factory. The second argues that the Stag's bad press was largely deserved but that its faults were fixable, that the car is better looking than its rivals and sounds better than the Rover V8 it is so often said to deserve, and that the point of the exercise is not money but keeping a car that was never quite allowed to deliver alive and on the road.