Front End

Getting panels ready for final welding is a tedious business and I thought I would have the two front wings, nose cone panel etc all zipped up in a weekend. It was not to be this weekend.

A lot of time was consumed in removing paint at strategic places from the panels to be welded, so that the weld would penetrate. This in itself took all day Saturday, and even then I gave up on the idea of spot-welding the inner arch to the outer arch via the lower lip as removing the paint on the inside edge of the lower lip of the outer wheel arch using a grinder is impossible. I will drill and plug weld it instead.

The new front wings are original BL and have a label on them saying that they are "photosomething" treated. Is this why the black factory coating will not come off with Nitromors or even Napalm?

Anyway, today I fitted the new old stock passenger door and tried to get it to line up. Shims in, shims out, shake them all about then get cross. It didn't really line up at all. When I got it just the way I wanted it, the new front wing would not line up either. I had to drill out the gutter spot welds in order to allow some flex in the top fitting, then try again. I'll keep trying.

As you can see, I have a bit of a job on my hands (which are now minus the top of my off-side little finger) as I have to align everything from both door fits forward. This allows an awful lot of potential progressive errors, meaning that the bonnet might not fit correctly.

Safety Gear

The moral of the story is: wear gloves when grinding TR7 panels. It bled an awful lot and removed a big chunk of finger nail. The things we do for TR7s. ET phone home.

TR7 Design Proposal

This is one of those stories which we all dream of...the unseen TR7 blueprints kept in the loft by a an ex-BL employee.

I have read all of the TR7 books, everything by Graham Robson and the book by David Knowles. The Lynx and Bullet prototypes are all familiar to me. But I did not expect to see this.

A colleague at work said he worked on the TR7 during his apprentiship and that he had a drawing in his loft which I could have. it was just a sketch, he said, but my heart was racing. A few months passed and nothing came of it. However, he came through and sent me a rolled up drawing in a cardboard tube.

The drawing is dated 1979 and shows a TR7 design which I have never seen before. To me it looks like a concept for a TR7 update, with bigger arches and a chunkier front bumper. I keep this item framed in my office and I have never seen anything like it before.

Maybe it is nothing, just a scribbler's sketch. But perhaps it was the shape of things to come? I would love to hear from anyone who has an interest in this.

Panels and parts

I started collecting panels in particular for the TR7 back in 1994, and continued to do so right throughout the decade. At one point the thrill of collecting "N.O.S" items became almost the hobby itself.

I have been lucky, as I have managed to find the following brand-new BL parts:

• Bonnet
• Both front wings
• Nose cone
• Near-side door
• Boot lid
• Both rear wings
• Both inner rear arches

Additionally I have, over the years, obtained a huge amount of new parts including trim, door cards, switches, suspension, headlining, in fact loads of stuff. I think I could make a complete TR7 out of the spares I have.

There are two items that I do not have which I would love to find, factory fresh. These are the rear deck panel and the rear lamp panel. If you know of the whereabouts of either of these, do contact me via the site (not sure how you do this) or via this link.

Near-side floor

Folks, I forgot to say that I have also been working on the nearside floor.

When the car was originally tarted-up in 1994 for the "MOT & escape" trip to Greece, my local garage just plated over the MOT failures. I was happy with that at the time but 18 years later I am older and wiser. The plates had to come out, so I spent an age "unwelding" them. Is there a more soul-destroying task (other than scraping off underseal)?

Front floor.

Both the front and rear floors are shot - they are full of holes and made of wafer thin metal. It is the kind of metal that just ends up being polished a sort of semi-shiny brown when you attack it with a flap disc or wire cup in your drill. Somehow the metal is infused with dampness. Anyone else come across this?

Rear floor

I decided to tackle the front floor first. As a good third of it was ok, it seemed like a good idea to leave as much (decent) original metal in place as possible. So, I ended up with this:

You can see that I cut out the worst of the rot, but left a large section of the ribbed floor in situ.

This meant butt-welding again and I shuddered at the thought of Dot Cotton re-appearing. So, I decided enough was enough, I had to blame the tools and buy a new MIG welder. After a lot of research I took delivery of a Portamig 185 and goodness me I am glad I did. It is just fabulous and a joy to use, with a wire feed that is as silky smooth as a Mercedes Benz auto box. In comparison, the Sealey was like welding with a packet of sparklers and a fag lighter. The Portamig 185 is British made, costs about £550 (and worth very penny) and has a very low 25 amp minimum power setting. It likes thin BL metal very much.

No, it is not normally kept in the house.

So, after a lot of fidding to get the ribbed parts to line up, I secured the panel and zipped it in. I am pretty happy with the results.

New panel butt-welded in. You can also see the plug welds I made.

One problem was that the front floor repair panel I bought from Robsport, whilst being very well made, did not cover the adjoining areawhere the gearbox tunnel had rotted out. So, I had to make a section and weld it in. The Portamig did a great job and now I feel like I don't have to make so many excuses about my welding. Sure, my technique has a long way to go but it has given me confidence that I can learn and improve now that I have decent kit. The moral of the story kids is "buy the best tools you can".

Gearbox tunnel to front floor repair

This repair has been a long time coming, in that it all went well and I am genuinely proud of the results. It made me feel like a proper car restorer.

The finished article.

NEXT STOP - completing the whole front end.

2012 - Near-side inner wheel arch

Well dear reader (s), everything before this post was a whistle-stop history of a restoration lasting years. We are now up to date and it is time to look at finishing off the front end of the car, with both sills replaced, A-post repairs completed etc etc.

The aim now is to fit the near-side door and align it with the new front wing, fit a new nose-cone panel, fit the driver's side wing and new bonnet, line everything up to get the gaps right and weld like crazy. I want this to be good, but the next job is to replace the inner wheel arch so all of the above can actually happen. No inner wing = no outer wing = no bonnet/door/nose fit = no progress. So here goes.

Nice.

Having removed the old outer wing, a little shop of horrors was revealed. The inner was brown and rusty, with holes and signs of previous crash damage.

Once the inner arch was removed, I welded up some holes.The welds have yet to be ground down.

Here is the new panel clamped in place although you can only see the red bit of it as the new outer wing is trial fitted over the top of the inner. The off-side did not fit very well, but this one appears better. I have not gotten any further than this so far.

Near-side sills

By now I was feeling a little more confident and the panels that I had amassed and stored in my shed were slowly coming out of their hibernation.

The near side sills were in an awful state and unlike the diver's side it was clear that both the outers and the inners would have to be replaced. So, before starting any work, I welded a couple of bracing struts across the door appeture and from the A-post to the gear box tunnel, to at least try to retain some rigidity. Cutting out the rot left a scary but satisfying sight.

Air

At this stage I had learned a bit about where the structural strength of the car lay, so even though the front floor was crying out for attention I decided to do the sills first, so I could at least align them with the rusty but original lines of the floorpan.

Above: The new inner sill all fitted, together with the closing end plate.

Here you can see the new inner sill in place, welded in and seam-sealed. The black patch repair you can see on the rear chassis rail/ to bulkhead panel isn't one of mine and will be coming off. Note the brand new single-bulge bonnet I aquired for £40.

And the finished article.

Overall, I was pleased with this repair. I used the spot welder to good effect and where I migged things it all went well. Nice, smooth welds on lovely new rust-free metal.

Regarding the chronology of the restoration, we are pretty much up to date now.

Near-side A-post

I wasn't sure how best to present this to you, as it is very linked with doing the near side sills. In this section the sills have already been replaced. However, I will leave the latter to a later post.

Pretty much the whole of the lower part of the A-post had rotted away, but I really did not want to tackle replacement of the sturdy (and strongly welded) lower door hinge as that brought to mind all sorts of visions of poor door fit later. No, the hinge would have to stay.

So, after a lot of head scratching, I bought a whole factory "A-post lower assembly" from Rimmer Bros (WKC189/90) which as I recall was about the same price as buying the hinge alone, then cut out the sections I needed. These were then welded around hinge, having cut out the rusty metal. Again, too much weld came out but it is strong and I was getting more confident. A (fairly large) skim of filler will smooth everything out.

A-post to sill section

New bottom section of A-post.

Off-side inner wheel arch

I am quite pleased with this. A new inner arch came from Robsport, which I trial fitted with the door in place and new outer wing on top.

Lots of weld-through primer...

...and more Hammerite. The bubbly bits you can see are not poor welds, just where I have painted over the top of seam-sealer.

As has been documented elsewhere on the web, these panels do not fit very well - especially where the arch meets the inner sill - and this one took a lot of bashing to get right. The silver band around the arch lip is where I was sensible enough not to paint with Hammerite, instead taking it to bare metal and priming in weld-through paint ready for welding to the outer wing. I aso seam-sealed everything and painted over it with, err, Hammerite.

Off-side outer sill

Right, this is where things started to get a little better. I don't have any photos, but I cut out the complete sill assembly and replaced it with a new BL part. By this time I had bought a spot welder and I must say it was a joy to use, especially as I had studied the repair manual and put in exactly the right amount of spot welds in exactly the right places (unlike in the factory). I also migged where necessary so it is very strong.

The only issue I had was a small fire, due to me having painted the inside of the sills with Hammerite and not leaving it to dry for long enough i.e. more than ten minutes.

Here's a bit of a new chapter. Having repaired the off-side floors and windscreen surround/scuttle at my old house over 10 years ago, I then lost interest and just left it.

Fast-forward to around six years ago and the car was in the new garage and I was ready to have another go. I decided to fix the very rotten spare wheel well. These are unavailable new, so I bought a second hand one and used it to make repair panels.

As is often the case, meticulous prep did not result in a perfect job. It all looked lovely, right up until the point of stitching in the new metal. Then the welding gremlins returned and the finished result looked like it was done by Dot Cotton. Damn I was upset.

Holes

More holes

New panel lined up

I made up a repair section for the bulkhead part...

...held it in place with intergrips...

...then tacked it in place. So far so good.

Then Dot Cotton struck again. Why couldn't I weld properly?

I don't have a close-up of the actual well going in, but here is
the finished article. It still needs the welds grinding down, which
will probably take all day and cause the panel to fall out.

Off-side floor repairs

The next repair I decided to tackle was the off-side floors, which were totally rotten. I bought new panels from Robsport and cut out the rot. To be honest how I managed it I do not know, as I couldn't weld and was working on the underside of the car, on my back, in  single garage. Now that I have gone full circle and gotten my welding to a reasonable standard, I fear these repairs will have to be looked at again as I am not convinced of the integrity of the welds. Oh well.

I don't have any photos of when the repairs were done - the pics below were taken much later when I got the car into my new garage much later and tidied things up a bit.

Look ok to you?

Windscreen pillar and scuttle

Ok, so here is the start of my restoration (although these pics were taken around ten years ago. I told you it has been a long haul.

My very first repair to the TR7 was to fix a hole in the n/s windscreen panel and repair a knackered scuttle. I don't appear to have any close-ups of the pillar repair, but here is the new section of scuttle going in.

Scuttle panel repair

I got a complete new (used) windscreen panel, cut out the biys I needed and welded them in. At this stage I have a Sealey Mightymig 130XP running on pub gas, so I guess I learned the hard way. Actually, to this day this repair is sound, which amazes me, as I had never welded anything before and frankly my welding got worse during this stage of the restoration.

The garage

Every restoration needs a good garage, so in 2005 I moved to a house that would enable me to build one. The whole house move was based on the TR7 restoration. Sad but true.




Site cleared

Hardcore down

Framework and slab in place

Inside nearly done

Finished!!

Bond Equipe is the first car in...

...followed by the TR7 on a spit some time later.

The story so far

Welcome folks to my little blog about my never ending Triumph TR7 restoration. The aim here is to get us up to speed on the restoration, so that I can show you where I am up to right now. However, there is a bit of history to explain.

Back in 1994, I bought a Triumph TR7, restored it (well, tarted it up), drove it to Corfu, and brought it back.

The TR7 being driven home after purchase, on back roads, as I don't think it was road legal at the time.

This is what was towed back.

Work begins.

Fitting a new cover sill.

Neil removes the old paint.

Dust coat...

...and out she pops (full of filler!)

  

Looking proud!

This may have been us leaving for Greece. I wish I'd left the double denim at home.

France, I think.

RJW307R in Italy

By the time it returned to UK shores 6 months later it was very battered and so put into my garage, after which I periodically did the odd job to it in a token effort at a full restoration.What I actually did was strip all of the paint off it, whereupon it went rusty, then leave it in various garages for a long time. Needless to say it ended up a bit of a mess.

TR7 pulled out of years of storage

Looking at my records (and they are patchy) in 2005 the car "came home" and was put into a new garage at my house, where it then languished for another few years.

Over the next few years I collected body panels, to the extent that I had nearly a whole TR7 in spare parts, with a view to one day doing that proper restoration job the car deserved.

In the meantime, I became a sort of armchair anorak when it came to TR7s. I became a staunch supporter of these cars, particularly the fixed-head coupes which are so rare now. Yes, I can tell the originality of a car just by looking at its interior door handles; its age by scrutinising its badges. I know a dog from a swan and will bore you rigid about the history of the car. But I do it in good humour and laugh about the knowledge I have amassed.

Most importantly, though, this knowledge helped me to decide that MY rubbish Speke-built car would (eventually) end up as one of the best on the road. My approach is simple - given the paucity of early fixed-head TR7 coupes now on the road, I want mine to be restored to absolutely original specification, without a single modification. And that includes interior door handles, badges and standards of welding. Ok, maybe not the last bit.

RJW307R returns home

So, dear followers, what comes next are various retrospective posts to show you what has been done, including my own learning curve, and the current state of play.

There - that's a potted history of how we got to this blog - it is all about my current restoration of RJW 307R, a Speke-built fixed head TR7. It is still a very slow burn.
I do hope you enjoy it.

John