Back again!

Sorry people, I have been out of the country for three months so Bessy the TR7 has been patiently awaiting my return. I'm back for a little while, so today I set to on the interior.

Sometimes with a restoration you have to do essential jobs, and other times you need to do feel-good jobs. Today was a feel-good day as I fitted the lower A-post trims and the carpets. Actually, the carpets are more of a trial fitting and I will leave them for a bit to settle, before securing them properly. The carpets came from Robsport and are a great fit and quality.

History

I feel like I am making a new history for Bessy the TR7, but have always wanted to chronicle its past. There are a load of old documents in my possession and I have now had time to go through them and work out the timeline. So, here's the entire back story to the car.

TR7 production at Speke. Thanks to @Auto_Attic

Bessy was built at British Leyland's Speke plant on 22nd March 1977 and dispatched on 4th April that year. Looking at the records, she went to a BL/Triumph dealership near Solihull in the UK's West Midlands, Archer's (Shirley) Ltd. Archer's was a long standing dealership which dated back to the 1930s and alas is now long defunct.

Archers (Shirley) Ltd. Thanks to the Miniforum.

Archer's didn't register the car until 19th May 1977, the same day it was sold to a new owner. I guess it was/is usual practice for dealers not to register the cars until sold, to avoid them aging in the showrooms. The new buyer was W.E. Wassell Ltd, a company in the same region (Walsall, Birmingham) and the paperwork suggests it was used as a company car. Wassell started life selling motorcycle spares after WW2 and appears to be thriving today. In my imagination I have the TR7 being run by a stylish 70s sales rep, zooming around the country in the car wearing huge sideburns (unless "he" was a lady, of course), purple shirt with big collars, a tank top, flares and platform shoes.

Wassell parted with the car two years and eleven months later, on Friday 2nd May 1980, which I guess is about the normal period of ownership of a company car. The new owner was Bole Bridge Garage in Tamworth, another BL dealer since the 1960s and one which is now owned by Friars Gate and seemingly still in business. I wonder if our sales rep part-exchanged Bessy at Bole Bridge for another BL product, maybe a Rover SD1 or even another TR7? Or maybe he did a part-exchange back at Archer's, with the latter passing it on "in the trade" to Bole Bridge Garage.

Whatever, Bessy didn't hang around long in the Bole Bridge Garage showroom, finding a new buyer the following Tuesday, 6th May in the shape of a Mr Towers of Burton-on-Trent. Then on 2nd May 1981, Mr Towers sold the TR7 to a Ms Towers, which I assume was a family member.

Perhaps Bessy wasn't to Ms Towers' liking, as she parted with the car just a year and four months later, on 28th September 1982. This time the car moved further south, in the ownership of a Ms Marriott of Boughton Astley, Leicestershire. Again, the car was moved on after a year and four months of her ownership and this time came to Northamptonshire where she still resides today.

The new owner was someone who I will call "Dr C", for reasons which will become clear. He acquired Bessy on 7th February 1984 and was - and still is - a car man. How do I know this? Well, I worked at the same place as Dr C for over ten years, and knew him well. We worked together on various projects but never once did we make the connection over the TR7 and I only found out about his ownership of the car long after I left, and when researching its history. I have since been in touch with Dr C and he remembers it well, telling me he was extremely fond of it. Apparently he only sold it due to some engine problems. Dr C is now a very respected academic in his field and has a huge online footprint, so would be easily identifiable if I used his full name. So we'll leave him simply as Dr C.

So, on 20th January 1987, the TR7 became the new toy of a Mr Spear in Northampton, who perhaps was responsible for changing the original engine after discovering the issues acknowledged by Dr C. I wonder if he knew he had fitted a Dolomite 1850 lump instead of the correct 2-litre version? I guess we'll never know.

Things get a little murky here, albeit temporarily. On 3rd August 1980-something (could have been 87, 88 or 89) Mr Spear sold the car to a Mr Juby in Northampton. However, looking at the documents it would appear the new keeper section of the registration form went astray, and the only record of this transaction is the tear-off slip filled in by Mr Spear notifying DVLA of the sale. A registration document in the name of Mr Juby appears not to exist.

We're nearly done. At some point after Mr Juby acquired the car, it ended up at the village garage at Cogenhoe, Northants, from where I bought it for £100 on February 7th, 1994.

So, there you have a 95% complete history of RJW307R. There are a couple of mysteries, however: why, when I bought it, did it have a Dodwell's of Hinckley dealer sticker in the rear window, when that dealership doesn't get a mention in the otherwise joined-up history/documents?

And who added the brown vinyl roof and (presumably dealer-fitted) fabric sunroof?

I hope you found that interesting and, of course, if you can add some detail to the car's history then do get in touch.

Catch-up

Hi people

I appear to have reached that stage where the restoration jumps about all over the place, and the blog can't keep up. So, this time, I thought I would put together a photo montage of some of the items worked on over the last few weeks. Enjoy.

New carbs from Robsport fitted to a lovingly restored manifold.

Don't you just love building things back up with shiny new bolts etc?

Rear bulkhead panel added, together with B-post trims and original fitment (but new) map reading lamp.

New door trims pulled out of hibernation and fitted. 

Underfelt kind of chucked in, ready for proper fitting. You'll also notice new lower A-post trims in the same state.

Boot mat "fitted" - it doesn't really fit very well but I'll have a play with it another day. Inner wing side panels also in place. Now I need to get hold of a new bulkhead mat.

Again, door card fitted although I am missing the door handle eustachians (ZKC926 and 927). They break and are unobtainable. Anyone got a pair they'd like to sell? 

Another look at the interior.

Heater unit fitted with new control knobs.

Side light blanks and drip channel trims ready for attention. While I'm at it, may I say thank you to my local District Council for providing this excellent work bench.

Bumper and grille finally fitted.

Erm, as above.

Glass!

Refurbished heater duct/plenum thing installed and with new seals. The car didn't have one of these before, so it is a mystery as to why Neil and I didn't get asphyxiated on our European adventure in 1994. Perhaps it was because we never had the heater on. 

Looking good? Judge for yourself.

Brothers or sisters?

Today was interesting. Neil, Terry and I went to UK specialist Robsport to buy some bits and out in the car park was a very rusty (and very yellow) FHC. What struck me was its registration/licence plate. Not only is the car of the same year as Bessy, but the plate is very similar. Yet its VIN was 10### whereas mine is 17###.

A quick search suggests that the yellow car was registered in November 1976 whereas Bessy was born in May 1977. Both "RW" and "JW" are Coventry numbers.

Does the number look vaguely familiar?

I thought it did.

The yellow car was incredibly rusty, I would say beyond it although the floors looked OK. It had an awful retro-fit vinyl roof which extended to the A-pillars.

After all that excitement we went to the excellent Imperial War Museum at nearby Duxford, whereupon three old duffers got to look at old planes and had a nice cup of tea. I was heartened to see that some of the aircraft in the throws of conservation had in fact been so since 1973, which makes their restoration time-line even longer than my TR7. To be fair, the planes probably take a little more work.

Doors & Glass

It's amazing how a car can come to life again, isn't it? What was once a lump of rusty metal becomes almost a living thing with a regained personality. That's what's happening to my car and various items of work make the whole thing grow.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been working on all aspects of the interior and exterior trim, including the bumpers, grille, cruise light blanking plates etc but for this short post we'll concentrate on the doors and glass.

As you can see the door locks were very past their best, so were stripped and painted. This was quite a satisfying job and I am pleased with the results. There's still a bit of patina there, but I like that - they are the original locks from the car and those little dinks tell a story.

Next, the glass. Thankfully I had a complete set of new sundym glass which was patiently waiting under my bed for their day in the limelight. When that day came, I started on the quarter lights first, which was easy. A clean of the rubbers and a lick of paint to the frames, and they went in a treat. See what I mean about it coming to life?

Next stop was the drop glass, which was a real pain. Starting with a pile of bits I had to transfer the bottom retaining rail to the new glass, which was no fun. Then it had to be hefted into place and lined up with the new regulators.

Getting the whole lot to align was a nightmare, as you have to get three lobes on the regulators to fit in various channels in both the door frame and under the glass. I had less hair immediately prior to this job, but in the end we got there.

More next time!

Headlamps, Dash, Exterior Trim

Since my last report the weather has gotten better, making working in the garage much more pleasurable. When we were here previously we were struggling with the left hand headlamp actuator, which was going really slowly. Having slept on it (not literally, obviously) I decided to clean up all of the earths in that area. I am delighted to say that the problem was solved and Terry and I then went on to fitting the headlamp pods. Carefully.

Terry the hand model strikes again. He's kind of becoming like The Stig. Maybe one day you will see his face?

Done

With the headlamps fitted, the car has got its face back! Sorry this video has so much bluriness! Every time the lights flashed, the camera had difficulty focusing.

Next was fitting the dashboard, which I had been looking forward to. This took some time, as we had to fathom out what needed to go where; what had to be moved out of the way. As it was, it went in quite nicely and without too much of a fight once the centre console had been removed.

One thing that was a bit of a nightmare was the heater pipes. One of them split, so we had to repair it with self amalgamating tape.

Heater pipe mended.

Bare bones fitted.

Nearly looks like a car!

Dash and clocks all fitted nicely.

It's nice bolting new things onto the car, as it gives you a boost. One of the things I wanted to do was fit the fuel filler cap, as the last time the car had one was back in 1994, but not for long. It got left on a petrol/gas station pump in Reims, France. I recall that for most of that trip the car had the cap from an Orangina bottle on the filler.

However, in order to see my dream of a filler cap fitted, I had to fit the filler neck and pipe. It is a horrible and impossible job as the alloy filler neck has to fit into the rubber pipe, and that lot has to fit into and around the fuel tank entry. I needed four pairs of hands. After much cursing it eventually went in, but tightening the lower hose was very fiddly.

New old stock fuel bezel. Very expensive these days but I had one in stock.

Damn thing.

Hurrah!

The first time Bessy has had a filler since Reims 1994.

And finally, I fitted one of the B-pillar trims. First job was to make a new vent flap thing from some spare vinyl I had around.

Lower flap is my own reproduction.

I had in stock two new B-pillar trims, but rather typically they were both for the offside. So one side gets a brand new one, the other I will have to clean up and paint with matt black plastic paint. The stupid little "T" clip things were a nightmare too, as the metal nuts just don't want to screw to the plastic clips. I got there in the end.

Nice, eh?

Electrics

Well, the strategy of making sure we get the electrics working 100% before rushing to put the car back together is paying off. Yesterday, I scuttled into the garage and assisted by Terry starting wiring more things up. We made a check list of everything and slowly but surely the car began to awake from its years of slumber.

From number plate lights to boot lamp, instrument illumination to dials, clocks, fan and exterior lamps it began to come to life.

Having had problems with the headlamp lift actuators and motors, we disassembled and rejuvenated the headlamp stalk switch and the hazard switch (the latter due to erratic indicators and hazards).

The lamps stalk switch predictably fell apart and we were left with an assortment of springs, a ball bearing and various "weeee bits" (they go "weeee" when you check them over your shoulder, having decided the part can do without them. Actually, we didn't really chuck anything). The Micky Mouse contacts were cleaned up and the whole thing put back together feeling altogether tighter than before.

That done, the hazard switch was stripped surprisingly easily and again its contacts cleaned before reassembly.

By the way, and I forgot to say, the wiper motor and rack went back in the car and worked a treat although I don't think it is parking correctly. There's an adjustment for that, but more another time. We're doing lights at the moment, right?

So, onto the headlamps and their wretched lift actuators. We connected up the lamps themselves and all was well, hurrah. But the actuators themselves were being a pain: the driver's side went up when it should have gone down and vice versa, and the passenger side, well, didn't really do anything.

First things first, we swapped over the whole assemblies. The faults swapped side, so we knew the problems were with the motors rather than wiring. As it was blowing a gale even inside the garage and these two old blokes get cold easily, we retired to the house and stripped the motors.

Alas I don't have photos but what we found was this:

Actuator A: the big cog inside the motor was 180 degrees "out". That'd be why it went up when it should have gone down. We rectified that. Why was it like it? My fault, I had refurbished these motors a while ago and got it wrong, obviously;
Actuator B: Two problems here: the contacts on and under the brass strip in the mechanism had tarnished to the point of no conductance, so the run/stop switches were inoperative. We gave them a good clean and hoped for the best. Secondly, some of the wiring was very iffy so we cleaned and resoldered them.

Now full of cornish pasties, soup and hope, we scuttled back into the garage and connected everything back up. Guess what? Both worked! Up, down, down, up, flash, the whole lot.

We then set about tidying everything up, cleaning connectors, screwing the relays back in, attaching the switch stalks etc and generally making the car look presentable in a slightly Terminator way. We were allowed to do that now as the lights popped up and down, and represented the last electrical frontier. I made a video.

Then the passenger side actuator started going weird again and the daylight faded, so we had to call it. At the end of the day we had achieved a huge amount, with nearly all of the electrics working. From a bare shell and a box of wiring loom, we had woken the car. That's still a result.

So, more next time and in the meantime here's my latest cinematic epic. Terry is the hand model again, in the scene with the interior light and door. At this rate I will have to pay him royalties.

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