Tonneau

[Menno van Rij]

Hello all,

 

Well, my restoration is finished... but as some of you already predicted: there's always something to tinker! Indeed there is. Last summer, a fellow TR owner gave me his car's tonneau for measurements. I saw the tonneau 'in situ' on his car, so I knew it was proper fitment. I made a paper template back then. My car wasn't ready when I made the template, so the paper was on one of the shelfs in my garage. This morning I started trial fitting: a lot of 3M masking tape and a felt pen did the trick.

 

What can I say: well, do not buy a tonneau before you are absolutely sure it will fit you car. The tonneau I used would not have fitted on my car! And I do not mean the position of the pegs and other hardware, It would have been too short!

 

Tomorrow, I will bring the template and the hood material to the guy who bought my Adler sewing machine recently. He's a tent and sail maker and he'll be making the tonneau for me.

 

Kind Regards,

 

Menno

[Don Elliott]

When I bought my 1958 TR3A brand new, I didn't buy the optional tonneau cover. About 10 years later, someone who had owned a TR3 still had the tonneau cover in his garage. This cover had originally come with his TR . He had had an accident with his TR several years earlier and the wreck was a write-off. When he found the tonneau cover, he offered it to me for $25.00. That was about 1968. I bought it and put it on. It fit perfectly.

 

I had a man who sews leather, etc. add a center piece to cover the zipper. It is sewn the full length of the zipper on the passenger's side of the zipper and he sewed Velcro along the driver's side and onto the overlapping piece of vinyl. It keeps the rain from soaking throught the zipper when there is a long steady rain and the tonneau cover sags due to the extra weight of the collected rainwater.