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18 year TR6 Restoration


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Finally, after 18 years & what at times seemed an almost improbable task, certainly in the first 10 years, the 6 has got it’s first MOT for 20 years, insurance at very reasonable cost with Country Mutual & a free tax disk in the window & is now ready for the spring sunshine - err when’s that then!

The last month saw a lot of work & some head scratching on an initially troublesome PI system & it’s initial run to the MOT station produced a couple of minor problems to sort, with non-self cancelling indicators & a defunct spedo. But when I drove it onto the ramp for test, the whole workshop came to a standstill & everyone was so busy drooling over the car & asking questions that no one noticed the spedo wasn’t working when they did the brake test. Happy days ahead!

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my indicators don't self cancel either and I can't be bothered sorting them!!

The manuals are useless here but after about half an hour scratching my head & piddling around, I sussed it: I had assumed that the self-cancelling thingy should be at 12 O’clock when, in fact it should be positioned at 3 O’clock, pointing directly at the indicator stalk. At first it seemed there was no way to adjust as all the splined connections seemed to have a machined ‘flat’ to accept the fixing bolt, so you cant get them wrong. Then I remembered the one on the rack has a groove all the way round, the only variable; viola!

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Congratulations Richard, wish you to enjoy your car and hope to see you at the International, the place to be.

Lucky you encountered a MOT station showing positive attitude towards Classic Cars. In the country where I live, this is not obvious  :(  When the first time I offered my 6,for MOT, after a 10 year lay-off, I was greeted by an Inspector with the words: This stinking cars should be taken off the public roads.

But this is Belgium and most of these people got their job via so called  " political nominations "

Good luck with your car

 :D  :D  :D

Jean

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Well done Richard.  Your news is encouraging to those of us who are still at it.  Thank god I havn't kept track of the hours spent, I'd feel even older than I do.

 

Happy motoring and just in time for the summer.

Jim

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Your news is encouraging to those of us who are still at it.  Thank god I havn't kept track of the hours spent, I'd feel even older than I do.

Thanks all for your kind words; It didn’t seem that relevant all those years ago when I first started but I now wish I had kept a record of all the hours I have spent on it, even if only to “frighten” & myself out of taking on another project – must be a gamble if I will actually live that long!

I thought taking 18 years to restore a car must be some kind of record but I am pleasantly surprised to hear of others taking just as long, if not longer. It seems totally lunatic now that I would ever have started down this road but it’s amazing what fixing a blown gearbox & “a bit of rust” on the rear wings can turn into! I never dreamt it would take so long, career/family commitments & changing circumstances constantly interrupted progress, sometimes for months or even a year at a time. None of my friends or family could ever understand why I kept going back to it but now, when they see the car! One consolation is that many of the components that were as rare as the rocking horse stuff (with prices to match) when I started later became available off the shelf!

To encourage those of you still “at it”, all I can say is keep going. Do one job at a time, then move on to the next & only look at that depressing pile of rust & **** in the corner of the garage when you need to extract the next bit to work on. The result is definitely worth it; when I look at the car now, I sometimes find it hard to believe that I actually own it & that it’s the same rust bucket I took off the road in 1986!

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Have you kept a list of what it cost you? I've got all the details of mine but I'm scared to add them all up

Ron,

as it happens, I have kept a very accurate record but most of the early stuff is on "Rapidfile" & there seems to be no easy way that I can see of transferring this info into "MS Excel". So I am in the process of manually transferring all the detail (bit by bit) into Bill Gates’s finest in order to get a total spend. However, I believe it to be around £8K which, it would seem, is rather less than some have spent; but then I have done literally everything, apart from the blasting & plating, myself!

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hope to see it at Malvern

Have been a Register member for 20 + years, fairly active initially, but have never been to Malvern. It sounds sad but it is a long way away & I have never really had the time as the job (working mostly abroad), family & other stuff always got in the way. Having taken the golden, “old fart”, handshake from the Post Office after 30 odd years (god bless em!), I now have all the time in the world so don’t really have any excuse not to go this year! We also exchange contracts on our house this Friday (28 days countdown!) & we still have nowhere to live. We were badly let down on the “perfect place” & despite endless searching, we can’ find anything else that fits the bill. So, it may be just a question of us finding somewhere new to pitch our tent!

So, anybody out there who has a small property in East Anglia for rent on a monthly basis while we “search on the ground” (preferably with somewhere secure & dry to keep the TR) or, even better, if you have a rural property for sale with around ½ acre, please “E” me with details! Ideally, we are looking for something in need of improvement &/or extension, preferably within a 20 mile radius of Diss. Sorry for the blatant use of this Forum but things are now getting rather desperate!

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The gremlins continue to bug me; spent half a day removing & replacing the upper steering column to replace the lower bush, dislodged while fixing the self cancelling indicators (fine now). The spedo cable had seized on the nylon bush at the top end (it’s new) & so has sheered the gearbox angle drive, which was perfect before.

On a short run out yesterday, the overdrive must have failed to release even though solenoid was disengaged; even worse was I failed to notice it & reversed the car into the garage. I wondered why it seemed so reluctant to go backwards but the penny never dropped initially, I just hope I have not caused any damage!

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