I read on this forum that rebuilding a Tr in the 70s was impossible, there were no parts available !

[TR24178]

Sorry, but having rebuilt cars and trucks since the late 60s, that is not my experience.

 

Yes it was impossible if you wanted to buy all the bits and assemble a car without resort to real restoration, but in those days you went more local, local engineering firms were a source of all the bearings, gaskets and sundries, specialists in the many marques were thin on the ground but the knowledge was in the local garage and at that time gas welding home made repair panels was essential and great fun as you saw your project car coming to life, the standard achieved was more than respectable and much more than impossible.

 

Many a lovely car came out of a chicken shed, with help from local knowledge and the Woodbine puffing garage man, and he always knew if it was a good day to put some paint on 'er!!

[Alec Pringle]

Couldn't agree more, we all managed perfectly well, thanks a bunch !

 

Cheers

 

Alec

[cvtrian]

Along with theses skills and levels of ingenuity, we (TR owners) were fortunate enough to have a steady stream of repatriated parts and vehicles, mainly from the USA, to provide good used parts, including chassis and panels, when things were really difficult. If we are honest, we still benefit from this facility today, and a very good strong parts supply network, all of which has contributed to the ease of ownership, particularly when compared with other marques.

 

WE all owe a great deal to the original founders and early day "management" of this club "To preserve the Marque TR and keep cars on the road"

[BrianC]

Does anyone know what happened to the blue TR3A that Darryl Uprichard built using a new shell?

It was originally M-reg but I believe it got re-registered later.

[cubehopper]

I remember putting 4 new wings on the TR5 I owned around about 1974/75 .

 

They took a long time to arrive once ordered,about 6-8 weeks I think from the local Standard/Triumph agents, and cost roughly about

 

£50 a pop.I don't seem to think that parts were not available just that they took forever to arrive.

 

Dave

[Alec Pringle]

British Road Services had something to do with the delay factor - nationalised road haulage run by incompetents and cryptos. A fortnight to deliver anything anywhere, no matter how easy or close, and at exorbitant expense. What comes of employing monkeys and morons.

 

Can't say I recall parts coming in from the States in great quantity, that development was more 80s than 70s.

 

Cheers

 

Alec

[boxofbits]

One of the biggest problems was searching out the source of parts. When I rebuilt my 4A it was mainly telephone calls to Cox and Buckles by the shed load.

 

There was no internet to speak of, so it was a matter of searching through classic car magazines, Motoring News, and autotrader for parts. I did source a near side rear wing for my 4A through a small ad which came from California, but repaired much of the car with a mig and angle grinder, and when we say pattern panels don't fit, they certainly DID NOT fit back in the late eighties and early nineties!

[stuart]

I suppose I was lucky doing Jaguars at the time as we had a very good main agents nearby and the parts manager was very enthusiastic about the old models and in fact it wasnt unusual to go into the workshop and see an XK or early E type or even a MK7 on one of the ramps being worked on by the older mechanics who were time served when the cars were new.Body panels were the hardest to come by and because the panels were all leaded in thats why I learnt pretty rapidly that skill and how to make repair sections. Because most of the mechanical parts were pretty much common to all models that side of it though was relatively straightforward.

Stuart.

[TR 2100]

I have commented a few times that no-one restored cars

back then. OK, virtually no-one. It just wasn't practical.

Add to that the cost - hard to find any TR driver back then

who was not on a very tight budget. That was the appeal

of TR2s, 3s and 3As - cheap and fun. S/h parts to keep

the cars on the road.

 

There were no rustfree cars being imported from the US.

I remember Buckles telling me that there were very scruffy,

but totally rustfree, TR2s and 3s. It was hard to believe,

based on the state of the cars we saw driving around.

TR knowledge was very limited - as an example, no-one

knew what a TR3B was. Or, rather, we thought they had

rack and pinion steering.

 

First guy that I heard of to restore a TR3 was one Tom

Hindle - body off chassis and repainted the bodywork by

hand, but that was a pretty sound car to start with.

That would have been very early 70s, and to put things in

perspective, even Pete Buckles was impressed by Tom's

efforts.

 

By about 1976, there was the occasional restored car,

using the techniques described above. I remember

a white car belonging, I think, to a Mick Roome and

then, 1977, there was the lovely green TR2 restored

by Dave Tabb.

 

And through it all, there was Chris Sergison's car,

LMW 140, ever present to show us what a TR2 could

look like.

 

I acquired my TR4 in 1977 and, courtesy of Pete Cox,

bought 4 new wings. My memory tells me about £25

for the front, £18 for the rear. Delivered by Pete to the

Swan Inn, Tetsworth at one of our meetings.

And that was the last of the Michelotti wings - Pete had

a very helpful the local Triumph dealer who could check

remaining stock.

 

AlanR

[Lebro]

Well I know 2 sidscreen TR's that were body off re-built, both in a single garage. I replaced inner wings on my Dove, & purchased two brand new doors for my '3 all between 1972, & 1979

 

 

 

Bob.

[TR 2100]

Bob,

 

My own experience is that up to 1975, body-off-chassis rebuilds

were very very much the exception.

 

I don't recall TR3 doors being available in the early 70s, although

some garages may have had old stock. At that time, a certain

Dave Whistler made a full-time hobby of chasing down odd panels,

and eventually acquired a very comprehensive range, but NOT by

ordering from the factory.

Rear wings were available until about 1976 (the pre-1300 ones).

Floors too, I think. And the rear panel could be obtained by ordering

901299 rather than 850045, as mentioned by Pete Buckles during

a national meeting, astounding everyone by knowing the numbers

off the top of his head, as in those days, TR owners were not wise

to the availability even of the Parts Book.

 

Very different days back then.

 

Yes, small garages could do bits of welding to keep the cars on the

road, but the cost of extensive work was beyond the finances of the

vast majority of TR owners.

Certainly no interior trim available, and there weren't the number of

local trimmers that are around today.

Back then, there was a totally different mentality.

 

But for Pete Buckles (and Pete Cox), only a small fraction of the UK

(and probably European) TRs surviving today would have made it.

 

Maybe PeteW can comment further?

 

AlanR

[Alec Pringle]

John Hanna penned in the current TR Action some amusing reminiscences of the 1977 Silver Jubilee Run . . . . . he was driving the white 4A that he'd just comprehensively rebuilt, and the panel gaps looked lovely until that late night high speed run from the Cornish Hostelry back to the camp site on the Sunday evening.

 

The V8 lady had her 4A rebuilt in 1976-77 too, at ten years old it was rotting and knackered, as were so many TRs, sidescreen and windey window alike. At that time the chap who later bought my Doretti was completing the body-off rebuild of his TR5, again necessitated by industrial quantities of tinworm at work. Dave Wilson had a TR2 and a TR3 in his workshops, Grantham Road Garage, Brighton, both body off and major surgery, and his trimmer remaking the interiors of both.

 

Agreed rebuilds were the exception, but they certainly were not unknown.

 

Cheers

 

Alec

[2long]

I have fond memories of going to scrap yards in the 70s and 80s, which often had a "Triumph" section! They let me crawl around and get whatever I could find and remove, and charged me whatever they wanted as I left. It was dirty fun! Nothing of the sort today.

 

Dan

[stuart]

FWIW I bought the last remaining early E type bonnet that was available as one complete unit from University motors in Kingston in 1977 for the princely sum of £400. The packing case it came in could have housed a family of four! That was for a nut and bolt ground up on 61 flat floor car. Worth an absolute fortune now!

Stuart.

[Don H.]

I got my first TR, my first car, in August 1978, as a twenty-one year old kid's reward for a summer job during university. It was a ten-year old TR250 for $850. Frankly, I overpaid. It had panel-flopping-in-the-breeze body rust, semi-trailing-arm-falling-off frame corrosion, and crankshaft end float from worn thrust bearings that was downright scary to see. The car was a blast, though, and from a distance looked OK, as in my signature line. I've had a Triumph continuously since then -- the TR3B I replaced it with after a few years.

 

Our focus was on keeping them running. As a starving university student, there was simply NO WAY I was going to be able to restore that car. Simply not an option time-, money-, skill-wise. Even today that one would probably be turned into parts, as it was in 1981. Yes, there were certainly some parts available, but for other reasons -- mainly the value of the car vs cost of restoration -- in America many "common" cars didn't get restored back then. If we were lucky, we put them aside for another day when time and money allowed more attention to the job.

Edited February 23, 2015 by Don H.

[ianc]

Most owners or sidescreen TRs in the early 1970s were in their 20s and 30s, and the TR was their sole transport, so had to be kept running 5 days a week. That meant that re-building was much more in the way of fixing what had failed &/or accident damage.

 

Both the factory and the main dealers were starting to off-load spare parts, which was the main reason for the founding of the New Spares Fund (NSF), which provided extra cash for Cox and Buckles to buy as much as they could of this invaluable "scrap". The NSF eventually morphed into the Spares Development Fund (SDF), because C&B's need for external funding had, largely, become unnecessary.

 

Thanks to a tip-off from TVG member, John Davies, I visited main dealer, Lankester's of Kingston, in the early '70s and acquired a brand new TR4 chassis for £40 - an excellent investment as, having been modified by Colin Matthews with all the strengthening originally applied to the Works' TR4s, it replaced 4VC's completely rotted chassis in the re-build in 1990-1993.

 

I recollect that TVG member Irving Price (still a member, but now back in his native Wales), carried out a continuous refurbishment of his TR in a street in Putney, and each meeting some part of his car would have changed colour!

 

The TR world is very different nowadays.

 

Ian Cornish

[james christie]

Ah yes! Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.

I rebuilt my second TR 1976-78. The chassis came from an orchard at £10. Yes the body was gas welded up in a chicken shed.

Spraying was done in a chippy's work shop in Stokenchurch. Three cars all painted in cellulose at the same time winter 1978 in sub zero temperatures, snow on the ground - Piggott, Welburn and self.

Rebuild on a budget aka Buckles. Somtimes things fitted, sometimes they didn't.

It was fun, we were young, happy days

 

And I still have it 39 years later

 

James

[Don H.]

I have fond memories of going to scrap yards in the 70s and 80s, which often had a "Triumph" section! They let me crawl around and get whatever I could find and remove, and charged me whatever they wanted as I left. It was dirty fun! Nothing of the sort today.

 

Dan

 

Hah! Well, there are some scrapyards full of Triumphs still, Dan -- but they're in private hands and the owners may consider them a car collection! One can still rummage for parts from time to time, though... with permission.

[Alec Pringle]

Nice one Don, that must be our mutual chum TH ?!!

 

Cheers

 

Alec

[flatlandsman]

I am somewhat astonished by this original remark???

 

On what basis/knowledge did the author 'know' this??

 

Even today some of the current yoof do actually get away from their smart phones, playstations etc and get out and modfiy their motors which often involves a certain amount of restoration.

 

I rebuilt my own car.-a TR6- in 1977 at the same time as friends of mine were doing another TR6 and a TR4 plus a TR5. All these cars are still on the road today, my own and the other TR6 still with their original owner!

 

In those days of course you made do and mended plus learned a VERY great deal about how to take a car apart and put it back together again. As an inexperienced 23 year old then, this was a life changing time for me, and fortunately has enabled me do the same for other people some 38 years on, and STILL accepting new commissions for restoration.

 

It's good that so many similar people doing all the same things at that time - Messrs Cox, Buckles, Uprichard, Revington, Hall, Bates et al are stil around to share their knowledge today; note the word EXPERIENCE

[Lebro]

Ian. My new TR3 doors also came from Lancasters in Kingston. (one of which is still on it !)

 

Bob.

Edited February 24, 2015 by Lebro

[billp]

Yes James, I recall it well and have the photos to prove it, snow on the ground and all....January 1979 I'd say, and weren't you rushing to complete the 3A just prior to your abandonning these shores for France? The chippy's workshop was of course Paul and Ray Good's establishment, and don't forget Paul helped too....and here's an interesting true story you may or may not recall....Welburn had been spraying your car signal red, got taken short, put the gun down and shot off to the bog, omitting to clean his hands...he later discovered a signal red member when, after it had started to itch, he dropped his trousers to investigate ! He told me later that the itch had continued for several days.....he also got into trouble from the then Mrs Welburn for (as my photos reveal) he'd liberated her BRG MG B roadster to get over to Stokenchurch, hadn't told her and to add insult to injury, returned it in less than perfect internal condition...ie red splodges and rubbing down dust on the driver's seat....I can't recall if he told me what she made of the said red member ! It'll all be in "Kerbside Motors" if ever I get round to writing it ! BILL P.

[Richardtr3a]

I have had many memories awakened by this thread.

I bought my TR3A in 1966 and used it as my only transport until 1969. I used to go to Moores in Brighton, the local ST dealer for any parts. The manager was very helpful and I had a rear spring fitted there. I later discovered that they cut away the inside cill to be able to slide the spring off the forward mount.

During the next 3 years I bought a complete back end and floor , £10.00, from a breaker in London, after a Swiss owner smashed in the front end of his car. I also bought the windscreen £8.00. There were also 2 doors from a scrapyard in Lancing and I assembled the whole thing in the garden with no previous experience or training.

I the traveled over 6,000 miles in Europe in two summers, with no starting , running, overheating or any problems. I did have a suspension failure in a remote mountain area which a local garage mended beside the road with no English language, imperial spanners, spares or Internet.

Finally I had a brief touch of a railway bridge on Mill Hill, Patcham, just off the A23 and bent the chassis. I was looking for a second hand chassis in Exchange and Mart, and called the Roundabout Garage in Chiswick to find out the cost of a new one. They had one getting in the way and offered it to me, delivered to my flat for £20.00. I had it zinc sprayed and enameled and started a full rebuild in 1969

It was finally finished, painted by T Reeve and son and won the Concours at the IWE in 1986. The doors are still a rough fit and every panel needs repainting. The chassis is very solid. However it is now not as reliable as when it was driven every day and everything was worn out and on its last legs.

It was possible to find parts and rebuild it yourself. Happy days.

Richard

[dykins]

As a relative youngster, I just wanted to say how much I have enjoyed reading these reminiscences from you old farts.

[Richardtr3a]

Old yes, but hopefully not F***