Andrew Kirkham's 1963 TR4 Rebuild

In Andrews words:

"I recently joined the TR register in anticipation of taking delivery of my 1963 TR4 which is currently undergoing rebuild.

The car is a 1963 TR4 - the original colour was signal red. In 1983 we think it was taken off the road for rebuild as a retirement project but unfortunately the then owner died leaving the car in the state you see in the first picture. This is when I first saw it - untouched but dry-stored since 1983!

The work started in October 2016 and the photos show the progress so far up to about 2 weeks ago when the car had just come back from the body shop with its final coat of (very) Signal Red.

The work is being carried out by John Hewitt Racing. John is quite a character - he started in karting in 1967 and progressed from F5000 into F1 in 1971 working for the Surtees and Graham Hill teams.

Since then he's raced and prepared an amazing array of cars - on my visits I check out the progress on his latest idea - a road and racing V8 MGA! John has rebuilt and tuned the engine of the TR4 by hand so I'm expecting plenty of BHP and torque! He has the original strombergs to go back on.

The car is currently registered as 176 JON but for some reason John wants that number plate! So once the car is ready it'll be re-registered with a period registration.

And when will it be ready? Should be drivable in the next couple of weeks - and ready by end of May.

Hope that's of interest to the local band!

We'll get along to one of the meetings soon - Beamish 3 May I think.

Cheers

Andrew"