1968 TR5 Restoration – Reg No UPB 4F – Dave McDonald
April – August 2019
After the initial report the project stalled when I was approached to carry out some freelance Construction Project Management work.
With that finished, in May and June I installed a 2 post lift in the garage Unit. This included cutting out part of the concrete floor slab and re casting much thicker steel reinforced concrete slab pad foundations, bonded into the surrounding floor, to carry the loads exerted by the new lift.
Floor slab ready for new reinforced concrete pads for 2 post lift installation
Concrete Labourer (Grandson) earning his corn compacting the concrete with vibrating poker
Headroom in the Unit is slightly tight, but when installed the lift can raise the TRs to give approximately 1.7 m clearance, so I’m not quite able to stand up completely straight underneath, but a significant improvement on lying on my back under the car. It has been a bit of a faff installing it, but since commissioning it so far I’ve found it to be an immense help. The addition of a 2nd hand transmission jack was particularly useful when changing the diff on the race car from the low ratio cwp used at Oulton Park to the more usual ratio cwp for Spa in late June.
At the Spa race meeting I damaged the TR6 race car engine so spent a lot of time in July sorting that out and preparing for the next UK race.
In August I’ve installed the new slightly softer front and rear road springs that I mentioned earlier in report 1. The car sits as I wanted it to and on a few road runs the handling is still good but the ride is not as harsh, so that will be fine for the final rebuild.
I’ve also been mindful for some time that the back wheels are too near vertical with virtually no negative camber, a bit like a live axle car. This is a function of the combination of trailing arm mounting brackets used. With 1 notch, 2 notch and 3 notch brackets available, which can all be used 2 ways up, there is an infinite potential combination to create the required camber. This I will try to sort out before I dismantle the car. It’s a laborious time consuming task but I have reasonable insight into it, having gone through the process, albeit to a more exaggerated degree, with the TR6 race car. When I’ve reached the combination that gives the camber that I want I will use that on the new chassis though inevitably it might need fine tuning if the new chassis is “straighter” than the old one.
Dave McDonald - Aug 2019