1) We decided to undertake a MASSIVE home remodel.

2) We decided to have a baby.
Ok, well, we knew a baby was coming when I bought it but the home remodel thing was a suprise.

So, Ole Betsy is sitting the garage serving as a storage facility for old boxes until ‘06 rolls around but here are the updates from the last few months..

Rust update

The rust has really not been very extensive anywhere. Its concentrated in the following areas with the following fixes planned

Thats it for rust!

Drivetrain update

Something is definently wrong in my tranny, probably the dreaded throw-out bearing. Very fixable but I am most likely going to swap the entire thing out for $2500 and move to a rebuilt tranny with A-Type Overdrive.

Last time I tried to drive it the darn beast would not go into gear. True to its LBC Heritage it had leaked out all of its clutch fluid. Oh well, should not really be driving it without seats anyhow

Also found a Super Charger for sale but with the house work it fell off my priority list. Hopefully I can still track one down next year.

New parts

Parts yet to find

Additonal fixes are the confirmed diff mount repair and thats really about it! After that its light body work and total tear-down time!

So far nothing totally unexpected but at the same time its MORE then I expected. Removed the drivers side rear outer wing to check out those decay spots that poke through the top. Here are the details of tonights activities…

(ADD PHOTOS BACK)
ALL HAIL UNDERCOATING! ENEMY OF RUST!
First off, ALL HAIL UNDERCOATING! The absolutely enormous amount of undercoating present on this car has prevented almost all decay on with the exception of the standard TR6 trouble areas where there has been SLIGHT decay but nothing like you hear horror stories about.

But seriously, its a lot of undercoating. Some drunken painter applied it, its crazy thick, like an inch in some areas. And everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Every nook and cranny. There has got to be pounds of the stuff down there.

Hacksaw Duel with the bumper
The rear bumper was a fun one and is the first piece I have removed from the car. Every single bolt was different and one of them stripped with 3 or 4 threads to go requiring a lengthy battle of wills with a new hacksaw blade. The hacksaw won but at the cost of a huge bruise on my arm. My first wound, touche old car! I am sure we will meet in battle again soon..

Summary for the evening

The pictures tell the tale but the summary is:

A) I may have to replace the b-pillars. Need some opinions on that. I think I can cut and weld patches pretty easily here.

B) Not sure if the rear fenders can be saved, once again, need some opinions on that

C) Wondering if the driver side sill was replaced, the welding seems a bit..new looking..

So, my biggest problem now is that I think I have the bug and this thing is coming off the frame for a total restore. Don’t worry, I have a perfectly good excuse, once again, ALL HAIL UNDERCOATING, a substance impossible to easily remove without sandblasting. Scratch that, sandblasting bounces off, I use a torch.

Heck, if I am sandblasting I may as well pull the tub

So, my list continues to grow:

New front fender New rear fender Diff mount welding New interior Tranny replacement New suspension, front and back Steering rack overhaul/upgrade Anything cosmetic

And I am sure that we are just scratching the surface.

Finally, here is my favorite picture of the night, its soooo ironic.

Rust under the TR6 sticker, how perfect..

So, I use google to poke around and for the last 6 months it always was picking up this hit on some local Triumph club site in Washington state. There was a guy selling one for $350! Finally, in a moment of desperation, I sent him an email. …

Three days later he answers and, sure enough, he has it! And an extra rear fender! Entire kit and caboodle is $500 and he’ll drop it off tomorrow at the UPS Store to have it packed and shipped.

What did we do before Google? I mean seriously, how would these dots ever get connected. Yahoo, Lycos etc never got this deep.

Thank You Google! Me and my TR6 give you great thanks.

Update: Hardtop arrived packed in about 5000 layers of foam. Undamaged from shipping but has some rust issues. The guy also threw in a ‘rust free’ fendor that totally sucked so that tells me something.

More on the hardtop in later installments.

First up was diagnosing that passenger side rear-clunk. Mike’s recent experiences gave me hope that it was just a U-Joint. No such luck! Every bushing on the diff mount is worn out (the front passenger side top bushing has a 1/8th gap!) and when I had my wife help me with the ’spin test’ the differential looked like it was going to bounce off the car. Holding the top of the pin while she spun the wheel confirmed, that pin mount on top is cracked :(

Question: How hard is this to fix with ‘body on’? Can an experienced TR6 builder handle the fix and box upgrade without to much trouble? Seems like a nightmare…

Next up was determining how much rust was on my floors. Turns out, a lot more then I thought :( The drivers side has 5 or 6 pinholes and is really pitted.

Question: At one point do most folks decide that a floorboard should be replaced vs. repaired?

First off, I think a diff pin must be busted, if I apply power suddenly it feels like something is going to jump out from behind the passenger seat. “CLUNK!”. I took a bunch of shots of the differential area, pins, U-Joint etc and it ‘looks’ ok but it is obviously not. I’ll investigate more using some more formalized testing but if anyone see’s anything wacky in the photos please let me know.
The second item is rust. (GASP!). Yes, as amazing as it might sound this is a TR6 that has some rust. Today I strapped on my Makita drill, attached a wire brush drillbit and went looking for trouble. First the good news, everything that looks like surface rust is, in reality, surface rust. Very nice!
The trouble came when I attacked the 4 or so small bondo areas around the rear deck. Yup, there it was, pinhole rust in the same spot on both sides, right where the rear deck joins to the wings. The good of this is that it is extremely localized (or so it appears) and everything else seems intact on both the inside and the outside and its very very structurally sound. It looks like the previous DPO attempted to stop the spread and succeeded.
So now I have to decide how to repair these pinholes, replace the deck or solder them or something like that. Time to do some more research!
The right wing is totally trashed. For some reason the previous DPO decided that it would be advantageous to apply 1/4″ of bondo the the wing rather then just replace it. It must have gotten pushed in when the other front damage occured. I don’t see any obvious frame damage etc so I think I am in the clear.
Anyhow, everything is looking pretty nice so far outside of these issues. Its a really complete car, even down to the original plastic covers for the seatbelt bolts behind the shoulders. Current list of ‘required new stuff’ is a right wing, front valance, new dash pad and a new bonnet, oh and the interior of course. Pricey stuff but easy enough to deal with!

Current dilemma – Restore to original or ‘make it better’. I guess in the big scheme of things thats a good decision to have to make! Oliver on the 6-Pack list said that his philosophy is to restore ‘in the spirit of the time’. I like that because it lets me put more HP under the hood and upgrade to an overdrive transmission

So, as part of my new Triumph purchase I’ve made an internal commitment to myself that I will ALWAYS put the house and my wife and all that ‘real-life’ stuff first. These cars can eat up not only your bank account but your relationships and lifestyles along with them!

Towards that I have a list of things to finish up before I am even allowing myself to do an initial assessment including running new gas lines for a gas dryer, crown mouldings in the office, hanging pictures etc etc etc. Lots of fun stuff in and of itself but with that TR6 sitting next to me while I cut crown moulding.. well, I find it motivating to move even quicker then I normally would

Day 2 and a real inspection

Enough about me, lets talk TR6. Last night (Day 2!) I moved the TR6 into the driveway so that I could wrangle my new Dryer into place and connect the gas line (failed to connect, damn fittings are the wrong size). I also used the opportunity to further clean the garage up and get things properly situated. Bonus! Getting rid of my electric dryer freed up a 220V outlet. The wiring will need to be upgraded to support a 4 prong outlet and more juice but its a good infrastructure if I need to do any welding. Hooray!

Once I was done I hopped into the TR6 to pull it into the garage and found myself pulling it OUT OF THE DRIVEWAY. It was like some Star Trek tractor beam grabbed me and forced me to drive around the block.. But the car seemed hesitant, not very forceful and generally not right.

Busted differential mount and always check the e-brake

Somewhere along this drive I notice that everytime I shift I hear a loud ‘THUNK!’ from beneath the passenger side of the rear axle.. Crap! Its either a bad U-Joint, something in the suspension or, more then likely, a broken/worn diff-mount. Not a huge issue, this is standard kit with the TR6, the diff-mount was a horrible design to start with and never could handle the 6-pack very well.

Hey, if thats the only welding this baby needs then I am in a good spot.

Since the car is not running that well I get home and park it. Then I realize, THE E-BRAKE WAS ON THE ENTIRE TIME! Well, that’ll kill your performance..

Lessons? Turn off the e-brake and hurry up with the house stuff, I have a lot of inspection to do so I can assess the deeper state of this beast.

Day Summary

I did get my seatbelt adjusted properly. This car has the old style 3 point static belts so they are some effort to get situated. I was amazed though, the belts have their original plastic cover over the bolts in the rear. Incredible! This car is so complete it amazes me.

Did a bit of surface inspection and noted the following things:

• My wiper motor moves to much in its rubber mount so the blades never retract back to their resting position when you use it. If you manually hold the motor in place its fine. FIX: Bid on a new bracket on ebay for $5.

• Looks like there is some light surface rust a few places when you look real closely. FIX: Sand and primer, save the car!

• I need a new hood and they cost a lot of money. Yuck but i knew that was on the agenda

• We may be able to salvage the front valence and spoiler but I won’t know until I get them off the car.

• Rear IRS mounts to frame look nice and solid from here but we really need to get it on jack stands to find the truth.

• Need a hard-top here in Half Moon Bay given that we get approx 3.5 days of summer annually, trolling on ebay actively.

• I still can’t get that damn soft-top to extend all the way to the windshielf lock points. Either the top is so shrunken that it can’t extend or there is a deeper configuration issue.

Well, thats that, hopefully in a week or so I’ll get to start digging in more and really finding out what this beast will cost to restore. The big dilemma now is Restore to original or Autocross?

Ack, choices..

TR6 Photo Gallery
Now, on with our story.

Ebay is my friend

So, I’ve been trolling ebay for 8 months now, looking for the perfect car or at least one that was not obviously ready for the wrecking yard. I’ve put in lowball bids here and there, hoping to get lucky (which would be unlucky in many cases). I never could make it make financial sense with shipping etc and no cars EVER came up that were local since this is the Bay Area in Northern California meaning anything good gets taken fast or its incredibly expensive.

Then, out of nowhere a 3 day auction came up for a car in Santa Cruz, 50 miles south of where we live. The owner claimed no rust and a rebuilt engine 5000 miles ago along with a phone number to call. I dropped him an email and followed up with a phone call asking him if I could come take a look as well as asking him what he was looking for. After a moment of hesitation he said ‘my reserve is $4900 but if its an easy transaction I will take $4000′. Immediately I set up an appointment to meet with him the next morning.

The meet, some history and a test drive

Cash in hand we head down to Santa Cruz to meet the owner at the storage facility where he is storing the car. Up comes the storage room door and there it is, sitting in the dark but dry room. He hops in and it starts IMMEDIATELY. No hesitation, choke out, key turn and its running. 106,000 and change on the odometer.

We walk around, looking at the car and chatting about its history. Apparently its always been a california car although the lady who owned it before him had only had it since 1986. It had lived in Santa Cruz since she bought it and had actually been in a garage for the last 2+ years when she stopped driving it. Her son had rebuilt the engine right before he died and she never got it running after that. All the current owner had to do was put a new battery in, prime the carbs and it fired right up.

He also reveals that the mechanic he takes it to is ‘Emil’ in Santa Cruz who also maintained it for the previous owner. Emil recently replaced the brakes, hoses and did general maintenance so the car is ready for the road. He even got every guage working and all the electronics (I guess Emil is the owner of a 200 hp TR6 that he races, you out there Emil?) The owner is getting ready to leave the country on business for a few years (he builds yachts for a living) so its time for his toys to go. Very nice guy.

But does it have rust?

While we talk I am checking all the usual spots, looking for the bad stuff. Rockers? Hmm, look good. T-Shirt pressing, looks solid from here. Frame, not even a mark from bouncing off a speed bump. Floorboards, some surface rust but nothing penetrating. Rear deck? Looks great. Trunk, original spare and no rust at all.

What solidified it for me was the fact that the few places the undercoating had peeled away had paint that looked almost new. I’ve never seen a TR6 in my search that looks this great. The only damage is the front passenger side. The owner tells me that the previous owner’s son had left it in neutral, no brake and it had rolled into a garage. Ok, I can live with that. The body doesn’t look tweaked otherwise so the story feels right.

Test drive

By this time the car is almost warmed up so we hop in to take a test drive. Vroom, out we go to the access road and down to the freeway. Getting on the freeway I slide the rear-end out a bit in 2nd gear, oops But it was fun.

On the freeway the car easily cruises at 70mph, even without an OD transmission, with what feels like power to spare. It handles great, taking the corners with ease although the brakes squeal like a banshee! That’ll have to be fixed.

Commitment

Back at the storage facility I decide we have a deal, drop $4k in cash on the trunk, sign the papers, shake his hand and off we go, the long way home over Hwy 17 and Hwy 92 which, if you know the Bay Area you know are the two windiest roads around. Top down (it wont go up) I hit the road, my wife following me and keeping those fast drivers with a 5th gear off my ass

To sum it up, the TR6 handles the roads without incident and it feels amazing. My hands get a bit cold but the heater seems to be working and already on so my legs and torso are warmed nicely. I didn’t turn it on, no fires for me 80 miles from home and I don’t know this car well enough to trust it that much. The only thing I engage are the headlights.

So far so good, as soon as I get my garage in shape I’ll take a more in-depth look at the entire situation and see where to go next. I’m crossing my fingers that the only body work it will need is that passenger side accident and then its ready for paint prep and paint!

The engine runs great but it was rebuilt by an amatuer and will obviously need to be rebuilt sometime in the future, even though it only has 5000 miles on it. Its leaking pretty nicely and is covered in oil. Runs like a champ though! No high compression, just a standard stock rebuild.

Summary

Overall, EXACTLY what I was looking for. My criteria

$4k total, including any shipping or fees No massive rust (I cant weld yet) Runs well so I can enjoy it immediately

The only thing it doesn’t have that I really want is an OD transmission but I’ll swap one in when the engine goes out for a rebuild.

See you at Triumphest!