Removing the rear deck.

Given the likely issues with the rear deck I decided to strip the rear panel with a wire brush (on my angle grinder). Unfortunately the passenger side of the rear deck was quite a state. A number of holes (from rust) meaning that both the deck and the extension from the deck to the B-post on the passenger side needed replacing. So this meant removing the panel. So using the angle grinder I sliced down the side of the inner wing and then drilled out all the spot welds that attach the back of the panel. You can see these on the picture below (the shiny dots on the piece of steel going across the car)

 Leaving a big hole :-(

Now all I have to do is weld in a new deck and front extension.. not much then!

Another stage in the rolling restoration

Its winter again and time to continue the rolling restoration of my 1972 TR6 PI. Last winter I carried out a chassis change including an engine refresh and suspension rebuild. This year I decided it was time to address the bodywork. From 20 feet the car looks OK, however once you get up close it becomes clear that the paintwork isn't up to much. In fact it has more "orange peel" than a tangerine!

Luckily there doesn't seem to be too much evidence of rust. The underside is clean with new floors and sills. Otherwise there is one rust bubble on the back of one of the front wings and another on the rear deck (the bit between the cockpit and the boot lid).. O yes and a small hole in the rear edge of the boot lid. Overall, the one that worried me the most was the bubble on the rear deck.

The first thing to do was to remove the 4 wings. These are all bolt-on and should (in theory) be relatively easy to remove. First to come off were the front wings.

These were pretty easy to remove with screws along the top edge and the bottom of the sill. The two sets that were more of a challege were those that go into the front edge of the B-post and those below the head-light. Both of these are accessable from inside the wing. (I should add that you need to disconnect all the electrical connections and off course the bumpers. An examination of the inner wings showed very little rust. just a little on the top flange of the passenger side front wing.
Then I had to remove the rear wings. Again this was just a case of unbolting. There are screws along the top edge (accessable from inside the car), the sill and then underneat the rear light (accessable from inside the wing). Once these wings were removed there was a rather nasty sight at the top of the passenger side wing.

There also seemd to be quite a lot of filler covering the rear deck..

Happy Ending

Hi all,
Well not blogged for some time... Mainly because life has been busy, but that is not to say that nothing has been going on with the TR6 project. In fact loads have happened. By the end of February I had competed rebuilding the chassis (see below).

And then it was a simple matter of rolling it under the body

And then just lowering the body. This time I used my engine crane to lower the body. I attaced it via the seatbelt mounts at the rear and the body to chassis mounts at the front.

And after some slight adjustment the car was back together

Everything pretty much lined up OK with just some very minor adjustments to two of the chassis mounts. I have to say it was nice to see everything back where it should be.

The rest of the reassembly, as they say in the Haynes manual, is just the reverse of dissassembly. However I did treat myself to some new wheels :-)

So over all the process, which was started in August 2014 was completed in March 2015, working only weekends and the odd evening.. Not bad really.
And the question then is.... Am I happy? Well I drove the car to the Spa Classic in Belgium, A 1000 mile weekend with a few laps of the GP circuit thrown in for fun.

Amazingly after the laps every vital sign of the car was resolutely in the middle of the range.

 The car behaved reasonably well with only 3 issues.
1) The rear telescopic shock mounts came loose and needed to be tightened a couple of times (now sorted with the use of a couple of nylocks.
2) One of the injectors failed (see below)

3) The car would idle no lower than 1300 rpm (hopefully to be sorted this winter with a new set of recon throttle bodies.

Dynamically the car seems good and the new cam makes the engine much smoother. Power seems pretty good and we returned over 30 mpg on the run. So over all worth it!