The First TR6 in the horde
While I am building up my new web site I am putting together some articles about each project in the shop, so as I do that I thought I might share them with you in the blog. A little by little so you don't get bored.
So, let's go...
The first TR6 in the horde was this 1973
This project popped up by chance. Someone pointed the ad in Kijiji and before we knew it it was in the shop. We bought it together with Jake, the shop's owner. Even though we do different thing for living we both have the same passion about Triumphs and we couldn't miss the opportunity. So it is a common car and probably we will end up selling it when completed. For me it is more the fun of the restoration and the fact that one more Rusty Beauty will be back on the road.
I do not know too much of it's story though. I know only that the previous owner started the restoration due to a rotten frame. He sourced another, restored frame and assembled it with the suspension from the old one.
The body also needed work so he started working on that by basically stripping it out and then he stopped for one reason or another. When we bought the car it was in the condition you see it on the picture above. The rest of it was in boxes, which we loaded as well. The valance was missing though - it was too rotten to keep according to the PO. The brake booster was also missing, but apart from that it was pretty complete as far as I know - I haven't started assembling yet :)
What has been done on the project so far. First we took the body off and started working on it. I say we, because the crew in the shop wasn't busy with official work so we took the opportunity to work on this car a little bit even though it wasn't a shop project.
So we patched the floor here and there, the rear valance, we bought a front tub from another TR6, cut off the valance and installed it on our car, cleaned up the undercoating and started getting ready to assemble and paint it. We weren't planning on going too deep with the restoration. It was just a put together project... Well, now I know it never works this way. We started taking steps backwards. Just one, then another, because we were finding more and more issues with the body and soon we were dealing with a sandblasted cheesy body.
We couldn't decide what to do with the body as it turned out it needed a lot of work and I wasn't sure I was able to do the metalwork yet. (It turned out I could later LOL) so we left it on a side and I moved to the frame. There the situation was the same. The chassis itself was very well restored and painted, but the visual condition of the suspension parts was telling me the PO just swapped the frame without changing any bushings. So I took everything apart, cleaned up, de-rusted and painted the components, changed all the bushings and reassembled it. In the meantime the trimmers in the shop reupholstered the seats and door panels.
Next I decided to deal with the engine and transmission. Again my colleagues helped to clean and paint them, I rebuilt the carbs and it was time to start the engine and assess it's condition.
At this point I also started filming the project and posting the videos in YouTube. So I ran some wires and hoses, played a little with the carbs and finally the engine started. It was running pretty well. No suspicious noises or ratlles, which was a good news, so I proceeded to measuring the compression. It was a little on the low side - around 150PSI. I tried a second test with a squirt of oil in each cylinder and that didn't change anything, which showed the piston rings were good, obviously the problem was in the valves.
I took the head off, removed the valves and as expected at the back they were completely covered with carbon, which was preventing them from closing properly and hence the low compression.
So I cleaned them up, lapped them manually, assembled the head and leak tested the valves again. This time they were holding very well so I assembled the engine. While the head was off I took the opportunity to clean the carbon from the top of the pistons as well. Once I assembled it I measured the compression again and I was satisfied with the results. This time it was 170 - 175 if I remember well. I will check my notes and I will update the numbers if I am wrong.
At this point we hired a mechanic in the shop, who claimed he could restore the body perfectly so we let him deal with that and I moved to another project.
What happened next I will tell you next time, because I also need to sleep some times... :) Don't tell Cheftush, he believes I never sleep!
to be continued......
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