TR6 Restored
Richard Pollard went looking for a motorbike, but ended up with this TR6 sports car instead. On the face of it that was a curious mistake, but there were mitigating circumstances – and, it seems, no regrets.
It was supposed to be rot free and complete. At least it was one of those...
Ihave owned a lot of Triumph motorbikes over the years, but even though I've had a lot of cars pass through my hands too, but before this TR6 only one of these has ever been a Triumph. Your readers might not know this, but Triumph in Meriden built a TR6 motorbike from 1956-1973. I'd never had one of those either, and one day I decided that this was a gap in my motorcycling CV which needed filling.
So I went online and typed TRIUMPH TR6 into the search engine. Obviously, both cars and bikes popped up. In the past I'd restored a Jaguar E-Type, but this was in the very early 1980s and back then you didn't restore cars so much as get them ready for the next MoT. I used to do cars up and then sell them on, occasionally coming a cropper but usually turning a profit. However, classics from the 1950s-1970s always have more rust than you anticiate. I'd always promised myself I would never do another car because they needed too much welding, but when this TR6 popped up on my screen, it was described as rust-free...
The car had been reimported to the UK from Arizona in the USA, hence the rust-free claim. Well, to be more accurate it was rot-free because there were inevitably little bits that needed work here and there, but even today it has its original chassis,
and all the outer panels are original too. I can only assume it was always in Arizona, because a car that ends up there before being shipped back to the UK could just as easily have spent the first 20 years of its life in New England and be as rotten as anything over here.
Oddly enough, I know plenty about the car's first weeks from the Heritage certificate, then virtually nothing about the next 40+ years. It was built in April 1976 (so it is a very late example of the model) and dispatched on 13th May to British Leyland Motors Inc via Baltimore in the USA. It was Inca Yellow with a black interior and hood, while other listed items were inertia
reel seatbelts, 185x15 Michelin red band tyres, a laminated windscreen, tonneau cover, MPH speedo, jack, tool roll and spare wheel.
I even know that it was shipped from container berth 201 at Southampton dock, but very little after that! I do have a name in the paperwork of its owner in the States, plus on the back of the glovebox lid there is a drawing of a native American and a lion with his initials on, so I guess he was an artist of some sort. I have tried to trace
him and I believe he still lives in Buckeye, Arizona, but I've not been able to get in contact yet.
When I saw the TR6, I'd just completed the restoration of a 1960 Royal Enfield Constellation and I was looking for another project. I'd stumbled across this car by accident, but it looked interesting. It had already been imported into the UK, I thought privately but when I went to look at it, the guy had hundreds of cars on the premises. However, the claim that it didn't need any welding looked justified, and that was the big attraction for me.
It had already been stripped, but that didn't worry me. In fact, my problem is that I am a sucker for a basket case. If
I see something that is just a pile of bits in boxes, I can't help thinking that it was once a complete vehicle, and if it was built once in a factory, then I could rebuild it again. I asked if it was complete, and was told yes, but that some of the bits were stored elsewhere in boxes because the guy in the States had already started a restoration. That did at least mean I could satisfy myself as to its underlying condition. While it was not rotten, it had clearly been out in the sun for a long time because the paint was burnt off many of the panels which were now covered in surface rust, every single bit of rubber was so hard that you had to chip it off with a chisel, and the interior was largely nonexistent.
Even the engine was stripped to its component parts, and that made it something of a gamble because parts have a habit of going missing when cars are moved around in this state. However, we agreed a price with the proviso that if anything turned out to be missing when I got it home and unpacked the boxes, they would be replaced. Inevitably, when I got it home
I found lots of things were missing, including plenty of bigticket items such as carburettors and manifolds. I compiled a list, but of course the seller didn't want to know. What could I do? It was my word against his. In the end, this contributed to an over-spend on the project of around £5000, but fortunately the work coincided with an increase in TR6 prices generally
which negated some of that. It was still something of a bitter pill to swallow, though.
The major issue with this project was having to do so many things twice – not having taken it apart makes it more difficult to reassemble in the correct order and the correct way. You do have to expect that when you buy a car in boxes, though. I bought it in November 2017, and it took me 18 months from start to finish. That wasn't working on it full-time, but I wasn't hanging about either.
My goal was to create a car that was fairly standard, but
I am not a rivet counter so it didn't have to be religiously taken back to original – I just like to see them looking nice and being used on the road. I could never keep a concours car looking good anyway because I am not a polisher. Having said that, any changes have been fairly minor – a high-torque starter motor for example, an Accuspark electronic ignition kit, high flow radiator core and things like that.
There were no shocks in the restoration. The body was on the chassis when I bought it and I never had to take that off, though of course I did check that it was good in all the places where they normally go. All I had to do was clean the chassis off, paint it black and then protect with wax. I did rebuild the entire suspension too, and went through the mechanical side from end to end. Anything with a seal in it was replaced as a matter of course, and I was quite surprised at how everything was easily available.
The carburettors on it are now SUs because I got a secondhand set of those rather than the original Strombergs. The engine itself was pretty good once I got it cleaned out – the bores and bearings were all standard size and only needed cleaning up, which was quite impressive, especially since there were 5000 miles on the clock which I assumed meant 105,000 miles. However, now I am not quite so sure because even after driving it for a while, there were still only 5000 miles showing – the speedometer works, but the mileometer does not! However, I did find a box inserted in the speedo drive that also had 5000 miles recorded. I couldn't figure out what this was and wondered if it was something to do with rallying, but eventually learned that it was a service recorder. I'd never seen anything like it before.
Mind you, I have also learned that this is not the original engine, which is another reason why I want to contact the previous owner so that I can fill in some of the history.
After the engine, I turned my attention to the gearbox. This part of the restoration did not start well because the input shaft would not turn. Initially I thought this was probably just because it had been standing,
but it turned out that all the layshaft needle roller bearings had seized. I suspect this might have been the reason why the car had been taken off the road in the first place and a restoration started. I priced everything up that I would need to rebuild the gearbox, and it was going to come to £500 for the parts alone. So when
I found a gearbox specialist in Lincoln who quoted me £350 to rebuild it, that was a no-brainer and he got the job.
I had to replace most of the interior, though the seat covers are actually the originals. The worst problem I had was with the dash. I'd got a brand new LHD dash, but found that the new wood was thicker than the original and so the switches wouldn't fit. Fortunately, I have a friend who is a carpenter and he machined out recesses in the back of the wood. The dash had come from eBay and unfortunately that was a recurring theme with this project – when you buy things cheaply, you often end up buying them twice.
Another friend of mine was going to do the paint, but got so busy that although he did the engine bay so that I could crack on with that, the main painting was done by Barkston Refinishing in Grantham. They do a lot of concours cars, and did a great job on mine.
I have kept the original softer cam in the engine, so it
Icouldneverkeepa concourscarlookinggood becauseIamnotapolisher
is putting out about 125bhp. I also kept it as LHD. I spoke to several people about that at the beginning and asked whether I should convert it to RHD, but the consensus was that I'd be better off leaving it as it was because there would be a bigger potential market for LHD cars. It doesn't bother me at all that way, it is still great fun to drive and as long as you don't follow people too closely, then it is not even much of an issue when overtaking.
It is very different to the bikes, though. It may be a sports car, but it is slow, comfortable and casual compared to them. Having said that, it is a lot better than I had expected it to be. I thought it would have a lot of squeaks, rattles and bangs – I've restored some cars in the past and immediately wondered why I'd bothered! – but this one doesn't; instead it feels very solid and rides very nicely. I do find the steering is very positive, and with the smaller steering wheel fitted you only have to think of changing direction and it is already there. Whether you call that positive or twitchy depends on whether you are a glass-half-full or a glass-halfempty kind of person.
Performance wise, it is of its era. Against modern cars with 2.5-litres there is no comparison, but then again how much power do you really need? As long as it will do 70mph comfortably, it doesn't matter. This one doesn't have overdrive, which would have been nice for longer trips but is not really necessary just for driving and enjoying locally. And the exhaust makes a lovely rasp. That's because during the rebuild I went down to TRGB for some parts and while I was there, happened to enquire whether they had any secondhand exhausts. They asked if I was bothered about it being a bit loud, and I said no. Apparently one of their customers had a twin system fitted to his car, then came back a month later and changed it for a standard system because it was too loud, so it was virtually brand new and very cheap. I knew it was going to be loud, but I didn't realise it was going to be quite this loud. It can wake the neighbours, but they do say it sounds nice. At 25003000rpm it is at its noisiest, but it doesn't burst your eardrums and things do quieten down when you are cruising.
Now I just have new covers to get for the sun visors, but other than that it is pretty much finished. Oh yes, and it could do with some Leyland badges on the wings if you are picking at details. However, if somebody came up to me and offered me the right kind of money, I would no doubt sell it as my enjoyment is in the restoration, or perhaps the resurrection would be a better description. Once that is done, I have a tendency to lose interest. If I do sell it, I will probably get another bike – they are easier to work on, don't need much welding and you don't have so many parts lying around. That makes them much quicker to do as well, so this could be my very last car restoration. What a good job it was such a nice one.
Ithoughtitwouldhavealotofsqueaks,rattlesandbangs,but this one doesn't; instead it feels very solid and rides very nicely