How a very damp drop top barn find was restored to live another day.
A 35-year-old TR7 bought online unseen doesn’t sound the most promising prospect but it’s turned into one of the best around.
There’s a great car in there,” comments Rich Kimberley as we discuss what a massive missed opportunity the premature demise of the TR7 was for BL and for the British sports car in general. He’s right of course: the last of the TRs was a world away from the old separate-chassis Triumph sports cars and had fate and Michael Edwardes’ axe not intervened it would have been the basis for a whole range of models.
In the case of the car you see here though, finding any greatness was a tricky prospect at first. As Rich relates, the Triumph was bought online and unseen as a joint project between him and longtime friend Lindsey. The two had been messing about with cars since they were teenagers and had already amassed a good track record with TR7s, owning several between them.
As is so often the case, the duo were mildly surprised when their bid won the car and they duly headed out with a trailer. Unsurprisingly, “It wasn’t the car we’d thought it was,” admits Rich but they decided to drag it back to their Worcestershire base anyway.
With Rich’s own background in engineering and Lindsey running his own body repair business, the duo were well equipped to tackle the worst a 35-year-old British Leyland product could throw at them and duly set about stripping the car down.
Working largely on spare Saturdays it was a slow process and along the way they discovered a whole raft of issues. Damp storage had done the car no favours and the electrical system in particular had suffered badly. “It would just about start and run,” remembers Rich but precious little else was
functioning. Elsewhere, many of the details were missing but on the plus side, the engine and box seemed pretty healthy. As acquired, the TR ran pretty badly but this was later traced to the 2-litre slant-four being massively out of tune: the carbs were out of balance, the mixture and timing were way out and the plugs needed gapping after which it ran sweetly.
During the stripdown, they discovered plenty of evidence of previous body repairs which suggested that somebody had once lavished a fair bit of time and money on the car. This meant that the basic structure of the body was sound, but this good news was somewhat tempered by the discovery of a pair of fibreglass front wings. In itself that wouldn’t be an issue but whoever had fitted them had decided to chop out much of the inner wheelarch to make the work easier. It seems a rather drastic solution and can’t have done much for the integrity of the bodyshell.
The GRP wings were duly replaced by a pair of BMHsourced panels, but pattern parts had to be used to rebuild the inner arches, which involved much fettling to get right. New door skins were also supplied by BMH, since the originals looked crusty but the frames were still solid.
Other parts were supplied by a range of the usual Triumph favourites including Rimmers, Robsport, S&S, TD Fitchett and James Paddock. Rich admits he hasn’t added up the final parts tally but he reckons it must be north of £3000 and probably closer to £4000 by the time every last widget and clip has been accounted for.
The stripdown also revealed that the car had originally been gold and that the blue paint it wore – described by Rich as a murky ‘commercial van’ blue – was decidedly non-standard. The entire shell was duly taken back to bare metal, with any remaining repairs being taken care of before it was wheeled into Lindsey’s workshop, A38 Auto Body Repairs in Malvern (01684 573445). There he applied countless coats of etch primer, filler primer and two-pack with much flatting and polishing to create the finish you see here. The car is still blue but now wears the lesser spotted Cavalry Blue, an original Triumph colour found on the later cars.
Before reassembly started, Rich and Lindsey went right through the electrical system, cleaning and replacing the many crusty Lucas connectors. Underneath, the suspension was stripped and the bushes replaced with polyurethane items in the interests of a sharper driving experience and improved longevity, with parts being cleaned and painted as work to the car steadily progressed.
The TR7 has always been one of the more affordable classics but in recent years some of the detail items have become scarcer with prices rising correspondingly.
One of these is the laurel leaf nose badge from the later cars and here Rich lucked out: pristine examples can sell for over £100 but he stumbled across a new unused stock item at a Triumph show and coughed up “just a couple of quid” for it.
By the time the car was being reassembled, Rich and Lindsey had done all the work themselves but when it came to the trimming a local trimmer was entrusted with the work. You might not believe it but the seat covers are the originals, having simply been stripped from the frames and the sagging original foams replaced before being refitted. The difference is impressive and shows how much an experienced trimmer can achieve without resorting to a full retrim.
Elsewhere, the trimmer also fitted a new mohair hood which is a great improvement on the flimsy original vinyl cover, plus a new hood bag while a new carpet set was also installed. One of the few non-standard bits of the restoration was extending the carpeting to the inside of the boot, which is now plushly trimmed instead of the rubber mats and cardboard provided back in 1981.
Remote locking was also added, which is a neat way to avoid that fresh Cavalry Blue getting scratched up around the door locks.
To finish off the TR7, a set of the original Keepax alloy wheels was sourced and after cleaning, priming and painting they look superb. A little over a year since the project had been started, it was wheeled round to the MoT test station in spring 2015 and earned its first pass since 1996.
Pressure of time – not to mention a fleet of other TR7s – prevented the car from getting to last summer’s shows but this summer should see it making an appearance at local events. Intriguingly, Rich’s Worcestershire location is also home to none other than Harris Mann, the TR7’s original designer and Rich has bumped into him on more than one occasion, the great man reportedly happy to chat about TR7s.
Meanwhile, having built up what must be one of the best TR7s in the country, Rich admits that it might be time to find the car a new home. The reason? There’s another TR7 project awaiting attention, while Rich’s own ‘keeper’ TR7 which he’s owned since 1989 is lining up for its long-overdue respray. Contact Rich via Classics
Monthly at cm.ed@kelsey.co.uk if you’re interested.