Vintage Triumph TR3A has a split personality
BCIT instructor had to cut its 1959 body in half lengthwise to fit on a wider 1970s TR6 chassis
British sports car enthusiasts do a double take when they see the classic 1959 Triumph TR3A owned by Randy Schultz of Crescent Beach.
It’s not the two tiny racing windshields, the built in roll bar, custom seats and dash or the aircraft style racing harnesses that get their necks snapping.
There is something else very different about this car.
It’s low and wide — really wide. In fact, this upgraded Triumph is four inches wider than when it left the factory. That’s because Schultz cut the body in half lengthwise, added 10 centimetres in width and then hammerwelded it back together.
Which poses the question: Why?
“I had already restored one TR3 way back in my youth and didn’t want to do that again so I decided to modify this car,” explains the BCIT metal and woodwork instructor who teaches future high school shop teachers.
He decided to modernize the half-century old sports car by using the chassis from a 1970s Triumph TR6 which has independent rear suspension, rack and pinion steering and better handling qualities.
But, when he did the measurements, the newer chassis was too wide for the older TR3 body — by 10 centimetres. So one Sunday, behind closed doors using a die grinder and hacksaw, he cut the body in half right down the middle.
Schultz’s love affair with the funky low-slung Triumph twoseat sports cars goes back to his early teens when he delivered the Richmond Review newspaper door to door.
“There was a car under a yellow tarp and I didn’t know what it was,” he said. “One day I got off my bike, pulled the tarp back at one corner and saw this outrageous big eyeball.”
That would be the distinctive Triumph ‘bug eye’ headlights and the front emblem bearing the brand’s name.
The next day, he looked up information on the car at the public library. He was hooked.
Months later, as he was walking home from school, he saw another TR3 parked in a backyard. He boldly knocked on the owner’s door to inquire if the car was for sale. He told the owner he had saved $125 and that was all he could pay.
With a chuckle and grin, the owner said, “well. I guess that will have to do then.”
The teen spent days freeing up the wheels so they would turn and pushed the car home with assistance from school friends. He then began the task of disassembling the rusty sports car, teaching himself as he went along.
One day, the local garbage collector knocked on the door and said: “I think you will need this.” He handed Schultz an original, well-thumbed and greasy factory manual for the car.
Sadly, he quickly determined his rusted-out car was beyond economic and practical repair. Undeterred, he discovered a 1957 Triumph TR3 advertised for sale in the Buy and Sell newspaper that had been taken apart. It had a good body so he bought it and set about restoring it. He rebuilt the motor and suspension and restored the frame as part of his Grade 12 shop experience at McNair Secondary School. This proved to be an invaluable experience.
“I learned a lot about the order of doing things, organizing work, technical process and patience. The car was a great teacher,” he said.
He kept the car through marriage, home purchase and the birth of his son Erik, who sat in the Triumph when he was just two days old.
“He loved that car all the way into his high school days,” Schultz said.
When Erik was in Grade 9, his dad made a deal with his son: Straight A grades through high school would earn him the keys to the car for his graduation. Erik subsequently drove his ‘new’ Triumph TR3 to his grad.
“That left me without a sports car,” Schultz noted, adding he remembers thinking ‘that was a pretty dumb thing to do.’
He joined the local Triumph club and kept involved through association with other owners, when one day he received a telephone call from a lady who had been in the club and had disassembled her 1959 TR3A for restoration years previous. She now wanted to sell it ‘as is.’ That car would be the basis for Randy’s highly modified sports car.
As he rebuilt and modified the later model Triumph TR6 chassis for his car and completed the work to widen his TR3 body to fit on it, he knew he wanted to have a more modern powertrain with computerized engine management systems.
He settled on using a fourcylinder engine with electronic fuel injection and double overhead cam from a 1990s Nissan 240SX.
“I wanted to use an updated engine for reliability, better economy and lower emissions,” he explained.
He went to a wrecking yard in Surrey in search of mechanical components. When the owner learned what Schultz was doing, he told him he could have anything he wanted for free.
“The manager of the yard was my unofficial sponsor,” he said.
The Nissan engine coupled to its five-speed manual transmission delivers 170 horsepower through the limited-slip differential.
“This gives the car 70 per cent more power with 70 per cent fewer emissions than the original car,” he reported.
Schultz also integrated the Nissan’s rear disc brakes and grafted Toyota 4Runner front discs to make as much stopping power as go power.
It took 2,860 logged hours of labour for him to complete his very special vintage Triumph TR3 sports car. All that hard work has not gone unnoticed. It has won the modified class at Vancouver’s All-British Field Meet three times and has been featured in an international magazine as well as in a book on modified racing Triumphs.
Schultz’s passion for old cars and the traditional techniques used to restore them has turned into a business. One of the first questions he asks his customers is if they would like their car cut in half. So far, no takers.
“I love this car,” Schultz said after taking the author for an exhilarating spin around Crescent Beach. “I don’t know what I enjoyed more: all the problem solving and technical work it took to realize the end result or just driving it.”