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Posted by Tim Holloway [69.54.28.229] on Sunday, October 24, 2010 at 19:32:01 :
Now you are probably thinking "Why in the heck is this bozo posting a picture of a Triumph TR3a on a freaking Power Wagon site?" Read on and you will see the relevance!
I bought this car in 1978. It was my 3rd car, a 67 Triumph Spitfire being the first and a 76 Triumph TR6 being the second. I am sure you are seeing a trend here. My Father had at the time a 61 Austin Healy 3000 MK1 and an MGBGT. A definate British sports car heritage. Anyway, back to the story. I drove this car for a couple of years, but decided I needed a truck. So, I bought a Mazda pickup, but kept the TR3a. My Fathers Healy had doed of frame cancer, so he drove the Tr3a for a couple of years. I had moved to California for a coule of years and then came back to Vermont. The TR3a mostly sat unused, needing an exhaust and brakes etc. About 20 years ago, I decided to get it back on the road. We had just built our house, with a walk out basement, AKA a drive in basement. I had put a pair of 36" doors in, to facilitate bringing firewood in. A TR3a will JUST fit into that opening. (I hadnt built my shop yet). So, as is always the case, one thing led to another, lots of "while its here I will fix that too" and next thing we knew the body was off the frame and at a local bodyshop, the frame was stripped of anything that bolted to it, and it was sandblasted and painted. I began rebuilding everything and putting it back together while the body work was happening. The body guy gave me a fantastic price, to use it as a filler job. I provided him new floors, inner and outer rocker panels, trunk floor etc. He got all the rot cut out and the new panels welded in, painted everything, and it all looked great. We brought the body home, invited a bunch of our stronger friends over for dinner, and brought the body back into the basement and set it on the frame. Thats when things started going downhill. As I started to reassemble fenders, front apron, hood doors etc, nothing would line up correctly. I struggled with it and finally gave up. Upon doing some research on TR3 floor pan and rocker panel replacement. When you remove these components, you have the front of the body and the back of the body, as 2 seperate pieces. People who know what they are doing, will weld up a framework to hold the 2 body halves rigidly and then take out the floors and rockers. Not my guy. I finally just abandoned it completely for about 10 years. In the meantime, I had built my shop, and moved it from my basement to the shop, but still didnt work on it.
Some of you have met my best friend, Neil. He attended the first VT Power Wagon Rally and has come to one since. Pretty good for a dyed in the wool Chevy slash hod rod guy. When he saw the TR3a, he looked it all over, and said, we need to look at this beautiful paint as really expensive primer. He explained how we needed to cut a bunch of welds and shift and shuck things around to make things line up. We set up a time and he came over and we did just that. It was really hard to bring myself to do it but there was no other way. The rear of the passenger door was the worst fit place. The body guy must have had a real problm with that because when we went to take it apart there we found bondo over 3/4" thick there. And this was with all new panels. WOW! We were able to move things around quite a bit, and got the bondo area way thinner, although there is still bondo in that area. I continued on for a while, and got all of the body panels fitted. Other things came along and it sat again for a few more years. The winter before last, I had some time between construction projects and got a ton more work done on it. However, over the years my taste has changed, and it is Power Wagons I would rather be working on, so the TR3a always took the back seat.
I worked on it some more last winter, mostly because I want to get my M37 project going and it needs to be in the bay that the TR3 takes up.
At the West Virginia Rally, it was announced that the Rally next October will be a Road Rally again. I began thinking, it would be cool to debut the M37 then. But first I had to finish the Triumph. I knew if I moved the TR3a out unfinished I would never get back to it. My wife and Daughter Claire left last Wednesday evening to visit my older Daughter, and came back today. I spent every waking hour I wasnt on a jobsite working on the TR3a, with the goal of substantial completion. At 11:00 last night I was ready to fire her up. This morning I put a battery in her and dripped some gas into the carbs. She fired right up, but would only run with a steady drip of gas into the carbs. I checked and saw that the fuel pump was pumping, eventually she ran on her own. I moved a bunch of stuff from behind the car, opened the garage door, that had not been opened for quite a few years, and drove out into the daylight! I made several runs up and down the driveway, just aching to take it out onto the road, but not quite daring to. Satisfied that it works well enough, I parked it outside while I cleaned out that side of the garage. It started to rain, so I brought her back inside, quite pleased. The feeling was quite like the first ride in a new Power Wagon! So, my next step is to bring the M37 frame out of the unheated storage bay and get started on it. The TR3a will go into the storage bay. So, 11 months from now I will be going nuts trying to get the M37 done! I dont think I have enough life left to keep the 20 year plan going!
Well, sorry for the long winded story, but hey, it was 20 years in the making!
Thanks
Tim
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