Original Restoration

Pictures from the original restoration

The road to the restoration of my TR6 began sometime in 1990 as I was having dinner with my wife and talk wistfully about someday wanting to buy and restore a Triumph TR6. Her response was "Well, if you're going to do it you should do it now before we have kids". The light had suddenly and unexpectedly turned green and I was off to the races. I promptly forgot everything I knew about buying a car and ended up buying what turned out to be almost a complete basket case. Remember that old adage about buying a car with good bones instead of good mechanicals? Well, I ignored that completely (even though I knew better) and proceeded to buy what you see below.

The car's interior was out (but complete), there were holes in the rockers and the floors were non-existent. However, the car came with new floor pans and rockers from a rust-free car. Should be easy to just swap them out...right? Then I accidentally put my hand through the inner fender well in the trunk on the driver's side. From there I realized that nothing from the doors back on the car was solid. I needed a new body tub and was in for a total restoration instead of what I thought was just replacing the floors. Oh to be young and completely clueless again :)

Now I finally came to my senses and spent the better part of 2 months searching the country for a well priced body tub to import. In retrospect I should probably have just scrapped this rust bucket and started from scratch looking for a new car but...young and stupid. Finally I found a rust free tub, fenders and frame down in Austin Texas. No interior, no drive train, just the body and frame. The guy had a friend who was coming up here to pick up another car so he transported it to me very cheaply. That car was disassembled and the body was sent off to be dipped to remove all paint, bondo, etc. Here's what my new body looked like when I got it back.

The car did indeed turn out to be completely rust free, just a little bent in a few places. With the 2 damaged body panels replaced, I now had a completely rust free body tub (and fenders) to work with. All parts of the body were primed in a zinc chromate primer and all seams were resealed with a high quality seam sealer. Here's the body tub after being primed.

I can't claim to have done the body work myself so, while the body was being primed and given its initial top coats I set to work on the frame. The frame was also dipped to strip all paint down to the bare metal.

Once the frame was stripped I ran rust inhibitive paint through the interior and painted the exterior with Black Magic paint from Bill Hirsch. This paint is very flexible and impervious to nearly everything, including brake fluid. I recommend it highly but be aware, its a pain in the butt to work with. I stripped and cleaned every part of the frame and suspension, rebuilt the suspension with all new bushings, rebuilt the wheel cylinders and put everything back together. Here are some shots of the completed frame and drivetrain.

With the frame done, the body tub painted and the initial top coats of paint on the doors/fenders it was time to start putting things back together. The body was put back on the frame, electrical system put back in, door glass reinstalled, etc. Once the mechanicals were all back in place I took the car out for a quick spin or 2 around the block just to make sure things basically worked. I honestly don't recall why I decided to do it this way but it worked out OK.

With the car basically complete mechanically and the initial top coat of paint on the car it was time to send it back to the paint shop to have the front fenders, hood and trunk installed. Following that, final top coats of paint followed by final buff and polish on the paint. Almost there...or so I thought (queue evil foreboding music). The car went back to the body shop where front fenders were installed, a final top coat was shot on the body (sans hood and trunk lid) and then the body shop, the car and the body shop owner disappeared! It took me 2 weeks to track down my car. A friend of mine and I went up into Wisconsin early one morning, loaded the car and the trunk lid onto a trailer and brought it back to my house. The hood was nowhere to be found but that was the only piece I was missing. I found out later that other customers never saw their cars again. To this day I have no idea where the body shop owner went or where he is today. Here's what I had in my garage after I recovered the car.

Sooo...I bought a new old stock bonnet from TRF, took it, the trunk lid and the car to a new body shop and had them finish the paint/buffing work. To this day I'm not thrilled with the paint work but I'm not sure anyone but me would see its flaws. The bumpers were not rechromed because I was out of money. Once I had it all together and painted I had a car that looked pretty darned good in my opinion.

The total time for the restoration was somewhere between 2 and three years from initial purchase to the drivable car you see above. Since this point I've replaced the interior with a new interior and rechromed everything except the side mirror. I also ended up replacing the wire wheels with steel wheels because the wires were simply worn out and could not be balanced.

Here's a pic of the car today. More pics can be found here: TR6 Pictures