Car Restoration is Humbling

I can finally say I am putting the Triumph back together.  It's taken so long to get to this point that I had to stop a moment and take in the view of the Triumph photo on the left for a while to appreciate this step.  All the hours of cleaning, wire brushing, fighting rusty components and now I am actually assembling these parts back together.

I forgot how humbling it is to work on the Triumph - every time where I think things will be straight-forward or easy, the Triumph usually proves me wrong.  I thought re-assembly would be easy except I did not factor that: 1) the powdercoating made holes smaller and fits tighter - in some cases wire brushing off the powdercoating was required, 2) missing bolts/nuts required multiple trips to the local hardware store, then 3) issues with some of the nuts not threading on properly (still not sure what happened here as things did not appear cross threaded, but maybe the new cordless impact wrench I used heated things up and caused issues?) required more trips to the local hardware store for new bolts and nuts.  This whole process took me probably 4x longer than I thought it would.

Eventually, I got to this point.  

I was super happy and pleased with myself to get to this point...except... 

The front suspension creaked, likely really creaked - loudly and obnoxiously - when I swung the assemblies up and down.  Every movement came with this groaning creaking sound that somehow I ignored or brushed off while installing but could no longer ignore now.

I foolishly thought some silicon lubricant spray on all the rotating pieces would do the trick but I barely noticed a difference.  After going through Triumph forum threads, I figured out that the new polyurethane bushings were likely to blame for the creaking sounds.  To make matters worse, it turns out that I should have but grease on the bushing before I installed them...so the thought of possibly going all the way back to reinstalling bushings bummed me out.

In the end, it turned out that the creak sounds were caused by areas where the round flat ends of the polyurethane bushing rotated against the powdercoated chassis or powdercoated pivot assemblies.  I used white lithium grease (was hoping to use something more heavy duty, but Amazon lost my package and this is what the local hardware store had) and rubbed it on all the surfaces that were causing the creaks.  While I was at it, I applied anti-seize to surfaces/contact areas that look suspect to rusting that I should have done the first time but only thought about it halfway through the first go around at this.  

...and now I am back to what is shown in the photo above AND without creaks.

8 years, 5 months, and 23 days

It's been 8 years, 5 months, and 23 days since I last posted and it's been about 8 years exactly since I last did anything with the Triumph, which was move it to its current location.  In the time that has passed, we moved, picked up new hobbies, said goodbye to Great Uncle Fred (who helped us restore the engine), got another dog, put down our other 2 dogs, had our first kid and the Triumph sat in the garage like this while more and more things piled around it.

Now as we wait for the arrival of our second child, I have been motivated to try and work a bit on the Triumph before we go on another hiatus.  (Hopefully not for 8 years this time, but maybe 2 years or so.)  

My goal is to get the chassis back to a rolling form by mid-Fall - assembling the front and rear suspension and steering.  I think I have found all the components since they were stored everywhere after the move (8 years ago...) and ordered some key items from Moss Motors.  Previously, I had ordered from Victoria British and I was sad to see that they had gone away.

Also, I have been impressed by the amount of information available on YouTube now regarding restoration.  There are so many good channels with a wealth of information on how to restore cars (Elin Yakov's Rusty Beauties, Vortex Garage, Chris Fisher, Rimmer Bros, Eastwood, Upholstery Tips etc.).  So I am hopeful that I might be able to pull off this project eventually.

That's it for now.  Hopefully I'll have an update in the not too distant future.