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.

Not the worst...

A few months ago, we decided that we would need help with the bodywork and had contacted Pete at Kustom Restoration Specialties (KRS) about doing bodywork on the Triumph.  (KRS is located in the same lot where we take our cars to get serviced and Pete's british racing green Triumph TR3 is almost always sitting outside.)  Pete kindly offered to drive up to the house to take a look at what we were dealing with.

He stopped by the house a couple of Sundays ago, in his TR3 of course, and took time to walk over the car with us.  He quickly noted what we we knew to be the troubled areas (floor panels, wheel arch areas, etc), but then started pointing out bondo-ed and patched areas we had no idea were present.

A quick squeeze by Pete on the ledge underneath the passenger door revealed to him that that area had been bondo-ed.  (He literally squeezed the panel then tapped on it to figure out that ledge had been bondo-ed and then painted over.)  Using a flashlight to inspect the exterior condition from the inside of the car, he also found that the car was likely in an accident where the rear passenger wheel area had been impacted.  Further inspection revealed to him that the owner of the car at the time had patched the panel in place using pop rivets (rivet tubes were exposed on the inside of the car).

Some more tapping, squeezing, and inspecting by Pete revealed to us that the Triumph had way more bondo on it than we thought.  One thing Pete pointed out was to look for metal seams along the car.  The attachment of body panels at the factory left seams with spot welds that should still be visible under the paint job.  However looking at certain areas of the car (rear driver side light area, body area behind the front wheels), the seams that should have been present were not there - the areas were smoothed out - and those places had been bondo-ed over.  I asked for Pete's assessment of the body condition and he candidly answered that it was not the worst that he has seen.

Also, Pete noted that we should have done the bodywork before fixing up the chassis, since the body needs to be on the chassis during bodywork to make sure the two fit/align correctly.  It is not the end of the world that we did this, but the chassis will be scuffed up a bit as the body is getting worked on, hence, the order should have been restore body first then chassis.

So, in the end, not the worst, but it's definitely much worse than originally thought.  I will try to post some pictures in the new year after we thaw out a bit from all the snow and cold weather.

Slow Going Fall

Fall came and went with us working infrequently on the Triumph and encountering small enough issues that no progress was made (well, some knowledge was built, but no advancements in Triumph repair were made).

An example no progress effort:
When trying to attach the return pipe to the water pump (already attache don the engine), we realized there was some sequencing of installation required to fit the return pipe to the water pump and therefore had to take off the water pump again.  Attempts were made to attach the pipe to the water pump, however the angle of the pipe did not align correctly because a sleeve and adapter fitting that connects the return pipe to the water pump have seized together.  We plan to try torching it this part to see if we can get it  unstuck, but haven't done so yet.

Do not install the water pump without attaching the return pipe to the water pump first.
(Ergo: Do not do what is shown above.)

The return pipe - notice how the end of it is at the wrong angle when fitted into place

Cleaning and painting the differential

Finally worked on something other than the engine - the differential.  I had previously scrubbed and hosed most of the grease off the differential, so today was spent wire brushing, cleaning with denatured alcohol, and applying a coat of paint.

Before wire brushing and cleaning:

After:

While working on the differential, some oil had leaked while i tried to clean/paint the underside of the differential.  I'll need to look a bit more at this later, but for now, differential painted can be checked off on the list of things to do.

Presenting...the Restored Engine

Before we get to the big reveal, this is what the engine looked like before:

...and from the other side.

....drum roll please...

The engine before we attached the intake and exhaust manifolds...

...with the intake and exhaust manifolds (we painted the water pump after we came back from NY).

The repainted bell housing of the transmission:

And last but not least, the engine ready to go back to Massachusetts.

A huge thank you to Fred for hosting us and helping us through the engine restoration.  Without his help, we would probably still be working on the engine for at least a year (or more given my latest track record).

Also, a thank you to Chris for the free manual labor (he did all the heavy lifting) and allowing me to use his truck to haul an engine and transmission across New York.

Cleaning and Painting

There was a lot of cleaning and painting to be done on this trip - valve cover, transmission bell housing, the engine block, ...

Below is a picture of some of the parts needing an exterior refresher...

Below is what the bell housing looked like before.  There was a lot of debris and grease that needed to be wire brushed and kerosene cleaned off.

..and what it looked like after...

After a good scrub done of the engine, I masked off parts that should not be painted and used a brush to paint on black, high heat resistant paint.

Prior to this trip, I had always assumed that you needed to use engine-specific spray paint for the engine block, but after talking to Fred, he had always used generic high heat resistant paint for all his engines and did not have issues.  So if it worked for Fred, I figured it will work for me.


Being able to paint on the paint with a paintbrush meant I did not have to mask off everything, just the edges that were not to be painted (so much easier to prep).  The paintbrush can leave slight brush marks, but with the rough, casted surface of the engine block, you cannot see a difference.  The only place where this is slightly noticeable is the oil pan and you have to get really close to notice this.

I think it came out really well, but you'll have to wait until the next post to see for yourself.  :-)