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.
