FHC resto nr. 18; Ahead of shedule

Or always look on the bright side of life ...

I received a phone call on Monday from the guy who's doing the interior. As he was using my interior parts  as stop gap work my first reaction was to ask if there was something wrong. There wasn't, he just wanted to tell me everything was ready for collection. Slightly ahead of my personal schedule. He also told me he was rather pleased with the work which of course made me very eager to pick up everything as soon as possible.

So after I finished servicing 't Kreng in preparation for Club Triumphs Border Raiders next weekend, I went over to pick up the re-trimmed interior parts. And I have to admit he was quite right about his work. Everything looks lovely, but being rather bright you probably either love it or hate it. The most important or big bits ...

But the in my opinion the best part is the parcel shelf. Here he has managed to cover the rather rough GRP surface  very well. And hopefully this way the covering will stay in place!

And after I return from Club Triumph's Border Raiders Tour this weekend the body shell will be moved ones again. This time for its final stage, paint preparations and painting.

Fame at last ...

The cover of the July edition of Club Triumph's magazine ...

Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised.

FHC resto nr. 17; Start of the paint preparations

With the welding and panel work finished the car was again dropped of at Habraken Straalbedrijf for final shot blasting and coating with an epoxy primer less than two weeks ago.

And today it was time to pick up the body, ready for its next stage, the paint preparations. And with all panels in one colour it starts to look like a car again. The pictures speak for themselves.

To be continued ...

Another MOT and switch panel V_2

Took an important hurdle in the preparation for the Border Raiders Tour in just over two weeks from now. The car for the event ('t Kreng) has a new MOT. Was again rather straightforward, only the track rod ends needed replacing. And that wasn't much of a surprise, two years ago they had developed a little play but not enough for a fail. Probably caused by the fact that both dust covers were torn. Two years on the play had developed, and now it was just enough for a fail. Luckily the owner of the work shop I use for testing the TR7's owns a few wedges himself so he still stocks some NOS parts for them. And he happened to have a pair of new track rod ends on the shelves.

So 15 minutes later the car could be checked out at the central computer from the RDW (the Dutch equivalent of the DVLA). And as the dust covers were still in pretty good condition they were stored for future use.

With a new certificate in the pocket I started some not very necessary work on the car. During the Wales Tour in early May one of the Club Triumph members pointed me to the German company Schaeffer AG, who produce one off switch panels. And as the switch panel I put in the car some 8 years ago was starting to deteriorate, I decided to give them a try. Luckily I still had the AutoCad file which I used than, so that was used as a starting point. And after little more than an hour (including downloading their design/ordering software) the order was placed. Was very impressed when only 5 days later a little package arrived, containing the panel. And very impressed with the quality of the panel ...

So as a treat for the car I installed the new panel today. As I am still working on a complete new lay out for the car's interior this panel is meant as a trial version, it might have to make way for something completely different when I start in earnest on 't Kreng V_2.

FHC resto nr. 16; Welding done

Last Tuesday I received a phone call from the guy who's doing the body repairs. He was looking for the exact measurement for fitting the lower front lip. Decided to drop of one of my spare spoilers at his place next day, as I was in the area because of another restoration related appointment. I had to drop of the interior trim panels and seats of for recovering ...

For the interior work we agreed on a rather loose schedule (ready before Christmas :-) as he is a pensioner and only works when he feels up to it. And as they are a lot of smaller items he can use them as stop gap work!

After dropping of the interior parts, I went over to see how the body work was progressing. Turned out that the progress was going pretty well, the work was almost finished. Time for another inspection of the work done so far. This is where I left last week, the passenger foot well. Solid again:

A perfect fit between nose panel and left hand front wing (and yes the spoiler does fit quite nicely. In case I will fit it to the car that is):

Right hand wheel arch:

The nose section:

Some small patch repairs in the engine bay. Mainly to get rid of some beginning rot behind the engine mount strengthening plate:

And an overview from beneath of the repairs of the boot floor:

Only the left hand front wing and the driver's door remained. The doors chosen so far for this side all turned out to be either too far gone through rust or the window frame was bent so badly it couldn't be rectified properly. In the end we settled for the driver's door that came of the DHC whilst dealing with the paint problems some two years ago. As the door-skin needed removal to fit the window frame, it was possible to remove any remaining chemicals from the door frame properly. We just had to weld on the window frame we removed from one of the rotten doors, and fit a new door skin ...

But before hammering down the skins outer edge, the door was fitted with the skin loosely attached to check the alignment and panel gaps. As you can see a pretty decent fit ...

Only the top of the front edge needed a small correction.

As you can see in the picture above the top of the skin curves backwards to much. And as the body man wants parallel shut gaps, the hammer and dolly were taken out for some rectification and to hammer down the edges. Remained the left hand front wing. With the outer wing clamped in place it was obvious that the inner wing needed a little persuasion to give a proper fit:

But as with the other side the alignment with the nose panel and panel gap between wing and door is spot on:

So a few hours after the last pictures were taken the body work was finished. And last Thursday I picked up the car, ready for the next stage. Not bad, bearing in mind it was only away for 6 weeks ...

The body will hopefully be returned to Habraken soon for final shot blasting and coating with an epoxy primer. All in preparation for the next stage: paint preparations.