My TR7’s in 2025

One final look back on 2025 from a TR7 point of view, before 2026 is well and truly upon us. Starting with the repairs of the DHC’s body. Below are a few shots of the work done so far. More in the relevant blogposts;

Early in the year the original body shell of that car saw the light of day again,

after many years of storage in the shed.

Ready for the next chapter in this car’s life and a new beginning!

After paint removal and shot blasting.

The repairs of the right hand sill and rear wing edge.

Rear of the right hand cabin floor section.

Left hand sill repairs.

Rear right hand suspension pick up points.

Next car in line for some attention was the 1976 TR7. Actually looking back not much work was done to this car (proof HERE!). But there has been some progress. Starting with a few small interior jobs.

Refurbishing and fitting the early style roof mounted interior light.

Fitting the gear-lever-gaiter-finisher to the gear-lever-gaiter.

It wasn’t as straight forward as it looks because I wanted the top of the

gear-lever-gaiter to be folded inside by a few millimetres to give a nicer finish.

Reassembling and mounting the steering column.

Always nice putting nice shining parts back on a car!

Than there was the business off redoing the gearbox extension because

my first attempt turned out not to be thorough enough. I think it is now.

And swapping the mounting hardware for the brake

balance pressure reducing valve for some nicer items.

Later in the year I had a go at fitting the ill-fitting but very nicely refurbished repro parcel shelf to the car. Needed an extra pair of hands to complete this job. But well worth the effort. And with the parcel shelf in place the boot trim could be finished:

But most of my Triumph time was spent on ‘t Kreng. Starting with another water pump replacement earlier in the year, after which the car was used as much as possible.

So far this pump has been pretty fine, with only a few very tiny leaks from time. But that is nothing to worry too much about with a graphite drag seal. These can always leak a tiny bit. So the most worrying bit is the lack of time to use the car on a regular basis. And thus preventing oxidation starting on the water pumps sealing surface. Which in turn can start another leak. But I did my best, covering exactly 2750 kilometres since fitting the new pump in the second half of April 2025. With the last drive just over a week ago:

End I reached an important milestone with this car. The car's odometer is around the clock for the second time in its life! Sadly at the moment the roads are covered in rock salt to prevent icing. So the next drive will be “somewhere” in 2026!

FHC resto nr. 174; Finishing boot trim

With the rear bulkhead panel and the parcel shelf fitted to the car I was able to finish the boot. Which meant fitting the two small rectangular trim panels against the back of the parcel shelf, and the trim panel in the right hand wing. These hadn’t been fitted to help access to the wiring while fitting the parcel shelf. And it turned out that the nuts for the rear mounting points off the parcel shelf were much easier to access this way. Call it foresight!

Despite that it was a bit of a struggle. Especially aligning the overlapping mounting holes of the left hand wing and rear bulk head panels with the hole in the body. Certainly not helped by the fact that I applied a self-adhesive flocked covering to the panels. And thus adding some extra thickness. Luckily I had a few longer non-standard plastic (drive) fasteners lying around to bridge the extra thickness!

Another problem that reared its ugly head was the shape of the trim panel for the right hand rear wing. That didn’t fit at all. It clearly was for a later car were there is more room in front of the shroud around the fuel filler neck. Luckily that was easy to rectify with a pair of heavy duty scissors.

Also used the opportunity to trial fit/check the position of the centre arm rest. It looks like the rear mounting holes align quite nicely. Though the carpet around the front of the arm rest needs some tiny rectifications before the arm rest and centre console can be fitted. But that should be easy!

FHC resto nr. 173; Choosing the back axle

While spending time in the shed over the past few days I also used the opportunity to select a back axle for the ’76 car. The choice was between one 3.90:1 CWP axles and three 3.45:1 CWP axles. As the original Dolomite Sprint uses a 3.45:1 diff ratio and I really like that ratio on a quick touring car (fitted to the DHC) the choice was narrowed down to three axles. Partly inspired because I want to keep the 3.90:1 axles for ‘t Kreng! So the choice was narrowed down to three;

• CL 11314: from a European spec. Solihull FHC with 72.492 km on the odometer;
• CL 11955: from a European spec. Solihull FHC with 87.173 km on the odometer;
• CL 12290: from a California PI spec. Solihull DHC with 71.823 km on the odometer;

Turned out the choice was pretty easy as there was one axle with absolutely no noticeable play or back lash. This one, and the first one in the list above:

It didn’t look very good from the outside at first glance. But on closer inspection and after it was cleaned a bit, it turned out all the “outside” hardware was in very good condition.

Next job will be attacking the outside with a selection of wire brushes on my angle grinder, followed by a rust converter, primer and satin gloss black paint.

FHC resto nr. 172; Fitting the parcel shelf

One of those tasks that has been haunting me for several years now: installing the aftermarket fiberglass- parcel shelf. And it's been even longer since it was beautifully covered by the late Lambert Craenen, a local old school car upholsterer.

So I'd decided to tackle this job during my current holiday and install it. So, full of good spirits, I headed to the shed last Monday! But after a few frustrating hours, I had to admit my defeat and throw in the towel. The fit of the parcel shelf was so poor that I couldn't install it on my own: While trying to align the front of the parcel shelf with the mounting holes, it went wrong. I had to stretch the shelf so much that it put too much strain on the four screws securing it to the rear to the body underneath the rear window. The result was that all four screws including the plastic distance pieces, were pulled cleanly out of their respective mounting holes. Time to call in the help of a good friend and come up with a solution to fit the shelf.

In the end we decided to tackle the problem with long flat Allen headed M5 bolts together with longer distance pieces for the rear mount. The lower front edge was fitted using the original mounting method. It still was a bit of a struggle to get everything in place, but we manged it in the end. And it was well worth the effort, as the pictures in this post prove. Special thanks go to Jos for assisting me today!

FHC resto nr. 171; A few rectifications

It’s six months since I last worked on the ’76 car. And as you can read in my blog, there are several reasons for this: ‘t Kreng's water pump, the work on the DHC, and my regular work of course. But with a few weeks holiday ahead of me I decided it would be nice if I could finish the rear of the car’s interior. Time to pull the cover of the car and start to work. But first there were a few (small) jobs that needed rectifying. Starting with the mounting hardware for the brake balance pressure reducing valve. While fitting the steering column I found out I had used the wrong bolt to fit the valve. It was the bolt for the column’s G-clamp, which is longer than the one for the valve. As I had prepared only one bolt of the correct length it was taken from the valve and used on the steering column. But that meant I needed to prepare new fasteners for the valve. Luckily I had a few rusty spares lying around. And with the help of a friend’s blasting cabinet, a blow torch and a small container filled with oil, it was blackened and fitted. Looks quite nice.

Next job that needed rectifying were four small holes in the cabin floor. These needed their rubber plugs fitted. Something I forgot when I fitted the sound deadening pads almost 10 years ago. First Idea was to just open up the holes and insert the blanking plugs. But that didn’t work. The combination of the steel panel, the underbody protection and the sound deadening pads was too thick to fit the blanking plugs. Time to borrow a professional (and very sharp) hollow punch set from a friend to remove the sound deadening pads around the holes. These punches are designed to cut through material when hit with a (big) hammer. Not a good idea on steel panels. But being very sharp punches, they could cut through the sound deadening by simply pushing and turning them through the sound deadening pads. This way a ring was cut loose from the sound deadening pads. And this remaining ring could then be removed quite easily using a pen knife and a small sharp screw driver. And this removed enough material for the blanking plugs to be fitted. Some clear wax oil was used for rust protection.

The last correction concerned the carpet over the transmission tunnel. When I fitted it over the 2024 Christmas period, I wasn’t impressed in the way the carpet ballooned coming down from the top of the transmission tunnel. So I decided to use some fancy high strength “gecko” tape to glue the carpet to the top and the sides of the transmission tunnel. And this worked very well. And it enabled me to perforate the carpet to fit the plastic carpet protector and the mounting bolts for the seats.

The last tasks for this productive afternoon were the preparations for mounting the parcel shelf. A job I've been putting off for a while now, because I'm afraid I'll make a mistake with the dimensions for the holes I need to drill. Measure three times, drill once! The fact that the guy who covered the parcel shelf has died since he delivered this quite nice job, didn’t help! Also checked and corrected the sound deadening panel I made and which fits between the parcel shelf and the rear window. More on that later!

FHC resto nr. 170; Fitting the steering column

Another job that needed redoing was coating the steering column’s outer tube. Actually I had to find a spare one as the original item that was powder coated got seriously distorted in the process. And with only one part to do I decided on a traditional line of approach: Cleaning the dirt from the tube and bead blasting it. After which I used primer and satin black paint from rattle-cans to coat it. Looks quite good for a piece that will be completely hidden from view!

Next stage was rather straightforward; fitting the two new steering column bearing bushes to both ends of the tube and adding the steering shaft to the outer tube. Decided to use a silicon based bearing grease as lubricant between the bushes and the steering shaft. Feels quite tight but also very smooth. Will see ones the car is back on the road!

Final jobs were fitting the steering/ignition lock and fitting everything to the car. Though while fitting the lock mechanism to the outer tube I found out that I prepared four Allen head bolts with an incorrect thread to replace the original shear bolts. I thought they were metric M8. But they were 5/16”. First idea was to drill out the holes and use a metric thread repair to get the necessary M8 thread. But I decided to try out a little bodge first. Changing the 5/16” thread with a M8 tap. The result was actually far better than expected, with smooth threads. And I could even torque down the bolts pretty tight without stripping the new threads. And much tighter compared with the original shear bolts which still had their shear heads in place. So more than good enough for a non-structural part!

The two M10 Allen head bolts, I prepared for mounting the steering column to the support rail, were a perfect fit. So no issues there.