FHC resto nr. 111; Striping

With my holidays almost over I returned to the shed for a job that has been postponed several times in the past year. Fitting the striping to be precise. Early in the year I decided to remove the striping from the bonnet and change the pieces for the wings. Sadly though a friend who has the gear to cut the new items had run out of black self-adhesive foil. As it is easier to apply all parts in one go, I decided to wait with applying the remaining striping parts and decals till everything was ready. Fast forward 7 months and the new stock of black foil still hasn’t arrived! So I reversed the decision, and went to the shed armed with kettle, washing liquid and other household stuff. And the various parts for the striping of course.

I decided to start with the striping for the right hand rear wing. After washing off any dirt or dust, de-greasing and applying some soapy water the striping was put in place. Aligning went pretty smoothly. When I “designed” the striping, I used the door handles and the top of the door running parallel with the door handles as datum lines. With the stripe running in a straight line, parallel to these lines, from the rear wing to the front of the door.

With the stripe correctly positioned it was time to get an old ID card and the hairdryer out. And with most off the water rubbed from underneath the foil, it was time to gently pull off the backing foil. And that’s where it went wrong! I wanted to work from back to front, so the bottom of the downward part would remain in place and any stretch could be dealt with at the door gap. But whatever I tried the backing foil in that area refused to come of the striping. And working from the other side immediately stretched the two thin outer stripes. A long story short: Waste bin 1 – Car 0!

Normally at this point you walk away from the job for a while. Sadly that doesn’t work when you’re working in a shed, away from home. So the only option left was to carry on with the remaining pieces. Just to be sure it wouldn’t happen again, I cut the backing foil right back to the striping. And hoped for the best. Though slightly nerve racking, this time the initial plan worked. Hooray!

Only three items left. Next in line was the striping for the bonnet. I fitted that already a few years ago. But then I noticed that one of the two stripes wasn’t fitted perfectly. So that needed rectifying! And as these pieces were much smaller they were far easier to handle and apply. (sorry, I should have taken a picture with the bonnet up 😜)

That left me with one final piece, and also the smallest. A small “SPRINT” decal. This is actually a left over from one of the door stripes. But I thought it would look good on the boot lid. For its position I followed the dimensions for the “TRIUMPH” boot lid decal of the later Canley and Solihull cars. And of course the early “TRIUMPH TR7” decal (with a twist) already in place. So now you don’t have to overtake me to know what’s under the bonnet 😁.

That leaves me with the job of producing the stripes for the front wings and the right hand rear wing of course. With some spare decals thrown in. And a different font for the TR7 on the rear wing. See how that looks in real life. Hopefully to be continued very soon!

Back to my regular work tomorrow. It was a productive month! 

FHC resto nr. 110; More small jobs

Or should I say that I entered the end-of-my-holidays-frenzy! At least I managed to complete a few more small jobs on the car.

To start with the interior light armature. I sourced that from the shed over 4 years ago, with the idea to clean it and fit it to the car in the then near future. Sadly life intervened in a negative way. Fast forward and last Sunday I was going through the small parts littering my study. As the F1 Grand Prix of Russia had finished, and the weather was rather wet, I thought it a good idea to clean the armature. As I had found a few extra spares in the past years, I decided on a little cleaning experiment.

To get rid of the oxidation I dropped the armature for 15 minutes in a lukewarm solution of cleaning vinegar, rock salt and water. Turned out to work quite well as the picture below illustrates

Another job that had been haunting me was the boot light switch. The very early original item (606239) got lost during the move of all my parts from René’s place to the shed. At first I didn’t think much about it as I had enough of the later switches. And that is when I found out that the later switches wouldn’t fit. Also the early left hand boot hinge I had prepared turned out to be missing its welded on tab to activate the switch. Time for a rethink!
So one of the items that were picked up after powder coating was the part of the boot lid hinge from a later car that bolts to the bottled. And I found out that I had a freshly galvanised tab between the coated parts! So these were fitted together.

After which it was time to remove the left hand hinge from the boot lid and replace it without damaging the paint work. It took me almost an hour but I succeeded. Also managed to fit a later type switch. Although it works I am not very impressed with the fit. Luckily it is mostly hidden from view! Though I will probably have a go at adapting it to get a slightly better fit …

And the final job for a day well spent in the shed was fitting the door strikers. The driver’s side went rather smoothly.

Though I have some doubts about the right hand (passenger side) latch. With the latch fully engaged there is a fair amount of free movement. Which isn’t there on the driver’s side. Looks like I’ll have to fit some door seals first, to see if that changes the matter. I hope so! Otherwise I’ll have to prepare another latch.

FHC resto nr. 109; Front bumper

I picked up the freshly (powder) coated front bumper bar just before the weekend, together with some other parts for the ’76 car and my two other TR7’s. As ever the quality of the work done by Habraken in Best was spot on.

And today I spent a few hours in the shed. So after about 30 minutes of careful work (I didn't want to break another cover!), the covers were fitted to the bumper bar.

The anoraks already will have counted 6 cover retaining plates (ZKC2251) instead of the official number of 4, as stated in the parts manual. But as you can see, there are also no studs in the corner cover. And no sign there ever were! So I used an extra retainer plate to keep this cover in position.

I could have fitted the bumper to the car, as I did with the rear bumper. But that would probably restrict access while fitting the head lights and wiring. So that will be left for another time. 

FHC resto nr. 108; Shot blasting

Yesterday and today I spent some hours on cleaning and shot blasting the remaining alloy parts for the Sprint engine for the car. To start with a few before pictures.

And a few pictures after spending an afternoon at a friend’s workshop and his blasting cabinet. Which was loaded with glass beads. Ideal for alloy parts!

And after fitting some of the zinc plated and (black) passivated parts.

Though I found out a few of the threads in the manifold and timing cover need thread repairs, as the original threads have been stripped. To be continued …