The Triumph Dolomite Club - Discussion Forum

1 sleep, Alan

Sleep? What's that? <---- Alan @ 3.00am.

It's Saturday morning, have you got it yet?

_________________
Sprintless for the first time in 35+ years. ... Still Sprintless.

Engines, Gearboxes, Overdrives etc. rebuilt. PM me.


1997 TVR Chimaera 450

OH YES!!!













Loads more of how it was done to follow....

WOW! That looks excellent Alan, looking forward to seeing the rest of the photos.

_________________
Sprintless for the first time in 35+ years. ... Still Sprintless.

Engines, Gearboxes, Overdrives etc. rebuilt. PM me.


1997 TVR Chimaera 450

Looks fabulous!..

Nice car Alan

Cheers fellas.

It really is superb, Frank (the guy who did the work) obviously enjoyed working on the car (he was beeming as much as I was) and he went the extra mile for me and did a few other bits that he spotted (which I knew about).

The fresh new Honeysuckle paint really pops out at you, it looks superb, the doors fit nicely, the standard of work is probably better than the factory as more time and effort was spent doing each indivdual bits.

All repairs (and those doors) were injected with wax after work had finished so it should last (so no need for me to do it ).

I feel an emotional wreck I tell you.

Once I have come down off of the ceiling I'll start uploading the pictures of the work that was done.

Meh.... Looks alright I suppose!

Simply amazing Alan, and well worth whatever amount of cash you had to put Uncle's way to achieve that result.

I'm all Honeysuckled out today.

What type of derustification treatment did you settle for in the end?

I didn't John as Frank had already injected the car before I collected him. Another job saved.

After collecting the car I took him for a good spin around the country roads, managed to catch up with a Herald 13/60 Convertible which I followed for a mile or so. Very nice.

WOW Alan, It's STUNNING

Regards

Darren

_________________
1974 Triumph 1500TC In Maple Brown, (MABLE) GGN 647N
1968 Triumph Vitesse Saloon 2L MK2 Not for the faint hearted, mega restoration
1973 Triumph Spitfire In Mimosa

Beautiful. Such a lovely, understated colour.

_________________
1959 TR3A, 1970 Triumph 1300, 1974 Toledo
Thanks Photobucket

Now that's what I call good service! Small wonder he has clients from all over Europe.

Yes mate I'm very lucky to have him living so close to me.

Anyway......

Roof overhang repairs;

First was to cut out around the holes and then mark out the exact same parts from the donor roof section.




Next up was to drop part of the roof lining, remove rear screen and prepare for welding in these sections.





Next was to weld in the new sections .



Biggest problem here was that the localised heat can cause distortion to the main roof panel, a barrier of cold wet cloths was applied to try to keep the heat from running away.

One did get a little distorted but was bought back into line by shrinking the metal manually.

Then grind the repairs flat.






You can see that the original flange that the clips were attached to has now been re established



I was lucky in that the donor section trim clips were in excellent order so these were used again.

However, the clips on the C pillar section were too far gone for re-use from both cars so the trim was chemically bonded to this section. Again wax has been run down the join between the roof and trim section to protect it for the future.

What I particularly like here is all the new metal that was added was genuine Triumph metal from the donor car.

Great stuff, I'm a little surprised that an old pro would use wet cloths rather than welding heatsoak putty, such as Cold Front, since he's making extra work for himself there; but the finished result is what matters there, and it looks pretty darned good from where I'm sitting.

With repair work of that standard, you should get many more years of regular use out of the old boy before he needs more restoration.