Well, thought I'd start a resto-mod thread as I thought it would be a good way to track my progress.
But first, a littl back ground on my car. It's a 1500TC and had it for just over two years, I bought it from someone in rugby for the small sum of £380. It had a blown head gasket and a horrible mat black and grey paint job, which was half primer grey and the other half paint brushes matte black. It was kind of a restoration project just getting it road worthy and looking ok. Me and my dad spent a few months getting the engine apart to replace all the bearings and seals which wasn't too hard compared to the next 4 months doing all the body work and interior.
The body work sanding was done by hand, by me, so it took about two months of work to sand off the black paint and to etch the primer that was exposed. My dad had some gear that he used to spray his cars when he restored his cars so he put both the primer coat and the colour layer. the colour I wanted the car was signal red as I thought it was a deep red and looked quite nice but the colour I ended up with was a very bright red, with a black roof as I didn't want to fit a vynle roof cover. It was a nice little motor, ran smooth when off choke and was roomy, but since owning it it's been through 3 head gaskets, 3!!
So after a year, I got into a small accident and crushed the nose so I took it off the road and wanted to do more than just fix the body work and I heard that an MX5 engine near enough drops in and was thinking it would be an easy way to make more power and increase reliably tenfold. And with all the mod support behind the engine would be a good engine to work on when I get bored.
So over all, the parts its been thrown at it:
3 head gaskets
1 front wheel bearing
2 float needles
2 bottles of T-cut
A lot of WD40
EDIT: thread superseded by
https://forum.triumphdolomite.co.uk/vie ... 0d2233468d