As the Gambler sang: “You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run”. Over the course of my 19 years of TR4 ownership I knew none of these things.
But first the backstory; If you know me at all you will know that I’m very imprinted on cars that I was exposed to during my childhood. In elementary school my best friend was named Jeff, and his mother had a TR3 for her summer daily driver. I’d occasionally catch a ride in it, growling along with my elbow over that cut down door was about the coolest thing going for a 10 year old sports car fan.
This isn’t the actual car, but it looked just like this. Source: etceterini.com Jerry Melton 1965 photo
During the 1960’s Jeff’s father had raced a TR4 at Harewood Acres and Mosport, but by the mid-1970s the red TR4 lay derelict in their back yard. Jeff didn’t pay it much heed, but I was intrigued…
Fast forward 12 years, I was taking a summer calculus course at University and commuting from my Uncle’s farm. As I came off the highway and drove down the boulevard to school there it was, a shiny red TR4 for sale at the side of the road with $1,100 on the windshield. I stopped, of course. The guy came out of his house as I was looking and the first thing he said was “It needs a lot of work”. It started and ran (badly) and although this would have been a good time to “know when to walk away”, being the suave negotiator that I was I offered him eleven hundred dollars.
After promising my ever patient parents that this was the last car I would buy while still in school, Dad helped me get it home with our faithful Impala and a U-Haul trailer.
My original plan was to fix what needed fixing and get it on the road as soon as possible. Dad suggested we have a mechanic check it out to determine what it needed, and it turned out to need EVERYTHING.
Despite the hand I had dealt myself I decided to hold. I began with the front suspension, disassembled it completely, had the front of the frame sandblasted and placed the first of many, many parts orders with Moss Motors.
Luckily my summer job was delivery driver for an industrial tool supply company, and the owner took pity and let me buy quality tools at a discounted price.
Unluckily, I no longer had an automotive mentor in my life. In childhood I’d done a pretty good job of seeking out and following people who knew how to fix cars, but since we’d moved to suburbia there was nobody to help or guide me. I learned how to gas weld from a book, taught myself to paint with a Wagner power painter, and improvised tools like spring compressors and engine hoists.
Note the absence of seams along the rocker, and at the top of the rear fender.
After the TR4 was back on 4 wheels I took a closer look at the body, and here my real troubles began. Beneath the shiny red paint was the story of a very troubled past. My TR4 had been crashed hard front and back, fixed with lead, crashed again, fixed with bondo, rusted out, then fixed with fibreglass, more bondo, and pop riveted garbage can metal. And then crashed again in the back.
Uh-Oh, I’m officially over my head at this point.
Indeed if you stepped on top of the rocker panel the whole body leaned in, and every seam had been filled and covered over with fibreglass.
After cutting out all the rot I was left with the two battered ends of the body tub, joined by shreds of original metal along the transmission tunnel and rockers. This would have been a good time to “know when to run”, but I ploughed ahead, too stubborn to quit.
I welded, and welded, had my tanks refilled, flipped the body over in the driveway and kept welding. I beat out the distortion caused by my inept skills. I later bought a MIG welder which was faster and created less heat distortion. New outer rockers came from Moss, but everything else was scratch bent over Dad’s workbench.
Tearing down the stout four cylinder engine the internals looked good, and many parts had been match marked, so it had been rebuilt at some point.
Cleaned up motor hanging from home-built engine hoist
The head wasn’t great, and I found a rebuilt replacement from an ad in the local paper. The seller turned out to be my old friend Jeff’s father, reducing his parts stash as their TR3 had also been off the road for years.
For a long time the TR4 was spread over both bays of my parents’ two car garage. Work progressed in furious spurts when I was home, then stalled for months while I was away at school. Finally the edict came down that I had to at least put it together enough so that it took up only half the garage, and my focus shifted from restoration to reassembly.
When I began to rehang the body panels I was horrified to discover that I had not braced the body tub adequately during the floor repairs, and that with all my cutting, welding, bashing and shifting the body was now a good half inch shorter than it used to be. Even without weather-stripping the doors barely scraped into their apertures, and the bottoms of the rear fenders significantly overlapped the back edges of the doors.
I also came to the realization that I now had over $6,000 in the car. This was depressing for two reasons: First, because I was still a long way from having a functional TR4, and second because at the time you could buy a pretty decent Triumph for that amount of money. I continued my work, albeit with diminishing enthusiasm and dwindling progress. A few years later Mrs DougD and I bought our first house, and my parents watched with glee as the TR4 finally departed on a flatbed. After twelve years they could now park a car in their own garage.
I stuffed the Triumph into my own single garage, and got on with my increasingly busy life while the TR4 became covered in boxes. In 2006 I came to my senses and took stock of the situation. The TR4 was in one piece, it ran and you could sort of drive it but it was nowhere near complete. Some of my later repairs were quite good, but I now judged my early workmanship to be woefully inadequate. What the car really needed was to be torn down again, the whole middle section cut out and started over with everything properly aligned. I just couldn’t face that prospect and decided to fold.
This is an actual ad I wrote up for a British Car Swap Meet – It didn’t work…
Selling the TR4 was difficult too, not only did it mean admitting to myself that I’d given up, but I knew I’d be taking a bath on my investment. I also found out that the Triumph had somehow been registered with an additional digit in the VIN, and it took an expensive letter from the British Motor Heritage Trust and a lot of arguing at the MOT office to get the paperwork corrected.
After several months of me scaring away sellers by telling them the above story, one gentleman looked at the car, and just when I thought he’d get back into his Range Rover and scurry off like all the others he said, “I’ll take it.”
And so it was gone. I’d spent untold hours, lost three quarters of my money, and had driven it only a few times around the block. But was it a complete fail?
One day Mom had brought me coffee while I was welding. I shut the torches off and slumped back against the smoking ruin of my dreams, coffee in hand. Looking up at my Mother I moaned, “Oh Mom, why am I doing this?”
Her reply; “Well, it’s cheaper than therapy.”
So yeah, the Triumph kept me out of trouble, and busy during periods of my life when I needed to be busy. I mostly enjoyed working on it and I learned a lot about what to do, and what not to do as well. Amortized over 19 years my loss only amounted to $240 annually, which isn’t so bad in the grand scheme of things.
So ultimately I was able to extract a small amount of Triumph from a huge disaster.
$240 a year to learn car restoration was money well spent Doug.Thanks for a good read and you’ve more skill and enthusiasm than me.I took the easy way,my cars weren’t really classics then, just old cars.I always bought a good runner in good condition and tried to keep on top of it.
In 1974, I bought a 1960 TR3 and after a slow start my restoration story followed this story….somewhat.
It helps, sort of, to find out I’m not the only one who (occasionally?) get’s in over their head with a car, invests too much time and money, and then reluctantly sells it. And to make matters worse, I keep looking for a LBC so I can do it again. Luckily, they are now few and far between.
I know the feeling, as I went thru the same thing. Only, in my case, we’re talking a 1969 Triumph T120R Bonneville. Bought it in 1992 from the guy who was the Triumph dealer in Johnstown when Meriden was still turning out bikes. Learned a lot of mechanics over the next fifteen years keeping it on the road – a daily driver with antique plates. And, my cafe racer, in true rocker fashion.
Unfortunately, in the last five years, the bike started nagging about a promised complete frame-up restoration that had been promised to it years earlier. And I started really losing interest in wrenching vintage motorcycles, having rediscovered my love of vintage bicycles in that time. Some time was bought when an old mechanic friend of mine with long experience in vintage British finally quit working for local motorcycle shops and opened his own shop (G6 Motosports in Mechanicsville, VA). Spring of 2013, the Bonnie finally got the new Amal carburetors I’d promised it since day one.
And on the first ride to try it out, promptly puked its electrics. Now, I’d never really had trouble with Lucas and considered the stories to be grossly overblown, but upon taking it back to Ron’s shop it got obvious that we’re now talking replacing the wiring harness. And that degree of teardown meant that I should start looking at doing that complete restoration. Which I neither had the money for (still was cleaning up my late wife’s medical bills) nor the skills to do on my own.
On to Craigslist, and in short order found exactly what I was looking for – someone who wanted to do a ground-up restoration back to original specs, and was looking for a solid bike to start with. Bye, bye, Pidge and I was now out of the antique motorcycle hobby.
For the moment – I may be picking up a 1983 Yamaha Venture Royale next weekend.
Glancing nervously towards garage where partially disassembled 71 Alfa Spider resides
I did not read this article
I did not read this article
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You’ve got vintage Italian. Which means its going to be a degree or so easier than vintage British. Courage man, get in there and get working!
That’s right:
American: SAE wrenches
Japanese and continental Europe: metric wrenches
British: who knows what fits!
My TR 3 was all SAE except for the twin SU carbs.
And the fuel pump , the wiper motor and lots of other odd bits one usually doesn’t fiddle with .
=8-) .
FWIW , in 1956 BMC made a big effort to change most everything to SAE .
-Nate
And at least you’re not dealing with the BSA/Triumph late 60’s nightmare. Due to a badly handled standardization of threads, bikes of that era were a combination of SAE, metric and Whitworth.
Wow Doug, that was great! I am convinced that your parents and Dave Saunders wife must be related, more patient and understanding people are hard to come by…12 years without use of the garage…!
The car looks great in all of the pictures (well, ok, not the upside down one with the huge rocker holes) and illustrates the one overwhelming failing of the Internet, that being the fact that no picture of a used car in an advertisement is at all able to accurately illustrate a failing. Thank you for a great Sunday morning read.
Yup, definitely looked better in the pictures, in real life everything looked a little wonky.
For starts you can’t see the wooden wedges that hold the rear fenders away from the doors.
In the last photo you can see the bad fit of the trunk lid, and disjointed line of the rocker panel.
What a difference a decade (or three) makes. If I didn’t learn anything in 40 years of old car hobbying, I learned when to fold ’em. But that still doesn’t make me so smart.
My last failure was the ’57 Austin A-35 that I bought from a fascinating octogenarian who had worked on it for 20 years in his back yard, and who exclaimed, “I’m gettin’ too old to get under a car any more”. Purchased in many pieces, the car appeared to need only screwing together to be finished. When I planted it in my driveway, and rolled its engine and spare mill into my kitchen on dollies (I live alone) I slid under it to begin the minor (in my mind) job of reassembly.
After a huge shock at the Carlisle Import Show flea market, where I naively expected to find truckloads of spares (not!) I opened up one of the carefully labeled ziploc bags to start in on the master cylinder.
It looked good but it was frozen solid. Inside it was a rusty mess coated with old fluid mixed with condensation. I broke it free and unscrewed it. It would need to be replaced or sleeved. Time and money, and a likely post or three to England.
With a clearer view of things, I went back outside to reassess. The rest of the brake system was still on the car, and had been renewed. But what was now evident was that the new lines, exposed and detached from the master cylinder for decades, had rusted internally. One didn’t have to use much imagination to foresee that the whole system would have to be re-overhauled.
I was beginning to see that much of what the former owner had meticulously, but ever so slowly accomplished had been overruled by time and the elements. I was out of my depth in hoping to get the car back on the road quickly.
I folded.
A n English guy came by the house. He worried about taking on another project but eventually low balled and I accepted. The car would be restored locally, which made me less ashamed to report the failure to my 81 year old former owner and new pen pal. He might still get a chance to ride in the Austin before he died, as he had hoped.
Two months later, I got a call from a stranger. It was the earnest sounding new owner, a degree separated from me, to whom the car had been flipped. It was his first English car project, as it had been for me. He lives 2400 miles away on the opposite coast.
Doesn’t look like the old fellow is gonna get that ride after all.
You know, you lost some money and you made some mistakes, but you learned a lot for the next time. It’s never a bad thing to know how to weld, and there’s not much better in life than a warm summer evening in the garage. 🙂
Now how are these skills translating to your Bug project?
Some lessons were learned, some not:
I started with a mostly rust free Texas car, and paid someone else to paint it.
But I did take the car apart too much, and have taken far too long to put it back together. On the road in 2015 for sure…
I feel your pain, Doug. Not nearly as much pain as you though, as mine turned out to be a pretty decent car.
Here it is leaving with its new owner.
Great write up as always and it’s really cool that you snapped all of those pictures as you went along, I have some pics of my cars over the years but none with such detail.
I had a chance in ’94 to pick up a TR4 for a $1000. I passed up on it when the seller seemed rather antsy in making the sale and things just didn’t add up.
A local mega car dealer here in Florida has been selling a TR6 for a little over a year now and has been dropping the price from 19k to 12.4k; wife still says no but damn it, it’s in British racing green!
I enjoyed the story and can relate to it completely as I have a stalled project sitting in a barn.
The biggest grin I got was seeing the 86 500 Interceptor in the last pic hiding in the garage (if my eyes and age don’t do me disservice).
Good eye, you are quite correct Mike. We still have it too, there’s a better photo of it in this article:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/boal-honda-450-nighthawk-the-best-first-bike/
Mine was an 84 and was my first bike, regret selling it to this day.
My brand new 1984 500 Interceptor was the best bike I have ever owned or ridden.
My dad used to say: “The best sickness is worth nothing!”
I think you and your wise mom may have proofed him wrong: “Well, it’s cheaper than therapy.” $240 per year Canadian, now that is a bargain!
And perhaps it was therapeutic writing about it now too?
Regardless, thanks for sharing one of the best stories of its kind ever. Perhaps I was spared something similar by watching my brother lose the battle with a rusted-out, clapped out MGA.
In 1972 I happened across an MGA Roadster , the engine was toast so I cut my losses , shoveled it full of dirt and planted cactus in it…
Back then a rust free MGA Coupe with decent paint but typical weathered upholstery wasn’t worth spit .
-Nate
Great story, Doug. As old car projects go, it was certainly expensive in time and money. But think of it in terms of the education you got – a pretty good return on that investment. Nothing like the combination of youth, enthusiasm and ignorance. 🙂
The closest I get was my 61 Thunderbird. I got 5% of the work into it that you did, maybe 10% of the cost, and probably 400% of the driving out of it (maybe 350 miles over about 5 years). Still not a good result. I was fortunate to come across a kid in a high school auto body class who needed a project. He turned it into a good solid 20 footer that I was able to sell for a less-awful loss.
Funny, but mine was originally a white car repainted in resale red as well. I went back to white on mine – all the better to hide high-school body work.
As usual ;
The best stories are true .
I only can wish I had Doug’s welding skills .
I’m shoulder deep in two projects right now , I hope and expect to get them both on the road again in 2015 .
LBC’s are a breed apart ~ either you love them or not , many have no idea until after the purchase and discover that correctly Restored Auld Crate isn’t the car they like even if it’s not broken .
LBC’s , like German cars , simply require more maintenance or ‘ looking after ‘ ~ if you’re able to do that , they’re good little rigs and fun to drive , even in the rain when they’re dripping on your left foot (ahem) .
In 1972 or so , we latched onto an unwanted 1967 TR$a in Midnight Blue , I thought it looked stunning , we hooned the living crap out of it for several dayze then pushed it into the Arroyo Seco to dispose of it after we’d toasted the clutch (no problem , just start it in first gear) and it refused to start again , ever .
Before we’d ever seen it , it had been seriously wrecked but looked quite fine indeed and at that point had zero rust anywhere .
Yes , I’m the guy who tossed old Motos off The Suicide Bridge…..
-Nate
‘TR$a’. I think it was unintentional, but that’s an incredibly appropriate typo.
HAHAHA
Tee Arr Dollar sign
How about Tee Arr dollar sign squared?
Great story! I always enjoy reading stories like this on CC.
I had a similar experience. At the age of 15 I inherited my great grandfather’s car. It was not a popular car but it was unusual and the look appealed to me. It was a 1969 Chrysler Newport 2door hardtop. Essentially it was a stripped down version of a Chrysler 300.
That car was so huge it took half a day or more to wash it by hand and put two coats of wax on it by hand and detail inside and out. It took the biggest tires money could buy. It required the most expensive solid copper spark plug wires and the most expensive spark plugs. The battery was the largest available and I had to call around because not every shop had one big enough. It drank fuel like an army tank or a transoceanic yacht and had to have premium grade fuel. A replacement radiator(new hand built) cost $400 dollars back in a time when I made about a hundred bucks a week after deductions and that was about double what most kids my age made. I worked 32hours/week all through highschool and made about 50% over minimum wage.
2 years after I acquired it, I spun a rod bearing and destroyed the crankshaft and the rod. I spent the next year searching out the best parts and upgrading the entire drivetrain and interior. $2200 later I had a car that got 6MPG but would do nearly 140MPH in a straight line and could accelerate impossibly fast for its size. That car spent the next 30 years sitting in various relatives’ barns and sheds until this year when my last farm-owning relative died and I broke down and sold it.
I remember one time my grandmother scolded my dad for allowing me to spend all my earnings and all my time on that old not-so-valuable car. His response was “he’s staying out of trouble and learning far more than any school can teach.”
In my early years of fooling around with cars my orientation toward driving and owning as many different kinds of cars as possible tended to mask the unlikelihood of my ever getting so far into a project car. It was always too easy for me to think “Hey, look at that $YEAR $MAKE for sale – it looks like a great buy and maybe he’ll give me something in trade for this thing I’m driving that still needs so much work”.
But I managed to learn a little bit along the way too…probably the most important was to do as Gem did and buy something that’s in pretty decent shape to begin with. Yet after fifty years I suspect that I could still pull and replace a Ford flathead engine – I did that enough times on my own or friends’ cars.
Mine was an MGB. Worked on it while driving it for two years. Ditched trouble and installed trouble free stuff when I could. Home made intake and VW carb is an example that saved me lots of trouble. Future wife and ex wife ran it into the back of a chrysler when we were rear ended. Wish she had done it two years earlier.
Now I have a 57 chevy that I quit driving in 2007 and I’m fixing to dive in. I tell you that to say the problem does not decrease with age.
My first LBC was a ’68 TR 250; red with wire wheels. Bought in December 1969, so it was maybe two years old. Since I didn’t know how to drive a manual, my dad drove it back home while I followed in the ’65 Monza. Went out the next afternoon after school and get the hang of shifting and clutch work in 15 minutes. Didn’t have any foot room so I rested my left foot on the clutch pedal and wore out the clutch in nothing short. Using dad’s Craftsman 1/2″ drive socket set, got the transmission out and a new clutch in. Didn’t work right, took it to the dealer in Detroit and they pulled it out, found these little packing pieces that I wasn’t aware you had to remove. Still didn’t work, so they pulled the clutch and installed a new one and all was good. Brand new clutch from the dealer, defective right out of the box. I’ve never had good luck with clutches….
Then I would be bombing along the freeway and it would quit like somebody turned off the ignition. About the fourth time it happened, I popped the distributor cap and noticed a little pile of carbon on top of the rotor. Wiped it off, started right up. 100 miles later, died again, wiped off the carbon and restarted. Bought another cap.
Just before I sold it, the trans would slap it out of second gear on a decel. Not always, just often enough to get your attention. I now know the thrust end play was too big, but not back then. Had it 9 months, paid $1800 and got $2100. Next car was the Lotus Cortina..
Wow!
Doug, your mother was correct – it is much cheaper than therapy and you got a lot of good skills developed in the process. I’ve thought about tearing into the Galaxie in this manner as it has a few issues here and there, but I was never brave enough. I admire your tenacity in tackling such a project.
Wow.
Cheaper than therapy is the answer I think, I recently (October 2014) finished rebuilding my Mustang. It was left to rot in neighbor’s driveway for several years to the point of barn find quality. Said neighbor gave me the remains for mowing her yard. Five years later and ball park of replacement cost it is done. I hope to drive it in spring. I can now check installing convertible top and reupholstering off the old bucket list. I don’t have before picture handy but the tow truck driver who fetched it for me 5 years ago questioned me bypassing salvage yards. These kinds of projects are not about the time or money…it’s the doing. 1997 GT 4.6 69080 original miles. Thanks for the great read!!
I friend I worked with many years ago had a thing for British sport cars and bought one of these. If I remember correctly, he heard from a co-worker a Triumph TR-4A was in Chicago and for sale. He flew up there bought the TR and drove it back. True to its heritage, he had nothing but troubles with it and was constantly fixing something…it had knock off hubs one day he and a friend were driving to work when Stan glanced to the right and saw the right front wheel rolling along beside the car. Fred managed to get the car to a halt without an accident, I think it took them about a week to find the missing wheel. He finally slid off the road one night to miss an object on the road and totaled it.
Shame about never getting to enjoy the fruits of your labors with the Triumph, Doug. It certainly makes for an interesting read though. I thought it was funny to see your car flipped upside-down to work on the underside. Couldn’t do that with one of my Chryslers without building a rotisserie to hold it! I’m sure the story of your Bug will have a more fulfilling ending.
Regarding the MIG versus oxy-acetylene welding, I watched my dad braze patches into the holes in the doors of his Chrysler with his torch before he bought a MIG. He warped the door skins so much that he pretty much destroyed them. The MIG is so much nicer to work with.
It turns out my Windsor had even more rust issues than I thought when I first started tearing into it. My dad’s MIG has come in very handy over the past two years. I’m getting the urge to post an update to my own saga soon.
Those TR4s (and TR5/TR250) are beautiful little cars; it’s easy to see how one could fall in love, then easily invest way too much time, energy, and money for little return. Still, it’s quite an experience and in some small part helped you become who you are today.
There was a raggedy TR6 in Pick-A-Part Sunday , not much of anything left on it tho’ .
Way in the back where it didn’t belong , was a 1977 MG Midget , yes the cute one with the worthless ‘40,000 grenade ‘ mile Triumph 1500 engine .
It had ZERO RUST , shiny original paint and tatters for the rag but the air cleaner and everything else was there….
I guess LKQ is giving up on selling the junkers , too bad .
-Nate
What you learned about repairing cars far outweighs what you lost in dollars. When I was 14 I bought a 62 Beetle for a small amount that I don’t recall. It needed an engine and headliner. I took the body off the pan with a few helpers lifting it off. I don’t really recall why other then maybe replacing the body to pan gasket. I split the engine case and found a broken crankshaft, wound up buying a crank with rods attached at a junkyard and all I replaced besides that were the main bearings and gaskets. Glued up shag carpet squares for a headliner (and headrush from the glue). Kept me out of trouble. I eventually put it back together and it ran and I sold it, although a few months later the junkyard crank also broke. Knowing what I know now, the case probably needed to be line bored. Did another project a few years later buying two 68 VW Fastbacks, one wrecked with good engine and interior, one with bad engine and interior, swapped everything over and sold it. Last project was a 66 VW fastback in good shape but with the engine in a box. Towed it home with a rope with the seller steering and braking it to my house. Rebuilt the engine and drove it for years and 100k miles. Now (since 1991) I started off with a decent 86 Jetta and still have it with over 300k miles. Sold my C10 in 2006 that I had since 1976 when it got to the point of needing restoration. As others have said, the way to go is to buy the best example of what you want and keep it maintained and garaged. In the long run you save money and a lot of work. Youth is a great motivator! Really enjoy your articles, Your VW’s seem to be well on their way to being great cars
I’d say that in case it was a matter of not knowing when not to get dealt into the game in the first place!