A Car Story

I know I have said it before, but I feel like I have to keep saying it just for my own peace of mind.  The thing I worry about most with the “Ultimate Restoration”, is that people will get the idea that a restoration can be done in a very short period of time.  I guess it can, but it would cost a lot of money.  That isn’t what we want to do here at the shop.  We want customers to have an affordable restoration, and give them a quality product at a fair price.  What concerns me is that there will be some who want the quality product, the fair price, and have it done in a week.  Oh well, I guess we’ll deal with that as we go along.

For now, I thought I would show some before and after shots of a few things so that you could get some idea of what takes up the most of the time when we do a restoration.  The cleaning, repairing, polishing and painting of all of the parts to be re-used on the project takes, what seems like, forever to get done.  Here are some pictures of the light assemblies I have just gone through-

It took just over three hours to complete these assemblies.

These took about an hour and a half.  The end results make it worth the time.

Enjoy the ride!

The month of July is drawing to a close, and the body work on the GT-6 is done, and it is getting ready for paint.  We were lucky that there was very little rust repair to do, the battery box was the only thing.

We decided to just cut out the old box, and insert a new one.  The rest of the car had only some small surface rust spots, and they were easily sanded out.  Since we are going with the original color, we left some of the interior color as is.

The hood turned out very nice, and the underside actually shows the final color.

The British Auto Works challenge of restoring a 1972 Triumph GT-6 keeps moving forward.  We tore down what was left of the engine.  The head had already been removed years ago.  In fact, I found that I had sent it in to have the valves ground, and new guides and valve seats installed.  Wow, that was lucky.  Not that I had already had the work done, but that I was able to actually find it.

Anyhow, here are some pictures of the block and parts.

I have to admit, things are pretty rusty.  If I had continued the repair on the rest of the engine, none of this would be an issue.

Here’s a great example of what happens when car parts are neglected.  As you can see by the picture, there are five piston assemblies, and of course this is a six cylinder motor.  Well, number six is soaking quietly in penetrating oil, and we are all hoping for the best.

The frame is back from powder coat, and we are beginning to fit the front suspension parts.  We are going to powder coat the suspension parts which we are going to re-use.  The other parts will be new.  Our main goal now is to try to find component packages that will allow us to have certain groups of parts that will create a “sub-assembly” if you will.  These will then be fitted and ready for the assembly process at the show.

Here’s the frame as it looked back from powder coat-

Remember, this is what it looked like-

All of us here at British Auto Works are getting excited about our major new project.  We have decided that at this years “All British Field Meet” held on Labor Day Weekend at Portland International Raceway we are going to assemble a 1972 Triumph GT 6 from the frame up.  This is kind of a brainstorm from my son that we should try to show people what we can do here at British Auto Works.  And to help me get enthused, he suggested that we restore the car that is basically responsible for us having British Auto Works in the first place.

The Triumph GT 6 that we are doing is the original car I talk about in the “about me” section of the blog.  I drove it out of the Triumph plant in Coventry in March of 1972, and I have had it ever since.  As you can see, it has seen better days, but we drug it out of the barn and loaded it on the truck and took it to British Auto Works to start the process.

Once we got the car to the shop, we started taking it apart.  It was actually easier than I thought it might be, the guys took three and half hours, and the tub was sitting on the floor beside the frame.

There are a few dents to take care of, and some rusted areas, but for the most part she’s in very good shape, and we will get started on the restoration straight away.  We plan to re-do everything, rebuild the engine and overdrive transmission, repair the body and paint, powder coat the frame, install all new hydraulics for brakes and clutch, and replace all the suspension.  We are going to do this and then put it together at the ABFM, we hope.

Throughout the process, we will be taking pictures and we are doing a film of the process.  Stay tuned and see what happens.  By the way, I have promised the guys at the shop this isn’t going to be like “American Chopper” at least as far as the personality battles go.