Build Log: Rebuilding a 1959 Triumph 10
This scraggly-looking derelict had been sitting next to a singlewide trailer since Dad was in high school. The previous owner died, his family had no interest in the car, and the guy who owned the property sold it to us for $200. It had its flaws. Someone had rolled it (into an irrigation ditch, we found out later) and tried to hide their crime with Bondo, spray paint, drywall screws, bathtub caulk, and a grille that we're pretty sure came from a refrigerator. Perhaps realizing their patient was terminal despite their efforts, they shot it in the rear quarter and left it for dead. On the plus side, the glass was still there, the rust didn't look too bad (you've probably heard that line before), and it only had 44k miles on the odometer. We borrowed a trailer, loaded it up, dragged it to the car wash to blow most of the dead mice out of it, and then took it to my uncle's shop for a couple of weekends/can of paint restoration. |
One of the things that talked us into this project was the 948cc four-pot under the hood. The engine itself isn't that exciting (it's rated for all of 40HP), but despite having sat outside for thirty years, it wasn't locked up. We ran a new fuel line and hooked up a battery, and after a lot of cranking and cursing, the little blighter caught and ran. The lights worked, the clutch worked, the gearbox worked, and the brakes worked. The only faults we found with the drivetrain were a dead generator (possibly the reason it was parked) and a hilariously wonky pinion angle. We're not sure what the rear axle was out of, but it wasn't a 10. It did however work well enough to drive up and down the street, so that's what we did--drive it down the street to my uncle's shop, work on it, then drive it home again at the end of the day. Towards the end of the disassembly process, my dad was driving around in a rusty shell with no glass, doors, exhaust, or interior, with a spare wheel and a boat cushion for a seat. If you're looking to impress your neighbors, this is probably not the way to go. The single-barrel down-draft carburetor (below) worked alright, but in a bid to add a horse or three, Dad replaced it with dual HS-2 carbs. This isn't possible on the right-hand-drive 10s because the brake and clutch masters get in the way. LHD meant we had plenty of room for activities. (Scroll down a few rows to see the engine with its new carbs.) |
The interior was full of mouse crap, so we tore it out. Unsurprisingly, the wet carpets had eaten the floors. We cut out the bad parts and Sean welded in new sheet metal to fill the gaps. When we redid the B pillars, we added mounting points for shoulder belts. |
The outside of the car needed help too. The layers of Bondo and spray paint hid some surprises. One of the headlight buckets had folded in on itself in the crash, and rather than pull the metal back, they'd just built the shape back up with putty. My uncle's new spot welder (brilliant tool for pulling dents you can't get a hammer behind) made short-ish work of most of the dents. The whole car has a bit of a twist to it (turns out flopping a car into a ditch is hard on it), but it wasn't enough to cause a problem, so we just worked around it. Sean welded up the bullet hole. It was not a small hole. Whoever shot this thing really wanted it dead. The sills were shot, but we were lucky enough to find a guy who made us a new set. Like all patch panels, they needed some re-making to actually fit, but they got us most of the way there. We also swapped out the rear axle for one that actually fit. Apparently, TR10 axles were a popular replacement/upgrade for Lotus axles, so we had some trouble finding one. But we finally did, and Dad cleaned it up and bolted it in. (That's his TR4A beside the 10.) |
| We threw out the refrigerator grille pretty quickly. It didn't suit the car, and looked like it had been cut with a cold chisel and a rock. Tina Walker of the Standard Club sent us a legit three-bar grille from England, which the postal service mangled beyond repair. We cut and sectioned a Rover grille to fill the hole. |
| Dad found another derelict 10 down by the Columbia Gorge. The owner thought it was in decent shape, but the floors thought otherwise. It had a lot of good parts on it, though, so my dad dodged the rattlesnakes that had taken up residence around it and dragged it home. |
| The '58 10 gave our '59 two of its doors, a rear fender, an ashtray (ours was missing the hinged top) and a set of drip rails that hadn't lost a fight with an irrigation ditch. Most of the body and mechanical bits went in the shed. The rear door in the picture below is a transplant from this donor. Also note the new shoes (from my cousin's Spitfire, which she upgraded to Minilites) and the new sills. |
There were a few different types of car built on this platform. There's the station wagon like ours, a pickup truck version (not my video), a coupe, and a delivery van with a raised rear roof to take taller loads. The roof has a seam across it, behind the doors, where it welds to whichever rear section they were building that day. The seam on ours was pretty screwed up, so we just welded it up and puttied over it. This went pretty well, except that we forgot to take the headliner out first. This was not the last time we set the car on fire. The 10's engine is supposed to come out, as we were told repeatedly on the forum, through the bottom. This wasn't an option for us at the time, so we pulled it through the top. We pressure-washed a half-inch of grime off it and gave it a nice spray paint overhaul. (It had very few original miles on it, and it passed the compression test, so we're not too worried about the internals.) We even found a build date cast into the side. |
| We got the seats reupholstered locally, and they came out looking great. The original interior was red and white, but we decided on this nice green instead. |
| Time for some serious bodywork. |
| British lacquer paint is tenacious stuff. Wire wheels don't touch it, and random orbit sanders don't work too well in crevices. This left sandblasting. Off with the doors. |
We were planning to take it down to Cashmere to have it blasted, but the blaster guy's compressor blew up, so we used a handheld blaster beside my uncle's shop. We got the door jambs, vents, and all the other annoying bits cleaned up, along with the rim for the spare tire. |
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Once it was more or less clean, we slung more putty at it. Dad worked on the roof, trying to find a body line between the dents. Notice the putty on the B pillar. Did I mention that being rolled into an irrigation ditch is hard on a car? |
This took a while. We picked up some grill-cleaning bricks to help with this. They wear quickly enough to conform to weird contours, and they get in where sandpaper's no good. They also smell nasty and disintegrate all over everything, which is why we call them shit bricks. |
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A whole lot of blocking and guide-coating later, Dad thought he had it pretty smooth. I scraped out what was left of the window seals, wire-wheeled the last of the paint out of the drip rails, and brushed rust converter into the seams. Then we put it up on jack stands, pulled the steering wheel out, removed the wheels, and handed it over to Sean to wipe it down and shoot primer. Five and a half years into the project, it was finally ready for paint. Sean hosed it with epoxy primer and sealed up the seams. |
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2-17 With the main part of the body ready for final putty work, Sean re-hung the doors and panels to make sure everything lined up. This meant I had to dig through our parts hoard for the bag of hinges and latches. It's nice to have two cars' worth of parts, but it's a challenge to organize. |
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Armed with the proper hardware, Sean started fitting body panels and figuring out how to make them line up with each other. The radiator appears to be the only thing squaring up the front of the engine bay. Sean suggested building a brace to take the load.
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Here's the cluster from the donor car, showing the original white paint. These are modular. The box with the levers can bolt to either side of the speedo surround. A right-hand drive 10 would use the exact same parts, just flipped around. |
Here's the one I stripped. Those ridges were a pain! And yes, that's the only gauge in the car: speed, fuel, odometer, and three indicator lamps. We'll repaint it before it goes back in. Luckily the knobs are available, because these ones are shot. |
44,699 original miles! I've been told the longer bar on 30 is because that was the British in-town speed limit at the time. |
The hood badge has a few battle scars in the enamel, probably from the accident, but it'll do. The name plate's from the rear door. |
This nacelle (which I kept calling the Cessna, because it looks like part of a small aircraft) mounts underneath the speedometer, with the steering column passing through the middle. The brass ring is for the horn. It'll need some cleanup. |
Good thing we've got two of them! I don't remember which car this one's out of, but it's been broken in half and glued back a little crooked. This one stays in the spares bin.
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This bit filled the rest of the dash. It looks homemade, possibly from the lid for a fish tank, but we've heard from someone else who had the exact same setup in theirs, suggesting this may have been installed at the factory or by the dealer. The chrome was the same as the chrome on the rear door, but in better shape, so we used it there instead. |
The radio is a positive-ground Motorola 301X. It says 'Transistor Powered' on the front, but it's actually a hybrid: transistors and tubes. Note the string wrapped around the tuning rod (left side). That's what makes the wiper move across the dial. 53 years old, and it still works! We're converting the 10 to negative ground, so this radio's not going back in. |
3/16 Sean came by for the hood release and latch, and helped me go through some of the other stuff. He found a chip I hadn't noticed on the nacelle, and suggested using fine sandpaper to get the rest of the paint off and prep for paint. I've got some model putty I'll try out on the chip. We started a bin of things to be beadblasted. The steering wheel we have for it (not original) has a few cracks, but Sean told me how to patch those up with JB Weld. He also suggested replacing the glass in the rearview mirrors. The one that mounts to the dash is losing its silvering, and the door mirror had dark-tinted glass, which was sort of unsettling. We decided on Old English White with Shoal Green below the chrome line, and considered adding TR6 chrome strips to the sills. Sean also pointed out that the rear door hinges on the other side on UK cars, because they park on the other side of the road. That's a nice touch. I wish Nissan had done the same for the tire carrier on my Pathfinder. |
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Sean slung more putty at it and tried to get the front end panels to sit right. The hood's still a little farther from one fender than the other at the bottom, but the fender can't move either way, and we can't very well stretch the hood. There's a lot you can do to make stuff fit, but at some point it's Good Enough, Dammit. There's a lot of putty in that front valance. That panel had a bad time. Sean installed the hood release/latch mechanism as well. Turns out, the donor car had a shorter lever, which didn't stick down far enough to use with this grille. The original fit fine after a little adjustment. Speaking of the grille, yes, we finally got the right grille for it! |
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The doors, fenders, hood, A pillars, and sills are rocking new putty as well. The driver's sill was so far shy of the doors that Sean added more metal to it rather than try and fill the whole quarter-inch with Bondo. |
3/18 Dad and I sorted out most of our parts. We found a complete dome light (which we didn't know we had), a new-in-box column switch, two tie rod ends in the factory painted tin (seriously, a painted tin box for tie rod ends), and a whole lot of fiddly bits, which we sorted as well as we could. We also picked up a Spitwad transmission from Sean, and compared it to our spare 10 trans. The cases look a little different, and the 10 case is much lighter (all aluminum), but the outside dimensions look the same. We're playing around with swapping the 10 shift linkage to the Spitwad trans, or swapping the Spitwad gears to the 10 trans. Both transmissions are four-speed, but first gear in the 10 trans is so low that it's not used in regular driving (and there's no synchro on it). We'll probably keep it stock to start with, and start messing with it once we've got a baseline. We found a few new picture galleries while researching our paint options. We considered the colors on this very nice Pennant, but found the green a little too somber. This '58 named Munchkin (incidentally, the same body style as the one we parted out) has what looks like the green we've chosen, though we'll be splitting our colors at the chrome line like this Pennant. Also check out Walt Fogle's blue and white 10! |
| 3/19 Sean came by looking for distribuitor bits, and found that transmission control linkages (which Dad and I had been unable to switch) were only incompatible because of a locator pin. The top piece we were trying to install had the pin from the 10 trans stuck in it, so it fouled on the pin in the Spit trans. They fit right up when Sean pulled the extra pin out. |
| 3/27 I went down and stripped a little of the old seal rubber off of the doors. It's tenacious stuff, and I had to remove the doors to get all of it. |
| 4/8 Dad seamsealed the underside, and I finished (mostly) prepping the doors. Also, Dad picked up some bedliner to paint the bottom of the car with. We still need to finish the hood, rust-treat the doors in a few spots, and finish cleaning out the fender jambs (where the hood sits) with a wire wheel before Sean lays primer. |
4/23 I rust-converted the doors, and Sean kept working on the hood. Meanwhile... We've been having some trouble finding the clips that'll hold the side chrome on. The ones it came with are shot, and seem somehow too small. A British firm was nice enough to send us some samples that they thought might be close, but, unfortunately, none of them fit. We're going to see if any body shops locally have more modern clips that'll work. While messing with clips, I found this sticker (along with another that had faded completely away) in the jamb of the driver's front door from the donor car. I looked up the company, and it still exists--in the same location, even. There's no date on the sticker, but there's a spot for PCV service, and I don't think that was a thing in '58. Also, forgot to mention, we tore apart the spare 10 trans, and the Spitwad trans, and found that, while the 10 casing wouldn't hold the Spitwad guts, we could put the back of the 10 trans on the Spit trans with a few minor modifications. We're not sure just what we're doing with it at this point... we'll probably assemble it stock first, just to see how well it does or doesn't work, and go from there. |
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4/29 I scrubbed the epoxy primer with a scratchy pad to kill the shine and help the next layer stick. I also discovered a few failed spot welds and a little rust coming back through the Rust-Oleum I spray-bombed the floors with. The paint in the engine bay is failing like crazy, so I'll have to clean that up and re-spray. Also, Dad and I started cleaning up a place for the 10 to live after it's painted. We've got a sort of wood shop shed thing that we've used for storage for a while. New shelves are up and most of the crap is moved or gone. This way, once the car is painted, I'll be able to walk out and work on the interior/wiring/etc whenever, and it won't be taking up space at Sean's. |
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7/31 We picked up a set of TR 250 chrome spears at the All-British Field Meet in Seattle. They're going on the sills, which clearly had a strip of some variety at some point. (It's all unobtanium now.) These should fit nicely, and at $5 a piece from the swap meet, they're at least worth a try. We held them up against Walt Fogle's blue and white 10, and they looked good on it, so that's a good sign. |
8/12 Sean got the panels off and hung up, and scrubbed it all down with a scotch-brite and some solvent to help the next coat of primer stick. Dad and I cleaned up one of the fenders a little more. I also ground a little more of the loose factory undercoating out of the wheel wells. At this point we hoped to get it in color by winter. |
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8/14 Primer! I helped Sean put the panels back on, and we rolled it out into the sun to cook the paint. Considering how hashed this poor car was when we got it, and how much we'd done to it, it all fit back together pretty well. Nothing fouled, the doors all opened and shut, and the roof already looked smoother than it had a right to. (We ruled out the Webasto top at this point, partly because we couldn't find one, and partly because Dad couldn't bear to cut the roof after all the work he put into smoothing it out.) |
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9/2 Once the paint was good and cured, Sean taught us how to block it. Blocking basically means scrubbing it down with wet soapy 220 grit paper in search of high spots (where you'll burn through the primer) and low spots (where the zebra stripes won't come off). We got two doors and a fender blocked. We also talked a bit about options to put a little more power in it with anything from a Spitwad 1200cc to a Nissan KA24 to a Mazda rotary. It's light enough that the 948 might be all it needs, but, well, get car guys staring at an empty engine bay and we start thinking about all kinds of stuff we could put there. |
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9/16 Dad finished blocking the roof. He found a couple spots that need attention, but it's nowhere near as bad as we'd expected considering how bad it was when we started. He also did the hood, which as you can see has a low spot on the driver's side and a low spot all down the middle. I went around it with a pencil, circling low spots, cracks, and pin holes. The seam sealer has failed for reasons unknown, so Sean is going to tear it out and re-do it with a different type. The primer has lots of pinholes, which we'll fill with spot putty before laying the next coat of primer. Sean was racing to get a Healey done, so putty and primer on this had to wait a while. |
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10/24 Sean applied spot putty to fill the pinholes. I thought it looked like it had been eating barbeque ribs.
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11/4 Sean finished sanding the spot putty, re-primed the body, and applied a fresh guide coat. Speaking of color, we got some paint mixed up and checked it for tone. Chevy Impala green was way too green for this car, and the Shoal green we were planning on using looked a little too grey. We liked the San Gabriel (?) green on Jay Leno's Dodge Coronet, though. |
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We'd spray-bombed the engine bay with black Rust-Oleum Hammered, but it didn't adhere well. There seems to be an inverse relationship between how much prep work you do and how well that stuff sticks. It was failing all over, and since we'd decided to spray the engine bay body color anyway, all the loose stuff had to go. This involved quite a bit of grinding, and required taking all the brake lines and stuff out again. We really should've sandblasted the whole tub when we started. We also found that the heater plate (the triangle with the two holes in it behind the heater box) was rusted out on the bottom. Luckily we still had the plate from the parts car, which was in much better shape. |
11/8 Sean sanded the guide coat again and applied a little more spot putty here and there. The hood and the bit that goes behind the bumper needed a little further work, so he applied icing (another flavor of spot putty). We discussed where to mask the green on the door jambs so that the white wouldn't show through the door gaps between the green bits. Dad and I decided to use '57 Buick mint green for our secondary color. Also, I found this vintage ad on Flickr, which cracked me up. It's for a Pennant, which is the coupe version of the 10. It had "exciting new body lines" a "Super Power engine," which happens to be the same little 948 mine has. Also, the "new self-breathing Vynair upholstery" raises questions. What did people do before that? Did they have to breathe their upholstery manually? How would one go about that? Dad says it was to stop your legs from sticking to the seats, which I guess would be helpful for drivers who don't wear pants. |
11/17 Sean bought the paint, but the car wasn't quite ready. I cleaned up the door jambs (with a Scotchbrite pad and some 600 grit wet/dry), but we still had to do the dash, inner B pillars, and the insides of the doors. Sean was still working on the hood. We decided to do the dash plastic bits in the Buick green to contrast with the white dash. The vent lever box I cleaned the previous winter turned out to be buggered (big chip beside one of the vent levers), so I cleaned up the other one. The radio in mine was originally installed in what looked like a fish tank cover, but there was a proper panel (for RHD 10s, anyway) that fit in with the cluster/vent box. Since we've got a spare vent box, Dad and I planned to cut it up and stretch it to create a radio panel. This does raise the question of what kind of radio we'll put in this thing. (We sold the one it came with.) And yes, a few companies make faux-retro radios. I don't like the look of them. The green LCD screens look like the 80s, the sputter-chrome plastic bits look like the 90s, and for the price I'd be better off hiring a guy with a harmonica to ride shotgun wherever I go. |
11/26 We stripped the engine bay with wire brushes and a torch. Where the RustOleum didn't adhere, water had wicked underneath, so we had some new rust to grind off. The front suspension joints felt a little flogged-out, so we made a note to go through those later. Sean gave us this old push-button Motorola. The tag with the model number was badly garfed, but Dad eventually identified it as a 1971 TM81a. Both knobs are adjustable and it's designed for a panel mount, so it's perfect for our dash project. |
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The push buttons work like presets on a modern radio, except that their operation is entirely mechanical. Since we don't have five decent AM stations out here, I'm considering modifying one of the buttons to use an aux input. |
12/26 I finished up scrubbing the last two doors. Sean found a little more rust behind some bracketry, but took care of it, and then sprayed bedliner in the areas we won't be painting. We had to put off a new coat of primer due to the fact that it's cold as hell here in the winter, and the paint doesn't work right when it's cold. The pic shows it after seamsealing but before bedliner. Sean had already hit a few of these seams, but all of that came out with the failed engine bay paint. |
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Dad managed to find a curved dashboard piece that would've gone in with the factory bakelite radio surround! It's serious unobtanium, since it was only put in the Super Ten models. He also bought some new repop vent lever knobs. The stock knobs were transparent, but these should go better with the car than the black knobs that are more commonly available. |
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| 2/28 Finally, paint! Sean shot the tub with primer and two coats of white. Next he'd spray the panels and mount them, and then it needed one last round of sanding to clean up the drips and get everything dead smooth before its final coat of white. |  |
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Meanwhile, Dad tracked down a Super 10 radio mount. |
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3/3/13 Sean had the fenders, doors, lower dash, bumper brackets, and front valance in paint, and we installed everything but the fenders and hood. The fenders needed felt glued to them to stop squeaks and rattles. The hood, the rear door, and the piece between the valance and the bumper were still waiting for paint. This is the fun part of a restoration... when the car actually starts to look like a car again! |
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3/13/13 Sean and I put the fenders back on with a layer of roofing felt in between. After six years of removing parts, installing them again felt really weird. |
3/28/13 Sean wetsanded it again and shot the last coat of white, which came out great. He also found some clips for the side chrome. We went through our collection of trim and picked out the nicer bits, and made sure they lined up with the holes. Dad and I stopped by to see the first coats of green. |
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Damn that looks good! Sean went to a lot of trouble with the paint and it looked great. You may notice the front suspension isn't attached. It all comes off in one convenient unit, and it needed some attention. |
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3/30/13 Sean got the side trim on and lined up. Because these trims are taken from multiple cars, and the new clips are different, this took some effort. We went back through our old pictures to figure out where everything went. Sean and Dad installed the number plates, the regulator, the coil, the horn, the dash switches (including a Jaguar switch for the fog lights we're adding) and part of the wiring harness. |
We weren't sure where other people parted their two-tone jobs, but here's how we parted ours. The B pillar's outer face is painted as well. We had to paint back here somehow, or you'd look between the doors and see white. |
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4/3 Sean got the pedals, master cylinders, and heater installed. Dad and I cleaned up the front suspension. We suspect that the trunions (think lower ball joints, but not) may be a bit hogged out, but seeing as how the assembly only has 44k on it, we decided to bolt it back in as-is and rebuild the one out of the donor car. This let us get it back on its wheels and off of Sean's car dolly. Here's the radio surround Dad found! Here it is (along with another corner piece) after we cleaned it up a bit. It's a reproduction, but it looks like a pretty good one. Since we have two of the rounded corners now, we'll put the other one on the other end. |
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4/8 Dad and I spraybombed the rear springs, and Sean got the axle bolted back in. I painted the front suspension assembly, but it couldn't go in immediately, as the Healey engine mounts that we thought would fit, didn't. We ordered the right mounts from England. Check out the comically small drum brakes! |
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Sean bunged up all the unused holes in the engine bay. (There's a Cornholio joke to be made there, but I'll leave that for Sean.) The diamond-shaped bungs are originals from the donor car, and the holes they're filling are where the clutch and brake master go on the RHD cars. The heater, horn, regulator, coil, and flasher are in as well. |
| Dad and I cleaned up the gas tank and primed it, and Sean gave it a coat of black and bolted it up. The fuel level sender was seized, but we soaked it in oil to try and free it up. |  |
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Dad managed to clean most of the spray paint off the reserve gas tank tag, and Sean polished the regulator cover. |
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4/9/13 The front suspension, engine, and transmission went in!I was lucky enough to find the single large bolt that holds the trans to the body in one of our boxes of bolts. We were still waiting on the engine mounts, so we used a Herald mount on one side temporarily, just to get it in there. We also reinstalled the steering column. The steering box was worn out and will require future attention. The carbs were a PITA because there's very little clearance to get to the lower rear mounting bolt. Sean ended up doing this from under the car with needlenose pliers. (We installed the engine without carbs or exhaust so that we'd have fewer things to worry about garfing the engine bay with.) |
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After installing the engine, we realized that the generator was sitting crooked, due, we thought, to the rear bracket probably being from something else. We swapped in the bracket from the '58, and it looks more robust, but it was still angled funny. Turned out there's a spacer in there that looked homemade, and not in a good way. Sean's installed the outside door handles and the latch assemblies. The rear fenders would've had a black beading from the factory, but they butt up to the side chrome, so Sean used chrome Austin Healey beading instead. |
4/27/21 Sean installed the rear fender beading and the side chrome, including the TR250 sill spears. He also installed the door latches, the strikers for the dome light, and the bumperettes, and painted the parts for the dashboard. Dad and I found the proper bracketry for the generator in our parts bin. Sean had some trouble with the windshield. Turns out that TR4/6 windshield seals are supposed to work in these, so we ordered one. Speaking of parts, he also ordered a TR3 speedometer cable, since we had one buggered one and one which was far too short for some reason. I cleaned up the new-to-us fog lights. |
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5/22/13, the front and rear windows finally went in. The front glass had to be custom cut, likely due to the rollover. The dash bits are painted. The chrome bands at the end of the lower bar were too pitted to save, and chroming is expensive, so they're green too. We removed a few shims from the steering box to tighten it up, which tightened it up a little too much. For the first time in four or five years, the 10 left Sean's shop! We towed it up the street with a strap, and I steered it and stopped it with the parking brake. We cleared a spot for it in our own shed. We were excited to have it home--and I'm sure Sean was excited to have the shop space back. |
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6/12/13 When we first stripped out the interior, Sean found a smushed bullet on the floor by the passenger's seat track, where it came to rest after punching through the rear fender and splintering the plywood interior panelling. I took it home, and somehow I didn't lose it in the years in between, so I decided to make it into a key ring. It's sort of a reminder of how far the car's come, sort of a conversation piece, and sort of the result of me wanting to see if I could solder baling wire to a bullet. Turns out, yes, both of those things take solder. Dad found some radiator hoses, and he kitbashed a pair of air cleaners from a couple of old air cleaner carcasses and a filter for a lawnmower. We decided we were totally definitely gonna take it to the All-Brit meet that year. It didn't happen.
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7/20/13 We realized we weren't gonna make the all-Brit, but figured we'd have it driving in time for the next one. Spoilers, this didn't happen either. We did, however, get a big box of Dynamat. |
| 7/21/13 Just because it's a tiny steel can doesn't mean it has to sound like one. And check out the dash! |
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| 12/13 We moved, and the unfinished Ten moved with us. It wasn't a runner yet, so it took another ride on Sean's trailer. Note the masking tape holding the doors. The catches were installed, but the door seals/fuzzies were not, and we didn't want the doors banging around. Also note the open vent flap on the cowl. I don't know why but I find the old-school approach to the fresh air intake hilarious. There's a lever inside that pops it up. |
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2/17 Holy crap, it's been a long time since I updated this page! It's a good thing Dreamweaver remembers my login for the hosting site. There hasn't been an awful lot of progress to report, but the Ten is still around, and still waiting on exhaust, interior, and window seals. The rear windows use a seal that seems to be unique to the Tens, which means we're probably going to have to find something else that'll work. Most of our wrenching time has been going to the 302 V8 swap on my dad's TR4A. |
January 2018 Yes, we're still working on this thing! Other projects (Dad's mutant TR4, our shop, and cleaning out the mouse-infested pickup truck we traded a bottle of whiskey for) have kept it on the back burner, but we haven't forgotten about the Ten. We closed in our new workshop and moved the Ten into it in hopes that having it in a heated shop and closer to the tools would speed reassembly. Dad finally found a seal for the rear side windows. He had a hell of a time getting the company that makes the stuff to actually fill the order, though. We considered what to do with the steering box. Our current box was built from the best parts of the two boxes we had, but neither donor was particularly good. It's also very small, which may limit our options for grafting in a more common steering box from something else. We've got a steering rack that we stare at from time to time, but we haven't committed to torching holes in the subframe to mount it. We also corrected a mistake made during assembly. The original hood hinges were trashed, so we used new hinges meant for a Triumph Spitfire. These looked the same, and given how many other parts of this car are shared with other models, they probably are the same. What we hadn't noticed is that there is a distinct Left and Right hinge, with the hinge pins a little cockeyed one way or the other to accomodate the hood curvature. We had them reversed. Turns out they work much better when you install them properly. |
April 2018 We finally got our hands on the rear window seal material, and it looks like it'll work! It's lower sash glass setting channel for a 1963 GM, and that's all I know at this point. Our other vehicles have been keeping us busy lately, as has the house. |
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