The story of my TR2 rebuild (as at March 2004) by Ian May

First a little background:

• 1954 long door TR2, off the production line 6th May 1954. Commission number TS 1562 in Pearl White with Geranium trim, hood and sidescreens.
• Originally registered HHS30, then ATR2 (yesATR2) and now 9963 AP.
• I purchased the car in October 1975 from my solicitor (and he is still my solicitor and friend).
• It’s been to Le Mans twice, toured France and even made it to Monaco and back (albeit with a run big end).
• The car came off the road from regular use (by Angie) some 17 years ago.
• The rebuild (or should I say rebirth) begins.

After some 13 years in a lock-up garage and buried under loads of other TR and assorted spares or junk, depending on which you look at it, the TR was transported to my newly built garages at Linden House. Needless to say the brakes had mostly seized and it was all in a pretty sorry state.

However, having got it home and off the trailer Gregg thought it might be a good idea to see if it would start. I laughed. So we rigged up a jury petrol feed using a lawnmower tank, the old feed would leak at the petrol tap (the cork perishes) and the tank was probably full of holes any way. We looked at a spark and replaced it, put on a good battery to see if we could at least get the engine to turn over. It did and after a few more turns it fired then came to life with an almighty roar, accompanied by much cheering from us. The roar was as a result of two things, one it is normally a noisy car having only one exhaust box and two, when the engine started it blew out a mountain of rust which had previously been the baffles! It was a large pile of rust we swept off the garage floor.

As it had started, we all had to have a little drive in the courtyard to reacquaint ourselves with the TR2 (not Gregg, it was his drive) and it was even driven into the garage. Now to work. I hadn’t actually intended to start the rebuild straight away, I had only wanted to get the car home. Gregg, however, had other ideas and before long had begun to strip the car down. The interior went; engine and gearbox came out, wings and front apron off along with the doors. But before any of this took place, loads of detailed photos of all areas, and from all angles were taken for essential later reference i.e. where did this go? I didn’t of course stop him, as I was also bitten by the bug and it was great to actually be doing something to the TR after all that time.

We then decided to go the whole hog and remove the body from the chassis, so having removed the doors we braced the body between the A and B posts to stop the body distorting or folding in half when you take it off!

Next the chassis was stripped of suspension, axle etc and sent for shotblasting (Heritage Blasting 01435 868289) so we could determine the necessary repairs. The cost was £150 and it was returned in primer for protection. Necessary repairs included some patching and the replacement of the outriggers that support the floors. Also a large part of one rear crosstube had to be replaced along with the spring hangers. Gregg fabricated all the replacement metal except the outriggers and welded them in place. The outriggers were purchased but the tube was of a smaller diameter than original and therefore gave us some extra work.

Once repaired the chassis was given three coats of rust preventative primer. Intend to use chassis black for the final finish, but this won’t be done until the body fitting is completed. Meanwhile we are also in the process of rebuilding the rear axle, which is the Lockheed type. This is proving to be a pain in the proverbial without the proper tools and presses, but we will get there! Fortunately Alan Peatfield, Kent Group Leader, has recently completed a similar job and was able to lend us a differential spreader etc and give some valuable advice, but it is still a pain.

Finally, we’ve made a start on the body, vowing to use as much of the original as possible, but it’s not going to be a lot. At the moment, it looks like we’ll be keeping the front bulkhead and scuttle, front inner wings (patch repaired and new front body mounting brackets) transmission tunnel and rear floor panel over the axle, the bonnet, doors but reskinned and possibly the spare wheel compartment. The jury’s still out on the front and rear wings.

So the body has been cut in half (so no need for the A/B post bracing after all) and the floors removed. The next stage is to make a positive effort on the body starting with reskinning the doors and building the body around those. Using the original door frames should help in this process, keeping proportions the same as the original. Time will tell!

Hopefully more will get done as the weather improves so watch this space!
Ian May