1972 Triumph GT6 MkIII PI, for sale

[stevea]

leigh - I'd love to say it's made a world of difference but the trouble is that I did not drive it before doing the work, but I have been told it does handle quite differently to other GT6's
The rear suspension is rotoflex converted to CV joints with a one inch lowering block and koni shocks, though one of the plans is to stiffen up the rear to reduce the roll by fitting a heavier spring.

marsie - ah yes, I do like what Jango has done with his Sierra diff and rear subframe.

[stevea]

Getting a bit more up to date now, in the years spent getting the car back on the road I'd realised a lot of the work done by the previous owners was not too good, nothing unusual there I guess. The two main problem areas were the front of the roof, which had a dubious amount of filler in it and the door gaps. I reckon when the sills and foorpans were replaced, the body must have closed up on itself, not giving enough space for both the doors to shut and have the rain channels on the screen frame. In addition to this there were a number of smaller jobs that needed doing, such as replacing rear wheel arches, so I set about finding another body before this one got too bad.

Some time later I managed to find one, but it was still attached to the rest of the car.




It took a couple of hours to prepare it for removal of the body and another hour to lift it off , not too bad as I was doing it by myself with jacks and blocks of wood.



Within a day or so I'd found a buyer for all the parts I didn't need recovering most of the cost of the car, but there was one little problem with the new body I knew about from the beginning, a little dent in the rear.




The rear deck, valance and light panel are all damaged, so at present I plan to replace just the light panel and try to straighten out the other panels.
I've also been out to yard behind the barn to retrieve a few parts from a mostly rotten bodyshell. Much easier to carefully remove the light panel in the workshop in the dry and on the bench. It'll also give me a at hand reference of how the rear deck should sit.

[stevea]

Decided the first job was to remove the old light panel, I was going to carefully drill out all the spot welds, but soon gave-up on that idea and just cut the whole panel out. I've been able to make a start on smoothing it all out again, but I'm all too aware of my lack of experience and the risk of making things worse if I spend too long hammering in the same place, so I'll leave it for now and concentrate on panel preparation before getting some professional advise.




Meanwhile at the front I've been looking into the bulkhead mods again, with the benefit of hindsight and more time I'm going to try and make a neater job of it and try to make it look as factory spec as possible. This will mean putting the lip back on the top of the bulkhead shelf, keeping the factory size radii on the corners of the new parts of the bulkhead and replicating the detail of how the bulkhead finishes to join onto the tunnel. So far there has been a fair bit of head scratching and wandering between car bodies to work out how best to do it, but hopefully it should be worth it.

The area I was looking at has been the master cylinders, last time I just put the two master cylinder brackets next to each other and cut a new hole in the bulkhead, but that looks somewhat scruffy. This time I plan fabricate a new bracket for the master cylinders, with a remote reservoir for the brake, then cut out and re-weld the pressing for the hole in the bulkhead.




And here it is all welded in, with a start made further along the bulkhead for the airbox and engine to sit further back.

[leigh]

Shame you didn't take a drive first stevea, they're quite decent to drive when everything's working as it should! Id say the engine shift centres the weight nicely, and the adjustments to the rear suspension can only help. I have seen a coilovered one somewhere too, that'll be your next job That red one has seen better days but it's very handy to have it there for bits and pieces

[stevea]

Yeah, I've kind of missed out a bit there, trouble was that the car was no where near as close as being on the road as I'd hoped, so I needed to lift the body off to fix some other bodges and it just seemed right to shift the engine back at that time.

Jango has done a really good coilover rear end for the small chassis Triumphs, but I don't reckon I need it yet.

[marsie]

Yep,Jangos rear suspension setup is the b****cks and i would eventually like it on my Herald when i can stretch to it
Paul

[mdh]

Nov 15, 2010 18:49:25 GMT stevea said:

Yeah, I've kind of missed out a bit there, trouble was that the car was no where near as close as being on the road as I'd hoped, so I needed to lift the body off to fix some other bodges and it just seemed right to shift the engine back at that time.

Jango has done a really good coilover rear end for the small chassis Triumphs, but I don't reckon I need it yet.

Wow thats some impressive work - is there any more info on it?

I have an idea in my head for a twin wishbone, pushrod, coilover rear end, but it would be simpler than that.

[stevea]

There is more information about it in this thread, Jango’s rear end kit. You may have to join before you can see all of the pictures, but here are a couple more for you.

[mdh]

Ta! :-)

[Em]

Nov 13, 2010 11:29:33 GMT stevea said:

V8 Herald - I have seen pictures of it done that way. I started off using a Spitfire/Herald front engine plate to mount it with the tower in the standard position, but seeing as the standard repro mounts struggle to hold a four cylinder I decided to fabricate some mounts and use Jaguar rubbers instead, bolting onto the suspension towers.

Neat work, that looks like a much better solution! And Jag rubbers are a robust choice, those XK motors weight a ton!

Like your thinking with the 'factory look' bulkhead too, it's little details like that that make all the difference.

Coming on nicely!

[stevea]

More bulkhead mods

As you can see from the pics below, I had already started on the drivers side before I remembered to take any pictures. The sides of the area around the pedal box have been boxed in and a new piece put in beside it to give more space for the air box.

So it went from;


Remaining redundant top of bulkhead and front of tunnel cut off


and new top of bulkhead positioned for the camera

[stevea]

A bit more fabricating and welding done over a weekend. The vertical closer panel on the passenger side of the bulkhead was cut and folded.


The problem with this is that the new bottom corner of this panel reaches out over the floorpan. Having some spare floorpan parts, I decided to change the shape to make it all fit and look better.
Replacement section in place prior to cutting and welding.


Replacement piece welded in with the top hole filled in and the old corner of the floorpan cut out so not to create a redundant cavity.


And this is how it soon looked, with the bulkhead started to be welded in and some of the holes in the bulkhead being filled in. There is still quite a bit of grinding back to be done and pseudo spot welding between the bulkhead top and the vertical panels, then it's onto the drivers side, which will be more complicated again as the panels have to give room for the starter and clutch slave cylinder.

[mdh]

Nice work Steve :-)

[stevea]

After pulling out some dubious repairs from the rear wheel arch I worked out that the left hand rear wing had already had three repair panel welded on. The trouble with this is that the panels were not very good and had a thick layer of filler over them to cover it up, so I decided to get a new wing.
The complication here is that the fuel filler cap is in this wing and the company that produces this wing do not do the pressing for the fuel filler, but one of their suppliers could do the pressing, so I ordered an appropriate wing from them. Unfortunately it was not quite as I had hoped, the red one below is an original and the black a re-pro pressing.




I asked the company if they could do better and they said no, so the wing was exchanged at their cost for one without a filler hole and I set about moving a filler hole across. I started by marking up all the parts with masking tape to give me reference points of where the filler hole should be.




Then the filler panel was trimmed down and a hole cut in the new wing to allow me to drop the piece in before doing the final cut around, just in case I had it in the wrong place.




Once happy with this, the proper size hole was cut in the new wing before welding the hole in place.




It's going to need a bit more finishing and possibly a skim of filler before paint, but I'm fairly happy with the result and glad that I should have something that looks right when fitted.

[mdh]

Why on earth do they sell a 'wrong' wing in the first place?

Nice work though.

[stevea]

Ta, I guess some people are happy to have that rougher looking pressing on their car, that or my standards are too high, though I doubt it. Strangely enough, the supplier has said they will no longer sell that wing direct, but their trade customers (including other parts suppliers) are happy to take and sell them.

[leigh]

That's very strange about the odd wing but I must say kudos to you for the filler insert in such a curved piece! That's some very tidy work Steve

[stevea]

With the recent cold weather we have been having I've not been so keen to work on the car recently, but I had agreed to move the body over to a bodyshop this week, so I wanted to get the bulkhead finished off if possible.
I don't have and in progress pictures this time, but once again the floorpan has been remodelled and the new bulkhead section welded in place, though this time the piece was fabricated.






Back inside the car, one of the radius arm strengthening brackets has been moved across, this is because the body was swing spring and will be going to Jones/Bowler CV.




I've made a start on the other side, unfortunately this bracket has had plates welded over it, but I found a decent one on my other spare GT6 body.




The body is now over at the bodyshop to have the rear light panel, rear wing and outer arch fitted, which they reckon they may have done by the end of the week, then it's back to me to finish the bracket on the heel board, repair both toe boards where it bolts down through to the chassis, patch a couple of holes on the back of the screen frame, put a new lip on the leading edge of the roof and if there is time, seem seal and paint the inside, all ready from paint in February, at least that's the idea :B

[DutyFreeSaviour]

Excellent work Steve. Coming along nicely. Can't see you missing the deadline working at this rate....
Looking forward to seeing this come back together.....

Good luck

[stevea]

I'd hoped to collect the body before Christmas, but with the bit of snow we had, we decided it could wait until the new year. So yesterday I trailered it back to the workshop.






I'm aiming to get it back to the bodyshop in the second half of February, but before that there will be quite a bit of finishing to be done. The original plan was to try and get it seam sealed and painted internally before it went for paint, but considering the amount of other welding I need to do and how cold the weather is at the moment, it may have to wait until afterwards.
Think I'll resume by finishing off the radius arm brackets then work my way forward from the rear light panel, checking every joint and seam I can find.