Stripping

Decided to strip the car out today, as there is soon to be some serious welding in the floor pan areas, etc, and I wanted to remove any fire risk.

After removing the interior, I wanted to check the replacement doors, to ensure they fitted correctly after the sills were replaced. The existing doors have rusted at the bottom, with the result that the door frame rubbers push the bottom of the doors out, as shown here.


I put the good blue doors on, but the bottom door gap is like this.
Upon measurement the door is 5mm shorter than the original, and tapers down from the top. Also the top right of the window frame also slightly fouls the B post.
Now I know that I can correct this when I reskin these doors - indeed the doorskins are 5mm wider than this door, but I now have to consider if I need to repair the old doors, which at least fit properly. Seems not all Triumph doors are the same.


View of rusty hole in floor near passenger inner sill


Some good news. I had always assumed the car had 86000 miles on the clock, with the instruments out I can see it is 36000. (pity the engine has seized). This accords with the lack of wear on the original tyres, and the disk brakes. This at least settles the decision on the transmission strip down. At this mileage I won't rebuild it, but simply remove the various diff and transmission sumps, clean them out and put new oil in. Some money saved! No wonder the diffs have so little backlash and the bearings feel good, its barely run in. If I can get the engine apart, this probably only needs rings and bearings and a hone of the bores.


Rust behind the front sill cover plate, showing the internal structure of the sill.


Modified pedal box assembly - note the second arm attaching to the main pedal, with the servo fork and clevis pin attached.


Another internal modification I had not noticed before , although its not too clear, there is a "hump" beaten into the transmission tunnel in front of the handbrake. Like all the other modifications no attempt at rust proofing, its obvious they didn't think this car would be around for long.


Modified pedal box removed, you can see the additional plate welded into the box, to relocate the servo, (from under the original area of the brake light switch) to its new position where the clutch master cylinder would have been. A car with the FF modifications could never be a manual, as there is simply no room for a clutch master cylinder.


This view inside the car shows the original Saloon Servo hole to the right and up of the new servo. It was left like this, not filled and open to the engine bay, with only the new servo partially blocking the hole. I think I will fill this with a plate upon rebuild.

The reverse view from the engine bay.

And 2 pictures of the servo, with the pump that varies the vacuum pressure to make the ABS work. Again no labels or manufacturers plates on any of this.



Front wing removal reveals this

And this

I have some arch repair panels which I got from Earlparts, which will fit here. I also have a better wing (which just has 2 frilly areas, and is repairable if I don't find a NOS), so I will trial fit that, and then adjust the arch repair panels to suit. I have left the large under bonnet flange attached as the replacement wing does not have this.

I also need to fix this damage above the plenum, before the new wing is finally fitted, and one other small hole just above the wheel arch.

Many thanks also to Dave for the NOS Driver's side wing, which will "fit a treat" when I get to that side of the car.