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This is the record of Ernie’s TR5 rebuild. The aim is to completely strip and rebuild the car over the winter of 2006/7 so that it is on the road in time for Essex Day at the beginning of July.
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In these first few pictures we can see the car as Ernie begins to strip it down. There are one or two obvious areas of concern, but basically the car appears to be sound and hopefully the problems will be superficial.
First step is to strip out the interior trim and take out the windscreen. Next comes the dashboard, dials and switches. Finally the wings come off (after some fun and games with rusty and inaccessible nuts!)
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And here we have some of the bits and pieces that have been taken off. I hope Ernie can remember where they all came from!
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Now that the main panels have been stripped off, we can begin to see the extent of the work that will be needed.
The Floor pan has quite a bit of surface rust and a few holes that will need to be repaired, but it doesn’t look as though a new floor will be needed.
The front O/S inner wing has some rust around the edges , but appears to be basically sound.
The front suspension mounts look fine – a bit of a clean up will sort them out.
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The front nearside inner wing has similar problems to the O/S, but this sort of rust can be sorted out. However, the bottom of the inner wing looks a bit more serious – we may need to do a bit of welding on this - and when we look in side some of the sections the extent of the rust begins to show. Not impossible but it needs sorting out.
The damage to the rear wing and sill was obvious from the outset, but we need to look at what the state of the metal is behind it. Similarly the damage at the bottom of the sill may hide some more serious problems so we need to get it off and have a good look.
At first glance the inner rear wing doesn’t look too bad – some rust around the edges that should be relatively straightforward to fix. However, a closer look shows some more serious work to repair. All the rusted metal will be cut back and new pieces welded in.
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With the tub off we can now see the state of the chassis and its worse then Ernie expected. It looks as though there have been previous repairs to parts of the chassis and as we clean the muck away and start poking around it is apparent that there is a lot of rust and some serious cutting and welding to be done.
Below you can see one of the main cross members being cut out and replaced with a new section. You can also see one of the main side sections being repaired.
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But finally after a lot of work the chassis is complete and can be powder coated and painted.
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With the chassis sorted its time to get back to the body work. Here you see a new section of the front wing being welded into place. The main tub has to be thoroughly cleaned so we can see the extent of repairs needed. As we saw earlier, some of the rust is superficial and can be dealt with, but that sill has had to come off and a new one welded in place.
The engine, gearbox and suspension have all been worked on and Ernie has been busy sourcing new components ready to start reassembly. He has also been getting some of the reusable bits cleaned up and either painted or rechromed. Keep an eye out for the next update!
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