Tag Archives: assembly

bowtie6 Back Together

Labour day has come and gone.  bowtie6 is back together.  Yeah!

We spent pretty much all day yesterday fitting body panels.  This is a challenge.  TR6’s don’t quite “fit” very well even with a perfectly plumb frame.  So we had to do quite a bit of fitment, shims and spacers to make things line up.  Suffice to say, after a long day yesterday all fenders are finally bolted on, the bonnet lined up quite well and the boot lid is in place.  Quite a day.

Sorry, no pictures but I promise a full set the next time I get to work on bowtie6.

On a side note, today’s post marks a bit of a milestone:  this is the 50th post since I started this blog.  I’ve been able to track hits via Google Analytics and so far, I have a pretty much global audience.

Just for the hell of it, if you happen to be reading this post – please, make a quick entry and just say where you are reading my blog from.  Just curious…

Pictures will be posted soon…

bowtie6 Reassembly

Labour day.  This summer has flown by.  Finally, the end of summer and heat.

A great deal of progress has been made and quite a bit is left to do.  However, today we decided to start putting body panels back together.  No pictures, there is nothing glamorous about bolting doors and fenders back on.  You get the idea.  Actually this is a major pain in the ass for many reasons:

  • Much attention has to be paid to avoid damaging expensive red paint.
  • A great deal of time has to be spent in order to get all body panels to line up properly (not easy to do on a British car).
  • Since we have a new frame, the body must be shimmed in order to make things line up properly.
  • Don’t scratch the painted body panels!!

This is especially hard work because we strive to get body panel gaps as close as possible.  This is not easy on a TR6.  These things are notorious for bad body gaps, especially the distance between the doors and the rear fenders.  This is where “purists” have a cow because in order to solve this problem shims must be placed under the body shell and this allows the gaps to be cleared.

Since we have a much more “true” frame to begin with, it will take some work to determine the appropriate shims and most important, where to place the shims to get the correction required to get the body gaps “just right”.

The plan is to get the bowtie6 back together so I can bring it back home.  Then  I will finish up all the wiring.  Once we get that done, new carpet can be installed (yes, new carpet) as well as many other small details.  I’ll have pictures soon.

Stay tuned…