Roger Williams - How to Restore Triumph TR5/250 and TR6

First printed in paperback format in 2001. This eBook based on the 2014 edition.

First published in eBook format 2016 by Veloce Publishing Limited, Veloce House, Parkway Farm Business Park, Middle Farm Way, Poundbury, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 3AR, England Fax 01305 250479 e-mail info@veloce.co.uk web www.veloce.co.uk or digital.veloce.co.uk .

eBook edition ISBN: 978-1-787110-36-6

Paperback edition ISBN: 978-1-903706-46-6

Roger Williams and Veloce Publishing 2016. All rights reserved. With the exception of quoting brief passages for the purpose of review, no part of this publication may be recorded, reproduced or transmitted by any means, including photocopying, without the written permission of Veloce Publishing Ltd. Throughout this book logos, model names and designations, etc, have been used for the purposes of identification, illustration and decoration. Such names are the property of the trademark holder as this is not an official publication.

Readers with ideas for automotive books, or books on other transport or related hobby subjects, are invited to write to the editorial director of Veloce Publishing at the above address.

All eBook design and code produced in-house by Veloce Publishing.

Contents

Acknowledgements & about the author

Acknowledgements

This book would never have been written without the help of a great number of people. Help in the sense of encouragement, but more particularly practical help by the unstinting provision of information, photographs and diagrams. Whilst I have appreciated every contribution, the full list is too extensive to mention everyone, but I hope all will accept my grateful thanks.

I wish to particularly single out a small number of absolutely crucial contributors, starting with John Sykes of TR Bitz. John suggested the book, got me started with a huge initial contribution, provided much by way of technical help along the way, and finally read the manuscript and made many invaluable suggestions. Alex, my wife, has provided moral support and a very practical contribution through hours spent in front of her laptop. (As an aside, I really wonder how authors wrote books before the days of computers, spell checks and auto-correction!) Gary Bates of TRGB and Malcolm Jones of PDI made significant contributions through the provision of technical information and boxes of photographs. Neil Revington of Revington TR, Alan Wadley of the TR Workshop and Steve Hall of TR Enterprises were other major sources of information, while Howard Vesey and Adam Bell of Faversham Restorations provided countless photographic opportunities. Books like this would remain stillborn without the collective help of these professionals, for which I am most grateful.

This particular book has benefited from the very large photographic and technical contribution of Mark Price of Hartford Michigan.

Last but not least, I must record my thanks to Steve Redway (of the TR Register), Jon Korbin (VTR Vehicle Registrar) and Bill Piggott for their invaluable help with my assessment of the numbers of TRs remaining. I also extend my grateful thanks to Bill Piggott for his Foreword.

About the author

Roger Williams was born in 1940 in Cardiff, brought up in Guildford and attended Guildford Royal Grammar School.

Aircraft became Rogers first love and he joined the de Havilland Aircraft Company in 1957 as a production engineering apprentice, and very quickly added motor cars to his list of prime interests. During the ensuing six years he not only completed his apprenticeship and studies, but built two Ford-based specials and started on a career in the manufacturing engineering industry as production engineer. Works managerial and directorial posts followed, and these responsibilities, together with his family commitments, reduced his time for motoring interests to exiting the company car park at the fastest possible speed!

Rogers business interest moved on to company doctoring, which he enjoyed for some ten years, specialising in turning round ailing engineering businesses. In 1986 he started his own consultancy business and renewed his motoring interests. His company specialised in helping improve client profitability by interim management or consulting assignments, whilst his spare time was and continues to be devoted to motor cars or writing.

Roger has owned numerous MGBs, all of which he rebuilt over a period of some seven years. He still has two of his all-time favourites the V8 powered variants and has two MGB books in print. More recently Roger has become involved with the Triumph marque and has restored a TR6 and, currently, a Stag.

Roger is married and lives in south west France in semi-retirement. He has two married daughters and is a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology.

Foreword

I feel honoured to have been asked to write the foreword to this new series of books relating to the much-loved TR sports cars built between 1953 and 1981. As an author of TR subjects myself, I know only too well how difficult is the incorporation of highly technical subject matter within a readable framework, but in this awkward task I feel that Roger Williams has succeeded admirably.

We now have, for the first time, a comprehensive guide to the purchase, maintenance and restoration of the TR sports car, written in an easily understandable form which is both accurate and practical. Such a series of books on the various TR models was much needed; we have had books on TR history, books on TR originality, books on TR competition success, but not previously any definitive title on TR restoration and purchase, despite several earlier attempts.

What I should stress is that this new series is an addition to the TR enthusiasts library, not a replacement for existing literature such as workshop manuals and parts catalogues. Roger Williams books are designed to be used in conjunction with official Triumph literature and to disseminate the collective and edited experience and expertise of owners and professional restorers as an overlay to the purely descriptive by-the-book methods of the TR manuals. Many aspects of TR restoration covered by Roger are absent from the manuals, perhaps for no other reason than that those who compiled the factory literature decades ago could not have envisaged that restoration of such cars would ever take place.

Rogers perception with which I agree is that the average TR owner is now older, as is indeed the case with most classic car marques. There are several reasons for this, but the principal one must be the cost factor; the cars are quite simply too expensive for a younger person to acquire and restore. These books aim to make home restoration easier for the amateur TR enthusiast, and enable him to save the considerable cost of a professional restoration. If they succeed in that aim, and in my opinion they do, then they will have made TR ownership more affordable to young and old alike, which can only be a good thing.

Rogers style is easy to read, yet informative; he writes from a practical hands-on point of view, encapsulating the opinions and hard-won experience of many TR restorers, both professional and amateur. This series of books will pay for themselves many times over they have achieved exactly what was intended, and I commend them to you.

Bill Piggott

North Yorkshire, England

Introduction & using this book

Introduction

This is the first of a series of books written to help would-be and existing owners appreciate how to select, buy and restore a basically standard TR. This book will primarily focus on the TR models that used the superb six-cylinder engine and Independent Rear Suspension; in other words the TR250, the TR5 and the TR6.