Barely Functional Racing LS Swaps a Triumph TR4

Indy - Guy said:

After several months of distraction:

 

I'm gonna make this build a priority again.

 

This pic was over in the other thread, but I wanna put in here too, well, because I'm flanked by two Challenge winners.  That's why:

2024?

In reply to Stampie :

First road test by August 2024 is the new goal.  Then followed by the VTR meet here in Southern Indiana in September.  Then the Challenge in 2025.  I've got to stop playing around with Priuii too, those have been another big distraction.

Edit to add link to VTR Meet

I'm all signed up for that VTR meet, so will see you there.  Good to see this moving forward.

JoeTR6 said:

I'm all signed up for that VTR meet, so will see you there.  Good to see this moving forward.

 I learned about the VTR meet from your TR6 thread, so thanks for the heads up and help setting a goal.

Well, I obviously missed the VTR goal, but.....

More lovin' coming soon.......

Got distracted with the P1800.

Me too.  My niece had just had her second baby, so my brother dropped out.  We had something come up as well, so I would have been solo and leaving my wife alone to deal with it.  Stuff happens.

Looking forward to some progress.

It's not the progress you expected when you saw this bumped again, but it's the necessary first step towards it.

The poor TR-amp. Was cast out of the garage and into the trailer over the winter to make space for my Prius / car flipping business.  So first order of business was to return it to the garage.

✔️ Done. 

Team photo:

Edit: and yes, that's it's official name now, TR-amp.

Following, as I am working on a TR6.

So happy to see this back - really interested in following along!

berkeleying Mice ! ! !

Downvote for rodents.

Upvote for LS swap goodness

In reply to Indy - Guy :

This is the only thing I don't miss about living in the middle of nowhere...

The TR-amp got a few minutes of love tonight after the boys home track meet.

I jacked up the left rear that had sagged because of all the missing metal in that corner.  It was compounded by me cutting some out on the failed attempt to install the swirl tank.  Also, I didn't properly brace it when we last yanked the body off the frame, so it's sagged about an inch and a half.

Also, previous owner must not have owned a welder or something.  He pop riveted panels that should have been welded:

So, what do you guys recommend for the pop rivet situation?

1.  Leave it as is.  Good enough 

2. Leave pop rivets in and add welding to the panels.

3. Drill out the pop rivets and weld the panels in.

4. Something even better I haven't thought of?

If the panels are in the right place, I'd add some short weld beads to secure them, drill out the pop rivets, and plug weld the holes.  Make sure the body is straight and the panels are where you want them to be before welding.  If some things need adjustment, save them for last, drill out most of the rivets, adjust, clamp, and weld.

Those door posts in particular look pretty flimsy.

Drill em out and weld in proper.

Take the whole thing apart, reassemble with aerospace epoxy.

LoL.

Just weld it.

I guess it depends on how roadkill you want it to be lol. If it was me i'd probably weld it up

I'd want to know what other shortcuts happened, so I'd be tearing it down and reassembling, especially since it has a saggy ass. Undoubtedly they're related.

In reply to Indy - Guy :

The TR6 is a body on frame design with the torsional rigidity of a serving of  steaming hot Lasagna. The body panels don't bring much to the party. So if the Roadkill Ratsun look is what you are after, then just leave the rivets and  rust and move on.

The chassis on the other hand, has to be perfect on these cars. A known weak spot is where the diff attaches to the frame. It is a body-off job to repair  the diff mount and maybe even to properly inspect.

EDIT: Just recalled that this was an early car with the leaf spring rear suspension. So ignore last paragraph.

Thanks for the feedback and mostly confirmation for what I should do.

In reply to NOHOME :

This is definitely NOT going to be a build to the level of quality or finish that you or JoeTR6 typically do.  It'll be much closer to RoadKill style, but probably will eventually be all one color

When I first grabbed this, I was super excited that the base color was already Red.  But now, I would really prefer the whole car is a Flat Dark Blue.  Not sure I want to put the effort into changing the color at this stage though, so it'll probably remain red.