So by the summer of 1994 I’d got a complete rolling chassis, a bonnet ready for painting, loads of cardboard boxes full of labelled bits and a body tub that needed its roof and bulkhead welding. Wishing to remain on reasonably social terms with my neighbours I was reluctant to get the angle grinder out again to tackle the tub and so was a bit stuck with how to proceed.

Sandy, my youngest son eventually came to (indirectly) to the rescue. He was then (and still is) driving a Fiat X1/9. Yes I know what you’re thinking, but he is young and didn’t we all make mistakes when we were young? Anyway this particular X1/9, his second (!) had a very sick gearbox and he was looking for someone to sort it for him. Somehow he came across Sports and Classics Cars in Spetchley near Worcester and managed to grind his X1/9 over to their workshop with a few teeth left on some of the gears.

Simon, the owner assisted by his (notionally retired) father-in-law John ‘Jock’ Parffrey is primarily a TR fan but also ‘knows’ our cars plus MGB’s absolutely inside out. Jock worked in the aircraft construction industry in his youth and the patience, precision and attention to detail that this work instilled in him he brings to bear very effectively in the car restoration business.

When the X1/9 had been sorted and I took Sandy over to collect it I took the opportunity to have a chat with Simon about Bluey’s roof problem. He sounded optimistic and a few days later came over to collect the body tub on his trailer. The three of us placed the heavy tub on the trailer resting on a set of old tyres that Simon had brought for the purpose.

The engine bay on purchase. Much work required.

While Simon and Jock were working their magic on the tub I removed all the engine ancillaries and separated the engine and bell-housing. As purchased the car had no overdrive and I was keen to fit one. Some years ago John Kipping wrote an excellent article in the club magazine about gearbox, overdrive, differential combinations and after reading this several times I went over to Coventry to talk to him about it. I eventually decided on a reconditioned gearbox, J-Type overdrive and a 3.5(ish)-to-one diff, a combination which provides overall ration which are lower (i.e. higher geared) than the factory fitted overdrive option to make the car a bit longer legged. John even provided the necessary shorter propshaft and went to a lot of trouble to ferret out the correct gearing to make the speedo read accurately, which it does.

I considered reconditioning the engine myself but when I costed up the necessary

Awaiting shipment. A very heavy engine.

machining operations I soon concluded that the financial gain would be small with no ultimate guarantee that the finished job wouldn’t sound like a box of nails. Sandy suggested that I could save cash by not bothering to rebuild the engine at all on the basis the overall project progress was so slow that by the time I was ready to refit the engine it would be safe to assume that the internal combustion engine would have been banned on environmental grounds rendering the whole car usable only as a museum exhibit. I dismissed such cynicism and left hm to play with his X1/9 which had by now,  developed some other Mediterranean foible.

I eventually collared a rep from Engine Machining Services (EMS) of Worksop at one of the rallies and being a good rep it didn’t take him long to convince me to entrust the engine rebuild to them. They did an absolutely super job, including fitting a head with hardened valve seats so that I could use unleaded petrol. My only minor criticism being that they used a carrier to transport the engine who clearly had no idea of the weight of a Triumph Straight Six. When the chap arrived to collect it he planned to lift it on his own into the back of a van. He soon became convinced that I had cemented it into the drive as a permanent feature. He disappeared and returned later with a tail-lift van and the two of us managed to lift the engine the necessary couple of inches to get it onto the lift. Writing these words makes my back twinge even now.

All welding complete. Now to burn off all the old underseal.

Meanwhile back at Sports and Classics Jock had made up a new box section to go above the windscreen and had fitted the repair panel from S.W. Classics. Simon had welded up the lot and also done the remaining work on the front bulkhead. They had mounted the tub on a very useful looking scaffold platform and so I asked them if it would be okay to leave the tub on the platform in their workshop and I would return on the next few Saturday mornings to complete the odd bits of welding. I didn’t expect them to be very enthusiastic about this idea because it clearly tied up space and the platform, but such is Simon’s enthusiasm  for these old cars that he cheerfully agreed.

I returned the next few Saturday morning’s brandishing my angle grinder with enthusiastic abandon. Welding completed, I left the tub on the platform which had now been moved outside under a large tarpaulin and set about removing all the old underseal. I remember working under the tub with scraper and blowlamp, torrential rain beating down on the tarpaulin and me snug and warm underneath. A bit like camping albeit with the odd bit of molten underseal dripping on you!

When I told Simon my plans to respray the car myself he was moderately horrified and passionately convinced me that I would never be able to do a lasting job even if it looked decent at first. At the time he had no prep/painting facility and so could not help directly with this, he therefore suggested a local company. So after persuading Jock to wield the nitromoors on my painted wing I followed with the rest of the body stripping it all to bare metal. We then refitted the body, the bonnet, and doors to the chassis.

Reunited at last a rebuilt chassis and stripped body are ready to roll into the paint shop.

Written down this sounds like a simple enough task but mere words does not convey the complications involved. For those unfamiliar with refitting a GT6 body let me explain that it is separated from it by rubber spacers. At the first attempt I could not get any one of the dozen bolts into its appropriate hole in the chassis. After the most inordinate amount of heaving, shoving, levering and cursing we managed to get eleven of the twelve bolts home without resorting to opening up any of the holes. The last hole I had previously ascertained by dead-reckoning after replacing the bit of floor which originally had the hole. This had to be opened up a little to get the final bolt home. Time for a mug of tea and a biscuit.

By now I had become some sort of honorary member of the Sports and Classic team and was occasionally able to demonstrate my ability to be helpful by fixing the odd electrical fault. One single morning I repaired the entire Sports and Classics collection of (two) vacuum cleaners, thereby securing my position as a more-than-useful customer.

But then one day soon after refitting the tub I arrived at the workshop to be presented by a concerned looking Simon. “Its not good Jim”, he said, “we can’t have you send it of to paint like this”. I enquired as to what the problem was. He pointed to the passenger side door and the outside of the B pillar and informed me that they were out of line. I could barely notice this but to be fair there was a slight misalignment. “Won’t it do?” I enquired”, Jock shock his head. I couldn’t really see how I could fix this but Jock explained that if I cut the B-post here and here, then squeezed up the gaps and welded them, the problem would be gone. It seemed like a doubtful solution to me but these guys seemed to know what they were doing. They wandered off to make some tea and left me to it. And so I cut the b-post ‘here’ and ‘here’ as Jock had indicated, squeezed up the gap and got the welder out. Transformation! Damn clever these professionals!

With Bluey now 100% set for paint it was time to ship the car off to Autospray in Redditch for prepping and painting. Simon had already told me not to hold my breath because they are primarily an accident repair outfit and restoration jobs tend to be second priority. If I’d known how much of a second priority I’d have been sorely aggrieved; the job took ten months!

This gave me plenty of time to clean up all the bits and pieces. I dismantled and cleaned the instruments, re-painting the dial needles in phosphorescent orange and resetting the odometer to 00000. If you plan to attempt this latter task, take care! Its easy enough to remove all the number rings but there are various springs , ratchets and spacers that fit between then and these must be shoe-horned back in the correct order between the end bearings. Its one of those jobs with a high risk of some crucial component flying off with a ping across the workshop never to be seen again. Although I managed to get it all back together, I quite expected the number rings to rotate randomly when I started to use the car but to my considerable surprise it all appears to work properly.

Other jobs carried out during the long delay included refurbishing the alternator, starter motor, radiator, fuel pump, carbs, air filter box, heater, water pump, windscreen wiper mechanism, rear light clusters and a whole host of other bits and pieces, Jock gave the dashboard his patient treatment stripping off all the old varnish, sanding down, revarnishing, flatting and polishing. I dismantled the the seat bases and had the components, along with various carb linkages and brackets shot blasted and plated. The seats themselves were is a very sorry state. I took them to Jim Hawkins at Witney, Oxfordshire and he put in a new layer of foam over the original and recovered them in  leather. A beautiful , although expensive job.

Having gone for leather seats I disciplined myself to make economies elsewhere, planning for example, to refit the bumpers with only a good cleanup and polish. However when I tried this they looked awful with streaks of salt corrosion and numerous blemishes. Discipline didn’t last long. They were sent away for re-chroming for a surprisingly reasonable sum and very nice they look too.

Ready for pickup at last a freshly painted Bluey.

At last, in late January 1996 news came that the painted car, gleaming in its many coats of French Blue was ready to collect. The irony here was that by this time Simon had added Tony Carr to his team and a prep area and paint-shop. Despite this and the long wait the job was excellently done and I was able to look forward to reassembling the car. I didn’t fancy doing this in the cold on my drive with the new paint job under a tarpaulin so I persuaded Simon to lend me a corner of his ‘back room’ in exchange for extending the guarantee on both vacuum cleaners.

Read Part 4