A Trip to Sebring in a TR6

"Local car nut drives 28 year old car 3500 miles and lives to tell about it..."

Last December we bought a 1971 TR6 for the street. We hadn't had a Brit car for the street in the last 38 years although we've raced a lot. It's a pretty car, having been restored about ten years ago and driven little since, but it had "clunks" in the driveline and several little things wrong, all a mystery to its previous-dentist-owner.

After completing a 28-item "to-do" list, including axles and u-joints, and seeing it sitting there in the garage with wintry weather outside, and having previously planned to somehow go to the Sebring 12 Hour Endurance Race, well, you know, one thing led to another.

We caravanned on and off with ISOA's westernmost member, Joe Alexander in his 300ZX, another couple in a Miata, and our son in his Miata. We were concerned about maybe not being able to keep up with the modern riceburners, but found on the way down that even in the two days of rain we were dry and cozy inside and that 3000 rpm made a comfortable 75 mph. We got 24 mpg on the first tankful, 26 on the second, 31 on the third, and then mileage fell off as we started driving 85 instead of 75. It burns / sprays a little more oil at that speed, too, asking for a quart every 500 miles.

On the way down the brake booster started hissing at us and when it also started hissing on acceleration, we stopped at a NAPA store for supplies and taped off the hose. The only downside to this was I was reluctant to force my wife to drive in heavy traffic with the heavy pressure needed on the brake. She did just fine on the Interstate, though, even after not having driven a stick shift in 15 years.

What fun in Florida, and everywhere else too! Gas station attendants, guys in pickups, ticket takers at Sebring, everybody liked the car and had a story to tell us about their uncle's experiences with SU carburetors. The guys in the Miatas didn't complain, but nobody paid much attention to their cars .... and surprisingly, the only other British cars we saw on the whole trip were in the Sebring infield, an MGB and a Marcos!

Several days of top-down cruising in the middle of the northern winter was great. And the 12 hour race was truly a spectacular scene, especially at night, with brilliant shaking headlights lighting up the 200 mile-per-hour landscape with their erie blue light and the brake discs and exhausts glowing red in the dark.

I must admit that our Triumphs are noisy at high speed, what with the thin fabric top and all. "How noisy was it?" "Well, it was sooo noisy that my ears became numbed to the noise on the way home. At our last homeward fuel stop, I started the car, and then because I couldn't hear it running I accidentally hit the starter again with the engine running and spun the ring gear on the flywheel."

That's our story and we're stickin' to it....

Jack and Frances Drews
April 1999