Five Easy Pieces

Part 1 of the "Get a Wedgie" TR7 restoration series

The easiest part of any restoration is the dismantling of the car. The hardest can be remembering how everything goes back together. It is truly amazing how many parts go into making an automobile. In order to do a proper ground-up restoration it is important to get the project down to its most basic form. In the case of a unibody TR7, it is the tub itself.

Before undertaking a project of this magnitude, you must be committed to take it to completion. Try to adhere to a schedule and target a completion date. If you do not do this, I will guarantee that you will give up and you'll have a pile of parts and a dismantled car that you'd be lucky to get a nickel for. Even with a schedule, I guarantee you will get disgusted, demotivated and delusional several times during the project. This is normal since there are moments when many hours have been spent and you see no tangible change in the look of the car. Keep plugging away, be determined and you will be delighted with the results (given you own skill quotient and other tangibles I can't help you with).

It is important during the process to mark many of the wires, hoses and other oddities with a small note as to where they may have been hooked up or placed. No need to get fancy, I use some masking tape and a marker to write the notes on the required bits. If you need to mark the left side driver door as a reminder to where that goes, stop here. Use the marker to make a sign and the masking tape to attach the sign. Write in big letters, FOR SALE, too stupid to own. For those not needing to mark where the boot lid goes, read on. The dismantling process also produces many nuts and bolts. Some folks put them in baggies/zip lock bags and mark those. I usually put the nuts and bolts back onto the part and deal with them during the clean up/fix-repair-recondition/reassemble stage. Many times taping them to the parts works as well. This way they won't get lost. Do what you feel comfortable with.

Everything gets pulled, lights, doors, boot and bonnet, interior panels, seats and the list goes on. Did I mention how amazing it is on how many parts go into making an automobile? Don't throw anything out, unless it's a classic styrofoam McDonalds Bic Mac container from 1982. You may find that you may not be able to get that particular part and may need to fabricate or substitute something else. At least you'll have the part no matter how bad it is. Then you throw it out!

Unless you've done it a million times before, restrain yourself from dismantling the engine and drivetrain. Leave it alone! You'll have enough pieces of car all over the place without needing to complicate matters by having a piston here and a camshaft there. If you really want to see the inside of an engine at this point, take your lawnmower apart. You can't do anything with the mechanicals until you have the body of the car completed to put the motor back into.

As you can see from the photos, the TR7 engine and drivetrain are removed from the bottom of the car. Once mounts, suspension, driveshaft etc. have been disconnected, the front of the body can be easily lifted away from the engine and drivetrain. I already constructed a roll around cart to hold the engine and such. This is different than an engine stand. The cart allows you to keep the engine and transmission together. It serves two purposes. First, during your restoration of the body tub, it allows you to easily move the engine around and keep it out of the way. When the time comes to separate the two, you can move it to a convenient spot to unbolt the tranny and place the engine block into your truck or trunk, whichever you have to transport it to your favorite machine shop. The second time it's used is when you have everything rebuilt; the renewed engine and trans find themselves back on this cart to be able to move it around easily and reposition it for mating back to the body tub.

One more homemade cart is used to hold the body tub. This can be seen in one of the photos. This is invaluable! Go ahead and laugh but this particular cart is simply made of several 2x6 boards and 4x4 blocks along with four casters. This cart is currently on it's fourth restoration (a Spitfire, a Stag, a Mustang and now a TR7)! You can push the tub around wherever you want. Need to move it out to pressure wash some grime, sandblast or whatever, just push it wherever. Have the neighbor kids push you around in it if you feel compelled to go for a ride.

The goal was to get the TR7 down to the tub. This single component is the FIRST thing to be reconditioned. It is this component that is the basis of your entire restoration. This is the item you will spend the most time on restoring. Do it right, and everything will fall into place. Do it wrong and skip steps, no matter what else you do it'll look like crap. You can always pull a part off to fix or replace, but this is the only chance you got to fix the tub with the car dismantled to this point.

Project Totals
	   Current Phase      Totals to Date
Hours:		19.5		19.5
Cost: 		$0.0		$0.0

By Joe "Stagmeister" Pawlak