Shock Treatment

Part 5 of the "Get a Wedgie" TR7 restoration series

This stage of the restoration is the significant turning point of the entire project. Why? Well for starters, this is actually the time you start putting significant parts back on the car.

This is also the time when a portion of the garage is really committed to the project. I say this because the body tub up to this point was on a rolling cart that I have used for my previous restorations. Here the car was rolled about the Hampshire Triumph farm at will and could be moved out of the way easily. But now the tub is off the cart and placed on jack stands which aren't conducive to be pushing a bunch of black steel around on.

Prior to the transfer of the tub to the stands, I was busy doing mostly cleanup on all the metal suspension components. This involved a lot of sand blasting to remove 20 plus years of road grime and rust. The suspension was broken down to it's individual components, such as trailing arms, radius arms, strut mounts, tie rod levers, sway bars etc.

Once all of the components were sufficiently degreased and blasted clean, they received fresh coats of paint. Springs and all got proper "satin black" finishes that match the original tone of the black. Yes you can have different variations of black. You can have flat black or gloss black, but neither is proper for the suspension pieces. It's sort of in between and for the sake of a better word, I just call it a satin black.

All of the "consumable" suspension components were being replaced and were the major expense during this phase. All of the rubber bushings were being replaced with polyurethane. I went back and forth between putting new rubber ones in but settled on the uprated poly bushes. The car handled superbly with the rubber bushes so we'll see how it goes with these. New struts up front and shocks in the rear are new. New tie rod ends and lower ball joints were done as well. Finally all of the rubber spring pads were renewed.

I am including the rear end in this part of the project and it received a few new items. There were two oil leaks (of the 5 main oil leaks on the car) coming from the rear end. A new front pinion seal and a rear cover seal were installed. One thing to look for on drive flanges is wear along the surface that the seal touches. Over time a slight groove can develop in this area. You can usually get away with not seating the seal all the way down thereby having a non-grooved surface to mate with the new seal.

As with any restoration, it's always easier to take things apart than putting back together. You will need several specialized tools. The TR7 definitely needs to have the front springs compressed to assemble the strut to the top mount assembly. Don't bother to assemble the front struts without it, your wasting your time and the potential for serious head banging injuries is high. I do own a set of spring compressors and had to try to find the things at a neighbors house since he was the last one who borrowed them. Once found, a secondary tool is needed. This would be the left handed Elwood wrench. This tool was used for front suspension stabilizing as well as rear end hoisting and bolt insertion. Is it wrong? Photos of both these tools are shown. As is typical for these projects, you can spend hours trying to do something without the right tools or do it for a fraction of the time with the correct ones. When in need, that's what makes ISOA the best.

All in all the suspension sprang right in and went in without any shocking problems.

Project Totals
           Current Phase      Totals to Date
Hours:	        28.25              240.75
Costs: 	      $505.55            $1565.27

By Joe "Stagmeister" Pawlak