Bodywork

The body work has been the major focus of the rebuild to date. When the car was bought the bodywork did look quite good but detail inspection found some excellent work replacing some of the standard TR panels in the main body tub. This is a standard TR3A post 60,000 commission number unit with modifications to accept a Herald type steering column and for it to sit on a widened TR3A chassis  of a unique design but what ultimately became the first incarnation of the TR4 chassis. There were also some rather ugly repairs using a combination of steel riveted in place with copper rivets, lead loading and in some cases finished off with fibreglass matting. These repairs have had to go and have now been replaced with nice new shaped steel welded in to make invisible repairs. 

To ensure the car would be straight when finished a complete set of measurements were taken to ensure the inner body shell was properly aligned, it wasn't, the front bulkhead has a slight lean and twist in it as a result of an accident in the early 1980's. As the car's last tax ran out in October 1982 it is reasonable to assume the accident was directly before then. 

The accident damage was restricted to the front panel and the wing with the chassis seemingly untouched. With some judicious pulling and shoving the bulkhead came back to its rightful place and the car is now sitting straight.

The tonneau cappings needed straightening and fitting to the car to ensure the cappings fitted perfectly and were aligned. It is always worth doing this before any paintwork.

 The body has progressed well, the body is now painted  black of course and back under wraps whist Neil concentrates on the Zoom body shell. The plan being to fit out the Beta body shell whilst the Zoom body is finalised and painted. 

Now that the paintwork is complete the fit up can commence.

Readers might wish to know that the primary parts that makes a Beta are available from RevingtonTR. These are: -

Body panels 

Chassis