15 September 2007 - the dismantling...

Well, the Beaulieu autojumble came and went, and served as an interuption to the restoration. I met with Bill from Rarebits and collected a number of chassis nuts, bolts and rubbers. Nice guy and certainly knows his stuff on the old Triumphs. I will probably be buying some more stuff from him as I progress through the rebuild. Only disappontment was that he didn't have all the chassis bits with him at the show, so I'll have to get them later.

Today was a good day! I had a clear day on my own to crack on with getting the body and chassis parted and succeeded as you can see from the photos below. I am also getting quite into taking photos and recording the events on this website, so it shold develop into something I can look back to with fondness!

The main target was to get the body off the old chassis so I can strip the suspension and differential ready to prepare to go on the new chassis. I acheived this and got a good look at the tub in the process. The tub is pretty rotten and has been patched in quite a few places. I am pretty sure it is salvageable with a bit of work and the fact that I got a good bulkhead means that I can spend some time getting the tub weleded and tidied up. The boot floor is shot underneath the petro tank and needs an new panel if one is available. I will take a look on Rimmer Bros website in the next couple of days and see. I have also bid on a top deck of a convertible tub, so I can use it to patch mine up with. Cheaper than buying panels and you get the factory fit! Obviously someone kept it to convert a sedan into a convertible at some point, but never got round to it!

I also stripped the paint (well started stripping the paint until I ran out of Nitromors!) off the good secondhand bulkhead to take a good look at it. On the face of it there is no major problems apart from the passenger footwell. It has worn think with rust and will need to be relaced. Luckily the old bulkhead had some new panels welded in to it (the rest of the old bulkhead was rotten!) so it became a donor and I cut out the good floorpans to reuse. I am all for recycling!

Taking the body off revealed that the old chassis was completely rotton and would have needed all the outriggers and side rails replacing so I am glad that I managed to get hold of a really good secondhand one. It is the first time that I have seen Herald running gear so it was quite interesting to see how it all goes together. The advantage of so many pictures is that I can at least have a record of how it all goes back together. The rear suspension came apart quite easily (air impact wrench is a godsend) and Bill of Rarebits said to keep the top shock mount bolt as it is a special one - good advice. The only snag I it was the nearside trunnion bolt - it is siezed solid. I left some WD40 on it so hopefully it may free up a bit for next time. If not I may have to look out for another one.

The next stage is to take the engine out and then get the various suspension parts off and cleaned ready for painting and reassembly. I have a set of discs on order (good old ebay again) and need to start looking for shock absorbers and springs.