TR2/3/3A Blanking off the spare steering hole on TR3/3A?

[TR4nut]

Can someone describe, or better yet provide a picture showing how the RHD spare steering column hole is blanked off on the TR3s and early TR3As? Everything I have is disassembled, and I haven't spotted it in the parts catalogs. I was thinking it would be a steel plate with a gasket, but maybe it is just a flat rubber plug?

Thanks,
Randy

 

[Don Elliott]

Mine was a flat piece of rubber about 1/16" thick contoured to match the oval-looking steel support ring that goes over the rubber to close the hole. I made a new one just like the original one in 1990 and it has a hole about 3/8" diameter right in the center where the black rubber drain hose for the vent lid comes out - about 2-3 inches out from the rubber under carb #2.

Look below the air filter for carb #2 in back of the brass extender for the choke pull, you can see the bottom part of the steel plate and the rubber extending out around the plate - also the rubber hose coming through for the drain.

 

[TR4nut]

Hey Thanks Don! That also explains to me also where the scuttle drain goes, I knew about the battery box drain in the transmission tunnel cover, but not that other vent. I need to hunt and see if I still have that steel plate.

 

[NickMorgan]

Look below the air filter for carb #2 in back of the brass extender for the choke pull, you can see the bottom part of the steel plate and the rubber extending out around the plate - also the rubber hose coming through for the drain.

Don, Is that the standard location for the drain pipe, or is that one of your cleaver modifications?

 

[Don Elliott]

Nick - My TR3A came like that new in 1958. By 1987, when I dismantled everything for the full body-off restoration, I remember how the drain hose came through the center of the rubber plate because after 80,250 miles from new, that rubber was "limp" and bulging. It had lost its memory and was no longer flat. So I made the one you see there now after 18 more years and 100,000 miles.

BTW, S-T changed the skuttle design a bit later than mine (TS 27489 LO), maybe about TS 45000 or so where there is no longer any removable rectangular plate to cover the place where a right-hand drive TR would have the master cylinders. I believe it was also at this time that they may have done away with this plate and the rubber piece that we are talking about in this thread.

 

[Geo Hahn]

...maybe about TS 45000 or so where there is no longer any removable rectangular plate to cover the place where a right-hand drive TR would have the master cylinders. I believe it was also at this time that they may have done away with this plate and the rubber piece that we are talking about in this thread.

That is how TS47905L is (no RHD firewall holes or plates for steering column or master cylinders box). I think a prior discussion of this change revealed that there was no clear-cut change point, i.e. there was a period of time where bodies may or may not have had the holes.

 

[TR4nut]

Not sure how fast the transition was, but I can confirm that TS45696L has both blanking plates. And I thankfully found the oval support ring Don mentioned which is good because it is NLA.

 

[TR3driver]

I don't think it was a transition at all; some cars still had the blanking plates through the end of the TR3A run. IMO it was a cost cutting move; the body plant built a certain number of LHD only bodies as they were cheaper, plus a number of 'ambidextrous' bodies. Then the number actually finished as each type depended on what orders the factory had.