If the TR4 book is like the TR2-TR3 book, it is useful and covers basic recovering of seats and carpet, bodywork (but assumes you will farm out the painting), and engine rebuilds, but not a lot of the nit picky smaller detailed stuff that takes some research to dig out. Some of the minor stuff is covered in the Triumph shop manual. However, there are questions that arise during a complete restoration that I found impossible to find answers for. For others, I got excellent guidance here on the forum. Some of the questions that were hard to find written down in black and white (for me) included stuff like:
- Do the rear lift-the-dot pegs go through the back capping as stated in several printed resources, or does the edge of the capping end just above these studs as is shown in every picture I've seen? (they end above the studs)
- What is the correct orientation and installation methodology for the sealing rubber on the boot and spare tire area? (still have no clue)
- Exactly what size screws and cup washers are used to affix the interior panels and where are the screws placed in order to come close to the originals? (I just ordered a bagful of Moss screws and cap washers and gave up trying to find them in my hardware store bin).
- Are there original factory upholstery patterns available for the seats? (I never found them so I created and published them myself).
- What is the correct orientation of the leather straps and buckles in the spare tire well (I think I puzzled that one out using pics of an original car)?
- Were there standard dash positions for mounting optional accessories such as the windshield wiper pump and cig lighter? (used pics found on the web and generous forum help to answer this one).
- How does the stator tube mount up to the steering wheel and steering box and why isn't this part shown on any maintenance or Moss diagrams? (still don't know for sure, but I have one installed now)
- What is the proper factory trim for inside the boot, and how should it be installed?
- What color should stuff be painted (silver, black, body color, etc)? The concours judging manual available on the web answered that one).
You get my point here - the popular books and even the maintenance manual covers things in broad strokes. But when you are dealing with a complete frame-up restoration where you literally must restore, rebuild, reinstall, or buy new every part on the car, expect to do a lot of research to answer questions that you expected to be easy, but aren't. My guess is that this is where the real art of restoration comes in - the amount of time and effort you are willing to spend to get close to the original - assuming that this is important to you. While I'm certainly not doing a concours car, I did want to make it close to correct and in my experience the devil was in the details.
Hi Guest!
Hey - did you know if you click on the title of a thread it will take you to the first unread post since you last visited that thread?
but were afraid to ask: 
STOP!! Never post your email address in open forums. Bots can "harvest" your email! If you must share your email use a Private Message or use the 
smilie in place of the real @
Pretty Please - add it to our Events forum(s) and add to the calendar! >> 
