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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: 
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Pretty Please - add it to our Events forum(s) and add to the calendar! >> 
My name is Gary and I am a 73 year old retired pilot. My first car was a 1961 TR3 that I bought for a hard earned $400 while in college in 1968. It had 100,000 miles on it, had just had the engine & transmission rebuilt, and was primed ( over a lot of bondo) and ready to paint. I had it painted for $75 and drove it for another 50,000 miles before parking it in a shed on our farm when I entered the AirForce. Driving a TR3 all winter in WI is something hard to forget! Amazing how much snow one will go through with tire Chains on it! I also vividly recall having it totally buried by a passing snow plow (couldn’t see anything but the top of the radio antenna) and having to shovel it out myself In order to get to school. It would always start in the cold weather but took a lot of cranking! The heater was worthless and I resorted to a catalytic camp stove on the jump seat in an effort to avoid frost bite. Probably not the safest arrangement but I’m still here.
By the time I left active duty it had been moved out of the shed and was looking like Swiss cheese. I couldn’t bring my self to junk it so I borrowed a truck and moved it 150 miles to my new home where it again sat outside under tarps for about six years before taking up residence in a corner of my new garage after our next move. There it continued to slowly dissolve for another dozen years or so before I bought another ‘61 from the man who installed the floors in our house. He recognized the shape under the tarp and told me He had one too. This second TR was as rust free as any I have ever seen, having spent most of it’s life in NM. I salvaged what I could from the old TR for possible use on the newer one, and scrapped the rest except for the frame and suspension which went back to the old farm shed, staying there until a flood took the shed and everything in it.
I disassembled the newer one down to the frame, had the engine rebuilt and slightly “improved”, and paid a friend who actually knows how to build things to put the rest back together. He did a great job. Everything was rebuilt or replaced, powder coated, plated, or painted. A local body shop did a nice job replacing the floor panels and inner rockers which had a few pinholes of rust, and painting it. It turned out very nice! The gaps around the hood and trunk are not even and maybe some day I will try to correct that. It was built to be a driver not a show car, but I have picked up several trophies at local car shows that I am very proud of. When people ask if I rebuilt it myself I tell them I signed every check. i am very grateful to my friends Ray & Mike who did all the real restoration work!
By the time I left active duty it had been moved out of the shed and was looking like Swiss cheese. I couldn’t bring my self to junk it so I borrowed a truck and moved it 150 miles to my new home where it again sat outside under tarps for about six years before taking up residence in a corner of my new garage after our next move. There it continued to slowly dissolve for another dozen years or so before I bought another ‘61 from the man who installed the floors in our house. He recognized the shape under the tarp and told me He had one too. This second TR was as rust free as any I have ever seen, having spent most of it’s life in NM. I salvaged what I could from the old TR for possible use on the newer one, and scrapped the rest except for the frame and suspension which went back to the old farm shed, staying there until a flood took the shed and everything in it.
I disassembled the newer one down to the frame, had the engine rebuilt and slightly “improved”, and paid a friend who actually knows how to build things to put the rest back together. He did a great job. Everything was rebuilt or replaced, powder coated, plated, or painted. A local body shop did a nice job replacing the floor panels and inner rockers which had a few pinholes of rust, and painting it. It turned out very nice! The gaps around the hood and trunk are not even and maybe some day I will try to correct that. It was built to be a driver not a show car, but I have picked up several trophies at local car shows that I am very proud of. When people ask if I rebuilt it myself I tell them I signed every check. i am very grateful to my friends Ray & Mike who did all the real restoration work!
