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Been restoring and riding older BMW bikes for a good while now. I’m 73 and, as flagging sense of balance appears in the cards, my biking days are numbered. What next, then, for a retired guy? For this last year’s project I bought a 1950’s 14‘ wooden boat with an equally 50’s 35 hp Evinrude and spent time going thru outboard and re-doing the hull. Motor was a pleasure, but coat after coat of fairing compound and epoxy boat primers and paints gets old. Not to mention I’ve only got so many brain cells left Nor to mention we’re talking offensively pricey. (Had to cut back from initial color choices on account of 600 bucks for one gallon of a certain Alexseal epoxy red but I still forked out far past what I’d thought at first was a generous budget.)
OK, so maybe, in May, a couple coats of topside varnish but otherwise wooden boat for pleasure only.
As I read others’ bios, I note I’m hardly the first among us whose own first car was a 50’s or early 60s Brit. Had a fun adolescence with a bugeye Sprite. Don’t know how it happens, but, heck, say you’re seventeen, you plop yourself behind the wheel of a sporty little red car and you find out you morphed into better-looking just-like-that. Bugeye belonged to older bro a Navy submariner gone for long stints but, had to happen, he came home for good wanting his car. So, rather than suffer a loss of my newfound curb appeal, I scrounged what I could and bought a 59 TR3. Color? Red. Sure. Why not?
I must say, northeast winters with anemic Brit heaters were crazy-stupid cold and have not improved. (Once took on a January trip, Ottawa-to-Boston, in the bugeye and, sure, you cardboard the radiator full in the face, and the heater was theoretically on, but you could’ve fooled me, Also, we’re talking extra-tiny road clearance and distributor cap too sensitive to melting snow, all of which didn’t help when a storm blew up. Ended up rescued from a snowdrift by a snowmobile trailering a very long toboggan. Fretted a day-and-a-half that some Quebec mega snow-blower might snarf that wee Healey full into its jaws – but thanks to the stars (and maybe red color rather than, white, say) a couple of days past schedule, I limped into Boston with all ten toes to boot.
So, now, next reasonable non-bike, non-boat choice would be to go for reliable and well-heated vehicular fun like a Miata or maybe an Abarth convertible – no wrenching needed – though I’m not so old I’m due for a garage sale of every last one of my tools.
For better or worse, I recently spotted an ad for a 57 TR3A and a zillion parts. Seems there’s this enthusiast of 50’s Brit cars within driving range of me, he’s amassed a wide collection from MGs to Jags, and his own time of life tells him to narrow down his collection.
So, he sells all things Triumph he’s accumulated over the decades. And me, in addition to one reasonably non-rusty chassis and body with many parts already removed to various crates and pails, ended up I bought the lot of them.
So now I’m the partially proud owner of 2 windshields, 3 steering wheels, 3 fuel pumps, 2 fuel tanks, 4 right-rear fenders, a spare hood, four (count ‘em, four) TR3 trannies, (not one tr4 in the lot with a synchro first, drat the luck). Ah, there’s tons more, of course.
I figured it’d be kind of fun running rusty parts through electrolysis and acid baths then get ‘em spankin’ clean to epoxy primer (got a bit of it left over from boat). Then it’d be like a jigsaw puzzle whereby each ID’ed piece makes for a shrinking pile of unknowns. But, some parts in that pile definitely do not go to a TR3, so there’s that, and here I am, wishing I had a heated garage though it’ll be okay all winter in warm basement just cleaning and figuring out what the heck is what.
OK, so maybe, in May, a couple coats of topside varnish but otherwise wooden boat for pleasure only.
As I read others’ bios, I note I’m hardly the first among us whose own first car was a 50’s or early 60s Brit. Had a fun adolescence with a bugeye Sprite. Don’t know how it happens, but, heck, say you’re seventeen, you plop yourself behind the wheel of a sporty little red car and you find out you morphed into better-looking just-like-that. Bugeye belonged to older bro a Navy submariner gone for long stints but, had to happen, he came home for good wanting his car. So, rather than suffer a loss of my newfound curb appeal, I scrounged what I could and bought a 59 TR3. Color? Red. Sure. Why not?
I must say, northeast winters with anemic Brit heaters were crazy-stupid cold and have not improved. (Once took on a January trip, Ottawa-to-Boston, in the bugeye and, sure, you cardboard the radiator full in the face, and the heater was theoretically on, but you could’ve fooled me, Also, we’re talking extra-tiny road clearance and distributor cap too sensitive to melting snow, all of which didn’t help when a storm blew up. Ended up rescued from a snowdrift by a snowmobile trailering a very long toboggan. Fretted a day-and-a-half that some Quebec mega snow-blower might snarf that wee Healey full into its jaws – but thanks to the stars (and maybe red color rather than, white, say) a couple of days past schedule, I limped into Boston with all ten toes to boot.
So, now, next reasonable non-bike, non-boat choice would be to go for reliable and well-heated vehicular fun like a Miata or maybe an Abarth convertible – no wrenching needed – though I’m not so old I’m due for a garage sale of every last one of my tools.
For better or worse, I recently spotted an ad for a 57 TR3A and a zillion parts. Seems there’s this enthusiast of 50’s Brit cars within driving range of me, he’s amassed a wide collection from MGs to Jags, and his own time of life tells him to narrow down his collection.
So, he sells all things Triumph he’s accumulated over the decades. And me, in addition to one reasonably non-rusty chassis and body with many parts already removed to various crates and pails, ended up I bought the lot of them.
So now I’m the partially proud owner of 2 windshields, 3 steering wheels, 3 fuel pumps, 2 fuel tanks, 4 right-rear fenders, a spare hood, four (count ‘em, four) TR3 trannies, (not one tr4 in the lot with a synchro first, drat the luck). Ah, there’s tons more, of course.
I figured it’d be kind of fun running rusty parts through electrolysis and acid baths then get ‘em spankin’ clean to epoxy primer (got a bit of it left over from boat). Then it’d be like a jigsaw puzzle whereby each ID’ed piece makes for a shrinking pile of unknowns. But, some parts in that pile definitely do not go to a TR3, so there’s that, and here I am, wishing I had a heated garage though it’ll be okay all winter in warm basement just cleaning and figuring out what the heck is what.
