• Hi Guest!
    If you appreciate British Car Forum and our 25 years of supporting British car enthusiasts with technical and anicdotal information, collected from our thousands of great members, please support us with a low-cost subscription. You can become a supporting member for less than the dues of most car clubs.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

TR2/3/3A TR3 Bolt Heads - Driving Me Nuts

Share this page

luke44

luke44

Jedi Warrior
Country flag
Offline
So I'm cleaning up the pedal box blanking plate for my firewall, and I get the bright idea to re-use the original bolts (1/4" fine) in the spirit of authenticity instead of replacing them with new. So I put them in my small parts tumbler, and finish the job off with my wire brush. Then I start to study them more closely and discover I have 8 bolts, with <span style="font-style: italic">8 different styles</span> of bolt heads! All similar, but different. Can this really be? And 4 bolts with pointy ends, and 4 with flat. And what looks like 3 different lengths. Go figure.

Surely the car did not have this plate off that many times in its life to have acquired 8 different bolt styles? Or did ST just use any random bolt supplier and mine got 1 of each? I can understand 1 bolt being different from the rest as it holds the flasher on, but all of them? Thoughts? Comments?

86049-m-0.jpg


86050-m-0.jpg
 
Well, the majority of my bolts are the same but I do find the odd one now and again. My TR3 is 54 years old so you do expect that and it's only been apart 1 time in the late 90's.
Can't imagine why a blanking plate would be removed often but if an amatuer rebuild was done and the builder had a container of 'like' bolts it would only take one shot.
OTOH ST did some weird cost saving stuff but it would be more expensive to source from multiple suppliers rather than a bulk buy.
Interesting collection tho.
 
You made me look!
All of mine in that area are marked Linread with a B in the center or Auto R as the one above in your pic. Mostly the Linread marking tho.
 
#2 & #8 are clearly not original, as they have the SAE (American) grade markings.
 
luke,

Going to have to have a look at mine now......

Pretty cool looking old hardware though.

Cheers,
M. Pied Lourd
 
I think that is what #7 says. It was pretty chewed up though so it won't be going back on. Funny thing - the bag had 8 bolts in it, the plate takes 7....amazing how that happens...
 
I'd just put new ones in and be done with it. But I am as far from a purist as you can get.
 
I put in new stainless steel bolts to hold the front and rear fenders on back in 1990 when I restored my 1958 TR3A. I left them un-painted and not one judge ever commended on the lack of - or wrong lettering on the bolt-heads for 12 years of TRA and/or VTR concours events. Several docked me a point because they were not painted. But it's my car and I liked it that way. Then a judge at TRA in Springfield Ohio in 2004 docked me a point because they were not "body-colour" and another point because the stamped markings on the hex heads were just lines. So when I decided to respray my TR in 2007, I looked for and found all the bolts that were left from 1987 when I dismantled everything. I found about 6 different markings on the 1/4-28 UNF bolts that came off my TR.

These are painted now, so that's what you will see.
 

Attachments

  • 23254.jpg
    23254.jpg
    76.9 KB · Views: 362
Hi Luke I agree with Randall about those two and I have seen the others on tr3s. I have saved tr3 bolts for years and they can be a mixed bag, but they are usually grouped together. I think you will find that the common short fender bolt is often an auto R and the longer ones are often Linread. I recently took apart a pedal assembly box on the fire wall of a 61 and the group was the Linread. I met a guy once that knew I had a coffee can ½ full of original bolts and he wanted to trade bad.
Steve
 
Don Elliott said:
.....I looked for and found all the bolts that were left from 1987... I found about 6 different markings on the 1/4-18 UNF bolts that came off my TR...
Click to expand...

So, Don, if I understand correctly, being as your bolts <span style="font-style: italic">were original </span> it seems like all these different markings are completely normal? If so, that fits my bolts also being different...Another ST mystery...
 
Nothing wrong in using original hardware, especially where mechanical strength is critical. This is always particularly interesting where the fasteners are easily seen such as the engine compartment. We had most of our 3A harware replated as original and I am happy we decided to do it then. Price to plate a gallon bucket full of misc. bits have gone from $20 in 2000 to $75 this past summer. it's almost worth investing in a home plating outfit.

plating-1-1.jpg


plating-2.jpg
 
Luke44,
Couldn't resist so wen out to check mine. Wouldn't you know, they don't exactly match any of yours but they are all the same, embossed with "Rubery Owen". Tom
 
Not a clue, Andy. I have no particular knowledge of British fasteners, the words "Rubbery Owen" were written out completely on the little bitty heads of the bolts. You (at least I do) need a glass to read the letters and a light coat of paint (as Don suggests) completely obliterates them. Tom
 
Nice job on those parts Frank. You may want to start a small side business.
 
Back
Top