READER’S STORY
ME AND MY RESTO
When Nigel Moss finished his project Triumph, he built another for his grandchildren
My Triumph TR4 is a US-spec model that found its first buyer in California in 1962 and stayed there until I bought it in 1999.
I’d contacted a company that offered to find good cars from the US and ship them anywhere in the world, so I gave them a budget and off they went!
Eight weeks later, this car arrived at the docks in London and was trailered back to my home. I bought it sight unseen but I’d been given a very accurate description by the company, and I knew what I was getting, which was a running TR4 with bad paintwork and a shredded interior. I was still asking myself the question: ‘What haveI done?!’
I drove it off the trailer and straight into my little single garage, where a rolling restoration began. I stripped it down over the next 12 months – with the priority being to relocate the steering wheel. I immediately carried out a conversion to right-hand drive, which involved measuring everything up and cutting the bulkhead in all the right places for the column and pedal box, then plating the original holes back up. I wasn’t hiding the fact it started as a left-hand-drive car; I just wanted to do the job properly.
The engine bay itself was painted black, so I took it back to red while the engine was out. I cleaned up the metalwork, primed it and painted the whole engine bay in cellulose. It was okay, but I soon realised I was no painter! I decided to put the bodywork on the back burner for a while and began rebuilding the rest of the car.
I was working in engineering at the time and was able to cheekily tap into my employer’s equipment and expertise. It was easy to get things machined or cleaned, which really helped move things along.
I skimmed the cylinder head and took the engine block into work, where I had it cleaned in a pickling tank before bringing it back to my garage, where I rebuilt it.
Meanwhile, registering the car in the UK was a bit of a tedious process but, having queued up behind dozens of other people at the DVLA’s Manchester office, I managed to get there in the end.
Once all the mechanical parts were up and running, with refurbished suspension and brakes, I drove it regularly in the years that followed, completing more jobs one at a time. There was always plenty to do!
I gradually worked my way around the car – including the interior, which was quite bad. It had the wrong seats and the rest of it had been badly damaged by the Californian sunshine. Nothing is hard to fin
