THE VAULT TRIUMPHS WITH THE ULTIMATE TRIUMPH (TR6)
News from the workshop as this week we return a Triumph TR6 to the road after a catastrophic shunt, twenty five years ago.
My passion for the TR6, as with the majority of enthusiasts’ choice of favourite car, is rooted in the emotional. They’re clearly flawed, in design and construction - yet if I close my eyes for a moment, suddenly I’m five years old again… Mum has just put me to bed, read me the story and switched on the red night light, casting a glow over my bedroom wall not unlike a photography dark room. My heavy eyes close in slow motion as the land of nod beckons, sleep enveloping me in the warmest of hugs after a long day of… I’m not sure. Eating biscuits? Watching cartoons?
And then I hear it, through the open window, curtains fluttering in the warm summer breeze. The engine first, from what might be five or six miles away. The distinctive, orchestral growl of the British built straight six engine, breathing freely through a stainless steel exhaust - a term I had already learned by then. The engine note rises and falls as the car negotiates the main road through Bawdsey, the village in which I grew up. I hear the downshifts from fourth to first gear, the left turn onto the driveway and the crunch of the Pirelli P6000’s on the gravel of the driveway. I recall being fascinated by the unique tread pattern these tyres have...
Eyes snap open, and I leap out of bed, wrench the bedroom door open, run in short, frantic steps over the brown (yes, brown) landing carpet. Open the back door and look out onto the driveway at what is still, the coolest scene I could imagine. My Dad, aviator sunglasses, brown leather bomber jacket, sitting in an immaculate Conifer Green, 1969, TR6. Black interior, chrome wires, gold pinstripe, big single exhaust pipe and an intoxicating smell of unburned fuel from the PI injection system. Thus, I fell deeply in love with arguably the quintessential British sports car, and it’s never left.
A good friend of mine, and owner of the title TR6 in this post, recalls similarly the exhaust note drawing his attention to the first TR6 he had encountered, “I’ve got to have one of those…”. And so he did, my father restored his yellow TR6 in the late 1990’s. The car met with an unfortunate end at the turn of the century, the unstoppable force of the TR6 meeting the immovable object of a railway crossing post. So began a twenty year hibernation of the car whilst the owner, in his own words, “grew up a bit”…
Over the course of those twenty years, the car was a permanent installation in the works storage. The car under an inch of dust, Dad passed away, and it fell to me to oversee the resurrection of the car. Father had sourced a new chassis, galvanised - as was our protocol - the galvanising adding another millimetre or so to the thickness of the chassis metal, and some much-needed rigidity. I set about building the car back up, straightening on a jig the body, and rebuilding from the ground up. The preparation and paintwork of the immaculate body was undertaken by our trusted partner Arthur at Concours Classics, Badingham, and the Vault carried out the final assembly.
The owner selected the colour scheme, unusual on a TR6 but flattering metallic grey against the plum leather interior and lashings of chrome. The wheels are genuine Wolfrace alloys from 1976, fully refurbished and polished to a high sheen. The specification of tyres and suspension selected to suit the requirements of this car to be a tourer, rather than the out-and-out sports car specified in the restoration of the 1990’s. I rebuilt the engine to ‘CP’ specification, with a stage one cylinder head, PI specific fast road cam, unleaded conversion and fitment of the PI system. Whilst originally having a reputation for unreliability, the issues are solved by the use of modern fuel pump and filtration system we had designed and honed over the last ten years of tuning PI ‘6’s, a fully rebuilt metering unit, braided ‘E10’ compliant hoses (not that one should consider putting E10 into a cherished classic in any case). Polybushed suspension meticulously set up to factory specification - too many of these cars over the years have been altered, poorly repaired and taken away from factory settings, the car then being blamed for handling badly when in fact, it’s much more to do with the setup. One should not simply replace shocks and suspension until one has checked one’s castor and camber angles…
A burr walnut dashboard to complete the dashboard layout, with a period-look Bluetooth head unit in the H section, and 120mm speakers in the kick panels beside the drivers left leg, and the passengers right.
The drive ? Faultless, from the first turn of the key. Even as the builder, I’d have expected some teething problems. The engine pulled strongly and cleanly from the first opening of the throttle bodies, under load the torque presses you into the rebuilt, original seats (superior in my opinion to those often substituted to MX5 seats, see above note on suspension setup…). The thick, black leather, polished spoked Moto Lita steering wheel providing all the feedback you need to wrestle this stunning car through the green and pleasant country lanes on a hot summers day. Not a bad life really, is it ?
This week, we win - the sense of achievement from this week of completing and delivering this stunning car, for such a good friend and deserving family, is genuine, wholesome and fulfilling. The beautiful result speaks for itself, made all the more meaningful by the opportunity to finish what that legendary man in the aviator shades started, twenty five years ago.