After doing some classic runs in the DHC on rainy days I thought how nice it would be to have a proper roof that didn't leak so had started to look around for another TR7 but this time it would be a FHC. This would not be instead of the faithful DHC but would be a second one for those cold and wet days.
Asking around the various TR7 groups I found a likely car up at S&S Preparations at Bacup near Manchester so a quick trip up there was arranged to have a look at it. Steve Wilcox the owner of S&S has a yard full of TR7s in various states of repair and an old mill full of spares. The car we went to see was not as good as I hoped. After a look around Steve showed me a Pageant Blue TR7 FHC that was complete but needed a bit of work. It had been laid up for a couple of years and needed some of welding but was in pretty good condition with a very tidy interior. Someone had obviously cared for it and already done some of the work.
Some welding work had been done on the inner wings,
And the ends of the rear deck would need repairing in the usual places,
The plan was to have it as a running restoration and do these jobs at convenient times. The car was delivered and I was able to drive it into my garage before starting a thorough mechanical check. The car had been laid up for sometime so a lot of items like the brakes needed a good going over.
As it turned out I decided it would be better to get an MOT and then take it to my bodyshop man before starting any more serious mechanical work. Luckily I was able to free the brakes and get it running well enough for an MOT pass so drove it the few miles to my bodyshop man to do the welding and paint that was needed.
