Teardown
This is where I found out what I really had. The car looked good, of course, as I bought it, but who knew what was lurking under those old carpets and panels? It was, after all, a fifty-year-old car. In that amount of time, things deteriorate.
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The first task was to remove carpets and panels. I saved the panels for possible future reference, but I saw no need to keep the ratty old carpet. The rear shelf had a horsehair pad, and under it was a pad made of hard rubber. The wheel wells were covered with a thin layer of cotton, probably to make the cover fit without wrinkles. The fiberboard cover over the handbrake cables was a goner.
I found some rust under the weather seals in the windshield pillar, which turned out to be just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Also some under the seal in the threshold.
The carpets were glued to the floors with a very gooey cement; they were difficult to remove. The interior came out and the trash heap grew larger.
I finally removed all the carpets and the transmission cover, and I found a few rust spots. (I eventually found more, hiding under the paint.) The transmission was, as expected, pretty grungy. This was my first good look at the Laycock overdrive. The plastic cap where the wiring attached to the solenoid was cracked and wrapped with tape. I hoped I could fix it without replacing the whole solenoid, but in the end I replaced it. (Overdrive).
The car continued to come apart, mostly uneventfully. The windshield was held on by two pins, one on each side, with nuts on the ends. Removing them was not enough; I also had to loosen the screws holding their mounting brackets. Removing the heater required cutting the hoses, as they were hardened with age and impossible to bend. Then, I found that one of the mounting studs was stripped; I eventually welded in a new one. The harness looked good. I reused it, but I installed new spade connectors and replaced those dreadful bullet connectors with Molex ones.
I found a hole under the battery. Because of its location, it was easy to blame it on rust, but it just didn't look like a rust hole, and the floor of the battery box was actually better than I expected. In any case, that kind of damage is easy to fix. The rod between the battery box and the engine is for the accelerator. It was slightly bent, probably to clear the engine; that's a puzzle, as the bend really shouldn't have been necessary.
I removed all the external lights. The only surprise was some aluminum foil used as an impromptu reflector for the brake light. I got a chuckle out of this but, what the hell, it does help to make the brake lights more visible. I eventually replaced it, of course, with something more permanent.
Along with the intake manifold, the carbs were removed for rebuilding. I noticed a couple oddities--one carb was missing a mounting nut and a large nut was used as a spacer for the exhaust manifold. With the carbs and manifold off, I was able to remove the starter and generator easily. The engine compartment started to look empty.
The carburetors didn't look bad, but they clearly needed rebuilding. The large amount of yellow varnish around both float bowls showed that fuel had been leaking for quite some time. The throttle shafts needed attention, too; they were loose in the body.
I started removing body panels. Under the right front fender, I found more rust and even signs that an animal had once lived there--nesting materials and a pecan shell. This area is part of the replacement rocker panel, so it doesn't require a separate repair.
I drained and removed the fuel tank. The interior seemed good, at least from a cursory examination. Eventually, I found that the rust on the bottom was worse than it initially seemed, and the metal was thin and had a few pinholes. The body underneath it was pretty cruddy. Like the rear of the passenger compartment, it was covered with a tar-like material and a fibrous pad, both glued in place. Removing them was messy but not too difficult. The trunk's spare-tire well had a fair amount of rust, "repaired" with fiberglass filler.
I removed the rear fenders. The top edge is a common rust area for TR4s and 4As, but, on both fenders, it showed only superficial rust. The fender itself looked fine; that's unusual.
The two rearmost upper-edge bolts were difficult to remove; there wasn't room for a socket wrench and they were inaccessible with a box or open-end wrench. I tried several tools, but the best option was a quarter-inch socket with an adapter that allowed it to be turned with an open-end wrench.
I took off the door and popped off one interior panel to see what the inside looked like. It wasn't bad. As I continued, the car looked more and more skeletal. Dissecting it like this was necessary to ensure that all rust was removed and that everything was painted and protected.
I now understand why the upper edge of the rear fender in TR4s is so prone to rust. Not only is road dirt, salt, and water thrown up at it by the rear wheels, but the tabs that hold the trim in position create a gap between the inner and outer fenders. That gap becomes a water trap, holding water and preventing it from evaporating easily. Worse, the fenders appear to have been painted on the car, as the mating surfaces were not painted. Just painting them should do a lot to prevent future rust.
Continuing, I took off the left-side door and both fenders. The area between the front rocker and fender was packed with dirt, but, fortunately, the fender had not rusted significantly. There was a strange hole near the bottom of the left footwell panel. It was eventually patched.
The rust in that area is largely caused by its use as a drain for water that enters the fresh-air intake. That water is dumped into the void between the footwell panel and the fender, and ideally drains out between the rocker and fender. Any dust that enters eventually blocks the drain, leaving the area perpetually wet and rusting both the fender and rocker. To fix the problem, some kind of new drain could be created, or the area could just be painted heavily with antirust paint. Even though the restored car won't be driven in the rain much, something really should be done to ameliorate the situation. It's not a good design.
At this point, I started the bodywork, the first step in the restoration. I did a lot of the rust repair with the body on the frame, as it helped maintain alignment while I replaced the rockers and floor panels. I then pulled the body off the frame; the rest of the bodywork was easier with the transmission and wheels out of the way.
In the first picture below, the body is completely torn down, the floors and rockers have been replaced, and the body is ready to be removed from the frame. I made a wood cart for the body so I could move it around as necessary and get under it easily. The last picture shows the chassis with the body removed.
I continued to disassemble the chassis, beginning with the removal of the transmission and engine. The overdrive is surprisingly heavy, and it makes the transmission just a bit too heavy to lift by hand.
I left the suspension and wheels on the frame for some time, as it made parts of the frame more accessible. Eventually, though, I had to remove them, and I was left with a bare, grungy frame and a huge pile of parts. At that point, teardown was complete and the restoration had begun.
