Bobby Whitaker wrote:
>
> I need floors and inner/outer sills among many other parts for my TR6
> restoration. A couple of local British car mechanics have told me to be
> careful when buying body panels - that many places sell cheap ones that do
> not fit well. Is TRF one of the companies that sells good quality
> floors/sills? <snip>
I used body panels from TRF when restoring my car. The outer sills were not
perfect, but fit OK. I believe the original tooling is lost, so finding better
ones
may be difficult. The floorpans and inner sills were great, as was the rear
valence
and rear deck main piece. The foward extensions of the rear deck were poor and
required much fitting. The front/inner fender replacement panels I have seen
leave
a lot to be desired as well. TRF and most major suppliers sell British Motor
Heritage panels whenever they can, and these are definitely not cheap.
As for how to replace rusted floor panels, I have done it two ways. On one
car, I
cut out the entire floor panel, and even had to patch some of the surrounding
metal.
This made welding in the new panels fairly easy, but required more care in
extracting the old panels. I drilled out the spot welds and used plug welds to
fill
the holes/attach the new panel. One could also cut around the spot weld on the
old
panel and grind off the extra material left. Eastwood makes a special drill
bit for
doing this. This is a better option if you want to spot weld the new panel
back in.
My latest project is an autocross car. For this, the floor pan was cut out
leaving
a .5" ledge on all sides. The new floorpan was trimmed and welded onto the
ledge.
Not quite easy, but less work than the previous job. It looks rougher, and
probably
shouldn't be done if the seams where the floorpan join the tub are very rusty.
I
prefer replacing both sill panels whole. Patching one up still takes a lot of
work
and is probably weaker structurally.
Joe Seward
'73 TR6
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