Finally, I have a "happy story" to share with the list.
In order to go to the Vintage Races at Mid Ohio 2 weeks ago, I had to put the
dog in a kennel. The owner is a transplanted Brit who noticed the TR6 pull
into her driveway when we retreived the dog on our way home. As in so many
such stories, she also used to have a '6 (but of course, alas, no longer
does). In talking over Triumphs in particular (and Brit cars in general), she
rememberd that she had 2 tranmissions in her barn that she said were from
TR6's. Did I want them? If not, she was going to take them to them dump on
Saturday. Of course I would take them! Even though my TR6 has a recently
rebuilt tranny, you can never have enough TR6 parts, can you? (Here's hoping
my wife isn't reading this.)
When I showed up to collect them, my heart jumped a bit to see an overdrive
living on the back end of one of them. The other had originally been an O.D.
trans too, but the O.D. unit was missing from the adapter plate back. They
were covered by several years of "Barn Grunge" (dust, bird guano, old grease
and who knows what else), so I didn't look too closely at them, but loaded
them into the back of my station wagon and thanked her several times. I
wanted to get outta there before she changed her mind ("No, I changed my mind
about those, I can't stand to part with them. They remind me of my lost
youth..."), so I bolted on home.
Now for the good(er) part -- as I stood looking at them at home, I noticed
that there were things about the O.D. equipped trans that made me think TR3!
For instance, there were the 2 isolator switches on the top, but no back-up
light switch, and there was this open hole where the oil dipstick would go,
plus the fact that the O.D. looked an awful lot like a Type "A", not the
familiar "J". Bingo! TR3/2/4(?) trans with an "A" overdrive. And I just
happen to have a TR3 A that is in need of an overdrive trans. So, now
TS60952L can become TS60952LO. And all this for the cost of a little gasoline
to go pick it up.
I took the top cover off to look at the innards, and didn't find anything
terrifying in there, but the real story will come with a tear-down this winter
to really see what's hiding in there. I'll post my progress as I go along,
but this is the start of my 2nd resto of the TR3.
Any advice would be welcome (other than to send the unit to you).
Tom Walling
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