TRIUMPH TR2 RESTORATION

Rear Quarter Panels - Sept 2018

 Probably somewhere in this site I described how the rear body had been cut off and a replacement body installed. While the part they installed was in reasonably good condition, someone somewhere made a brilliant decision to cut the body off through the rear quarter panels and through the flat section floor in front of the fuel tank. I they had chosen to cut through the box section that was hidden behind the door and through the fold of the floor the process of putting it back together would have been a whole lot easier and looked a lot better. Unfortunately the reattachment was largely done with an oxy welder with a little bit of brazing around the inner wheel arch for good measure. As any car restorer would know, welding flat panels with an oxy torch will result in a massive amount of distortion. However this is not a problem if you buy filler in bulk which apparently they did.

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After some soul searching and a lot of work trying to make the rear quarter panels acceptable I decided the best solution was to buy new panels from Moss Motors along with the B pillars. Unlike the B pillars the quarter panels looked pretty good from the get go but my best guess is that the body fit was not quite right going by the way the remains of the inner quarter panels were finished off. As a result I had to cut the panels and extend them with a wedge which is hard to do on a 1mm panel which is largely flat but with a bit of a form that tapers out of the door. I also had to guess how to close these panels off to the completely re fabricated B pillar. I have them both near complete with some slight modifications to the drivers door panel to get the gap right. It will need a skim of filler to accommodate a slight dip at the door but this is a lot better than the sculpture I started with.