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The body work I have done on my TR4A has been by far the most challenging and rewarding restoration task I have ever done. If you are planing on doing this type of restoration, I would like to make a few suggestions.
Bodywork
1. Try and divide the work into managable tasks. This is very important as it is very easy to get into a place where you feel overwhelmed with all the things you have to do. There will also be times when you work all weekend and Sunday evening, you take one last look at the car before you turn off the garage light and it looks just about the same as it did the previous Friday.
2. Try and document your progress somehow. Creating a website worked for me. Check with your internet provider about provisions for personal webspace. Most providers these days offer 10-100MB of free disk space to each customer for the creation of a website. If you use Netscape as your browser, it comes with a very easy to use web authoring module called Composer. This is how I started mine. I am currently using a product called Web Studio.
If you can't do that, try a starting a journal. Either way, PLEASE TAKE LOTS OF PICTURES! My website has created a couple of interesting side effects which I discovered as I worked on it. First of all, you find yourself planning the steps you will take to accomplish a task. Another benefit is that you can review your processes which is very important as you usually have to repeat each repair twice, once for the driver side and once for the passenger side. A perfect example on my site is how I figured out a better way to install the weatherstrip channel on the door openings. The driver side turned out much better than the passenger side. Finally, it is very interesting to hear from other Triumph owners from all over the world. I have gotten emails from as far away as Algiers!
3. Maybe the most important thing to do is locate a local club. It doesn't even have to be a Triumph club, just get involved with a group. There is usually two or three guys in the club that have done a restoration and can offer help.
Well, thanks again for taking a look at my restoration website. I have a email link on the main page if you want to contact me directly. Also, if you have a picture of your Triumph, send it to me and I will include it in my "Cars" section.
I will break it down step by step Start to Finish Pick a link below to see how it went.. 
After two years, all the major body work is done.
Here is a view of the driver side minus the door. You can see part of the tub brace I fabricated. 
You can see the brace a little better here.
Here is the passenger side. The door gap is actually better than this. The tub brace is holding the upper hinge away from the A-post. I just wanted to get a picture of the body.
The next step is the final dent removal, filling, and block sanding that is covered in the Auto Body Section.
The pictures to the right show the body just before I removed the tub to start on the frame restoration.
As I had said, this took about 2 years to complete. Part of that time was spent waiting through 2 winters! The entire tub, hood, trunk lid, and fenders have been stipped by either sand blasting or chemical means. Any repairs were made by welding in panels or patches. The next step was to coat the bare metal in a phosphorous coating and finally sprayed with two coats of DP90 epoxy primer. After the frame is restored, I plan on using a gray high build primer to block sand all the panels smooth and then paint. This has been quite an accomplishment for me!! |
