Interior
Fall 2001
It’s now November 2001 and this project has stretched into it’s second year. The car was placed in storage on November 3rd for six months. Yup, six months! The weather should be warm again by then and my enthusiasm refreshed. I was really getting burned out.
Here it is ready to head for the storage barn. Still a lot to do but the effort is finally starting to show.
During the winter I will pick away at some of the many small tasks remaining. Headlight buckets need cleaning and painting, bumper brackets, seat slides, etc, all need sprucing up.
I’ll have to save my pennies for a new interior. The original interior was “shadow blue” and it was never my favorite. One of the many catalogs has an interior color called “biscuit” that looks very sharpe.
A project started last winter was building an intake manifold for electronic fuel injection. The basic construction is pretty well along but things like injector sockets, fuel rail, and throttle boby remain undone. This project was slowed last winter by bitter cold temps in my garage. Perhaps before the holidays I can at least get a ceiling up in the garage to hold in a little heat. Besides the TR6 projects this winter I have two marine diesel engines to rebuild. The ceiling/heat project is becoming more important by the day.
There may not be much to report, but from time to time over the winter I’ll update the site. Feel free to drop me a line. I always have time to talk TR6.
March 2002
All winter I’ve been thinking about the next stages of this project. Some work has been done over the winter on an intake manifold to convert to electronic multiport fuel injection and the actual manifold will be completed by the end of this month.
The manifold is something that is not essential to getting the car back on the road but an interior in now a more pressing matter. The old carpets are rotted and the vinyl glued here and there is pretty tired. The seats were recovered not to many seasons ago but the foam rubber cushions inside are original and badly deteriorated. Little piles of foam particles now build up under the seats. I asked the knowledgeable folks of the 6-Pack list (6pack@autox.team.net) for advice about suppliers. The praise was unanimous for Prestige Auto Trim of England (https://www.pattonmachine.net/1975-tr6/the-rusty-tr6/fall-2001/). I emailed them and they sent samples of the three colors of leather I requested. Biscuit, a light tan, is the new color of choice for leather seats, vinyl door panels, and wool carpets. Never had a car with leather seats and figured (my 62 Austin Healey 3000 MII may have had leather seats but I don’t remember, duh), that with all the time and money already spent, may as well go first class. New seat foams have been ordered from my old friends at Moss Motors. For some reason they don’t supply the headrest foams so I’ll try cutting them myself. Right now the headrest foams are nearly nonexistent so the headrests are sort of like empty bags on a chrome post. Delivery time from Prestige is about six weeks and I understand as it is custom built. The car is still in storage until the first of May but tomorrow the forecast is for nearly sixty degrees! Absolutely unheard of temperatures for Maine in March. This winter has been extremely mild and it’s very tempting to get the TR6 out of storage any day now.
