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"Beans"
posts: 5742
Netherlands
joined on Sun 5th Mar 2006

FHC resto nr. 118; Striping finished
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At the start of my Christmas holidays, I decided to transfer most of my tools to the shed, and spent a Saturday afternoon there. And with the temperatures well above 10°C I thought it a good idea to finish the ’76 car’s striping and decals. Even the Sun came out for a brief spell!



With everything prepared and ready (including water cooker and hairdryer) I decided to start with completing the driver’s side. This meant applying the striping to the left hand front wing and replacing the TR7 decal underneath the blanking plate. Which shouldn’t be too difficult, and as such ideal as a warm-up. In the end the only slightly difficult part was folding the striping over the rear of the front wing. And that was due to limited access to the area. But I managed to get some warm air and my little finger between the wing panel and door to press the foil firmly in place.


Next was the rather 70’s style “TR7” decal I had applied a few months ago. I didn’t like the look of it, mainly because the font style clashed with the SPRINT cut-out in the door stripes. So the “original” decal was removed and replaced with a slightly down sized Speke nose decal. I have to admit that this looks much better.



After this warm-up exercise came the most important and difficult part for the day: The striping for the right hand rear wing. As with my previous attempt I needed to reposition this part a few times to get the correct position. But this time it was successful.



After which the application foil could be gently removed. And due the length of the part tricky. Especially for the two narrow side stripes, which have a tendency to stretch a bit when removing the application foil.


Although not 100% perfect. There is a tiny fault in the upper side stripe. And the alignment to the back of the door could be better. Though this is fault is exaggerated by the fact that the door sits a little to the inside. And that is because the seals are not in place yet. But overall I am well pleased with the end result.





The final part to apply was the “TR7” nose decal. For its position I used an instruction leaflet I found on the internet, forgot when and where. And at the time I stored a digital copy on my computer. Just in case! And after 15 minutes of positioning scraps of masking tape, careful measurements and placing markers, I had produced this seemingly random pattern. Which enabled me to put the nose decal in position. The cross hairs (just visible on this decal in the second picture in this post) were used to align it correctly between the markers.




As there still was a little daylight left, I decided to carry a few smaller jobs on the cars. The first being fitting the bulbs to the front side lights. As with my other two TR7’s I opted for standard spec bulbs, which were pulled from my the spares stock.
When I restored ‘t Kreng almost 25 years ago I thought it a good idea to buy a selection of various smaller bulbs. Thinking I would have to replace them every so often. Well, so far all the bulbs fitted to ‘t Kreng are still functioning as they should. So I have a few spares left.

The final job for the day was fitting the hand brake lever I prepared well over two years ago. But first the rubber dust cover needed some attention. It has a little tear at the nose, where the cable connects. Apart from that it is in good condition, and will probably outlast any cover sold these days. The cable tie is there to remind me of a small tear at the nose of the bellows of the cover. When the hand brake cable is fitted I’ll tighten the cable tie over this tear to prevent it from getting longer. Fitting the actual hand brake lever was the proverbial piece of cake.


Edited 24-12-2020: I found out something went wrong with the screen calibration while developing the digital negatives. As a result of which the colour of the pictures was to yellow. This is now rectified. And in the process I added a few pictures which, with the correct colour, turned out much better.

 posted Sun 20th Dec 2020
"Beans"
posts: 5742
Netherlands
joined on Sun 5th Mar 2006

Seasonal Greetings
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2020 is drawing to a close quickly, and I am quite happy to turn my back on it. Welcome 2021.
I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Hopefully 2021 will be better than 2020!

 posted Fri 18th Dec 2020
"Beans"
posts: 5742
Netherlands
joined on Sun 5th Mar 2006

FHC resto nr. 117; Small jobs
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While working in the shed, dismantling the parts donor, I also used some of the time to carry out a few small jobs on the ’76 car. The most important one was fitting the front side light armatures to the front bumper. Apart from mixing up the left and right hand lights, and trying to fit one upside down, that job went pretty smoothly. Mental note made that next time I will have to do this job it will be easier to position the bumper in its normal position before I start and not upside down 😶



As you can see, the finished product doesn’t look too shabby! Only have to adjust the rubber surrounds a bit. But as it was fairly cold, they were too stiff, so that has to wait till warmer weather (spring?), or the hair drier!
Another important part for this car that looks in fairly good condition is the gear lever and gear lever knob. These were removed from the parts donor, while stripping the interior. And as you can see the assembly is in very good condition. Much better than the one from my spares stock. And the infamous dust cover is also in good condition, with the small mounting bracket still in place and undamaged. Well pleased with that find!


But most importantly is the gear lever knob. All my spares have signs of de-lamination along the edges of the shift pattern insert. As you can see in the picture below this one doesn’t.


Final job on the ’76 car was trial fitting the revised stripes that go over the front wing off the car, between door and bonnet. They do fit, but only just. So I’ll have to be careful when applying them, as alignment is critical. This is because they are just about the right length, with no margin to play with. Will see ones the weather is good (= warm) enough to apply them …

 posted Sun 13th Dec 2020
"Beans"
posts: 5742
Netherlands
joined on Sun 5th Mar 2006

Parts donor part 3
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I spent some quality time in the shed again yesterday afternoon, spending a small amount of time on the ’76 car (more on that later). But most of the time was spent clearing out the interior of the parts car.
My original plan was to remove the dashboard assembly and the main wiring harness. But I thought it would be better to first strip the rest of the interior. This was prompted by the fact that a lot of the interior trim had already been (partially) removed or loosened.
As the seats were already loose in the car that seemed to be the best place to start, followed by the centre console (yes I had to crawl underneath the rear of the car to undo the hand brake cable, in order to remove the gear lever surround) and the rear bulk head trim.
The parcel shelf is only fit for the skip, the rear bulkhead trim might be useful in future. So that was put aside, leaving me with a fairly empty interior.


Next came the body harness (RKC 3630). Most of the connections had already been disconnected. Only the earth points and heated rear window wires were still in place. Easy!
As there was still plenty of day light left, I removed some more parts including the very dead boot lid struts (clearly replaced for obvious reasons 😝), the door strikers, the rear quarter grilles, and the rear window.




I was quite surprised that the last item only took me about 5 minutes to remove from the car. And the seal looks like it might be fit to be used again after a bit of cleaning. Final pieces I removed were the drip gutter trim pieces. Also easy using a soft faced hammer.
The final job for the day was removing the carpets and inspecting the floor sections.




As you can see are both rear sections in fairly good condition. But both foot wells have signs of standard amounts of rust, with the drivers foot well also showing signs of a water leak. Might be that some extra welding is necessary in that area.


To be continued!
 posted Sun 13th Dec 2020
"vitessesteve"
posts: 2379
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Isle of Wight group
joined on Mon 16th Oct 2006

W Sparrow & Sons Ltd of Yeovil - Triumph car dealers 103
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W Sparrow & Sons Ltd of Yeovil Standard delivery
W Sparrow & Sons Ltd of Yeovil Standard car delivery
W Sparrow and Sons Ltd were based at Osborne Garage, Sherborne Road, Yeovil.  The firm sold Standard cars over a long period of time.

W Sparrow and Sons Ltd advert from 1924
W Sparrow and Sons Ltd advert from 1924

In 1924 the garage was selling Crossley, Humber, Overland and Standard cars.

W Sparrow and Sons Ltd Autocar advert from October 1957
W Sparrow and Sons Ltd Autocar advert from October 1957

Change of name or ownership

When did the business stop trading using "W Sparrow" identity and become Somerset Motors (Yeovil) Ltd.

Somerset Motors (Yeovil) Ltd, Osborne Garage, Sherbourne Road, Yeovil are  listed in March 1972, March 1974 and May 1975.  Were a BMW dealer in 1979.

Somerset Motors (Yeovil) Ltd was incorporated 7 February 1952 under the name W Sparrow & Sons Limited. The company name was formally changed 12 December 1966. However I have photos showing the company trading as Somerset Motors from as early as March 1956 The company has been dormant since 4 January 1992.

Plea for information

If you have any more information or recollections about W Sparrow & Sons Ltd of Yeovil Standard Triumph dealer such as photos of window stickers, dealer badges or sill plates etc please let me know. I can be contacted via the comments to this post or on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/stephen.weblin

Further information and sources

Link to the other articles in this series.

Link to facebook page: Triumph Car Dealers.

Link to my Triumph Car Dealers Flickr group which includes many photos of Standard Triumph garages etc from my collection and many other contributors .

I have a collection of Standard Triumph car dealer directories: http://vitessesteve.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/triumph-car-dealer-directories.html

Picture credits:W Sparrow & Sons Ltd of Yeovil Standard delivery photo posted to facebook by Bob Osborn; W Sparrow and Sons Ltd advert from 1924 from an old theatre program; .
A blog post from vitessesteve
 posted Tue 8th Dec 2020
"Beans"
posts: 5742
Netherlands
joined on Sun 5th Mar 2006

FHC resto nr. 116; Refurbishing the front side lights (part 2)
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In my previous post on this subject, I finished with a two sets of bead blasted side light armatures. The next stage was painting them. The inside was easy. Here I used VHT chrome paint, which can be applied without a primer. For the armature’s exterior I did use the more traditional approach. First a few layers of grey primer, followed by a few black layers. But than I found out that I had ran out of black paint. But I did have some clear lacquer and wheel silver left. After a few small test patches I opted for the clear lacquer. Gives a nice grey finish and it will be hidden from view anyway. Only other problem I encountered were the outside temperatures. Really too cold to paint parts. But storing all the parts at room temperature and then quickly taking them out one by one to paint, and using a hair dryer to keep them on temperature, worked fine. To make sure the paint would cure properly I put them in the living. Where a music stand can also be used for!


Quite pleased with the end result. And from a distant it even looks like the original finish (when new that is).


With the armatures painted I could switch my attention to the remaining parts, mostly the wiring. After a visual inspection I choose these parts, but after checking the wires with a multi meter I found half of them either were badly corroded inside, or had hidden cable breaks. The corrosion turned out to be a problem I found with more of the wires. Luckily I did have a few spares. And in the end I had a complete set of wires plus a few smaller parts.


And after cleaning everything thoroughly, cutting the new PVC cable sleeves to length and selecting the correct connectors it was time to reassemble everything.



And with the correct tools that wasn’t too difficult. Though always a bit of a fiddly job to crimp these connectors to the wires and fitting them to the connector blocks. But everything went fine. I even thought about fitting the rear gasket before fitting the connectors …


Another one of those many seemingly easy jobs finished. In this case, with everything added up, I think refurbishing these side lights took me somewhere around 16 hours (including a few trips to collect stuff and blasting, etcetera). No wonder this project is taking so long 😵
 posted Sun 6th Dec 2020
"Beans"
posts: 5742
Netherlands
joined on Sun 5th Mar 2006

FHC resto nr. 115; Refurbishing the front side lights
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Although the temporary guest is also in need of some attention, I decided to spend some time on my own project. And one of the jobs that was waiting to be finished were the front side lights. During my (late) summer holidays I collected my spare lights from the shed. And after inspecting them, I decided that it was best to dismantle them completely and refurbish two complete sets (leaving me with one spare set). So I started with dismantling the chosen units.


To take them apart you first have to remove the connectors. Not too difficult using the correct tools. Though some connector pins didn’t need tools, as they fell apart at the slightest pull. One of the reasons why I always place the connectors well out of harm’s way!


With the connector blocks removed the connectors themselves were unceremoniously cut off. They were too far gone to be of any future use. And removing them enabled me to remove the rubber boots, and the wires plus contact points for the bulbs, from the armatures.


And after an evening of pulling the armatures apart, including drilling out a few lens screws, removing all mounting bolts (or their remains), and hammering out some dents, I was left with various assorted parts:


The lenses of course won’t be used as I finished a pair of these for the car almost half a year ago. So the lenses pictured above will be for the spares department. Same applies for the gaskets. These will be replaces with new ones.
The final stage for this part of the front side light refurbishment was a trip to a friend’s work shop and his bead blasting cabinet. But first one of the armatures had to be cleaned of a thick layer of under body seal. The final process of bead blasting the four chosen armatures was rather straightforward. Though much more time consuming than expected. The rather old blasting medium and a slowly emerging blockage in the nozzle didn’t help here. But I got there in the end. This should give a good base for the next stages, painting and assembling of the armatures.



 posted Sat 28th Nov 2020
"Beans"
posts: 5742
Netherlands
joined on Sun 5th Mar 2006

A drive at last!
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Managed to start the weekend a few hours earlier today. And as the weather was very nice I decided to take ‘t Kreng for a spin. Last time I used her was when I drove her to her bi-annual inspection on the first of July! So it was no surprise she was a bit reluctant to start. The cold weather certainly didn’t help here. But on the fourth attempt the engine fired, and even settled into a fairly steady idle. Time to enjoy the local country site and a few hours of driving.


Because of the cold weather and the fact that the holiday season is well past (not mentioning Covid-19), it was rather quiet on most roads. Which meant I could drive the car in anger from time to time. I have to admit that due to the low mileage I have done with this car over the past year, I had almost forgotten how much fun she is to drive.


Yes, due to the pretty stiff suspension set up, she is harsh when pottering around on bad surfaced country lanes, but on full chat she still is absolutely lovely to drive. Well balanced and surefooted with brakes to match. But the best bit is that she can be steered with the throttle without getting massive oversteer.


Sadly I have only a few days left this season. On the first of December she’ll have to go into forced hibernation again till the first of March. Hopefully 2021 will be a better year from a driving point of view!
 posted Fri 27th Nov 2020
"Beans"
posts: 5742
Netherlands
joined on Sun 5th Mar 2006

Parts donor part 2
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I had a slightly better look at the parts car that we put in the shed over the past weekend. Didn’t do an in-depth inspection, which will have to wait till I clean it out and start pulling parts of it. And when I am done the remainder will be passed on to a fellow TR7 enthusiast who will probably use this fairly solid looking car to re-shell his current restoration project.
And as it was Sunday when I took the pictures, I didn’t crawl underneath the car but only took a few “external” pictures of the it. But the overall impression isn’t too bad!


First its origins and the VIN plate;
  • *TPAEJ8AA404354* This was a bit of a surprise as it was originally registered almost a month after ‘t Kreng. But its VIN number is well over 500 earlier;
  • Paint code CDE or Carmelian (according to the Parts Catalogue) or Carnelian Red (as it seems to be its correct name). The car clearly had a respray somewhere in its history but looking at the engine bay they stuck with the original colour;
  • Interior trim JAJ or Navy Blue Velour. I am afraid the seat’s covers are in a fairly sorry state, so will probably be discarded. While the frames will be stored for future use. Unless someone offers me two good bare frames for them!



As can be seen in the picture above the car has only covered 87173 kilometres. And the instrument cluster looks in good condition. So might yield some useful spares. And according to the car’s mileage the engine, which will remain with the car, might still have some life left inside. At least the engine bay looks unmolested. Though a bit … euhh … neglected




The upper part boot area looks fairly normal for a car that has led the life it did. With some rust in all the usual areas. And clearly showing why all my cars have the early mechanical boot-lid-stay. The gas struts can’t even hold up the hinge itself. Let alone with a heavy boot lid fitted 😜



The boot floor and spare wheel well will have to wait for a detailed inspection, as the boot is filled with old and mouldy interior parts. So I left them where they were. And to finish this post a few exterior pictures of the car:





Oh … and being a late European specification fixed head, it is factory fitted with an Edrose folding roof. But that is hidden by the bonnet.


 posted Tue 24th Nov 2020
"Beans"
posts: 5742
Netherlands
joined on Sun 5th Mar 2006

Fitting the refurbished strut brace to ‘t Kreng
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Shortly before the end of my holidays in September, I picked up a smallish batch of freshly powder coated parts. These were mostly for the ’76 car. But there was also a freshly coated strut brace for ‘t Kreng. But when I went over to the car to fit it, I was confronted with an unpleasant surprise. For no obvious reason the strut brace was now about 5 mm too long! Rather strange indeed, as the adjustable mounts on the bar had been very securely locked in position. At the time I managed to fit the bar. But that was only possible by moving the top of both struts outwards by a few millimetres. Time for a rethink!


Fast forward and last week the solution suddenly occurred to me. Due to the weight of the car the now unsupported strut towers had moved inwards. The fact that the almost 40 year old car’s body has had a tough life certainly has aided here. So the solution should be pretty simple: Get the weight of the wheels, and the strut towers should move apart. Thus enabling me to fit the strut brace in its original position. Sounds easy and it turned out to be just that.


First the two mounting rings (and strut tops) were put back in their original position (glad I marked out the original position). And the mounting nuts were tightened up properly so the strut tops couldn’t move anymore.
After that the brace bar was put into position, but with only one of the two mounting bolt loosely fitted in position. After which I slowly jacked up the front of the car, while keeping an eye on the other end of the bar. In the picture below the car had only been raised a small amount.


And with the front springs almost fully extended, the holes in the bar and the mounting ring were aligned correctly. Result!  Remained the easy task of tightening the two mounting bolts and lower the car. Hopefully I will be able to enjoy her within the next few days, before her mandatory hibernation starts on the 1stof December.




 posted Sun 22nd Nov 2020
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