[For those of you that don't know, or for whom it has been so long that
you don't remember any more, Sarah is my TR-4A. Last August, after
braving the wild west to drive her from Palo Alto to the VTR convention
in Boulder and back, all without incident, I hit a deer five miles from
home. After rescuing her from the clutches of the insurance company,
I found a friendly britcar shop willing to take on the body work. Since
the paint on the car was really terrible, we decided to repaint her
entirely. She went into the shop last October. There were at least five
coats of paint and more Bondo than three cars should have. The guy doing
the work now hates the car, but...]
...and she is beautiful. At least, the outside of her is. Nice coat of
TRG (for some value of TRG :-) Centari, and a clear coat on top -- she
shines like a Miata, and hasn't been color sanded yet! I spent several
hours today doing trim, things like installing window scraper seals (oh
boy oh boy) and attaching mouldings and such.
I'm really going to have to do the interior now -- I can't salvage any
of the panels that are there now. They just look too terrible!
It turns out that they spliced the inner fenders on both sides in
front. You can see the weld, which is too bad, but will make for an
interesting story. Someday, maybe in 5-10 years, the engine will come
out and front fenders will come off and the engine compartment will get
completely sorted and straightened. For now, there isn't a terrible
amount of spray on cables and such, and I'm happy to leave it as is.
Might get the engine steam cleaned, which would help a lot...
She's missing her windscreen (the old one cracked coming out) and the hinges
TRF sent are wrong: have to track that down tomorrow. But there's real
progress. I doubt that she'll be on the road before VTR, but maybe I'll
bring some pictures.
Yow, I'm getting excited!
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