>Pulled this from the TR2-TR4 web site... may be of interest. (My '60 TR3A
>post
>TS60000 has the rounded nose - no evidence of bondo in that area!)
That was from me. The front valence was undamaged. The underside
painting was factory colour and poorly sprayed and the outside was
factory colour well sprayed. The paint, primer and condition was
consistent with the valence being original to my car. There was no sign
of front end damage in the past.
>TR3 Front aprons
>Around '93 or '94 this list had a long string on TR3A front aprons and
>holes for
>lettering. During that time I ran a questionnaire through the list asking
>nose
>shape, hole info and TS number.
That was the poll I made over the list as part of my investigations. In
parallel I went to a a lot of LBC lawn leaks and looked at 3As and looked
around the cars belonging to the Triumph Travelers.
>Here are the conclusions from the poll: The first TR3A tools had the smoothly
>rounded front above the mouth. This tool was replaced by a newer tool that
>had
>the double curve, or lip
This is exactly backwards. The lip was on the early tooling and smooth
curve on the late tooling.
> around TS74??? & before TS75???.
I think it is a little before TS55000.
>Evidently, a large
>number of the early rounded front valances were stamped and stocked as repair
>stock. These did not have holes punched for the lettering.
>So cars that received factory replacement parts from an accident, got one
>of the
>round nose valences.
Some errors here. Front valences from both early and late tooling were
added to the factory replacement panel stock. The factory did not seem
to make any effort to separate one from the other and did not seem to
have a clear first in first out inventory control system.
Front valences stamped during the TR3B and after period intended for the
replacement panel stocks evidently did not have the holes for the front
lettering drilled because there were two configurations at that point and
they would need to set up a different part number and add additional
inventory valences for each lettering type. It was cheaper not to drill
the holes and assume the dealer or repair shop would drill the correct
holes.
> Some body shops drilled holes & replaced the lettering &
>some didn't. This accounts for early 3As with no holes in the valance for
>lettering.
A front valence replacement, when the car was young, from the late holess
valences and the shop not drilling holes accounts for 3As that have front
valences with no holes for letting on the front.
Front valence replacement accounts for early 3As that have a smooth round
nose front valence.
Front valence replacement from old first tooling replacement panel stock
plus the factory running out of new valence panels on some days and
grabbing parts from the replacement panel stock accounts for the lipped
front valences on later 3As. A few came with them from the factory &
many were panel replacements when the cars were young.
> Also, it looks like this repair stock was used to
>build the TR3Bs as the polled 3Bs all had the earlier round front valences.
Many of the 3Bs had lipped front valences indicating that early front
valences were used, presumably from repair panel stock. Who knows maybe
all of the 3Bs were made from repair panel stock and TR4 parts???
>Unfortunately, there do not seem to be any records left to prove this so it
>remains only a theory based upon a poll of around 50 TR3A&Bs.
This is still all theory but seems very consistent. The e-mail poll
received replies from about 50 TR3As & Bs and to that I added another
thirty or forty cars.
>http://www.rucompatible.com/triumph/
Whomever summarized my study for this site got the panel types backwards.
I hope it isn't an archive of one of my e-mails. If it is, I wrote it
backwards.
TeriAnn Wakeman Marigold Ltd.
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