Some very good advise from the previous restorers. Having done a ground
up, with media blasting the body, and everything rebuild, or new (some
chrome), I have only one suggestion.
The engine. The old 260 is good for a purist, but you can buy a 5.0L at
the junk yard for $400-$500, and it has more cubes, a roller rocker
system, the internals are clean, not junked up from 40+ years of
neglect, it will run cooler, and the after market parts are abundant.
It will outperform a 260 for a fraction of the money for an all out
rebuild of a 260.
Looks, who knows, as all of the "stuff' transfers.
It worked for me.
Larry
Curt wrote:
> I've done three Tigers now-
> The first I did everything- engine, suspension, etc. Only thing I
> didn't do was the body work. Took me over three years and a ton of money.
> The second one I had Doug Jennings do the suspension, I did the engine
> and everything else, and farmed out the body work. took me three years
> and a ton of money.
> This time I farmed out the engine, had Doug do the suspension, am
> leaving the body alone, and did everythign else myself. Took a ton of
> money minus a little, and so far I hope to be done in two years. I am
> either getting busier or something.
>
> I enjoyed rebuilding the engines and it's not all that hard. But I
> thought a professional rebuild would be a nice change. I have rebuilt
> two of the transmissions before and that is pretty easy. This one I am
> leaving alone. The brakes and such are pretty straighforward as is all
> the assembly. Just decided to let Doug do the welding and bushing
> installation on the suspension. I did the assembly.
>
> The previous note about pictures, bags or something for all the bolts,
> etc is critical. After three years, you forget where those bolts went
> and how something goes together. I labeled everything and still it
> could have used more. years of fading has hurt my labeling of bolts /
> parts too. Plus putting the old greasy parts in a bag with a paper
> label has caused some problems over time as the grease morphed into
> the paper making the label unreadable. I label every wire and such too
> even if it seemed childish and obvious when I first took it apart. I
> know from hard knocks on previous projects.
>
> The other good thing about taking three years to complete a car. You
> get three summers of car events to go look at other cars, take
> pictures, and ask questions to cover up your amnesia.
>
> Curt Hoffman
>
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