Help me ID this Triumph(?) chassis and cowl

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

Please. 

This would make a great basis for a Lotus 11 inspired build

Or something like that.

Or some type of speedster, like this?

or this?

Woody starts thread

*wally has joined the thread*
 

so confusion

Wally (Forum Supporter) said:

https://images.app.goo.gl/jY7xq6KrgtCf67a98

Yellow one doable with speedway fiberglass parts pretty cheap

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) :Dang! Doubledang!

In reply to wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) (Forum Supporter) :

Always had the fantasy build of vintage race car (30s-50s) for the street. I have no desire to OWN one,  but want to build and drive one and ensure it exists somewhere. If i can enable woody. I will.

Triumph (spitfire) based.

link

Woody said:

I’m not sure if I’m surprised or not that this tool exists, but I’m glad that it does and it arrived in the mail today. These wheels are too pretty to mess up with a mallet. 

 

But is it any surprise at all that a tool for old British cars is made of wood?

If it were me, I'd make a tracing of that tool and see if i could knock out a reproduction for my own use. I think it's worth buying because someone makes it, but I'd almost certainly try to keep this one nice and use a copy in the shop. 

How about this one based on a TR2:

In reply to Indy "Nub" Guy :

Tripledang!!!

1959 makes it too now for Race of Gentlemen, yes? 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

Maybe make the copy out of HDPE so it will hold up longer.

I plan to talk to some people about some fiberglass this week.

mazdeuce - Seth said:

Woody said:

I’m not sure if I’m surprised or not that this tool exists, but I’m glad that it does and it arrived in the mail today. These wheels are too pretty to mess up with a mallet. 

 

But is it any surprise at all that a tool for old British cars is made of wood?

If it were me, I'd make a tracing of that tool and see if i could knock out a reproduction for my own use. I think it's worth buying because someone makes it, but I'd almost certainly try to keep this one nice and use a copy in the shop. 

I’m not sure if I’d actually make my own or not (it would require a 3.75 inch hole saw to start), but I will certainly make a pattern before using it just in case. New ones are around $30 from Moss (currently out of stock), and it’s almost nice enough to hang on my wall. 

In reply to Woody :

I think a plunge router would do the trick using it as the guide.

In reply to Stampie (FS) :

I don’t have one of those either.

It seems like the easy button is just to buy them from Moss as needed. 

I still don't have an actual plan for this yet, but this morning I reached out to some friends, both here and in the UK, regarding vintage fiberglass bodywork.

Re knock off wheels.

The original TR wheels had fairly hard knock offs and as long as you used the soft hammer (zinc faces) provided with the cars there was never much trouble.  You didn't need plywood gimmicks to use them.

The problems came from two things, lost hammers replaced with inappropriate hard faced hammers that damaged factory knock offs and after market knock offs (knock-off knock offs?) that were made of softer metal and so dented more easily.

My thoughts on what to do with a good TR chassis? (other than sell it and buy something that would handle better with the proceeds).  Rescue one of the derelict Fiberfab Jamaican bodies  from someone's garage. They made them for TR chassis and many bodies ended up in unfinished state waiting for someone that would follow through on them.

Hmmm, that's a lot of curved aluminum...

I just typed a whole bunch of stuff and then lost it with one errant keystroke. I'm pretty annoyed about that. So here's the really, really short version of all that.

No real plan yet.

This chassis is completely unrestored, and super-duper nice. I'm convinced that it came from Arizona, New Mexico or the California desert.

I've never really liked TR3s.

I like vintage racing.

The original Ambro was built on a TR3 chassis. I like Ambros, but they only made around 50 of them. I've seen a couple in person, but the odds of finding a stray body somewhere are pretty slim.

RichardSIA has made me aware of the Dio-Tipo. The molds for the Dio-Tipo were pulled from an original, unbuilt Ambro, with approval from the original designer. It would be a seriously authentic choice, but a new Dio-Tipo body is $6500 plus shipping, and still require a ton of finish work. Unless I find someone's unfinished project, a Dio-Tipo isn't really an option.

I'm going to stop here, for fear of losing this again...

While researching every conceivable maker of fiberglass sportscar bodies back in the day, I stumbled across a 1963 ad from Speedy Bill, offering 1932 Bantam Roadster bodies. Now, these were certainly directed toward the drag racing guys, but it's not inconceivable that some guy with a banged up, four year old TR3 might have bought one of these in 1963 and built himself a fenderless road racing special.

Speedway Motors still sells a version of this body today for $709. Shipping is a lot more reasonable than I would have expected, and there are actually a bunch of new/used ones out there for about half that.

The TR3 chassis has an 88 inch wheelbase. There were not a lot of options for something this small. 

Hmmm...

So, IF, I decide to build something out of this perfect old chassis, it just might look like an old road racing special with a lightweight Bantam body on it. The Triumph engine already had about 100 hp in stock form, and even with reinforcement the Bantam body would still be a featherweight.

I think something like this could be less than 1500 pounds, and it shouldn’t be too hard to argue that it would be period correct  

Woody said:

While researching every conceivable maker of fiberglass sportscar bodies back in the day, I stumbled across a 1963 ad from Speedy Bill, offering 1932 Bantam Roadster bodies. Now, these were certainly directed toward the drag racing guys, but it's not inconceivable that some guy with a banged up, four year old TR3 might have bought one of these in 1963 and built himself a fenderless road racing special.

Speedway Motors still sells a version of this body today for $709. Shipping is a lot more reasonable than I would have expected, and there are actually a bunch of new/used ones out there for about half that.

Hmmm...

So, IF, I decide to build something out of this perfect old chassis, it just might look like an old road racing special with a lightweight Bantam body on it. The Triumph engine already had about 100 hp in stock form, and even with reinforcement the Bantam body would still be a featherweight.

I think something like this could be less than 1500 pounds.

 

 

I like this thought process 

I like the Bantam idea. Whats your vintage engine of choice?

I think I would find x-flow kent, but I never really looked at how expensive those get..