OK. I know. There’s been no posts from me now for over a year. How embarrassing.
There has been a reason, though: I’ve moved house. It was a fairly spur of the moment thing that we decided on in March last year (although we’d been thinking about it for a while), and we actually made the move at the end of April. We’re now in a lovely house in the Warwickshire countryside, complete with a garage and a paddock. All very nice, but this meant that I was now 36 miles from where the car was. The plan was to move the car to the new garage by the house, but for various reasons that didn’t happen until the end of July. I eventually got her loaded and ready for the move though:
All done on the cheap, the van was borrowed from work and the trailer from the farmer at my old house. It made a fairly interesting drive, especially through the narrow lanes near our new house. Did I mention I’ve not really driven anything with a trailer for several years? 😮
Anyway, I got her home and into her new garage:
As you can see, I’m now right next to the house, so I’ve been able to get rid of the generator. It’s nice to be able to work with power tools without having the (frankly noisy) generator running all the time!
Unfortunately, what with having a new home (and garden, and paddock) to sort out, I didn’t really have much time to work on the car, so I decided to leave it for the year. And now here we are. I’ll be putting some time into the car this year, the bulk of the bodywork is done now so I’m hoping to get her painted and start reassembly by the end of the year. I won’t be able to start properly due to the cold weather for a couple of months, but I will soon make a start on stripping the underseal from the front arches. Watch this space!
Speaking of this space, it can’t have escaped your knowledge (you’re a smart bunch) that I’ve moved to a new blog. My old blogspot site was fine, but I’m trying to get all my personal stuff into one place, and chezred.com is it. There’s plenty more on the site if you look around! Also, this blog (using WordPress software) gives me a lot more flexibility than the blogspot platform, I’ll be tweaking things as I go, and adding new features and site layouts. All feedback is welcome!
At the moment I’m updating all the old posts – I’ve imported them from blogspot but the images are having to be done manually. If you look at an older post and there’s no images showing, that means I haven’t got to it yet to upload updated images.
To all the people that have followed me over from the old site, thanks for sticking around. I look forward to hearing from you all!
Hi Red
I have been following your old blog for sometime with interest, as it is almost a mirror of my own restoration. many of the things you have had to deal with are very similar to my own challenges.
As I had so many photos and a chronological story to tell, I decided to start a blog too. I have put the URL in this form.
Maybe we can swap tips!
All the best and very good luch with the ‘7.
John
Thanks John.
Always good to see someone else doing the same thing! I’ve just read through your blog so far and I look forward to your updates. It looks like we’re both in about the same place with our restorations!
Any tips you need, feel free to ask. I don’t claim to be an expert by any means, but I have the perspective of someone that’s ‘been there’.
Garry
Hi Gary
The similarities are striking, right down the the age and colour of the cars. It would be really interesting (in an anoraky way) to see how close these are as “sisters”. According to my Heritage certificate, mine was built on 22 March 1977 and delivered on 4th April. The colour is Flamenco, despite me thinking earlier that it was Vermillion.
Anyway, yours is a great blog and source of inspiration. How you did that windscreen repair I will never know as it would have frightened the crap out of me!
All the best
John
Yes, they’re surprisingly similar! Mine was built on 27 September 1976 (chassis no ACG3424), despatched the next day. The colour is pimento.
I’ll be making a page soon on here with the exact specs of the car, keep an eye out for it 🙂
As for the windscreen, it scared the crap out of me too! But it needed doing, so I just got on with it. It wasn’t so bad in the end, a lot of work though!
We find them, fix them and drive them….We found our car on Ebay USA, cost $250.00. It sat in a horse field for 6 years waiting for us to drive across the USA to bring it home to Minnesota. I found the steering frozen, the carbs were stuck, the brakes needed work and the clutch was none functional.
I pulled the tranny fixed the clutch, fixed the carbs and the car ran…We have been driving this car for like 15 years, with three trips to Seattle and back. Its time to buy new tires so you know its been driven and enjoyed.
I found an 81 TR7 drop top this fall, $200.00 minus an engine, drug it home and it waits in our garage. Spring is near and 2014 will find us working on projects in warmer weather. These cars are a lot of fun to drive and are not seen so often on the streets .
I’m amazed at how much work people like you do in your garage, amazing. Enjoy the moments driving and sharing your experience with others.