[ROVERNET - UK] TR7-OT

Steven Dibdin sdibdin at hotmail.com
Wed May 24 15:18:08 BST 2006


I ran a couple of these back in London in the '90s. The engineer although 
not that refined, could be encouraged pretty easierly to perform well. The 
suspension was cheap and easy to modify into something a little more 
'serious' in th ehandling dept'. And, remember it was the biggest selling TR 
ever, so it wasn't all bad. It aslo had the strongest monocoque chassis that 
BL ever produced. I remember replacing the front wings, I had to drill out 
114 spot welds to get them off, no wonder they used them for rallying the 
body was really strong before therust took hold!

The down side was a consant battle with rust on the cars built at the Speke 
factory, Mine were coventry built and they seemed to be well put together. 
If it has the five speed box, twin SU's (not strombergs) and was built near 
the end of production, they were okay. Bear in mind that the TR7 came in 
around '74(?) the X1/9 '72 and the MR2 later in the early eighties. Road and 
Track gave it glowing reviews before union action destroyed the quality of 
the early cars and their reliability.

I'll stop rambling now, but do check out

http://www.austin-rover.co.uk/

for the development storey.

Cheers, (I've finished defending my first classic love now)

StevenD





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