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Triumph TR3 - Door Sills

Hi All,
Busy restoring a 1959 TR-3a comm#TS51899. My question is do you need to remove the body from the frame to replace the inner door sills? And as a side question what is the best method?
Thanks, Alpha
Alpha

First of all, the outer door sills (rocker panels) just below the door are welded along the top and the bottom to the inner sills.

You would have to change those too.

The inner sills are bolted through the floor panels with 4 bolts on each side to the outriggers. Use lots of penetrating oil, some flame heat and a few swear words to get the bolts out. Take out the seats, the seat bottoms and the carpets first.

There is one bolt (the bottom one) under the front fender that secures the inner under mud-guard to the front of each sill. This bolt will need to come out.

The front fenders have three bolts on each sill along the bottom so you will have to at least loosen the front fenders too.

The rear end of each inner sill is welded to the inner fender curved part of the rear wheel arch just behind the outer decorative stone guard at the bottom of each rear fender. This will have to be drilled or chiselled out.

The floor panels are welded along the top of the inner sill. It would mean grinding along the top of the floor panel edge to remove the welds.

To get the old inner sill out and the new one in without removing the body, you will have to undo the 18 bolts that hold the tub to the frame anyway and then you will have to lift the body, perhaps one side at a time to slip out the old sills and insert the new sills.

When you have the sills back in, all still loosely bolted in place, you will need to MIG weld all the places where you cut, ground, chiselled etc. the original welds to get the old sills out.

To see how I did mine in 1987 to 1990, click on the web-site of the Montreal Triumph Club:-

http://www.rucompatible.com/triumphmtl/

Then click on Member Cars as well as Member Profiles. Scroll down to click on my name and you can see my tub during the restoration. BTW, I've driven "TRusty" over 70,000 miles in the last 12 summers.

I believe what you are planning to do without removing the body is pretty hard to do.

Good luck. Let us all know what decision you make.

Don Elliott, Original Owner, 1958 TR3A TS 27489 LO
Don Elliott

I forgot to mention that the bottoms of the front door posts (the "A" posts) are welded to the outer sides of the inner sills too. Same for the rear door posts, (the "B" posts) and also the bottom edge of each footwell side wall is welded along the top of the inner sills.

I think you should forget trying to do all this without removing the body.

Don Elliott
Don Elliott

This thread was discussed on 05/02/2003

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