Join us for a detailed look at this rust free 1959 Triumph TR3 with special guest Dave Icaza. We go over the drive train, body, special featurres of the car and take a test drive around Manchester!
My dad gave me a TR3 when I was 17 years old (A used TR3 we were not rich). Watching the video brings back a ton of memories. My TR3 was British Racing Green and had the wider grille. If my memory serves me correctly it had two Weber one barrel carbs, not the models shown here on this video. Great and fun little cars. (I wouldn't mind still owning it!). Thanks to my good friend Greg for sending me this video. Phil Jersey Shore area...
In 1971 I was stationed at Chanute AFB in Rantoul, Illinois. It was an Air Force tech school. While off base at someone's house, a poker game ensued, which seemed to be a rather popular past time for Air Force recruits, at least it was at several bases I was stationed at. On an extremely "lucky" (the jury is still out on it being luck on my part of if I was a "sucker" 😊), I won a 1958 Triumph TR3. It ran, had a new rag top and was a driver. Any further positive attributes would be an exaggeration! It had issues. But I was undaunted by little things like no brakes, the bonnet wasn't bolted on, neither the rear and it had a smoking habit from oil leaks on to the exhaust. It was a "money pit"! I was "short" (a term we used when our PCS was up and we were assigned another at a different base). Being short on cash because I was gleefully spending all my pay trying to restore the TR3, I had to unload... uh liquidate my assets to make my transition. I managed a sale and a modest profit but being a car guy, I still to this day rue the loss of that little charming sports car. Never have laid my eyes on another one since until I happened across a few of them here on RU-vid. Thank you for sharing these great little cars. Yours looks showroom in comparison to the little yellow one I briefly had.
The right-hand vs left-hand drive is built into the chassis. Just for fun, I flipped mine to a right-hand drive for a while. I built a different dash out of walnut that was a mirror image of the one in this car. The pedal cluster is unbolted from the firewall and a cover plate with a matching bolt pattern is unbolted from the right side. Then you unbolt the steering gear and steering wheel supports from the left side and the steering idler arm from the right. All of these parts were swapped side-to-side and the new mirrored dash installed and now I had a right-hand drive. I got stopped by a cop who noticed that I was driving a right-hand drive vehicle which did not have foreign plates. I told him what I had done and he just howled with laughter and wanted to see all of the bits and bobs I used to convert. Here we are sitting long side the highway, lights flashing with the hood up and him looking under the hood and crawling under the car (no mean feat given that it has less than 6" ground clearance). I am sure that everyone that passed figured he was looking for drugs. He then explained that this was not a legal modification for a car driving in the US and suggested I switch it back because the next cop I met might not be a motor-head who was as understanding as he. Sigh, it was fun while it lasted. BTW, only the TR2 had drum brakes. All TR3's have disk brakes and was the first British production car to have them beating Jag by one year which did not get theirs until 1958. Any TR3 owner would instantly recognize that as a mod. The TR3 did not have a front bumper. It was just the two vertical pieces like on the front. It also did not have door handles on the outside of the door. You opened the door by pushing down on a chain that draped the full length of the door and was connected to a small knob at the back edge that was connected to the latch. In the rear, there was only the two lights at in the fenders which were brake and tail lights. The TR3 did not have turn signals which is the pair of inner lights on the rear. That was a change made for the TR3A model. The TR3 sits incredibly low in spite of the 15" wheels, and I like to sit at stop lights and pick up gravel from the road without even needing to lean, just because I could. The low stance was a problem in Idaho where I lived because most of the vehicles on the road were pickup trucks and my entire car fit easily in their blind spots. It definitely kept you on your toes. The SU cabs take some getting used to used to if you are used to typical cabs like the Holley or Edelbrock. The American carbs have instant response due to the fixed jet and accelerator pump. The SU has no accelerator pump or even a choke. When you punched a dual SU carbureted engine, the response is best described as sluggish with very little initial power because opening the throttle doesn't really open the airflow. When the throttle is opened, it causes an increase in the speed of the air flowing past the piston which creates a vacuum that raises the piston. This takes a while but as it goes up, the power really increases. Given how light the car is especially in the rear end, I could spin the radials in 4th gear. Drive down the road at 35mph in 4th and punch it and hold the peddle to the floor. Over the next several seconds the volume and pitch would increase from the normal put-put to a full-throated roar and then the rear tires would start to bark. Got a lot of strange looks doing that. 2,00-lbs with 115 horsepower and 125ft-lbs of torque which both max at 5,000-rpms will really move you. You didn't point out the unusual things about the chassis. the frame rails are straight and go under the rear axle rather than over the top. This made the car very stiff with a light frame but limited rear axle travel which could cause the rear end to come unglued if you pushed too hard. It also does not have piston type rear shocks. In fact, the TR2 had no rear shocks at all. The TR3 has lever arm shocks which have a very low profile which is not taller than the rear axle travel. The front-end is a double wishbone with a twist. On most cars with double wishbone suspension, the upper and lower arms both have the same radius or the upper has a larger radius. On the TR3's the lower wishbone has the larger radius. What this does is that as the body rolls, the suspension on the outside of the turn is compressed which causes the wheel to lean in. At the same time, the suspension on the inside of the turn is de-compressed which causes that wheel to lean out. This means that as you are going around the corner, both wheels lean towards the turn. With radial tires this helps to keep the wheels on the ground. On the Bias-ply tires that it was designed for, this had a huge effect on cornering because this type of tire does not handle roll well and the tilt keeps the full width of the tread on the road. If you look at a road grader, you will see the front wheels leaning toward the side they are pushing the dirt to for this very reason.
...SU is "Skinners Union"....engine is 1991cc until the TR3B and TR4 then 2138cc.......The spare tire should have a strap around it to pull it out, and leather straps to stop it from flying out if the car spins......I've owned my TR3A for 52 years...never restored, just regular maintenance.....The cover is a tonneau cover as opposed to the convertible top and side curtains....1st production car with disc brakes in front.....TR3B has TR4 running gear and was produced at the same time due to the demand.......It has 105hp and weighs in at 2150lbs (mine on the scales)...The rear end is 4:11 in overdrive cars and 3:73 in the non-OD models.........John (west coast,Canada)
I've had 4 ot these. 2 rotted out and junked, 3rd one wrecked by my wife. and one I've had since 77 rescued from a storage lot in Chicago, rebuilt engine and mostly sitting since and garaged, never finished, driven only a couple times.
The "tractor engine" story is the most overstated and incorrect misconception that haunted Triumphs. Core block and certain components of an engine used by Triumph and its parent company "Standard" was adapted for use in a Ferguson tractor almost 10 years after passenger car use. Not the other way around.
For what it’s worth, that’s a myth about the TR3 motor originating from a Ferguson tractor. Actually both engines (TR3 and tractor) were developed independently and quite differently from the same Standard Vanguard automobile engine released in 1947.
I had a 57 TR3 and often needed to hand crank or push start it because the Lucas Electrics starters were not up to the task. The engine is based on the Standard Motor Company in-line for wet-sleeve engine originally put in the Ferguson TE20 tractor. The engine block was used in both a petrol and diesel version. The original tractor version had 1850cc with a compression of 5.77:1 and 23.9bhp but was increased to 1991cc with a 8.5:1 compression ratio, bigger cam and dual SU carb putting out 100bhp for the TR3. The diesel version of the engine used a 2:1 gear reduction on the starter to double the torque for starting the high compression and I was always trying to find one of these because I had the overbore kit which raised the displacement from 1991cc to 2187cc and the compression from about 5.77:1 that the starter had been designed for in the original tractor to 9.5:1. Because it was designed to handle the diesel compression ratio of something above 16:1, the wet sleeves were very thick and made from a chrome-moly alloy. Because of this, the engine was prone to overheating when pressed hard because of how much mass there was in the liners. I know of a mod that some people did to the engine where they bored the engine out 250-mill to increase the bore from 3.27" to 3.50" and would install a standard piston from a Chevy in-line 6 which had a 3.5" piston. This would increase the displacement from 1991cc to 2283cc which increased the power and allowed for better cooling due to the thinner wall thickness.
Lots of good info here but not true about the Ferguson...both tractor and Triumph were independent adaptations of the 1947 Standard Vanguard. See the Triumph Register among others to get more information,
