What we drive: 1969 Triumph TR6

Updated March 2013: Go straight to the update here.

Wisdom borne of experience: If you are contemplating the purchase of a British car and the vital parts of that car are in more than, say, two cardboard boxes, your purchase is suspect.

Obviously there are exceptions: The D-type Jaguar comes to mind. Any Aston Martin. Even within the realm of Triumphs, a long-door TR2 might be worth the challenge.

But restoring a basket-case TR6? In a modestly equipped suburban garage, while you're putting two kids through college?

Fortunately, the logic made sense to my father.

Dad's no mechanic, but he had gained a measure of technical confidence from a prior TR6 freshening. Seller's remorse set in after he let it go, so when a coworker spotted the straight, rust-free remains of a 1969 model in a North Carolina salvage yard, the threshold of good judgment disintegrated.

The result was a British Leyland sampler arriving at our Atlanta home on a flatbed trailer one summer evening. I shook my head and considered myself fortunate that I would be heading back to school in Athens, 90 miles away, the following Monday.

That was 1992. Now, mid-2011, I'm pleased to say the car is mostly done.

Notice I didn't say “restored.” It's not. Rather, the car has been re-created as the TR6 my father would have bought in 1969 had he not been newly married and in the army at the time--British Racing Green with a Biscuit interior. Fortunately, the Triumph we acquired in 1991 had neither a consistent exterior hue nor any vestiges of upholstery, so there was no guilt about deviating from originality.

As it sits, the car is about one-third new-reproduction bits, plus a couple of parts cars blended in for good measure. There's a 1972-vintage driveline, a 1973-ish interior and a windshield that, inexplicably, bears a 1976 commission number.

I'm still not sure where that one came from.

Nature abhors an empty garage

After a few years rebuilding American iron, I found myself with a vacant garage and an understanding spouse. Dad had gotten busy with other things in life and the TR6 had, at that point in late 2007, endured six years of being occasionally started, driven around the block and put away again with no further progress made on the long list of minor details that needed to be finished. We talked terms, and the car was loaded into a covered transport a few weeks later for its journey to Michigan.

Since then, the TR has been driven more miles than it had been in the previous 20 years combined. I've also undertaken much of the detail work that gets put off at the end of a long project. The A-Type overdrive now works reliably, the paint has been wet-sanded and properly polished, and minor electrical issues have been solved one by one.

The car has also been converted to a home-built MegaSquirt electronic fuel-injection system. Before you jump to conclusions about my side-draught Stromberg skills, know that the carbs were tuned nicely. But I'm both a child of the EFI era and an insatiable tinkerer, so I wanted to see whether I could make MegaSquirt work.

Much to my surprise, it does. I'm still dialing in the car but I take great pleasure in tweaking fuel/air ratios with a laptop in real- time on a four-decade-old British roadster. And given my Triumph's provenance (or lack thereof), I don't have to worry about the ethics of bastardizing a perfectly nice original TR6 in my pursuit of mechanical education. Just in case, the original components are all carefully packed away.

If history is any guide, though, those parts won't come back out: Every upgrade I've made to the TR6 has resulted in an even-nicer driving experience. It's one of those old cars that simply responds well to effort expended. And the styling still appeals to me, muscular in a way that the MG B and, much later, the Mazda Miata have never approached.

Good thing I like it: My Triumph is an heirloom now. Like a family member, we're stuck with each other. It's probably for the best, though. If I ever sold it, I'd probably find myself eyeballing junkyard TRs in short order and we'd have to repeat the whole sordid tale for yet another generation.

It's been a few years since I initially posted about my TR6, and, since projects have a way of evolving, I figured it was about time for an update.

First, induction: The Megasquirt fuel-injection system has been abandoned in favor of the original dual Stromberg carburetor setup. The reason is simple: While I was able to get the car to start and drive successfully for a season using throttle-body injection, I was never able to tune it to the point where it ran better than it had with carburetors. Megasquirt being a homebrew setup, I have no doubt that additional swapping of components and massaging of fuel maps would have yielded a superior tune, but as it stood I'd lost most of a driving season tweaking the thing -- I really just wanted to drive the car. One Saturday morning in September 2011, I threw in the towel, and I was driving on carbs by lunchtime. Smiling, I might add.

FleaBay afforded the opportunity to sell off all the Megasquirt gear I'd accumulated, making 90 percent of the money I'd spent -- about $500, give or take -- back in the process. Money + old car = winter project, so off came the anemic 7.75:1 emissions head (remember, the engine is from a ’72) for a quick shave and rebuild.

To meet increasingly stringent emissions standards and cope with unleaded fuel, Triumph simply added metal to the deck of its cylinder head casting. Owners can gauge their rough compression ratio with a micrometer, comparing the head thickness to spec charts found on the web.

As suspected, mine was dead-on stock, so a reputable local machine shop who'd done some complex work on a friend's Triumph Stag heads was entrusted to shave enough off to bring the engine up to about 9.4:1 compression -- a number that would give a noticeable increase in pep while staying comfortably on pump gas. The head got fresh valves and springs, hardened seats and some mild flowing in the process, and was back in my hands well before the snow thawed in 2012.

After cleaning everything up, the head went back on with some fresh ARP studs, and the car was on the road with the early thaw that year. While it's difficult to determine any power boost in the absence of a dyno test, the upper-rpm improvement is unmistakable, and the engine is far more willing to rev than ever before. Simply put, it drives like a sports car now.

So, how many happy miles were piled on that summer? Just 300, unfortunately. See, the TR6 got a sister that spring when a 1981 911 Targa joined our family, and we all know how it is with new toys. …

Now that a year has gone by with both the Porsche and the Triumph, I'm able to take a balanced look at them, and I appreciate the cars for different reasons. Make no mistake: The 911 is a superior machine in every way, but it still feels new; the TR oozes as much vintage charm as it does 20W/50.

Regardless, I'm determined to get the Triumph out for a good, long road trip this summer. Stay tuned -- miles and stories have a tendency to accumulate in roughly the same proportion.

By Andrew Stoy