Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) TR7

Plenty of things you can do to improve the handling + braking. TR Register has good info.

My memory of the TR7 Sprint, was that they tended to blow head gaskets.
I think the small quantity was to homologate them for stage rallying and they were all had tops.
A few went out as lease cars on the BL Management Car scheme.
My memory is also that only a very few factory built TR8s were ever produced.

Bud
4/4 - Stanley

There were quite a few about on the Rallying scene, Tony Pond's BL liveried V8 was arguably the most famous and really looked and sounded the part. I drove a mate's once in forestry spec a bit of a dog in comparison to the Escort chevette and Sunbeam brigade. In fairness it was a transplanted v8 with dubious suspension set up as were most of our car's at the time....... Em

If you're into the rally stuff, we need Spanner Juggler...Colin where are you ?

We once had the Tony Pond car on our front drive for an afternoon - if I remember correctly there was an open day/family day at Heenan & Froude and Dad had trailered it down from wherever it was kept, and it was on show at the event. I think Shaw Taylor hosted it.

Tony Pond was a hell of a driver, anyone in any doubt should have seen him throw the shitty Rover vitesse 3.5 about like he did the 6r4. Em

I am here, just don’t log in very often these days 🤣

OK, my last job at the Midland Service Centre (BL Workshops) before joining the Product Training School was to test and sign off 27 TR7 Sprints intended for the press launch. They were all in white with black coach lining and transfers and were intended for the press launch. After I tested them. They were all put into what we called number two shed, which was a large, secure compound and a week later they had disappeared as the launch was cancelled. That’s when the rumours started that they had gone into management fleet and were all purchased on the company car purchase scheme by senior managers and above, but they were never seen off again on the company premises. As to the higher number than this I don’t know, but these were all sprint engined cars with five speed gearbox’s, in fact, all TR7 is built in Coventry had five speed unless autos one of the easiest ways to tell them apart from those built at Speke.

The TR8 it’s a totally different animal there’s a lots of body changes not immediately obvious with strengthening and double skinning all around the front suspension. One of the issues we had with TR7 was it failed the barrier test at MIRA, The front chassis was simply too stiff. If you look at the lower chassis rails, you can see where notches have been cut to create more of a deformable zone structure as it would not pass, and too much load was being transmitted to the occupant compartment. TR8’s don’t have this cut out as more rigidity was required and as the car had been largely homologated they took a chance with rubber stamping the barrier test didn’t quite get away with it but standards and systems were not quite as rigid back then and there was a hell of a lot more skulduggery going on with the ministry to get cars signed off.

Ponds TR8 was something of a hybrid so much so that the car he used was developed by Brian Culcheth and I think (memory not what it was) Ponds RAC car was actually Terry Kaby’s Manx shell with Culcheths running gear.

I was at the school by then as I mentioned so had left the role as test driver at Jaguar experimental so all this was in the background for me but I was building a TR8 rally car when I left and the deal was whilst an employee I could buy anything for scrap weight value (including brand new power units!) but that it all went in the crusher when I left. The car was about 75% complete and I think the apprentices had fun with it when I moved on to P J Evans in Birmingham as training manager. Happy days indeed.

Cheers
Colin

Getting 200hp out of the Dolly 2L would be a pretty good outcome. I had a load done to mine and had trouble getting 160-170 without it becoming as peaky as hell! For it's time it was a great thing, it was best to order head gaskets (and the little tubes/seals down to the spark plugs) in bulk though. Oh and front discs. Might be a few more as well.

About 60 TR7 sprint and about 400 TR8 most of which are in the USA

Colin,

Very interesting piece of information about the TR7 sprints, I've been lead to belief there were about 60 produced and I remember a batch of the sprints for sale at the ( I think it was) Mann Egerton main dealership in Birmingham, they were all in russet brown with pin stripping all round.