The Tiger, in all its rusty glory.
In last week’s post, the ’66 Tiger had safely arrived at its new home. The next order of business was to perform a PPI. Most cautious collector-car buyers recognize this acronym to mean “pre-purchase inspection.” In my case, more often than not, it denotes the “post-purchase inspection,” an activity during which numerous nasty details of a recent collector-car purchase are slowly and painfully revealed.
Shortly afterward, I rolled my new acquisition onto a set of car ramps, chocked the rear wheels, and painfully lowered myself onto a creeper to examine the Tiger’s underbody. (This was a painful exercise because about eight years earlier, I had seriously annoyed my lower back by simultaneously lifting and twisting to put a Crosley engine block into the cargo bed of my ’70 F-100 without shifting my feet while doing so. I’m still feeling the aftermath of that moment of stupidity today, fifty-some years later.)
Before even getting all the way under the car, I examined its rusty rocker panels a bit more closely than I had while making the purchase days earlier. Looking through the rust holes in the inner rocker sheet metal revealed that the outer rockers had been “repaired” with a combination of fiberglass, bondo, and expired Connecticut license plates (cut roughly in half lengthwise and then bent so that they more or less approximated the contour of the original sheet metal). Ripping the pieces off, I threw them into a corner of the garage.
The Tiger was (briefly) insured and registered in NJ until I inspected it more thoroughly and took it off the road.
Underneath, the horrors continued to reveal themselves. The steel fuel line had at one time been cut, and a short length of rubber fuel hose had joined the cut ends. This was secured by nothing other than the grace of whoever it is that protects over-enthusiastic purchasers of decrepit project cars. No hose clamps, no nothing.
In retrospect, it’s amazing that the Tiger and I made it home without incident. The collector-car gods must have been smiling at me. Their smiles turned to laughter shortly thereafter…
I slid out from under the Tiger, jacked up the front cross member so that the ramps could be removed, and then let the car down to rest on its wheels. As it touched down, rows of small rust particles fell onto the garage floor, in a scene that might have been more appropriate for a Three Stooges short. Ticked off as I was, I couldn’t help laughing at my own idiocy, realizing that I had, in effect, purchased some usable Sunbeam Tiger parts and delivered them to my garage for safe keeping.
Not too long thereafter, the easily-removable bits (hood, doors, trunk lid, dashboard, gauges, steering wheel and column, lights, seats, radiator, fuel tanks, etc.) occupied a corner of one side of the two-car garage.
Lacking an engine hoist, I tackled the removal of the 260 V8 and toploader four-speed gearbox by first unbolting the steering shaft from the front suspension and then unbolting the front cross member from the chassis, rolling it with wheels and tires still attached, away from the car. Next, the driveshaft was disconnected, the engine and transmission mounts were loosened, and the rest of the engine’s connections to the car were severed. Then, using an oxy-acetylene torch to cut the Tiger’s unibody in half laterally, the front half of the body was pivoted away, exposing the drivetrain.
The Tiger’s engine and front suspension on the garage floor. Unfortunately, the victim did not survive the surgery.
All of these parts, including the Tiger’s removable hardtop, now occupied half of the garage, still leaving more than enough space to comfortably park the ’67 Alpine. Eventually, the engine, transmission, rear end, and several other parts would be sold to another Sunbeam enthusiast. Though I briefly had dark visions of another faux Alpine-based Tiger – we called them “Algers” – being brought to life in the dim light of a Frankenstinian basement, I didn’t ask what was planned for those items – I was just glad to see them out of the garage.
I kept the hardtop, refurbishing it over a few months in the late summer/early fall and then using it on the Alpine to extend its driving season by a few late-fall/early winter weeks, as long as the weather cooperated.
Would this experience dull my enthusiasm for Tiger ownership? I’m afraid you’ll have to wait more than a few weeks for the answer to that one…
Bonus points if you correctly answered the question posed in last week’s post by identifying the background car as a Sunbeam Alpine coupe. This one too didn’t stay around long enough to be COAL-worthy.
Wow. Maybe after 40 years I’d be able to write about that too, but maybe not. I had a sense that this is where this story was headed after last week’s part one. I just know that I’d be kicking myself endlessly for shelling out $1750 for a pile of rust. Repurposed license plates for patches? Oh my.
Oh my, there are few things worse than the kind of buyer’s remorse we can feel after an old car turns out to have significantly more problems than we first believed or understood. Those of us who live in Rustland understand how this poor car was beyond salvageable by anyone with more than an ounce of sense. I hope you came out alright by selling the good parts.
Selling the remaining parts did lessen the financial pain. The rest? Well, let’s just say it was a lesson learned…
Look on the bright side: Had it been any other engine than a Crosley, things could be worse.
You’re right – but I likely wouldn’t have attempted that maneuver with a heavier engine…
I’ve been around old cars for a while and in my experience, it is not worth trying to restore a rustbucket unless you have the skills and tools to do it yourself.
Of course, living on Canada’s West Coast, cars can go decades with nary a speck of rust. That’s a lot harder to do in salt country.
The good thing is : you have used this as a learning and teaching moment .
I hope the drive home was fun at the very least .
When I was young we’d use old discarded street signs to patch floors and trunks, back then they were good quality steel and very strong .
I can’t wait for the next installment .
-Nate
My brother bought a similarly rusted ’57 MGA for his first car. I remember when the seller brought it over and showed it to him; I instantly noticed the pop-riveted rocker panels. The whole thing had been given a $29 Earl Scheib (or worse) paint job.
The rockers soon rusted totally off and there was about a 1-2″ gap between the floor boards and the bottom of the door on the inside, so that one could see the road going by a few inches away.
The big difference was that the MGA sat on a separate frame, unlike your unibody Tiger, hence it was still usable despite the rust issues. Of course it eventually succumbed to the wrecker, due to incessant mechanical issues. He may have had it a year at most.
It was replaced by a cherry 3-year old VW. What a difference!
In retrospect, I wish there had been evidence of pop rivets on the Tiger. Things might have turned out differently, though I think I probably would have been seduced by the V8’s sound track anyway…
If a “mid 60’s Barracuda” @ That “Sunbeam Alpine” had a baby it would be the first gen, “Datsun B210”, h/b.