After the frame repair and refurbishing last fall, I ran out of time and temperature to continue working on the car. I do have some heaters i can use, but the main other task i wanted to get done before reassembly was some paint touchups on the body tub, and especially the engine bay.
I had previously cleaned up and repainted the engine bay when i had the engine out for rebuilding a few years ago. But, since the only remaining big job on the car is body work and paint, and if i do that work i want to go back to the original color, i thought i'd try to save myself a future headache and make the engine bay yellow now.
The hard thing about doing a rolling restoration and trying to maintain some driving time is that the car is going to look bad until it's done. So far, this is pretty easy to conceal by just closing the hood.
I also painted a couple of small areas under the floor that i couldn't reach while the frame was on, and ran seam sealer along those floor pan welds. On the chassis, i prepped as much as i could, fitting rubber pad strips along the center rails and chasing threads everywhere after the new paint.
This is how things looked before the a bunch of club members came over to help:
I was really nice having the tub so high in the air, really easy to get around underneath to work and the whole engine bay was at standing work height.
A bunch of people from the local Triumph club came over to help reunite body and frame, several of them with experience doing this. With shims, rubber pads, and hardware all handy nearby we got rope hoists on front and rear points and several hands around fenders, the tub went home easily.
Then we lifted a bit to align it better, and a few more times while we adjusted the panel gaps by swapping out shims in the center section. In the end the gaps aren't perfect, but then it likely never was. It took quite a few shims at the far back end to lift the tub enough, so i'll likely adjust the rear rails at some point to bring them up. I probably should have measured this more carefully when i did the frame work, but not that bad to do later with the body on.
It was really nice to have the tub back on, but it was another full week of reassembly before i could give it a test drive. After all the work, the car feels good: more solid, thanks to (hopefully) less flex and a fresh body mount kit.