Most people who are vaguely familiar with the Triumph TR3 think of the wide-mouth grin of the TR3A and TR3B. This earlier “small mouth” car looks like a good restoration candidate in the supplemental pictures and videos, although a personal inspection is never a bad idea. The car is located in Reno, Nevada and is being sold here on eBay. The seller is offering a buy-it-now price of $7,500 but is interested in lower offers. I have to commend the seller for the detailed pictures, video and description of the car. For example, they call out body filler areas that are not readily apparent in the pictures despite them being quite detailed. It gives me some degree of confidence that the car is truly as represented. Reflecting it’s largely indoor storage during this dormant period, the floors show mainly only surface rust and are certainly repairable. The only things the seller notes as missing are air cleaners, front bumper and grille, all of which are readily available. This seems like a good place to start a TR3 restoration; what do you think it’s worth?
Weren’t the Small Mouth TRs prone to overheating?
I worked for a autorepair shop in Orange Ca. the owner was a road racer and owned a small mouth TR2, he said that all small mouth triumph’s was TR2’s.
@ Nick — no, they just changed the nose for a new look when the tooling got worn.
@Viking — The TR2 had the same nose with no grille (looked just like this car). The TR3 had a grille in the same opening (this car’s is missing). The TR3A/3B (which were never called such by the factory) had the wide grin, and are much more common than the TR3.
@Nick. The wide mouth nose actually had the same amount of airflow to the radiator. Once you get back to the wheel wells it is the same opening. They have a fiberboard box in front of the radiator (many of which disintegrated years ago) that directed all of the air between the wheels directly to the radiator. Overheating was no different between small mouth and large mouth models.
i too think the seller has done a great job on this listing. the repair work to the front looks poorly done. still a interesting project. could again be a fun driver if repaired correctly. great find