Project Costs

These are estimated costs but should be fairly realistic. We have not kept an exact tally running but these are indicative of what has gone into it. The pictures on the site will give you an idea of the standard attained for this money. In some instances there are no labour costs as I did the work. So the strip down of the vehicle cost nothing but a garage would charge around £2,000 plus. The total build costs comes in around £28,000 . As at October 2014, that would be about £1,500 over the achievable price for a AAA restored car. However, by the time the car is back on the road £28,000 should be achievable. The car will not be sold. If you had to get someone to do all of the work for you, expect a bill of between £40,000 and £55,000. We have just seen a restored TR4 go for £40,000 (June 2015) so prices are on the increase for quality cars. May 2016 with the TR4A finished we went £2,150 over budget/estimate. The increase came from buying a body panel and an extra £1,000 on the quoted body work.

Chassis replacement and nut and bolt rebuild

Chroming and plating

Bodywork and painting

Engine Rebuild

New Interior and fitting

Wheels & Tyres

Hood and fitting

Other parts

Other labour, auto electrician, suspension set up, etc

Total

Value of the Triumph TR4A IRS at start of project

Unaccounted labour

Most of the work we are doing ourselves/myself:-)

Where outside suppliers are used their labour charges are included in the price so it is accurate.

What is not included is my time. I have not kept an accurate log but it feels like I am doing 20 hours a month on average. Over the christmas periods I do that in a couple of days so I thought the best way to get to a figure is an average.

In terms of cost for my time I have allowed £15 an hour to get to a figure. Many restoration garages here in the UK charge £15 an hour for large projects in our labour terms.

This project will have taken 3 years in total to complete if all goes well. That gives an unaccounted labour equation of the following.

Monthly unaccounted labour 20 hours
Yearly unaccounted labour 240 hours
Total project unaccounted labour 720 hours

Now the project is finished the reality is that I have spent around 1800 hours on it so the value of the labour would be a lot higher than thought,

If you add up all of the hard external costs and add them to the unaccounted labour charges you get a total restoration bill of £39,600. I was quoted £40,000 for a well known TR restoration shop to do a complete restoration of my car. £40,000 may sound like a lot of money but in truth it is an accurate reflection of what it costs to do the job well.

We have saved £11,000 by doing it ourselves but we have also given up 720 hours over 3 years. So the question surrounding restoring your own TR is how much value do you place on your time?

For me, it is an amazing project and I have leant a lot along the way. I have made some mistakes but they were fixable. To restore a complete car is a huge achievement and if you start today, you could be driving the finished result around in 3 years - great!

So, was there any where we could have saved time? Yes! If the bodyshop guys could have focused on the car we would have saved 12 months. This would have had a saving on the finish date by probably 6 months. The deal I did with the body shop was that our project would be fitted in-between regular work.

Once they started it raced along and only took them about 3 months. If you are going to get a bodyshop to do the work for you, you might want to get a fixed schedule off them.

My guys did come in £2,500 cheaper than we were quoted by specialist TR restorers but then we did need a panel that cost £700! on top of the £2500. So a hard look at the body meant it came in at £8,200.

£3,500 £3,500 Actual

£4,000 £3,600 Actual

£6,000 £8,500 Actual

£4,000 £4,565 Actual

£4,000 £5,000 Actual

£2,200 £2,235 Actual

£600 included in trim cost

£2,000 £1800 Actual

£1,500 £750 Actual

EST ACTUAL

£27,800 £29,950 Actual

£8,000

£300
£3600
£10,800