CLOCKWORK ORANGE?

Shawn Daniels has fully restored his 1968 Herald 13/60 convertible. It has ended up a very unusual and very eye-catching shade of orange, but it is fair to say that the restoration went anything but like clockwork.

I first saw this Herald in 1997, when I took my MGB GT into a body shop for some work. The Triumph was sitting at the back of the workshop looking lovely in black paint and with wire wheels. The story was that it had been painted, but there had been a fault in the paint. The manufacturer had admitted liability, so the body shop was going to repaint it for the customer and then it would be up for sale.

I bought it before it was even repainted. I had just fallen in love with the looks, the colour, everything about it. I had owned a convertible before, a rubber bumper Midget which was great fun, but I’d moved on to the BGT because the Midget leaked so badly over winter. So now in theory I had a convertible Herald for the summer and a BGT with a roof for the winter.

The only flaw in that plan was that my BGT ended up in such good condition that I didn’t want to use it for my daily commute into Birmingham, especially in the winter. So I used the Herald instead (and yes, it leaked just like the Midget had done!) and within 18 months or so, it had started to deteriorate quite badly.

Clearly not enough time and effort had been invested in the prep work before painting, the main aim being to sell it on for a profit. The body was going in so many places – at the bottom of the doors, the top of the bonnet, the rear decking, the boot floor was very iffy, the floor pans weren’t the best – and when we looked closer we saw that the outriggers had detached themselves from the rails. There wasn’t much MoT left, and it clearly wasn’t going to pass another without serious surgery. However, I had just started working the night shift and fancied having a go at a classic car project, so I approached my local college and asked if they had any restoration courses, either weekends or during the day.