Going for the Startup 3

Well, the car won't start without some electrics.

The loom of my car is nearly 50 years old. It has been cut into several major chunks, which I imagine allowed the previous owner to quickly dismantle the car, perhaps planning to re assemble the loom later using quick connectors. Not a bad idea, which I will probably revisit later, but for now, I decided to make up a skeleton loom to allow me to start the car. This is partly because after working on it on and off for six and a half years, I want to get the engine going, but partly because I wanted to understand how the wiring works.

At this point, I should say that the plan is to rebuild the car with dynamo and control box, as original, but later I will convert it to alternator power. Yes, mad I know, but I want to do it that way to learn how the system works, before changing it.

I'll post a diagram of the skeleton loom below once I have got it to work.





For the skeleton, I have extracted the basic ignition and charging  system from the diagram below. Its from a Series 2 Vixen manual that I bought early on to help me understand what bits went where. This one has the interesting addition, by a previous owner of the book, who was clearly fitting an air horn.

This diagram doesn't tell you that the wires are of differing thicknesses to cope with the current going through them. That bit, I had to get from the old loom. Also, some of the colours on the S2 diagram are not the same as the original loom on my car, so it may not be 100% helpful to S1 owners. If you are relying on the above loom diagram, be aware that the over drawn section obscures part of the ballast ignition circuit. You need to check it closely.


Just as you can't get the engine running without electrics, you can't have an electrical system without a battery, and in my case, you can't have a battery without a battery clamp, and you can't have a battery clamp if it has returned to nature:

           so that has to be fixed. But not before I got distracted and cleaned off the rest of the old paint from the engine bay, and theres another reason why this all takes so painfully long. 

There thats better. Don't worry, I vacuumed out the slot then ground it back.

Quick point: I cut out the rusted section from the top, because I mistakenly believed that TVR had let the steel section in and then glassed over it. However, the bulge that went over the section, was actually the result of the completely rusted steel expanding and pushing the mat upwards! In fact the factory appear to have cut two small slots for the protrusions pushed the steel up from below, then glassed it over underneath. I added two additional small bolts through the bracket to stop it being pulled through by the weight of the battery on braking or cornering.

5th July: Update. 

I've installed the skeleton loom and wired it up to the dash. I've bought a new battery and I've made a reproduction battery retainer; and following a short interlude with no power due to a missing wire between the battery and the control box, the car very briefly, turned over on her own key for the first time in at least 17 years and probably since 1986.

WOO HOO!!!

A few things to do before I try and start it:

Petrol pump needs sorting out,  I need some petrol pipe and I need to find some suitable fittings for connecting the pump to the pipe.

Points need doing

Connect up plug leads etc

Connect up oil pressure pipe, so I don't lose all the oil

Water in

Fit temperature sender, which currently doesn't fit, probably because the threads are full of paint. 

I hope. 

Watch this space.

22nd July update

After a lot of Googling and thread measuring, I identified the temperature sender thread in the crossflow head as 1/8 27 NPT and ordered a suitable tap, which arrived the morning I was due to go off on holiday, so I sneaked out to the garage and cleaned out the threads and quickly fitted the temperature sender, which now screws in fine.

29th July

Well, she runs!

I would add "Yeee Haaa!" but I can't get her to run for more than a few seconds at a time.

Initial problems with a slow turn-over were traced to loose earth connections, but she wouldn't start. I checked I had a spark and I did. Then I remembered I had intended to gap the points and had never got round to it, so  I did that...no luck. I rechecked the ignition timing, which was a bit out and at this point the engine began to "catch", but not hold. It popped and spat back through the carbs. At one point a blue flame leaped out , which was novel! At this point, I noticed some smoke issuing from the side of the engine and traced it to the hole in the inlet manifold where the crank-case breather was supposed to be plugged in...remember I said I would get around to that later.... Of course the missing pipe means there is a huge air leak weakening the mixture, so I plugged that back in and the engine then caught, ran very rapidly for about 5 seconds and then died. So, I have a spark, it occurs at the right time and so the issue seems to be fuelling; and so began an infuriating cycle of me adjusting the choke, throttle or starting jet and retrying until the battery began to show signs of weakening. So I put it on charge and shut the garage up for the day. 

I think it might be over fuelling. I am going to check the float levels and go through it again tomorrow if I can sneak out to the garage.

Going for the Start Up 2

I've inched forward with readying the car for startup over the last few weeks.

What I hadn't bargained for (although I should have got used to it by now!) is how long it takes to do the most trivial of stuff. Looking at the engine installed in the car, I thought "great, a couple of weekends work and ...broooom!" But of course, it doesn't work like that when you bought the car as  boxes of bits!

What slows you right down is the small stuff thats not there:
Coil...Does my car use a a ballasted ignition system? (yes)
Which one of the 3 distributors I have is the right one? does it even matter?
What size thread is the fitting for the oil pressure take off. What IS the oil pressure sensor?
Cooling system piping, thermostat housing (I now have three!) etc etc.

Identifying the correct parts and tracking them down is a huge job, but oddly satisfying, although, some expensive mistakes have been made! For example, when I was close to getting the engine in the car a couple of years ago, I bought a whole load of parts, some of which I now find are wrong and bought too long ago to take back (Sixty quids worth of non ballasted high performance coil I am looking at you here!). I hate to think what I have spent on wrong parts in the last year.

Anyhow, moving on,  I got the carb on easily enough, but the next issue was that the nice alloy rocker cover I bought years ago in anticipation of this stage, actually gets in the way of doing up the rear carb nuts So, off it comes, to be subbed for the manky old original cover that came with the engine. I don't have the original fittings, so order new nuts and washers. Next the nice shiny stainless exhaust manifold (headers). These fit perfectly, but I had bought the wrong exhaust studs, so new ones were ordered.

Next, the new starter.....I only have 2 of the correct size nuts....and so it goes on, you get the picture.

Cant find the breather pipe from the crankcase breather. I know I have it somewhere, turn out all the boxes of bits, find it, fit it.....it fouls the heater valve, so can't fit both breather and valve at the same time. Argh.... Ive put that issue to one side whilst I try to identify a right angle fitting for the manifold.

Fit the radiator, which is a separate histoire, all on its own.

The car came with an absolutely knackered radiator, rusty and falling apart, except that, it had perfectly good lower and upper chambers. I was in need of an expert to restore (note the word) it. It needed a new core and new side brackets, to which the original fittings could be attached once they were cleaned up. Easy enough for a company who specialises in restoring historic radiators you might think. I found such a company an hours drive from my house; lots of examples of their work on their website, all lovely. So after a chat about what would be needed I dropped it off.

What I got back was an abomination. They had replaced the side brackets and reattached the fittings, without de-rusting them. They had separated the top tank (unique to these particular TVRs, so only a couple of hundred made) and used a chisel or some such to get rid of the deposits so the the top tank was distorted and covered in pimples. Then they appear to have given the job of reassembly to a work experience school child who re-soldered the side brackets leaving solder blobs all over it, and made no effort what so ever to make the new brackets look like the old ones.

I took it to another restorer, who looked at it and said they might be able to improve it but they wouldn't be able to put it back to original. They offered to make me an alloy one for £550. I don't really like the look of alloy radiators, so I am currently stuck with a functional but aesthetically ruined radiator. So if anyone knows of a series one or early series two radiator, in any condition as long as the top tank is there. Please let me know.

Writing that wasn't even cathartic; I am still mad.

Anyway, thats fitted now.

There are issues with using the header tank I have, for a number of reasons; mostly in that its totally U/S

Its an odd, rather home made looking, little thing and different to the usual header tanks TVR used, so I suppose its likely to be a  home-made replacement, but you never know. A while ago another owner was having an alloy header tank made, so I got the fabricator to make me one too. This is similar to one of the standard TVR tanks; a bit dusty from shed storage!

Fitting this one would involve having to fit the nearside wing (on which it is supposed to be mounted), which would be a faff at this point, since I am only supposed to be side tracking myself by getting the engine running. TVR used several approaches to header tanks for the  early cars. I have seen two that were factory fitted and a couple of others that may have been.

 In line filler neck, I've seen several of these. 

Cylindrical header tank, I am told by those in the know, that these two are original fittings

And this arrangement, which I am not sure is original, but may well be as I've seen two of these:

So far all the tanks I've seen have been on the nearside wing. My oddity, however, appears to have been mounted on the offside wing according to the mounting holes. I am quite tempted to refit a similar tank, but for the moment have decided to buy a cheap in-line filler neck and fit that between the thermostat housing, and the rad, just to get the car going. The radiator top and bottom outlets are 32mm, but the Cortina crossflows thermostat housing is 38mm, so to keep it simple, I have got hold of a Fiesta Mk1 housing, which is 32 mm and, as a bonus, has a threaded hole to take a thermostatic switch for a radiator fan, which is nice.

There thats better, cooling system all in. Awaiting repainted rocker cover.

There, thats better! Now, where was I...?

Going for the Start-Up 1

After getting the chassis back, I dropped the engine in and it fitted beautifully (more on that in a few months time......watch this space) so naturally, despite the fact that this is still only a dry build, now I want to get it started. So this is the run up to the engine test.

The first thing I did was to re-strip the engine.

I did that because the engine has been standing in a cold, damp,  garage unused for a couple of years and so I wanted to be sure there had been no condensation build up. Not surprisingly, yes, there had been a small amount of rust staining, so I cleared that up and re-assembled.

I didn't described the engine rebuild after the rather extended messing about earlier on in the rebuild as 1). Its all in the Haynes manual and although great fun, its not really specific to the TVR and 2). I didn't really want to jinx the new one, but I'll just mention a few bits. Don't forget, the engine was apparently rebuilt when I got the car, so many of the bit were new.

The block was stripped and checked over, then cleaned and repainted. Oil ways were cleaned to and new bungs fitted. The crank had already been sorted and reground correctly, which obviously meant oversized mains. The big ends were also replaced. Pistons were new, and the engine had been fitted with a BCF3 fast road cam, followers were new with no signs of wear.  Other than that, reassembly was the reverse of the assembly process, as they say.

I had checked the cam timing on the earlier rebuild, and it seemed fine, but this time around I bought a gauge for accurately measuring TDC and cam lift and found it was 2 degrees out, so, having briefly toyed with the idea of an offset cam peg,  I replaced the cam gear with a vernier and re timed it correctly. That was "fun". It took be a few hours to get my eye in, but satisfying to do it properly. The cam chain was new and I had replaced the follower. The head went on with, what was possibly the 4th new head gasket in my ownership, without ever having actually fired up once (its an Ajusa of the correct size for a 90 thou oversize bore, in case anyone cares!).

In preparation for eventually getting the engine running I have been rebuilding a few ancillaries like the carb.

This one is a 32DFM as fitted to the Cortina 1600GT.

It started off looking like this:

Grubby, but not terribly rusty. I stripped it down taking loads of photos along the way. The body was dusty and dirty and although I made a start cleaning it up with a Dremel, I could see that it would be difficult to get a good finish, so I bit the bullet and sent the body and linkages off to get them vapour blasted. 

I was glad I did, this is what I got back.

What about that then!

Cost about £60 quid, but well worth it I think. This is the guy who did it CLICK. Highly recommended.

Having caught the clean and shiny carb bug, there was only one way to go from there; I bought a zinc plating kit off eBay and plated the linkages:

Then re assembly with new jets

I've had this sitting on the shelf in my office for the last 9 months. I am rather pleased with it. 

If I get the time, the carb is going on today.

The Dashboard

This is what the dashboard looked like when I bought the car

The photo was taken after I had recovered the dash top. This is the type of dash used in the Grantura 1800S and the early Vixens (S1 and early S2). Its ply with a veneer covering.

Sadly, being an idiot, having finished rebuilding the dash top, I then stored it in a shed in the garden, and it got damp and the veneer broke up and started to peel, so I decided to reveneer it. I initially went with slightly burley oak veneer, which looked lovely, but was very dry and started to crack as soon as it was laid, despite me acclimatising the veneer and dash in the garage for two weeks.

Finally I settled on a paper-backed sapelle, which I applied with a specialist contact adhesive and it went on beautifully. I then applied 6 or 7 coats of satin exterior varnish, but was unable to get a spotless finish. No matter what I did I couldn't get a finish without brush marks, so in the end I resorted to a rattle can of Morelles Satin Cellulose 244M. That worked very well first time around.

This is what the dash looks like now

I am rather pleased with it.

I made some mods to the back with my trusty router.

The switch bank under the gauges had small round cutouts for the switches, which I modded to take the larger switches, see below. I also routed out the back to provide an exact fit for the MGB heater controls. In order to do this I had to remove the old cutouts, then fit a new piece of ply that I pre cut to fit the mechanism exactly. This should stop the whole knob turning. It seems to work.

There are a couple of other things:

When I started sorting the dash out, I did wonder how the steering wheel attached to the dash.

This is the steering column, before and after a clean up. Its from an early Spitfire.


Before

steering cowl before cleanup

That bracket, held in place by a U bolt, is the bracket for holding the steering column to the dash. The circular flange clamps the cowl to the bulkhead and is held to the cowl by a Jubilee clip!

After

Here it all is cleaned up, with a new indicator stalk

It turns out that the bracket is attached to the dash by two bolts through the dash between the speedo and rev counter. Since there are no holes there I can only assume that mine is a new dash.

Switches were another issue. The switches on the dash are in two banks. Apparently along the bottom of the gauges the switches are for the heater fan (on/off), the reversing light (there is no switch on the gear box, so the lights are manual), the panel lights (odd that its not wired to the headlight switch) and the washer pump. To the right of the speedo, its the headlights and the windscreen wipers (single speed as standard, but two speeds as an upgrade. I am going to upgrade it if possible).

The switches are Lucas with numbers 31828D and 34426E 

and they have lozenge shaped tabs, which should have silver decals on the lozenge face. Mine were all gone, except one I found in amongst the rust particles in the bottom of a spares box! 

On my car the washer pump switch was missing, but all the rest of the switches below the gauges were 31828Ds, whilst the wipers and headlamps were 34426Es.

These particular switches are pretty hard to find. Similar switches have been fitted to Aston Martins (DB Series), Maserati (Mexico) Alfa Romeo (Giulietta, 60s version!) and possibly some others, but they vary slightly in appearance and operation, between the cars. On my car the switches  seemed to be fitted with the lozenge face, facing upwards, switch up for off, down for on, so that when the switch is turned on, the lozenge is straight out from the dash. Some of the spares I picked up the lozenge was fitted the other way around, some had the pictograms moulded in to the end and painted white.

The lozenges for the Aston are actually available as a brand new part (on EBay), but they are £30 each (yes, just for the plastic bit, but they are individually printed.) and the wrong shape (phew). Amazingly, the decals are available from a couple of sources including the Maserati Club International HERE

My switches all worked, but were very rusty. I was lucky enough to find a couple, but the rest needed some lateral thinking, so I decided to swap the levers to new switch units. This you can do quite safely by pressing out the hardened pivot pin, of both switches, removing the levers and swapping them over, as long as you take it gently, 

Once the lever is out of the new switch, don't disturb the rest of the mechanism whist you reinsert the new lever, or you will never recover. All you will have is useless rattly thing that looks like a switch (ask me how I know this). Gently pop the old lever into the new switch body in the same position as you pulled the old one out and replace the pin.

Be careful, not all Lucas switches have the same shaped lever internally, its best to stick to the bodies of identical numbered switches. The 34426s are quite widely available second hand, as they are used in a fair few classics. The others are available new, although (surprise surprise) of poorer quality than the originals.

You CAN just swap over the lozenges. I didn't have a momentary switch for the washer pump, but I did have a modern Lucas momentary and an old switch, 

so I Dremelled off the new switches plastic part,

leaving the barb. Then I held the old lozenge in some soft jaws and gently warmed the lever with a soldering iron whilst pulling on it, until is came free

The old lozenge fitted back on the new switch fine, but I added a small dob of epoxy resin, just in case

I had a starter switch but no keys. These are available new but I didn't want to do that. I wanted the car to have its original starter switch, I know, weird, but it felt somehow wrong to change this part. So with a bit of a search I found a classic car key expert who could cut me new keys from the number on the lock. Now she has brand new keys (that work!) on a TVR key fob, all ready to go.

The only other thing to mention is the the car came with a very rusty cigarette lighter and it took me an age to track the right one down. They are made by a company called Casco/Tex. They made many slightly different variants, but many of the individual components are interchangeable. In the end I had to rebuild one out of a combination of mine and another one. Its the knob that makes them hard to find. The knob matches the knob on the glove compartment.

The same Casco lighter is actually also used on the Aston Martin DB5, so you can imagine how much NOS ones cost!

Thats it for the dashboard. Having learned my lesson, its now wrapped in bubble wrap in the loft ready for wiring later.

Some notes on the handbrake

While the chassis was away being sorted out, I turned my attention to some of the minor assemblies. One of these is the handbrake, which was not in a great shape when I acquired the car.

I don't know where the handbrake comes from. I have heard that it might come from  a dumper-truck that is no longer made, but it could easily be a modified, off the shelf item. The ratchet seems to be similar to some kit car handbrakes. As for the shaft, the only one I can find that comes close, although not identical, is from a Jaguar XK120/150. TVR may have modified the assembly by brazing on a tail to which are bolted the twin handbrake cables, however, I have also seen illustrations of generic handbrake assemblies, which also show this tail, so who knows.

The handbrake clearly needed renovating, it had had a hard life exposed to the underside of the car. I asked a re-chroming specialist and it seems that a partial re-chrome, say down to the ratchet, isn't possible, which means the whole assembly needed to be stripped.

A clevis pin holds the ratchet dog against the ratchet, and that comes out easily, but the central button and the rest of the mechanism can't be released from the assembly until the thumb button comes off. Although it looks like its screwed to the push rod, in fact its held on by a pin, that simply drives out. The rod and dog can then be pulled out the back of the handle. There is a rubber grommet in the handle that seems to hold the rod to some extent, but it was mashed.

That left me with the handle and ratchet assembly. You can see that the  main pivot pin is peined over to hold it in place. The only way past this is to grind or file it off, so thats what I did. The pivot then dropped out easily.

Heres the kit of parts:

I've sent the handle and thumb button off to the chromers. On reassembly the main pivot will be replaced with a half inch clevis pin and split pin arrangement.

So, after a months wait, here is the newly re chromed handbrake lever. Its been stripped and rechromed, including the tail section. The quality is excellent, I am really pleased with it. Now it just needs re assembling!

Chassis sorted out

Its been a while since i last posted.

I have been doing odd bits and pieces, but most importantly, I managed to get the chassis away to be sorted out by Duncan Reuben of TVR Classiscs

As it turns out, once the chassis was measured up, it became clear that several errors had been made when it was originally fabricated back in 2000. It seems some of the dimensions were intended for a Griffith chassis. These all had to be cut out and then re-welded correctly. Fortunately the problems related to things like the bottom diff carrier tubes being set too low and the brackets that take the support arms of the diff, being incorrectly placed; nothing that needed major tubes being cut about. The engine mounts were also in the wrong place as I had already suspected.

The car came back in the first week of January and I re-assembled the drive train straight away so I could take these pictures. The engine just dropped into place as sweet as a nut.

so now I can get on with it in earnest again