TVR Vixen Series 1: 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.