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.