In reply to JoeTR6 :
I don't blame you at all for that. Overspray when you care about what you're spraying is no joke. When you posted the pic with just the painters tape I was a bit worried.
In reply to JoeTR6 :
I don't blame you at all for that. Overspray when you care about what you're spraying is no joke. When you posted the pic with just the painters tape I was a bit worried.
AxeHealey said:In reply to JoeTR6 :
I don't blame you at all for that. Overspray when you care about what you're spraying is no joke. When you posted the pic with just the painters tape I was a bit worried.
That was me trying to drill holes in the right place on fresh paint. Another thing that I'm paranoid about. 
The interior is back in (at least what I had before) so I dropped the car off the stands and backed it out. A quick spin around the block didn't end in fire or death, so I took it out. It's running a little lean, but not horribly so. Other than that, no issues whatsoever. The back of the engine is still dry, so that's at least an improvement. I'll take it out later with the tuning laptop and give the tune a tweak.
Oh, I also got the chrome sill trim installed. I think that adds a subtle detail that was missing.
There was some oil on the engine adapter plate and clutch slave after a 20 mile tuning drive. It wasn't nearly as bad and smelled more like gear oil. Maybe the gearbox vent hole I added isn't venting. It may be time to strap a diaper under there and just drive it.
On the plus side, it ran great after some tuning. My speedo reads about 6 mph low at 60, but I still thought it was getting up to speed well without crossing 4000 rpm.
Well, it's progress. The passenger seat bottom is done except for a little adjustment. Waiting on a parts order to finish the back because I ran out of the metal clips that hold the upholstery on.
Don't you hate when you thought you ordered 30 of something but accidentally ordered 1 instead? Especially when it's keeping you from making progress. Oh well, I suppose I should work on something else.
JoeTR6 said:
Quoted because it looks so great.
I definitely vote to throw a diaper on it and enjoy it for a while.
AxeHealey said:Quoted because it looks so great.
I definitely vote to throw a diaper on it and enjoy it for a while.
Thanks. It's definitely coming along. I'm getting pretty close to the tuning and sorting out phase, although I've kind of been doing that as I go.
A black canvas soft top was in my last parts order along with all of the stuff to install it. The only other thing left is to decide what to do with the bumpers. Options are:
I'm beginning to like option 4 better. Maybe I'll bolt up the old bumpers to see how they fit and whether they are worth the cost of rechroming. A set of stainless steel bumpers can be had for less than the cost of good chrome.
How nice do the old ones look? Would polishing make them bring them to an acceptable level of quality?
Also, you can just go with them for now and replace them later when you feel like it. Pretty easy swap, I would think.
TVR Scott said:How nice do the old ones look? Would polishing make them bring them to an acceptable level of quality?
Also, you can just go with them for now and replace them later when you feel like it. Pretty easy swap, I would think.
Not great. Scratched and pitted with a few dents thrown in. But they are basically straight and not terribly rusty. Yeah, I'll clean them up and see how that goes. Worst case, I'll hit them with some silver paint. That will most likely convince me to not have them powder coated.
We were in Tennessee last weekend visiting my family, so not much has been accomplished. This shows the total progress.
The seat back is ready for foam and covering. But if you look closely, you'll see the rear glass for a TR6 hardtop. I've been thinking about trying to fit the hardtop to see if it's worth painting or will even fit. It will need all new rubber, two quarter windows, and a liner, so this will not be without significant cost. But the rear window is no longer available. Here's a closer view.
Those scratches won't buff out, and they are right in the middle. Too bad that glass wasn't stored in a safer place. I suppose a good used one could be located, or I could try to make one from Lexan.
The passenger seat is mostly done, at least the parts that require swearing. This one went together a little easier than the driver's seat because I knew how much and where to trim foam. I also had a better idea of how to fit the side bolsters. There are a few adjustments to be made around the headrest before the back panel and release mechanism are installed. It *will* be in the car on Thursday for the first two person drive.
The big thing is that the passenger seat is done and installed. But there were also lots of little things accomplished. The glovebox is in. The crash pads on the top of the doors were glued down. The trim caps on top of the B-posts are done. Lastly, I pulled out the box of door parts to see what condition they're in. Before taking the wife for a ride, I want a working interior door latch. Of the four mechanisms, only one was fully functional. It looks like I'll need a new one for the driver's side. Ready for an extended test drive tomorrow.
you have put new life in an old car. You can visit uptree for more ideas.
In reply to georgemarhsal :
Do they offer a roof rack so that he can carry his canoe on his TR6?
I did a few more things this morning such as adjust the alignment by eye. The front wheels were indeed toed out, and one of the rear wheels needed a shim to toe it out slightly. I also pulled the tach to oil away a squeak and the speedo to adjust the needle calibration. So now sitting still, I'm doing 10 MPH. But at least it's correct at 50 MPH. That will be sent off for a rebuild later.
After some more tuning, we took it out for a 30 mile drive.
(click for video)
The only issue (besides that damn leaky rear main seal) was a slight occasional hesitation. The plug gap and condition looked fine, and nothing is showing up in the TunerStudio logs. I suspect this is a result of those smaller injectors I swapped in several months ago when trying to stabilize the idle mixture. Those would get hot at autocross and randomly stop working. Since the larger injectors are actual Weber Pico injectors and not made in China, I'll swap back to those. The long-term plan is to try running on E85, so I'll need those anyway.
I've been pondering over the oil leak for a couple of days. It's better but still not what I consider fixed. From what I know, it shouldn't be leaking as badly as it is. So why? Here's what I've come up with. Take a look at this picture.
Going way back to when the engine was rebuilt, I remembered that the main bearing cap was machined to hold a second pinned bronze thrust washer. That is right behind the flared crankshaft end. This could be causing oil under pressure to shoot out much closer to the seal rather than dropping straight down into the pan. Maybe. If so, there's not much I can do about it. So back to my plan of enjoying the car and parking over an oil drip pan.
Run it, Joe!
Nice work, and congrats on the first pleasure drive. Great milestone!
TVR Scott said:Run it, Joe!
Nice work, and congrats on the first pleasure drive. Great milestone!
Thanks. I'll drive it up next time if it's done raining or I get the soft top installed. What I haven't said anything about is how it's handling. After the alignment tweak, it feels very good in a corner. The chassis is much stiffer than my other TR6 ever was, and it feels very solid. I think the roll bar paid off there. Even with the nylatron suspension bushings, the ride is firm but not punishing. I'm really happy with it.
This morning I swapped out the 226cc/min injectors for the 330cc/min ones. At first I tried changing the flow setting within TunerStudio, but this didn't seem to make a difference in the AFR. It was running rich as hell (~10 AFR) for a while until I gave up and just manually cut the entire fuel table to 65% of what it was before. This got me in the ballpark until it was warmed up and could be autotuned. A few miles driving around various terrain got it dialed back in, but it wasn't too far off. The hesitation appears to be gone, and the AFR at idle is fairly steady.
Yesterday I learned something about TunerStudio. If you change the injector flow rate, you need to do it inside the required fuel dialog and hit OK to recalculate the required fuel value. Entering it elsewhere doesn't automatically do this, but remembers the new flow rate. That explains why I had to manually change the VE table. I manually changed it back and retuned the cells that were off. Not much work, but it could have been a pain further down the road.
We had a weird thing happen on a drive just after changing the injectors. After a few miles, we stopped for around half an hour with the car parked in shade (it was getting late anyway). The car wouldn't start. At first I thought vapor lock (with EFI?), but holding the throttle to the floor (which turns off the injectors) got it running. There was also the smell of raw gas after it fired. Either there's a leaky injector or I need to back off the cranking pulse width and/or priming pulse.
I've been driving the TR6 around some more with the total getting close to 200 miles. Something I realized is that I didn't put any sort of break-in oil in the engine. It's running the semi-synthetic Penn Grade (formerly Brad-Penn) oil that has enough ZDDP for flat tappet engines. Having previously broken in a freshly rebuilt TR6 using this oil, I was still going to try some sort of break-in oil this time around.
So today I checked the compression cold and hot. Cold it was 140psi on all cylinders except for one near 145. Hot, it was 145 across the board. I expected closer to 155psi with a 10:1 compression ratio, but 145 isn't bad. So now I'm wondering should I swap to a break-in oil, or has that ship sailed and just keep going as is?
Edit: Actually, see level pressure is 14.7psi, so with a compression ratio of 10:1 I should see around 147psi. But I'm not at sea level (roughly 80% of sea level here) and my gauge is cheap. So definitely in the ball park.
Unless you’re using a high dollar gauge calibrated in a metrology lab, I would not worry about the value. It’s the old accuracy versus precision thing. Cheaper gauges are typically precise, but not accurate. Your consistency across cylinders is what that gauge should be good at.
Btw, my car still has a similar oil leak as yours on the rear main. However, this is the most oil tight British engine I’ve ever built. I’m up over 3000 miles since I finished the rebuild last Thanksgiving- 1000 of those miles drive to and back from the Mitty vintage races in late April.
Oh yeah, on the Bumpers- fab up some ‘towel bars’. They’ll fill the open holes and stabilize the sheet metal while looking cool.
I think Revington sells them ready to install.
In reply to oppositelocksmith :
You are right, the precision is the important part of a compression test. The numbers I'm seeing are high enough and similar enough that I'm not worried about the rings not breaking in properly.
So I'm having a bad day today. I took the car out for some more tuning and breaking in, and someone put this in the road.
I saw all of the safety markers and even a "BUMP" sign, but wasn't thinking that someone would stick a 4.5" tall piece of rusty steel in the road. My eyes identified the threat too late. The TR6 is only 4" or less off the ground, so this happened.
At a minimum, I need a new radiator pan and sway bar mounting hardware. Amazingly, nothing else hit. I was only going 15 MPH, but if I'd been crawling the frame, oil pan, and exhaust might have bottomed out.
So after determining that no serious damage was done, I took the car out to make sure it still drives OK. Within 5 minutes still driving on neighborhood roads, a woman in a Lexus SUV came over into my lane to avoid a cyclist. I used up all of my lane and laid on the horn. She honked back and flipped me off. Good thing one of us was paying attention and a TR6 is quite narrow.
While the car was up in the air for inspection, I added a spring to the clutch lever. It's still experimental, but this puts about 5 lbs. of pressure to hold the throwout bearing down on the clutch. I've read that the Gunst-style bearing is harder to turn and may need up to 10 lbs., but this seems to do the job. If not, I have heavier springs or I can shorten the tab.
You'll need to log in to post.
