1974 TVR 2500M driver restoration

This past summer I acquired my first classic car, a 1974 TVR 2500M. The car was owned by Lorne Fritz of Sports Car Haven in Danville, PA. Over the past few years he spent some time getting it road worthy and I bought it in June. I've since had a blast driving it here and there while continuing to bring it up to spec.

So far I've done new tires, new upper ball joints for the front suspension, new soft brake lines throughout, rebuilt the brake master cylinder, new clutch lines slave and master, and new steering rack bellows. While currently generally sound I plan on undertaking a full body-off renewal and documenting here. I'm concentrating on making it driver that I can reliably enjoy as often as I fancy.

Here are some pictures from earlier this summer. Looking forward to keeping whoever is interested informed of my progress!

Love these cars. Nice to see a driver.

Welcome! I'm looking forward to finding out more about your m project.

BTW, I can't see any of your pics...

^What he said.

Interesting. How about now? Obviously new and figuring out what works best.

It's a good 25 footer and drives pretty tight as is but I want to go through every system and replace or renew everything that is suspect. Lots of paint cracks from the body flexing. The interior aside from the dashboard needs to be entirely redone. Glass front/rear is good but the seals have shrunk and pulled away from the body. The frame has surface rust throughout but seems solid otherwise so blasting and paint should do it there. All new bushings and springs/dampers will be in order, as well as new fuel and brake lines and likely new electricals.

I'm expecting to kick things off this coming week by hopefully getting the body separated and I hope to make steady progress over the winter. My biggest concern for the time being is whether some of the captive bolts securing the body to the frame will pull out of the glass when I get after the nuts

In reply to ViperT4 :

Better!

Great looking car.

When I took the body off mine, those rear captive bolts did indeed rip a hole in the body.  So that's on the to-do list of repairs.

Yikes. I'm hoping I can get away with out having to do any major body repairs but I'm glad they sell new captive nut plates ready to be glassed in if I do have to go that route. the car was sitting for a long time in a barn so it's pretty sound, it seems. 23k original miles. As of now the biggest structural issue I've identified is a break in the bonnet frame where it hinges with the space frame.

There’s the bracket, that extends rearward from the passenger compartment, in the wheel well, and that’s as close to a captive fastener as the M used for body/frame attachment. That’s a fact in my ‘75, and after a misspent youth at a TVR dealership, in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and more than a decade on the PistonHeads classics section I’m almost 100% certain, that NONE of the fasteners attaching the body to the chassis would have been captive, from the factory, on ANY M. It’s more likely that you’re thinking of the bolts extending downward, under the tank, and the heads are usually covered with decades of crap. In a barn car, I could easily imagine that to be real crap, from the rodent equivalent of a meth head, getting high off varsol fumes. If there are bolts that have been glassed in, drill them out, because they’d be to E36 M3ty to re-use, if you’re going to the trouble of a body-off. 

In spite of me being so damn sure, there are some pretty significant differences between ‘74s and ‘75s. 

My mounting points by the gas tank had some bolts welded to backing-plates.  I had to use a nut-splitter to get the nuts off the bottom side.

Advice on removing the body: 

Once all of the bolts are out, lift the rear first, and slide it back as much as possible, incrementally, until the foot wells have enough clearance to slip up, past the top frame rails. 

Nice! 
 

is that a 6.0 in your garage? 
 

also nice to see all red in your driveway . Most times my driveway looks like that 

It’s not like you’re under any obligation to post updates, but you’re under an obligation to post updates! 

Slow_M said:

It’s not like you’re under any obligation to post updates, but you’re under an obligation to post updates! 

Haha, I know I know! I've been working on the car the past 3 days with my dad while my parents were visiting for the holidays and I had the week off work. I'm happy to report that while things went slower than I hoped, we separated the body and chassis with no issues. We had to get creative with how we did the lifting. My garage isn't tall enough to make a lift worth it. I cut the nuts off the bolts securing the seats. We couldn't properly keep the bolt heads from turning as they were recessed into the channels of the seat rails. Almost everything else came out without a hiccup.

Pictures!

Interior gutted. Getting the fuzzy insulation that was still adhering to the body is going to be a challenge, I think.

Bonnet off, pops getting stuff done.

And it's up!

Some shots of the frame. It's definitely crusty on the surface. I had seen as much from beneath. Now that I can get up close to it it seems solid throughout though. We'll see if media blasting turns up any areas that rusted through. I don't think any major repairs to the chassis structure are in my future thankfully.

mr2s2000elise said:

Nice! 
 

is that a 6.0 in your garage? 
 

also nice to see all red in your driveway . Most times my driveway looks like that 

Red is the fastest color! Most of mine is red if you notice the motorcycles in the newest project pics. It is a GTO, but a 5.7, thanks for asking. Bought it in 2010 as my first car out of college and I'll be keeping it forever. I've built up the LS1 with ported heads, medium cam, forged internals and Harrop HTV1900 blower. It's quite fun!

ViperT4 said:

Slow_M said:

It’s not like you’re under any obligation to post updates, but you’re under an obligation to post updates! 

Haha, I know I know! I've been working on the car the past 3 days with my dad while my parents were visiting for the holidays and I had the week off work. I'm happy to report that while things went slower than I hoped, we separated the body and chassis with no issues. We had to get creative with how we did the lifting. My garage isn't tall enough to make a lift worth it. I cut the nuts off the bolts securing the seats. We couldn't properly keep the bolt heads from turning as they were recessed into the channels of the seat rails. Almost everything else came out without a hiccup.

Pictures!

Interior gutted. Getting the fuzzy insulation that was still adhering to the body is going to be a challenge, I think.

Bonnet off, pops getting stuff done.

And it's up!

Some shots of the frame. It's definitely crusty on the surface. I had seen as much from beneath. Now that I can get up close to it it seems solid throughout though. We'll see if media blasting turns up any areas that rusted through. I don't think any major repairs to the chassis structure are in my future thankfully.

Great progress! Your pop has the spine of a 16 year old! I can do that pose for about ten seconds. 

I noticed that the bolts that were under the tank are still attached to the chassis, with what looks like torn fiberglass still holding on. 

Get your hands on a pneumatic de-scaler. Some of the tubes may not have been penetrated by rust, but be thin as tinfoil. The pins in the de-scaler will show you what tubes need to be replaced. If there aren’t any, you can move forward with more confidence. The process will also make the one of blasting easier.

Slow_M said:

Great progress! Your pop has the spine of a 16 year old! I can do that pose for about ten seconds. 

I noticed that the bolts that were under the tank are still attached to the chassis, with what looks like torn fiberglass still holding on. 

Get your hands on a pneumatic de-scaler. Some of the tubes may not have been penetrated by rust, but be thin as tinfoil. The pins in the de-scaler will show you what tubes need to be replaced. If there aren’t any, you can move forward with more confidence. The process will also make the one of blasting easier.

  

Haha, I'll relay your kind words to him. Good eye on that pair of bolts. We saw them early on but didn't think they went through the body and were only holding the tow loops. The rear was a bit stubborn in coming off the chassis. It seemed like it was just 46 years of stiction making it difficult to separate. Should've put 2 and 2 together.

Thanks for the thoughts on the descaler, I'll definitely look into that. I don't have an air compressor but maybe I can find one for a power drill or electric impact.

Now that the body's off I'll be transitioning to pulling the drive train and otherwise prepping it for media blasting. I'm on the fence about final finish, i.e. powder coating or paint. I'm leaning towards paint. Any recomendations?

In reply to ViperT4 :

I will chime in here. Use paint. Every powder coat job I have seen gets serious rust creeping under the powder, it doesn't adhere nearly as well. Used it a lot on formula car frames (formula vee and F Ford) and it was a lot easier to do because of the sub contractor rather than painting myself, but never again.

+1 for paint. Whatever the final coat, I’d go with epoxy primer. 

Thanks for the confirmation of going with paint, and 10-4 on the epoxy primer. Especially for a car that's going to be driven that sounds like the proper solution. I got one quote for blasting and painting the chassis, suspension arms and potentially bearing carriers yesterday for $700. Maybe 40% more than I was expecting but I understand it's not just a normal ladder style frame. I have another person coming to look at it tomorrow, we'll see where they ballpark it. Anyway, it will be my goal this coming weekend to to get the drivetrain out, but we have some house work going so we'lll see if I get any garage time.

That price for all that blasting isn't bad.  I had just the frame done and that was about $400.  With the paint included that seems like a pretty good deal.

BTW, my car was ridden hard and put away wet, but I had all the suspension parts magnafluxed.  It turned up a ton of cracks that needed repair/replacement.  There are several pages of details on my build thread.  I did a fair amount of reenforcement based on where the cracks were.

Typing from the garage.... I'm nearing having the engine out on this project. My engine has the driver's side rear lifting loop, but from other TR6 builds I expected to see another loop behind the water pump on the passenger side but I do not. I do see a plate with a [well-oiled] hole on the bottom front-passenger side of the engine. Am I to feed a bolt through and lift from that?

Picture coming.

Seems a little on the small side but that's the only thing that looks like it fits the bill.

I wouldn't lift from that lower hole.  It might get tippy.  There should be a lift ring bolted to the top of the block by two bolts just below the front exhaust header pipe.  The lift ring extends up like this.

In reply to JoeTR6 :

Beautiful looking engine bay! And thanks for the reply. That's what I was expecting to be able to lift from in the front but there was no such ring on my engine, There were two tow hooks bolted to the rear frame so I decided I could bolt one of them to the plate using that hole. Worked well and was stable.

So drivetrain is fully out, I'll post more of an update later on. Think I'll be able to see about getting the suspension undone today.