1974 TVR 2500M driver restoration

oppositelocksmith said:

What axles are these? Not familiar with them?

HD front axles offered by Rimmer. Not sure who their supplier is in this case, though. The reason for these is to eliminate brake pad knock back.

https://rimmerbros.com/Item--i-114284UR

Got it. Thanks!

I have 'Uncle Jack's' HD axles in mine ( what TRF and maybe Goodparts sells) for the same reason. 

Yours have a different axle profile, but they both use shims for adjustment.

Been working on some little things too. Added a "secret" AFR gauge. Just to help me verify I'm in an appropriate range during all driving conditions as I get the carbs dialed in. Not something I'm going to continuously monitor.

Took a stab at getting my bonnet better aligned tonight. Far as I can tell there are three means of adjustment. You probably all know this but the bonnet mounts are attached to the chassis in a slotted section of square tube that allows for fore/aft adjustment of the unit in relation to the body. The mounts are also threaded into the bonnet frame so let you adjust the height of the front of the bonnet, and the posts that engage the hood latches are adjustable for essentially preload, which allows the back of the bonnet to be made higher or lower when latched. Lastly you can adjust the lateral fitment of the front of the bonnet via spacers between the mounts and the frame. So I guess technically there are four means of adjustment.

I think my plan is to get the bonnet aligned at the latches first with the front mounts completely free, and then adjust the mounts for fit and good movement. If anyone has gone through this before or has tips, things to pay attention to, etc. I'm all ears.

For a first effort I'm quite pleased. The gaps are still a little big for my taste but at least they're straight now.

Yes, from what I've read you are on the right track. Latch the "hood" first, then determine the other adjustments by the gap alignments, then make the necessary adjustments at the front pivot points.  Got to say, that blue color (and finish) looks very nice indeed!

Those gaps look pretty good to me - maybe as good as they'll get.

Stu Lasswell said:

Yes, from what I've read you are on the right track. Latch the "hood" first, then determine the other adjustments by the gap alignments, then make the necessary adjustments at the front pivot points.  Got to say, that blue color (and finish) looks very nice indeed!

Ha, I've watched far too much Top Gear to be able to call it a hood on a British car! Thanks for confirming m thought process.

TVR Scott said:

Those gaps look pretty good to me - maybe as good as they'll get.

Agreed, I don't think they'll get much smaller. Overall I'm pretty happy with them. The passenger side @ the latch is sitting a little higher than the drivers side, which is due to the post being farther out on that side, so I need to set that into its mount more.

Here to update again. I'm having to pivot a bit on the seats but I'll get to that a little later.

Wife and I were in Ireland for almost two weeks and got back yesterday, so I haven't been to do anything during that time. But before our trip I pushed to get the car out for at least one drive, and have to say it was quite rewarding.

I was able to put roughly 20 miles of mixed country and in town driving. I'm happy to report that for the most part everything went well. I definitely came away with a list of observations that need working out but most importantly the car is still great fun to drive. My biggest worry being an amateur wrench was that I might've ruined the car and turned it into a mess behind the wheel by taking everything apart and rebuilding myself. But it still handles on rails, brakes well (enough), engine runs nicely and make broad power, shifts are crisp, so on and so forth. Overall very pleased at the moment.

Here are some of my observations, some of which are just interesting but most will require further tinkering. Happily, none of them indicate to me that massive reworks are needed .

-A bit of gas is leaking from around the fuel sender seal. Need to investigate or find better gasket.

-It's been GREAT having the wideband AFR gauge. Cruise is very lean, on the order of 15-16 AFR. I think this is what the Strombergs are designed for basically and I'm not too worried about it. It idles in the mid-14s and and as I put the throttle down the AFR's drop down to the low 12s right away, so I think the carb tuning is in a good place for now.

-I get a steering wheel shake at slightly less than freeway speeds. Alignment still has to be done, but I think some of the wheel balancing weight have fallen off and this is the bigger cause of this issue. Bump steer was not apparent during driving.

-Bonnet is able to be properly aligned but seems to shift while driving, additional fine tuning needed here and will likely have to tighten the mounting hardware much harder than I had been so that it doesn't moved in the slotted frame from bumps.

-Engine revs nicely but falls on its face at 4,000 rpm. I don't think it's fueling because it happens at idle as well, plus when it occurs while driving as soon as I shift it revs up nicely again with power, until hitting 4,000 RPM in the next gear. If I were running the bowls dry because the fuel pump doesn't keep up I would imagine once I run out of fuel at the top of one gear I still would be out of fuel after the upshift. Going to investigate the ignition system some more first. I have a couple ignition coils around here so I'm going to try swapping them out to start.

Pics of it out finally out in the wild. I'm really liking how this car shows in the French Blue.

Fantastic!

I love French Blue, awesome car!

I will double what's been said.  That looks fantastic, especially in French Blue.  I'm glad it's running better.  Do you have a stock intake and cam?  Those tend to end the party around 4500 rpm.  Also, check your timing advance.

Thanks all!

I have a stock intake, but GoodParts GP2 cam and header. The cam is supposed to be good up to 5500 RPM, and I bought their HD valve springs as well so it shouldn't be valve float unless the machine shop set them up at too high an installed height.

Definitely could be the total advance as well, will check that. Dizzy was rebuilt by British Vacuum Units but still running points.

That car looks incredible. I'm so glad to see it on the road. Well done. 

Congratulations! It's looking fantastic. I hope you get to enjoy it daily! 

Thanks for the compliments, all! Great to be driving it again. Interior has a ways to go yet. Hope to get it to an upholstery shop this coming week to have them install the carpet. I did get the door cards that I had restored a while back installed today. The center parts with the cross hatch pattern are all original, but the bigger pieces have new foam and vinyl.

I ended up spending most of my time with the car today on what I believe is called the safety clamp for the steering column. It's on interior side of the bulkhead right in the midst of the pedal box and it allows for telescoping of the steering column. I loosened it to extend the column further into the cabin area and thought I tightened up correctly. Then yesterday I noticed probably 30 degrees of freeplay in the steering wheel before the wheels did anything. What I didn't realize when I tightened it up before is that there's a grub screw in the clamp and that's really what positively locks the interior shaft of the steering column to the intermediate shaft. The "clamp" is apparently just there to hold the grub screw. Anyway, learning experience for me, and glad it didn't come more loose while driving!

So I've driven the car about 300 miles or so. Still no major issues after going on progressively longer drives. So far my longest has been about 120 miles. My rebuilt tach seems to be on the fritz again and I've been getting the GAZ suspension adjusted to my liking.

Today it was in the upper 80s here so I did some driving focused on seeing how it handled the heat. Went to an empty parking lot and crept along a few parking spaces at a time to mimic stop and go driving first. After that I did some freeway and county highway driving with longer hills to get a bigger load on the engine while turning some RPM. The temp gauge never went above ~110C, and when I logged actual water temp vs the gauge display with my new sender I found the gauge was reading a few *C high by that point. So I'm going to call that test passed for now.

Fingers crossed I can connect with the upholstery shop and have the carpet kit fitted this week. Also, the TVRCCNA is having their national meet, Out of the Woodwork, in conjunciton with the PVGP this year. I've registered to bring my car so you can come check in out Aug 1-3 in Pittsburgh if anyone is going to be there!

More progress and actually getting close to calling this one "DONE." Or as done as a restoration ever truly is.

Got the call from the upholstery shop that the carpet is done being fitted. I should be able to go pick it up this afternoon.

In the meantime I've been working on the seat frame, getting them ready for the new covers and foams which are on order. Other than being generally custy and gross the seat recline and forward tilt mechanisms were sticky and tough to manipulate.

The forward tilt situation was particularly bad. There's just a spring loaded hook at the bottom which engages on a bar and keeps the seat back from tilting forward unless you pull up on the lever. These 2500M seats are the sames as Jensen Healeys, but this piece has been modified from JH use for TVR duty as the original tilt release lever was on the bottom and interferes with the TVR body sill when in situ. Of course TVR's brilliance in engineering shown through with their adaptation.

Hook:

This is the forward tilt lever which operates the lower hook via the cable. Note how thin the lever is. With how sticky the lever's action had become the metal was just bending instead of pulling the cable at all.

The whole thing is easy enough to dismantle, so I removed the cable, disassembled the hook/spring and sanded the rust off the post, then re-lubed everything so it moves freely now. The cables were pretty janky so a new lawn mower throttle cable came to the rescue. Most importantly I cut some tabs out of bar stock, drilled holes, and then had them welded to the tilt lever as reinforcement.

With the renewed lubrication and additional bracing the lever works a treat and doesn't seem to have any flex, so everything should be quite easy to use when the refinishing is complete.

Carpet's in!

Continuing to put on test miles. Still waiting on the seat covers to arrive so for now I'm driving around with one spare black seat and an old tan passenger seat. Oh well, I don't notice while I'm looking out the windshield.

The engine's coming into its own. I was initially concerned it wasn't revving past 4,000 RPM. But I cleaned up the fueling a bit and I think it just needed additional break in miles as it's driving pretty happily now. My tach's out for re-servicing. It worked fine after being converted to work with electronic ignition but of late would gradually stop working the longer the car ran before stopping working altogether. That means I don't know exactly how high it's revving but the car pull steadily all the way to 105 mph at least. Using an online gear-speed calculator that should've been about 5500 RPM.

Question on RPM for those who have more experience with the Triumph 6- as I look ahead to the road trip to Pittsburgh for Woodwork, what's a safe RPM for extended cruising? If 3600 RPM puts me about 70 I'll just be a rolling road block out on I90. But I'm concerned about spending 8 hours going along at 4,000 RPM or more to keep up with modern traffic. I don't mind sitting there at 70 all day but would you have the same concerns about maintaining a higher speed? I drove from just north of Chicago to west of Milwaukee on the highway yesterday averaging 70 mph and temps and oil pressure were steady the whole way. I'm more concerned about undue wear of those sustained high RPM.

Thoughts?

You should be fine running it at 4000 RPM for a longer drive if the engine is broken in (> 500 miles).  I'd freshen the oil if you haven't changed it yet just in case.  I'd also vary your speed a bit, so 70 mph when you can and faster when needed to keep up with traffic.  My understanding is that running an engine at a higher steady rpm for hours is harder on it early in its life.

In reply to JoeTR6 :

I think I just crested 500 miles so I will keep putting them on to be safe. But that is good to hear

Yesterday was one of the more frustrating days in this whole build. Getting some miscellaneous work done with the bonnet up and a rusted section of the old cable which keeps the hood from opening too far snapped... The car was on my Quickjacks so there was a lot of clearance between it and the floor for it to rotate. It flipped forward with a good amount of momentum and I'm really lucky the first obstacle in its path was the round handle of my vice. It sounded like it crashed pretty hard but I don't see any cracking. If it had hit a corner of the work bench of something on it it could've been catastrophic. I'm lucky it came away with just some light scratches, which I'm fairly confident can be polished out.

The nose was not as fortunate. As the hood swung down and around it scraped against the cement garage floor and "re-profiled" the leading edge. On the bright side it's not super noticeable with touch-up paint now unless you're looking right at it. But still, pretty low moment and feeling. This thing went from a Hagerty 2 to a 3 and emotionally a Hagerty 4 pretty damn quickly.

And then as if I wasn't having a bad enough night, I went to the back of the car which needed some serious cosmetic attention. I'm not sure it's my exhaust setup or just the kamm tail effect on aero in general, but there's a lot of exhaust deposits which were not coming off with normal washing. It was even embedding in the stainless bumpers.  I spent about 2-1/2 hours just claying the back of the car to get it clean again. My hopes are a good ceramic sealer will prevent the need for doing this again. This bit came out well. Some in progress and all finished photos:

But once I got it all clean I noticed cracks in the cleat coat or paint on the lower valence. There's one on either side of the car, and all I can really think of that could've cause it is the end of fuel tank rest approximately above those areas. I guess ONLY the ends are making contact with the body and so all of its force during bumps is being concentrated and causing the trauma to the paint. I will have to think about how to remedy this with more fuel tank support. Hopefully the paint and be repaired with a limited effort, given the location of the problems.

More discussions with the body shop to be had here. Really just posting so everyone else following can avoid these issues. Check/replace those hood stay cables and thoroughly think through how your fuel tanks are placed! But man, what a E36 M3 evening.

Absolutely love the build of your car. I know you'll be able to work out the 'kinks' that caused those minor blemishes in the front and back. 

On the soot deposits on the rear, there is a reason that the Kamm back end of a TR6 was painted black..... From my personal experience, Windex will remove the deposits from chrome quicker than anything else. My 6 is satin black, so I don't generally see it on the paint. 

Per what Joe said on the high RPM's, Your engine is not broken in yet. So, vary the RPM's as much as possible. Might annoy the traffic around you, but will be better for the motor. I've done a 1000 mile trip in mine with the OD broken, and at high speeds. Nothing terrible came from that, but it did make me appreciate my overdrive (take some ear plugs with you). 

Thanks for the positive comments as well as suggestion about Windex. Glad also to hear a second confirmation the long highway journey with some mechanical sympathy should at least be manageable for the car. Trying not to overthink it as I know these were just cars back in the day but traffic conditions have evolved over 50 years. I'll definitely keep these tips in mind!