1974 TVR 2500M driver restoration

TurnerX19 said:

In reply to ViperT4 :

If that is as small as I think, it is a choke or throttle cable end clamp. Usually they have a hex head, but someone didn't have such when they lost(or broke) it, so straight blade it was.

AH, that could very well be it. I was thinking it was maybe bleed valve for the coolant system but I haven't worked on the cooling system yet and it is definitely the right size to be a cable clamp. I will check things out the next time I'm around the carbs and throttle linkage. Thanks!

Nearing the last phases of moving so progress has still been slow, but gladly there's still some. I got the fuel and brake lines plumbed and fixed to the chassis. I also de-grossed the interior. so it's down to clean glass and vacuumed out, ready for new a new interior whenever I get to that point. It's due to be transported in the coming weeks from NY to the new house in WI.

I've also been working with Rimmer Bros on the right front hub assembly. I purchased their upgraded front hubs and stub axles. The left side seems fine. There is very little to no play in the hub and the wheel spins freely. The right side exhibits rocking that concerns me. I would say there is very little lateral in/out end play in the hub, but I can rock the wheel left/right or up/down a great deal. It's similar to what you would see from a bad ball joint, except it is only the wheel and brake disc moving in relation to the upright. The right side wheel also rotates significantly less free than the left side.

I followed the installation procedure when I initially installed them some months ago and redid it a couple days ago with the same results. If I go one tooth more on the castle nut the bearings bind and the wheel does not spin freely at all. Their vendor said the most likely cause would be the axle not engaging the taper of the vertical link. I checked that today and saw no odd witness marks on those surface. The axle looks perfectly perpendicular to the flat face of the vertical link.

I took a video of the action. I've never had a vehicle where the wheel bearings were adjustable so I'm not very familiar, but am I crazy or is this way too much play:

https://youtu.be/vYXHWJ8U0qU

Holy crap!  That's a huge amount of play!  Clearly something is wrong there.

You might be able to use a square on the upright to see if the stub axle is coming out at an angle.  Rolling the stub-axle on a flat surface would probably show if it is crooked.

Good luck with the move.  I have so much heavy junk that moving has just become impossible.

I disassembled both hubs just now. I left the inner bearings in place with the seal because I won't have time to source replacement seals before it gets transported. I did compare the fitment of both bearings of the good hub with the questionable hub and both seemed to contain the bearings at the same depths, etc. Everything fits well when assembled by hand.

I then decided to swap the left and right hubs to see if the problem followed or not. The problem did not, so I believe pretty firmly there actually is something off about the fitment of the axle within the upright on the right side, despite not being able to tell with the naked eye. The axle is secure in the upright and does not wobble with the amount of force I can apply by hand. I also measured the distance the hub protrudes from the caliper mounting bracket and the left and right sides were with .05mm of each other. However I did see that the dished area of the caliper bracket (immediately surrounding the axle) had uneven witness marks whereas the one of the left side had an even ring around the whole axle stub. SO, either the axle itself is slightly cockeyed in the upright, or maybe the caliper mount is slightly uneven. I did tighten the caliper bracket bolts as tight as I was comfortable doing with no effect.

Loaded up, and looks like it's in good company with the TR4 in the right color above it!

Good luck with your move.  Seems like you're moving from a cold place to a colder place... bu then I've always lived in the southern half of the country, albeit nearly coast to coast!

And delivered. Props to Passport Transport, and Dennis the driver in particular. Dealing with them was easy and they gave me as much notice as possible knowing that I had to hire a rollback to get the car from my garage to the meeting location with the hauler. During delivery, the driver, Dennis, was able to back the hauler up directly to the garage at the end of a cul de sac, UPHILL, immediately after an ice storm. For $1,355 I'd say it was money well spent.

Picture courtesy of my dad who met the truck driver, as I'm still in NY completing the process of selling my house. Not sure what the neighbors thought, if anything. We may officially be "those people" now, or will be by the time my other toys come out of hibernation in the spring.

New home, awaiting the rest of the mess:

Thanks for the well wishes Stu and Scott. I do admit it's this time of year where I wish I lived more south, but during the summers I'm glad it's less humid up here. And after being gone for 5+ years it'll be nice to be back home amongst family and old friends so it could be worse.

In reply to ViperT4 :

If you’re up for sharing, I’d love a copy of that excel file as well! 

Congratulations on getting through the worst part of moving. 

I’ve read the post about the movement in/around the hub multiple times, now, and I still don’t understand exactly what’s going on. What differentiates the Rimmer Bros. setup from original? Regardless of whether it aligns with the hole in the stub axle, can you get the nut snug enough to eliminate the play? 

Slow- I think the Rimmer Bros hub is similar in design to the factory hub but is uses different bearings and modern seals, plus a much thicker axle to eliminate brake pad knock-back due to axle flex.

Something seems to be misaligned, preventing me from eliminating play. I can either get two conditions: 1) wheels spin freely but rock back and forth relative to the upright  2) axle nut tightened to eliminate play but wheel binds or is completely unable to turn.

I'm sure you know there should be a happy medium between the two where there is virtually no play but the wheel spins readily. I was able to set up the driver's side just fine. As best as I can determine the axle itself is located correctly within the upright. Others have suggested ensuring the caliper bracket bolts are sufficiently tightened and I think they are, but I am wondering if when I painted then I created an uneven surface and cause it to sit a little cockeyed relative to the upright. This could cause interference with the hub. I'm only halfway through organizing my new garage so I haven't been able to work on the car yet, but hopefully before long I'll be able to make some more progress.

I’d remove the caliper before re-testing.

Well I played with things some more. First was to recheck things without the caliper attached as suggested. This made no difference.

Second I took some 120 grit sandpaper to the mating surfaces of the upright and caliper bracket to remove any uneven or excess paint. This also made no difference.

Last thing I did was remove the hub seal and inner bearing to compare to the outer bearing and confirm whether they are the same like I thought. They appear virtually identical but one seemed just a few mm shorter so I figured I would go ahead and swap them. This made a very slight difference but I'm not considering the issue resolved.

I was able to set the outer hub nut so that play in the hub was all but eliminated. It does not spin as freely as the left front wheel but it is better than previous at this level of play in the hub.

https://youtube.com/shorts/pM1GADzlXgs?feature=share

That video is with a medium amount of force applied to the wheel. It completes a few rotations and obviously is fighting some friction. The left front wheel spins much, much longer with the same amount of force applied.

Thoughts at this point? I'm either going to continue with the restoration and revisit the situation once I begin to drive, or order whole new uprights/brake brackets/hubs. There's only so many ways things parts can be assembled and reassembled, I may just chalk it up to variance stacking and hope a different combo of parts fixes it, or see if the bearings loosen up with a few miles since they're supposed to be readjusted anyway.

Seems like it's gotta be something wrong with the axle kit.  Try swapping the axles from one hub to the other.  If the problem stays with the axle that's the issue.  If it moves to the other axle then the hub is probably machined wrong.

I guess the other possibility is that your upright is damaged.  My guess is you got a bad axle kit.

Thanks Scott. I did try moving the hub from one side tot he other and the problem stayed with the right front corner. I have a new axle on order anyway to to me gorilla-ing the threads off the rear axle nut side with my impact before moving. Will see if that's an improvement when it arrives. Or the axle could just not be locating itself 100% correctly in the upright for some reason. I'll continue to evaluate.

Any progress?

I've been delinquent in posting updates, but there has been progress. Most of this summer was taken up with outside work for the new house. With help from others, I built a 5ft tall retaining wall mostly by hand, laid a patio, built a shed base and had a shed built, dug a fire pit in the yard, and installed a subpanel in the garage because it was barely functional as we bought it. It took up a lot of time and energy but I'm very pleased with the results.

But with those major projects out of the way, back to regularly scheduled programming!

I mentioned in the last post I was getting a new axle stub to replace the one on the front corner. Unfortunately it made no real difference. It's tight enough where I'm just going to leave it be and reinspect after I start driving it a bit. I think things well bed in those first miles and I'll be ok. If not I'll get some different parts and go from there.

In another dead end, I spent a good deal of time and money restoring the factory fuel tank. I don't want to cut the body work to hang a universal fuel cell bigger than 5 gallons, and of course the new ones sold in England are pretty expensive so I was trying to work with what I had. After rounds of acid dipping to remove rust, having patches welded, trying to reseal with POR15 fuel tank sealer it still is leaking from the seams in several places. I know reproductions are sold by several TVR vendors overseas, so it looks like I'll just have to bite the bullet here.

I completely stripped the body of every removable panel and bolt, nut and rivet in preparation for paint. I didn't get into every single nook and cranny of the bodywork but easily 95%. After lots of searching, calling, and meetings I scheduled time at a body shop for this coming July. They body shop will take care of any remaining prep work and then do repairs before going to paint. I'll consider it money well spent as I just don't handle tedium well.

Here's some close-ups of the various types of damage. They seem pretty standard looking through the other builds on GRM and elsewhere. Again, the body shop is going to be taking care of all this for me. More expensive, definitely, but it'll save my sanity and keep things on track. There doesn't appear to be any major past damage in the body, like from accidents. Aside from the wheel arch and hood profiles, all of the body filler seems like it was just to smooth the body lines which I think is a good sign.

Another area I got buttoned up are the coolant and exhaust systems. For the cooling system I had the swirl tank acid dipped to remove any rust and then painted it. I was just ahead of Andrew Gray releasing his hose sets for early TVRs so I bought some universal silicone pieces and universal pipe and cut to fit. Nothing fancy but they'll do the job.

For exhaust I also bought universal pieces and put it together how I desired. I previously restored and installed the factory exhaust manifold. As I got to working on the exhaust I decided it would be simplest to buy Richard Good's 6 into 3 into 1 header as the flange would mate directly with what I'm using post-header. And I'm so far in now what's another $700? It's mild steel but comes ceramic coated in your choice of 3 colors. Overall it's a very nice piece.

The header has a 2.5" collector and from there I'm running 2.5" stainless pipe through two 45* bends which center the exhaust, which then meets a Magnaflow muffler. The muffler is a little tall but tucks neatly up into the frame underneath the driveshaft about an inch, which will help my ground clearance as much as I can. 

The muffler is a dual 2" exit which I am going to run straight back. I just like the look of the dual-center exhaust.

Here's where the muffler sits. Pretty tidy I'd say. I know people usually use bullet style mufflers here for extra ground clearance but having used them in the past on other projects I wanted things a little quieter. I should end up with about 3.5"-4" of clearance here.

AND FINALLY... I've also begun making decisions about interior. I've definitely made compromises between cost and originality here, but I think it work. Originally I wanted to keep the seats and all of the original panels and just replace the carpet and headliner. My seat covers and bottom cushions were totally trashed when I got the car. After going to a few upholstery shops It became apparent the redoing the seats was going to cost well more than some of the cheaper pair of seats from reputable companies. My problem was nobody sells seats with as much tan in the orange as our cars have, so I had some decisions to make here.

Either I could go with a complete color change of the interior, spend more than I needed to restoring the inferior OEM seats when I could get better, new seats, or work out some combination of both.

In the end I decided a combo would best suit my needs. I'm keeping the original dashboard and door card material. It's a tan/orange color many of them came with. The gauge bezels and many parts of the dashboard, and steering wheel are black, so I decided black seats and black carpet would work as a color scheme against the tan dash/doors.

Pre-restored dash. Don't have pictures but I kept the gauges, but got new bezels and seals. Then cleaned the entire piece up with water/vinegar mixture.

For seats I chose Sparco GT seats. https://www.sparcousa.com/product/gt  They're a little more modern looking than I wanted but fit a sports car better than the Corbeau Sport seats I was also considering for the same price. I plan to use fabric dye and black out the Sparco branding which will help the retro effort.

The seats got delivered today and I'm happy with them. They're very close to the OEM seat dimensions, weigh only 4lbs more per seat and feature much more bolstering which will be appreciated. This is compared to a spare Jensen Healey seat I picked up. THey're the same as TVR M series, if anyone finds that information useful.

I really like those Sparco seats!  I think they'll look great in the car.

   Wow. I'd say you've gotten quite a bit done since your last entry.  I also went with Goodpart's header, and plan on  2.5 in. into a similar muffler, with two 2.25 outlets.  Then again, do you think the muffler could fit in that gap by the gearbox if set vertically? Maybe with single 2.5" in and out... might help with ground clearance, although the extra heat in the tunnel could be a problem.  Also it looks like you will be replacing most if not all of your bonnet hinge metal. I suspect that you will find that there is virtually nothing left of the metal inside the fiberglass "tube" there in the bottom of the bonnet! Good time to improve the geometry to allow for opening it further. I'm way behind you as far as completion, yet you are dealing with many of the same considerations I face now. It's great to see your progress!

In reply to Stu Lasswell :

That's an interesting though, Stu. I hadn't even contemplated going down that route. It would have to be a single entry/exit, and they'd have to be offset to the same side. Here's a little better view of the space between the driveshaft and the muffer:

You wouldn't be able to go fully vertical because the chassis necks down in width, but you certainly could rotate it up about 45*. Depending on how close the inlet pipe is to the side of the muffler body you could probably gain up to an inch in ground clearance. Any additional heat introduced to the area I assume could be mitigated by insulation under the carpet. and reflective foil tape to protect the fiberglass if necessary. I'll keep this in mind if I decide the current setup needs improvement.

With the exhaust and cooling systems completed I should be in a place to start the car now and break in the cam. Hearing this make some sounds on its own would really help motivate to keep pushing on. Winter in WI can be brutal but there's also stretches where the temperature will crest 40*F for several consecutive days. I'm going to try and be ready to take advantage of one of those times. Yesterday I pulled the spark plugs and ran some jumper cables from the GTO's battery directly to the starter and a head stud nut for ground. I have a mechanical pressure gauge plugged into the tapped port in the block for the oil pressure dashboard gauge. Touching the signal wire on the starter to the jumper cable spun the engine over and before long I was seeing a healthy 60psi of oil pressure on the gauge just at tickover.

Apparently this was a better test of things than I planned on it being. The oil galley plug directly above the oil filter was leaking a lot of my expensive break-in oil right out the side of the block. It appears to be a fairly common issue on these rebuilt TR6 motors. I think my options are try and peen over the top like was done at the factory or replace the galley plug with a short bolt and washer. Since it's already in situ I'm thinking I'll try peening it first, unless anyone would recommend against that.

Either way, I have to locate my ballast resistor and then I'm thinking I can run a jumper wire from the alternator to the ignition coil and make a first start attempt. Things are getting exciting!

Good to see you back, and nice progress!

The body looks ok as far as damage goes.  Some there for sure, but nothing horrible.

Good luck with the first start!  I've been putting that one off for -um- years.

In reply to TVR Scott :

I agree on the body damage. Nothing that everyone else going to this level with these cars hasn't dealt with. But I know for me personally it will be best handled by a pro.

Just to update on the galley plug situation. The leak had been fully remedied. A few braps with the air hammer did the job nicely.

I did go for a first start and even though it was unsuccessful it was good I introduced fuel to the system as I found a couple leaks near the carbs. Got those taken care of. I either have a week spark or my timing needs to be corrected, so I'll be looking into the ignition side of things next chance I get.