Another TVR 2500M Restoration thread

Good starting point.

Looks like the hinge frame on the bonnet will need either repair or replacement.  I'm totally redoing mine so that the hood will fully open.

You wanted me to build you a roof panel, right?  For filling in the sunroof.

JoeTR6 said:

That's where the spare tire mounts.  Doesn't  everyone put their spare tire over the radiator?

That looks like a good project.

You are so right. I actually knew that but still those lug nuts looked out of place to me! I guess in person it just doesn't look like there's room for a whole spare so I didn't make the connection. 

And no, as much as I would have liked to sit in the car and just see how it felt, the car is unfortunately so disgusting inside I couldn't bring myself to get that intimate with it yet! May well get bitten by a black widow sticking my feet down in that foot well! 

TVR Scott said:

Good starting point.

Looks like the hinge frame on the bonnet will need either repair or replacement.  I'm totally redoing mine so that the hood will fully open.

You wanted me to build you a roof panel, right?  For filling in the sunroof.

That would be excellent if I could get one from you. You could go in to business and I could be your first customer. First of three or four! Shoot me an email to talk details when you get near to having a chance to make another. 

Further struggle with the hood hinge matter... I had the hood open for a couple hours for cleaning, inspecting, photographing and the like today. When I first opened the hood it wouldn't stay open. It hit the ground just a hair before it would balance to stay open. So I put a prop in and let it come down on the prop. Didn't push it open or anything. Later on I noticed it was now able to stay open without the prop. Even later on and I go to set the hood down, thinking it's lower stress to be in a closed position even if it's not latched. When I pivoted it down the back edge of the hood fell at least an inch short of meeting the body. It would appear that while being open for a couple hours the hinges bent to the point of effectively moving the hood forward over an inch. I was so gentle with it too! 

Cleaning all the glued on padding off the interior is not actually as difficult as I expected. 

I feel like I've been doing a ton of work but not getting terribly far. Such is the nature of this project! I got the dash out. Labeled lots of wires as it was coming out. Pulled the harness loose for the tail lights and fuel tank. Got the windshield and the fuel tank out. Taking the windshield out should maybe have waited but it made the dash removal so much easier. I'm not sure if the fuel tank will be useable. It was empty and stinky and underneath it was wet. Inside looks pretty rough. I'm thinking it needs replacing. 

I really hate to disregard this fantastically terrible interior pattern, but I hate it. I completely get the impulse to keep it, but it's hideous. I can't bring myself to put all this effort in to preserving it and building a car with that terrible pattern in it. I am contemplating MAYBE changing everything else to black and just keeping the dash original. For the nostalgia. Thoughts?

In reply to CoolHandMoss :

I originally thought that pattern was the vinyl fading and aging in weird random ways.  But in that picture it does look intentional.  I've never seen a pic of a TVR with similar, so I'm guessing some owner did that on purpose.

And it looks like complete E36 M3.

Change it.  It's your car.  Doing nice clean black vinyl will add value in the end, and you'll only think of how much better it looks now.

That looks like the aftermath of a frat house party.  Get rid of it.  You don't want to stare at that after so many hundreds of hours of work.

It Is actually original. I have found a picture of another car with that pattern. It is definitely factory. 

I think its vinyl meant to look like burled walnut. 

It does it badly, but...

Is anyone else having trouble posting?

Okay wow. Tried 6 times to get my post to go through and just on a whim tried that and look at it go. Anyway, here's the post I intended to make. 

I prefer to refer to it as a marble-ized brown pattern. that picture is the only car with any of that pattern that I've seen but it's still a rather different interior than that of my car. I have panels in with that finish all over the place. 

Find someone with a decent black interior who wants the "marbled dog crap" interior.  Swap with that style maven.

If I ever found anyone that wanted it, they could have it. I am not throwing any of it away. 

   I'm still of the opinion that someone recovered that interior. I've seen that slightly mottled brown interior before, but nothing like that "Mossy Oak" woodland camouflage interior yours has.  Besides, that inset metal plate should be black/silver with labels for the switches... I suspect that if you pull it out and peel the vinyl off you'll see the original labeling.

I'll have to investigate a little more. If the pattern was applied post factory, someone did an extremely thorough job. There are no giveaways that it was done after the fact and it looks completely factory. The pattern is even on pieces glued to the body and even in the way back where it would have been very difficult to get to with the glass in. But if it wasn't factory I'd be way more comfortable with getting rid of it! 

You may well be right stu. I pulled down the covering on the flat part and there are labels underneath. So I looked around a little more at just how very very good of a job was done if the interior was all re-covered. And then it hit me. The guy I bought the car from was a custom tailor for decades. So he must have put a lot of time and effort in to doing a really good job on this. 

That would explain a lot!

He probably saw another car or a pic with the factory "marbled E36 M3" pattern and wanted to duplicate it.

Would be interesting to see if the original vinyl is still under the marbled layer.

Ugh. I'd have to redo that in black if it was my car. 

There is nothing under the surface layer on the dash at least. I'm guessing it's all gone. 

I ordered a 302 block. Woohoo. 

I tried polishing the window frames up today. I don't think they are going to polish out. Pitting is just a little too deep. Looks like i'll have to send these for chrome. 

Bonnet is off. A friend stopped by today and helped me lift it. That couldn't wait any longer. The hinge was breaking off more and more and I was getting nervous. So much easier to do things with the bonnet off. 

oh also, the engine is not seized but the diff appears to be completely trashed. If anyone is in the market for the tr6 egine and transmission I might let them go  

You mentioned that you ordered a 302 block, so I'm guessing that any info about my neighbor's Rover engined TVR 2500 is moot at this point? He's still out of town anyway, so I won't have access to his his car for a while yet. 

Certainly don't go through too much trouble looking in to it. I would still be curious to hear how the manifolds cleared and if the exhaust was able to be mounted normally. There isn't a ton of documentation about fitting v8s in these cars in general to be found. 

V8 conversions have certainly been done forever. I drove one on a pre-purchase evaluation 25 years ago. My over riding memory of it was that the steering was too slow! It was otherwise a nicely done car, with a 289 ford.