My 1973 TVR 2500M : Renew and Restomod

Ok, lots going on, not a lot of pics. Engine is back out of the car and I'm trying to get it all finalized and buttoned up.  

Which brings me to the flywheel and clutch. Wanting to save some money last summer I bought a scrap yard ST clutch and flywheel for $50 plus $50 shipping. 

Now I'm getting ready to install it and I'm looking for a bit of a gut check. What do you think of these?

Clutch definitely has some wear but still has grooves. No signs of overheating on the metal or plastic parts.

Here's the pressure plate:

The flywheel looks similar. Again no blue discoloration from too much heat. Is the patchy pattern a problem?

Looks like every used clutch set that ive removed and reinstalled. Without blue spots, obvious contamination, or evidence of wear and damage, id run it. 

Worst case is you have to pull it because it slips power shifting. 

I normally hose them with brake cleaner and stuff them back in when the look like that. 

Dusterbd13-michael said:

Looks like every used clutch set that ive removed and reinstalled. Without blue spots, obvious contamination, or evidence of wear and damage, id run it. 

Worst case is you have to pull it because it slips power shifting. 

I normally hose them with brake cleaner and stuff them back in when the look like that. 

Cool.  That makes me feel better.  Thanks, Michael.

Quick update on what I've been doing lately.

After the getting the DusterBD13 Seal-of-Approval, I got the flywheel torqued, and the clutch cleaned up and installed.  Not a big deal to most of you, but it's been a good 20 years since I've assembled a clutch and flywheel.  Fun to do it again.

Matching throw-out bearing cleaned and put back in:

The trans is all bolted up and torqued.

In the meantime, I did get a new radiator and fan kit from Wizard Cooling.  Nice guys to work with.

I've been pondering the layout of the intercooler and oil cooler in relation to this shiny new radiator.  My latest thoughts look a bit like this:

This design is with a 20" x 5" compact spare instead of the big factory one.  Oil cooler was mounted in the nose of the car by the PO, but I'm currently thinking it would fit well tucked in behind the radiator.  Intercooler up front with plenty of space to the radiator.

I'll make sort of support for the cone filter that will come off the intercooler mount.  This is all still a bit in flux.

Thanks for reading!

I like it.  Just make sure there are no gaps for air to escape!

wvumtnbkr said:

I like it.  Just make sure there are no gaps for air to escape!

Tell me more about what you're thinking.  Specifically no gaps where?

Do you think I should be shrouding all of these various air-to-air heat exchangers?

Would it be helpful to continue the duct and point it downward right before the engine?  I have the room to do that.

YIn reply to TVR Scott : any air that enters the grill should go through the-radiator not around it.  

Without shrouding air will bypass a radiator. Shrouding is relatively easy to do, just make cardboard  pieces between the bodywork and the radiator. Cut up cereal boxes usually works and if you need bigger pieces overlap and tape them together. It’s just a template.  

Use aluminum for the finished product. 

frenchyd said:

YIn reply to TVR Scott : any air that enters the grill should go through the-radiator not around it.  

Without shrouding air will bypass a radiator. Shrouding is relatively easy to do, just make cardboard  pieces between the bodywork and the radiator. Cut up cereal boxes usually works and if you need bigger pieces overlap and tape them together. It’s just a template.  

Use aluminum for the finished product. 

Thanks for that!

What about the exit side?  I don't know enough about aerodynamics.  If I duct the hot air down is that a low pressure that'll pull it away from the engine?

In lieu of an actual update, here's a gratuitous milling machine action shot!

Yes, ducting to radiator. No gaps for air to escape.

After radiator no ducting may be fine, or horrible.  Only testing will tell you.  No air gaps to radiator is the important part to start.

In reply to TVR Scott :

Very unlikely. Air past the radiator tends to be very turbulent, duct work doesn’t achieve much.  

The nice thing is air tends to slightly pressurize in the front of the car while the back of the car operates in a slight vacuum  thus air is pulled through the radiator and finds its way out of the engine compartment 

Lots happening, so here's a few updates.  I had my TIG welder set up and in-position and was trying to finish off the last little bit of argon in my tank, so I did the finish welding on the down-pipe.  Turned out ok.

Some beauty spots, some less so.  The expansion joint - with all it's weird layers - did not want to weld pretty.

I did turn a simple end-plug to close off with a band clamp.  This worked well with the back-purging.  Foil tape was ok for tacking, but wouldn't hold up to the heat of the finish weld.  If I get around to making a second one, I've got the 1/2" pipe tap in the middle for attaching fittings.

And the nitrogen did it's back-purging job nicely on the inside:

More later!

A work of art.

dculberson said:

A work of art.

Thanks!

My kiddo and I also did the gas tank sealing on Saturday.

Mixing:

Pouring:

Unfortunately, the results were so-so.  Even though I used the recommended amount, and rolled the tank around a bunch, I guess I didn't do it enough.

Inside looking down thru the fuel pump cutout:

Inside looking up (I photo-bombed this one):

So it mostly covered, but it's streaky.  Looks like the baffled zone with the fuel sender is covered a bit better.  No way to really check the center section.

Buy more and brush it in as much as possible?  Just ignore it and pretend it's fine?  It'd be another $50 for a pint kit.

Send it. It'll be fine. 

Fingers crossed for you on the tank sealing. Heard of a few and seen one case in person where it did not hold up and large sheets covered the fuel pick-up. The suspect is the ethanol in today's gasoline. The local bike shop that used to do tank coating stopped doing it citing the ethanol risk.

One from the MG Experience. Looks like a different flavour than you are using.

https://www.mgexp.com/forum/mgb-and-gt-forum.1/bill-hirsch-gas-tank-sealer-review-rant.3059237/

Well, I'm going to call it sealed-enough and not worry about rust.  All that nice clean gas I'm going to feed it isn't going to have time to rot!  At least that's the plan.

This coating is a two-part epoxy, so I'm also going to decide that it'll hold up fine.

Piece of cake...

Even more updates!  The stock alternator was nearly touching the frame, so I needed to make some space.  I thought about buying one of the "mini race" alternators, but I already had the stock one from the junkyard and I don't feel like having more unused parts sitting around.

Modestly inspired by all the casting-butchery going on around here lately, I decided to whittle down the top ear on the stock alternator.  Original thickness was about 0.8".  Taking it down to 0.4" will give me lots of clearance and still leave some meat.  Lower ears will stay at full thickness.  Modest and reasonable butchery.

Set up for milling:

I used my big ball-nose end mill to smooth the transition, and then carefully sanded all the sharps.  Keep those stress-concentrations down, eh?

Not so much: Holy Porosity, Batman!

Probably drizzle some epoxy in there to keep any cracks at bay.

The lower alternator mount had a little sub-plate that also mounts the A/C compressor.  So I took some measurements and designed up my own that is 0.4" tighter to the block.  I'm sure I'll make millions selling these...

There you go.  Alternator mods: complete!

NOHOME said:

Fingers crossed for you on the tank sealing. Heard of a few and seen one case in person where it did not hold up and large sheets covered the fuel pick-up. The suspect is the ethanol in today's gasoline. The local bike shop that used to do tank coating stopped doing it citing the ethanol risk.

One from the MG Experience. Looks like a different flavour than you are using.

https://www.mgexp.com/forum/mgb-and-gt-forum.1/bill-hirsch-gas-tank-sealer-review-rant.3059237/

If E10 is causing the problem, then the maker needs to do a MUCH better job.  E10 is the nominal US fuel, and it's the most commonly available fuel.  Like it or not, whoever makes stuff that has to deal with fuel should be robust to it, or you should get your money back for a crappy product.  

This isn't new nor a mystery.  If the product can't deal with it, it's the manufacturers fault, not the fuel.

A few more pics for the morning.  More alternator shots:

And from the back 3/4:

I decided to safety wire the mounting bolts on the axle adaptors.  Safety wire looks cool:

Heck yeah it does. So does alt brkt pr0n.

I've been wanting better info for designing the radiator and intercooler intake shrouds.  So my latest activity has been more in the realm of computer work than car work.  3D Scanning!

I bought an XBox Kinect sensor for $25 from a guy on Craigslist, and then had to get a power-cord / USB adaptor from Amazon for another $9.  Software I'm using right now is Reconstruct Me for the surface capture, and Mesh Mixer for clean-up.  Pretty neat stuff.

My first real experiment was with the driver's side fender.  I brought it inside and scanned it in a couple different configurations.

End result is a bit crude but really not bad!

The fit to my measured 3d model of the frame is relatively close.  Not perfect, but the fender is sort of hacked and probably was deformed sitting on the floor.  But this surface model is very useable for my interests.

Top view:

I just mirrored the left fender to get the right side.  My actual right fender is really hacked up from the PO's turbo installation.  I haven't decided if I'm going to source new ones or fix the ones I have.

That's incredibly cool!

In reply to TVR Scott :

This is awesome.  I've thought about picking up a Kinect to do this but wasn't sure if it was worth the effort or not.  What file format did you export the scan data as that you could bring it into CAD and what CAD software are you using?

RacetruckRon said:

In reply to TVR Scott :

This is awesome.  I've thought about picking up a Kinect to do this but wasn't sure if it was worth the effort or not.  What file format did you export the scan data as that you could bring it into CAD and what CAD software are you using?

 

The Kinect and Reconstruct Me produce basic "triangle files" - like an stl or obj.  I'm pulling them into Mesh-Mixer, which is also free and pretty powerful.  You can do a lot of clean-up and smoothing there, and then I exported back into a newer, much smaller, cleaner triangle-file.  These can get get imported into Solidworks (for this I'm using 2017). 

In Solidworks, the file can either be imported as a graphics file - basically a 3d picture - or as a surface.  The surface import won't work if you have too big a mesh.  I want to play around more with other export options in Mesh-Mixer and see if there are cleaner ways of getting files into SW.

This is sort of the very beginning of my scanning.  I've already got ideas on how to make them sharper, more accurate, and more useful.