My 1973 TVR 2500M : Renew and Restomod

Question from a recent TVR purchaser for those with more experience... is the driver's side hood release in the same position as the passenger side? My passenger side has a nifty leaver that moves to the side but I have been unable to locate a driver's side leaver. There is some sort of cable under the steering column, is that it? I have limited access to the car where it is until it is moved but I'd like to get the hood open, it's just hard to look thoroughly when I can't open the driver's door. 

In reply to CoolHandMoss :

Yup, you've got the idea.  You should be able to open the hood from either side.  Assuming the mechanism is still intact...

Oh you only have to work one of them? I have only been able to get one side to pop. 

In reply to CoolHandMoss :

If the wire connecting them is intact then yes one side will open the whole hood.  If it's not then you'll need to actuate both sides.

In reply to CoolHandMoss :

My 2500M has 2 levers and I don't see any indication of there being a connecting cable, but I can see why that would have been a reasonable component.  Each latch is on a "sprung" post, so there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to pop one side, and then the other to open the hood.

Okay thanks guys. I'll have to wait til i get the car moved and can get in the other side to get it open. Sorry to thread jack! 

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/build-projects-and-project-cars/another-tvr-2500m-restoration-thread/185178/page1/

I am done thread-jacking now. 

You weren't thread jacking.  Somewhere in this thread is a real example and my cruel retribution.

You have a beat up old TVR, so you're among friends!

I've been on a college tour vacation with my oldest girl for the last week, so I'm finally getting caught up.

Biggest car-related news - I got to visit Michael and Stu in Albemarle!

Check out that sweet Chevy Spark rental car!  Actually a surprisingly decent little vehicle.  Put about 1300 miles on it over the week and it was quite reasonable.

We showed up at Stu's on Weds morning, and did lots of TVR talk and inspection.  Michael clued us in on the details of a custom air conditioning install.  Many ideas there.

We had lunch at a great little place downtown.  Rolling car-show on the way - Michael and Mary in the Duster, Stu and his wife in their JCW Mini, and Jana and I following in Stu's TR-3.  Many thumbs-up and happy-honks were given on the way!

I hadn't driven a Triumph in a long time, so that was a treat.  I forgot what manual steering feels like.

After lunch we traded cars, and Jana asked if she could drive Stu's Mini home.  Sure!

Well, she fell in love with it.  Evidently she tried to make a side-deal on it with Stu, but her summer haul from Panera and gardening wouldn't quite cover it.  Maybe next time, kiddo.

Then Stu lent us his kayaks and Subaru, and let us over to the town lake.  We had a wonderful time kayaking along the lake and as far up in the inlet as we could go.  Turtles, herons, beautiful overhanging trees.  We finally had to turn around at some fallen trees blocking the way, but we got in about 2-1/2 miles.

Afternoon was at Michael's house.  Got to see the beautiful but crippled blurple Neon.  Stu and I took the V6 Miata for a blast around the neighborhood.  Really fun little car!  What a beast.

In the evening we headed North to Lexington for a great bbq dinner, and then blasted up the highway back to Chapel Hill for the night.

Thanks guys for a great visit.  It was a true pleasure getting to know you.  If you're in Denver don't even think of not calling!

I enjoyed the visit! You have an amazing daughter. 

And, If and when i get out that way i will definitely stop by!

Thanks for spending the day with us.

   It was our pleasure having you and Jana here in our town. I'm glad we kept you entertained. I know you had three pictures of us in front of the Spark... not sure why you went with the one with my eyes closed!  You know, I hadn't driven the Mini JCW much at all in the last year, and I had forgotten what a fun little car it really is. I had seriously planned on selling it, but now I'm thinking I should just get it back into shape and save it. The JCW is to the Mini what the ACR is to the Neon... maybe in 10 years or so it will be a valued collectible!

In reply to TVR Scott :

I wish we could have joined you guys but we were about 4 hours south of you playing with chickens and pigs.  Stu's TR3 touched me in a good way.  I may have spent too much time looking for ones for sale.

In reply to Stampie :

Yeah, I was bummed to hear that you'd been in town that close to when we were.  Another time we'll meet up.

I feel like I should get a t-shirt that says: "I came to see Darth Nader and all I got to see was a white Nissan Leaf."

From Stu!

In reply to TVR Scott :

That's a lot of Stampie smiles in one place.  Yeah I loved it.  Also I swear that Lil Stampie took at least 4 shirts on our vaction but every single picture is of him wearing that one.

Finally, some forward progress.  I've been planning this roof-tool layup for a while now, so I had a bit of spare time this afternoon.  That and my younger daughter offered to lend a hand.  Shop temp has been an issue the last few weeks, but the last couple days were cool.  Temp inside was just about perfect at 75 F.  Time to get on it!

Here's the gel-coat all spread out nice and thick.  I estimated based on the dimensions and planned a 20 mil thickness.  I just spread it all out evenly with a foam roller.

In the meantime, I got a work table covered with plastic, precut some plies, and got the first quart of resin measured out.

About a half hour after laying down the gel-coat, it was firming up nicely and so I moved on to the first layers.

My assistant:

We laid down four layers of fine woven cloth, and then added two more layers of thick bulking fabric.  This used up our first quart of resin.  The data sheet suggested 6-12 ml of hardener to a quart of resin, and the working time was just about spot on at 20 minutes.  Those last few pieces were a little boogery, but we got them down!

First layer done:

I had this big piece of Coremat left over from long ago projects, and decided to use it for a thick bulking layer.  It's basically a honeycomb structure with filled glass micro-balloons.  A scrim on top and bottom keeps it all together.  You wet it out with resin and it's a nice thick but not too heavy solid layer.

We blew thru the rest of our resin wetting out the coremat and then adding on a last layer of glass cloth.  After finishing the layup, we covered it all with a plastic sheet and smoothed out all the air bubbles and stuck-up fibers.

That's it!  Progress!

I think I'll let it sit and cure for a few days and then see if it's going to be nice to me and pop off the roof without a fight.

I can always clean up the giant mess in the meantime:

This picture reminds me I'd better go wash off those scissors before they're ruined forever.  Gotta go...

Looking good! That's a rather space efficient layup. You could store that in your glass rack! 

The progress looks nice, I am excited to see how this build will go. 

I literally laughed out loud at the darth nader t-shirt idea. 
Roof is looking good, looking forward to seeing how it comes out. I'll have to look out for that coremat, could be useful.

TVR Scott said:

I think I'll let it sit and cure for a few days and then see if it's going to be nice to me and pop off the roof without a fight.

 I didn't mean to make myself a liar.  But I couldn't help myself this morning:

Popped off easily and it looks great!!!

That's right.  Three exclamation points.  It's that good.

A bit more today.  I trimmed the edge clean with my sawzall and a masonry blade.  Those cut composites nice and smooth.

I did some DA sanding on the gelcoat too.  When I sprayed the PVA mold release it came out in a stream instead of a nice fine mist.  So I had to brush it down uniformly.  This actually left brush marks in the finished gelcoat.  A bit of sanding made those a lot less pronounced. 

I may do some more sanding for an even thinner coat, but I'm a little reluctant to go so far that I sand thru the gelcoat.  I do have enough to lay down another coat, but I don't really want to drag this out terribly far.  And I'm not shooting for a Class-A perfect surface for this panel either!

I'm going to put a coat of paint on the back side, just to clean it up and seal all the loose fibers.

That's it for now.

Did some sanding with 600 grit and then hit it with rubbing compound.  Not a perfect surface, but looking pretty nice.

Then I flipped it over and hit it with some old Rustoleum.  This will knock down any loose fibers and make it a bit less itchy.  Looks nice too.

I thought about knocking the filler plug out of the sunroof hole, but I'm going to check the location and fit of the mold one last time before I permanently destroy my master model.

A tap here and a whap there:

And I'm back to an open roof:

At least I have a sweet roof-shaped piece of bondo for my trouble:

Time to sand everything back off the roof...

Great progress Scott. I hope you are able to pop out an extra for me. 

Do you know what kind of paint you are going with on your car?

In reply to CoolHandMoss :

Thanks!  It's slowing coming along.

For paint I'm planning to spray some variety of base coat / clear coat.  I've used a couple different brands in the past.  I'm pretty sure I've picked a color, but for now that's under wraps!

I need to do a bit more research about paint systems for fiberglass.  You read much on the TVRCCNA page and you'd think it's just about impossible to get a good paint job.  My past experience with fixing carbon/glass/kevlar rowing boats tells me it's probably no big deal.  Good prep and good process probably fix most sins.

Maybe I'll chat with some Corvette people some too.  There's a whole lot of fiberglass getting sprayed in that world.

I need to get a better handle on fixing spider cracks too.  Some spots on my car need quite a bit of attention.