My 1973 TVR 2500M : Renew and Restomod

It might be a little early to think about paint, but here's what I'd go with.

The Minilites don't look bad either.

Don't forget about helper springs. If the rates are suitable helper springs could be preferable to longer springs. Or even tender springs because you rarely, if ever, see full droop up front. I always tended toward shorter springs and helpers on racing set ups to maintain more headroom on ride height adjustments. 

Did stuff related to hood hinges today.

I ordered some 1-1/4" steel tubing to go inside the hood mounting points on the frame.  The factory hinge bolted to the outside, but that is certified janky.  The inside frame tubing is just a bit smaller thank 1.25, so I fired up the mill and took off 0.025" per side.  I made the small sections a bit longer than needed, in case I need to allow of some adjustment.  Probably not necessary.

Here it is in place:

I mounted the hood latched back onto the body.  I'll use these to help me get the hood lined up for the front end stuff.

I did install rivet-nuts in the body while I was at it.  Passenger's side:

And driver's side:

The illustrious PO was up to some shenanigans on the pedal mounting arrangement.  There's way more holes in there than are needed.  And the fiberglass is all crushed and beat up.  Again, that dude is the best.

Test fit on the hood looks pretty good:

The latches aren't quite holding tightly yet, but I'll get them figured out.

Right now ride height at the crank pulley is about 1" higher than it was with the old engine.

That's all for now.  Fun day in the shop - I needed that!

Always a pleasure to see progress on this one. Inspirational work.

Did TVR use a TR6 pedal box?  The bolt pattern looks similar but without the center row of bolts.

That's a lot of hardware to hold in a pedal box.  There are also 4 studs on the brake booster.

It's good to see the hood in place.

In reply to JoeTR6 :

It is the same pedal box as the TR6, though there are lots of extra holes in that mounting plate too.  And spacers.  For uncertain reasons.

Hi you all. Great thread with lots of good detail. Lovely to see so many contributors. I have built one TVR Vixen thats posted in members cars and now building another race car. 5000m.

I am very interested in the roof panel if you have any left. Keep up the good work.

Westwood95 said:

Hi you all. Great thread with lots of good detail. Lovely to see so many contributors. I have built one TVR Vixen thats posted in members cars and now building another race car. 5000m.

I am very interested in the roof panel if you have any left. Keep up the good work.

What stage are you at? I’m just getting back into mine, after a very long pause. 

TVR Scott said:

Did stuff related to hood hinges today.

I ordered some 1-1/4" steel tubing to go inside the hood mounting points on the frame.  The factory hinge bolted to the outside, but that is certified janky.  The inside frame tubing is just a bit smaller thank 1.25, so I fired up the mill and took off 0.025" per side.  I made the small sections a bit longer than needed, in case I need to allow of some adjustment.  Probably not necessary.

Here it is in place:

I mounted the hood latched back onto the body.  I'll use these to help me get the hood lined up for the front end stuff.

I did install rivet-nuts in the body while I was at it.  Passenger's side:

And driver's side:

The illustrious PO was up to some shenanigans on the pedal mounting arrangement.  There's way more holes in there than are needed.  And the fiberglass is all crushed and beat up.  Again, that dude is the best.

Test fit on the hood looks pretty good:

The latches aren't quite holding tightly yet, but I'll get them figured out.

Right now ride height at the crank pulley is about 1" higher than it was with the old engine.

That's all for now.  Fun day in the shop - I needed that!

Hood shut line is starting to look good! Hope your hinge allows for adjustments. That thing you called a four bar link is what I was trying to describe in my email. 

In reply to Slow_M :

Engine and trans and diff all mounted. Just making roll cage mount points. Next will be building roll cage and fuel tank rear protection.

In reply to Westwood95 :

Must see all details. 

Westwood95 said:

Hi you all. Great thread with lots of good detail. Lovely to see so many contributors. I have built one TVR Vixen thats posted in members cars and now building another race car. 5000m.

I am very interested in the roof panel if you have any left. Keep up the good work.

Yeah, welcome!  Thanks for chiming in.  You should start a build thread on your M too.  I've lost track, but we might be up to 6 different build threads for various M restorations.

I'm not building any roofs right now, but I can add you to the list.  It takes a ton of time and space to set all that up, but I'll get you one sometime.  You have any crushing deadlines?

In reply to TVR Scott :

I would like to be ready to paint next Spring.

In reply to Westwood95 :

Send me a private message and we can discuss.  I'll warn you right away, material prices have gone up a bunch.

Back on the project, I did a bit more messing to get the hood alignment sorted.  This gap looked pretty good - about 5/16" along the edge:

Looks great there, but the other side was a mess.  Basically I could only get it to align on one side or the other.  A bit of investigating, and I found this:

The body sits on the frame about 1/2" too high right behind the front right wheel.  The body should almost cover the tube there.  Hmm.  Well, I know the body will come off again pretty soon, so I'll have to investigate the obstruction then.  Good news is that everything should line up nicely once this is rectified.

Unrelated Airbox beauty shot:

I wasn't sure how to mount the airbox, but turns out the heater box is just about in the perfect spot to act as a mounting surface.  Sweet!  I'll mess with the top edge trim on the airbox once the hood is back on, but so far so good.

What else?  I've been trimming and fitting the front end bulkheads where I'll be mounting hood hinges.  I also ground out all the old steel and fiberglass from the old hood frame.

Left side:

The sharpie marks tell me where to do my bond prep for the bulkheads.  I'll need to add some more material to the bumper mount locations.  Pretty thin there.

Right side:

Funny how the rusted steel discolored the fiberglass.  It was almost like scraping mud out of the gaps.  Gross.

Here's the big picture with both plates in.  I'd like to get these bonded in this week:

My glutes are wrecked from kneeling on the floor all afternoon yesterday.  Body by TVR...

Last little thing I found while working on the hood latches.  The driver's side was super sloppy.  Wonder why?

Easy, because it's broken.  Why wouldn't it be?

It actually looks like it got partly sawn-thru. Really weak and flimsy right there.  We'll get there though.  No worries.  That's all for now!

How do you plan to bond the aluminum? Plate to the fiberglass? This is something ill need to do on the track car, so ill learn from you!

The bulkheads?  Those are fiberglass/epoxy, so bonding those will be no big deal.  Just scuff both sides, wipe with acetone, and bond.

However, bonding aluminum to fiberglass isn't a super big deal either.  Most of the steps are the same, but there's an additional step.  I'd first scuff the aluminum with scotch-brite or some fine sandpaper.  Just in the bond area - you don't have to do the whole thing.  Then you need some aluminum etching wash - like this.  You'd apply that on the bond area and then thoroughly rinse it off after a few minutes.  Then the panel is ready to bond right away.

Basically the etching wash removes the natural aluminum oxide that forms on any bare aluminum surface.  That lets the epoxy really bond hard to the actual aluminum surface.

Whenever I repaired that rear hub upright (long ago - maybe fall of 2020) I used this technique and then bonded with structural adhesive.  It's pretty simple - just follow the directions and don't splash it on yourself!

The underside of the hood is starting to clean up pretty well.  You can see where I've sanded and bond-prepped for the new bulkheads:

I also popped out the steel mesh from the grill opening.  I'm thinking of replacing this with stainless mesh for better corrosion resistance.

The mesh was held on by a bunch of resin of some sort.  Might just be thickened polyester resin.  It's brittle and not very strong, though it still sort of puts up a fight when I go to remove it.

A lot of times when I finally get under it I find what only could be described as mud.  Probably dirt and rust creeping in all the creepy-spots, but it feels like the right idea to get it out.

That's all for now.  Lots of hard work, and nothing really show-stopping to write about.  There will be soon, though.  Bonding of the bulkheads is next.  Then hinges and mounting frames are on-deck.

Those red synthetic brush wheels are perfect for getting that resin that holds that stuff in. I get them at harbor freight. They'll take all the junk off without digging into the fiberglass. 

Looking good. Can't wait to see the bulkheads in.

In reply to CoolHandMoss :

I've got one of those brushes - I'll give it a try.

Any updates?  How does that penetrating resin you tried earlier this year seem to be doing?

We're all on the edges of our respective seats...

All right, all right, consider me shamed into posting.

Turns out I do have plenty of things to share.  Picking up from where I left off, I got the bulkheads all bonded in:

Each spot got 4 plies of 3" wide fiberglass tape.  I added some bagging film over the top to smooth out the epoxy and to keep the dust and dirt out as it cured.

The aluminum tube is just a spacer to keep everything oriented correctly.  It's totally pretty close to perfect enough.

Next task was making some fiberglass c-channel to be the hood-side of the hinge assembly.  I added 0.040" of sheet wax to the steel tubing I'll be using for the hinge frame.  This became the mold:

I've forgotten, but I want to say I made the channel with 8 plies of glass.  Don't remember.  Here it is bagged:

First test fit of the hood onto the frame with the bulkheads in place:

Just barely clears the intercooler!  Not really an issue, since I need to trim those bulkheads just a touch for intercooler tube clearance.

From the fender well, things look pretty good too:

Yesterday, things got exciting:

Destruction!

And here are the C-channel section roughly in place:

And the hinge frame tacked in place:

That's where things stand for now.

Nice work!

Nicely done. It's tough getting anything straight in this car with a lack of solid surfaces to measure to! Your precision appears pretty impressive. 

Things have happened.  They have not been documented.  I shall do that now.

I finished up the hinge frame:

Obligitory close-up beauty shot:

For humility's sake, I'll admit to accidently putting my welding helmet down on this part when it was scorching hot.  I melted two slots in the front of the helmet.  Nothing some duct-tape can't fix. 

Here's a pic of fitting the hinge pockets:

Here they are glassed in.  I used some aluminum tubing as a caul-plate to get a nice smooth surface.

Here's the hinge mount.  This one is just 3d printed, but once I'm happy with everything I'll machine a couple out of aluminum.   The nut is captive, and allows some fore-aft adjustment.

Here it is riveted in place with the rod-end attached:

The hinge frame got a couple nut-plates, so that attaching the hood would be a one-sided one-tool operation:

And here it is back in place on the car.  So blurry...

This next bit is a little hard to see.  From the factory, the underside of the hood actually tilts up as it extends back to the frame.  This creates a weird air pocket draggy area under the car, and also looks weird.  I wanted mine to be a smooth transition to the back of the frame.  So I cut a big long slot, bent the panel down, and glassed the slot back over.  Here it is in-process:

Now the bottom surface lines up nicely with the hinge frame:

At long last... Open:

And closed!

I've also started fitting and beveling the patch panels that I previously showed.  That's going to be a good bit of work, but it's not hard stuff.