:: Diary - April 2007 ::

:: Sunday, April 1, 2007 ::

Took the car back along to the garage today, to put it away until I can get it fixed properly.

Apparently (according to the person following me to give me a lift home) the car is really low on that side. It looks ok to me so it must be so weak that even my slim athletic frame is causing it to bend. I take it very easy because I can (I am sure) hear it creak. Left hand corners especially are performed at a crawl. I even have to stop half-way to let a convoy of old boys in Rovers go by, nearly choking in the fumes of Golden Virginia from the open flame pipes they are smoking. Old boys should be fitted with catalytic converters.

I then set up a system of wooden blocks to boost the ride height to get me over the door sill without ripping another chunk out of it.

Despite my misgivings about the state of my back and general decrepitness, I park the car nose in so that the offending swing arm is nearest the door and in the best daylight when the door is open. I jack the car up onto axle stands under the chassis so that the car's weight is not resting on the swing arm - if it snaps then I don't want wheel / bodywork damage on top of everything else!

It would appear, then, that I have subliminally decided that I'm going to fix this myself, eh?

Later I post on Pistonheads for advice, and the name Adrian Venn crops up again - I remember he is something of a specialist in these things but I didn't have his contact details. But now I do.

:: Monday, April 2, 2007 ::

I telephone Adrian Venn who is very helpful. He will shotblast the old swing arm, replace the damaged bits, put in new bushes, paint it and waxoyl it and sent it back to me the next day or thereabouts, all for £202 - about half of the price of a new one when you include the price of bushes, carriage etc. It's a no-brainer.

Dave (the owner of the TVRCC calendar girl for April) also emails me and offers to help if my back is still sore. Hugely appreciated Dave.

All I need to do now is get the swing arm off the car and into a courier's van.

I am a bit happier than I was at this time yesterday!

:: Friday, April 6, 2007 ::

Early finish at work today so I arrange to meet Dave and get the swing arm off.

Because I am still under treatment for the dodgy back, Dave does most of the graft, while I provide useless technical advice.

First step is to take the wheel off and put the space-saver spare on. Why you ask? Forcos the ordinary roadwheel only has a ickle hole in the centre, while the spare has a big hole, and you need a big hole to get the 41 mm socket through and onto the hub nut. Some hubs and drive shafts are left hand thread but mine is just an ordinary nut.

Right, with that loosened, next step is to take out the bolt through the front outside bush. It's as tight as an Aberdonian's wallet, and covered in a combination of paint and rust so it takes a while until we can get a socket on that's the right size. The bolt pulls out of the bush no bother, so we replace it (without the nut) to hold everything in place just now.

Same procedure with the bottom bolt for the shock absorber. While we are taking that off we notice that the spring is broken at the very bottom coil.

Then we loosen the 4 bolts that hold the inner arm onto the adjuster, but again leave them in place just now.

Next step is to remove the brakes and hub. The brake drum and shoes come off as normal, unhoooking the handbrake cable. Then the main hub nut and the 4 bolts holding the hub onto the swing arm, belt the end of the driveshaft a couple of times with a big hammer to jolt the hub splines free and the whole lot comes off.

The car has braided brake hoses and you can't use ordinary brake pipe clams so we snip through the copper pipe and flatten the end to seal it. That allows the brake back plate to come off except that the handbrake cable is still clipped through it.

Getting that handbrake cable occupies nearly as much time as the rest of the job. It has a sort of "umbrella" fitting that pushes through the backplate and then springs out to hold it in place. Except now it's all rusted totally solid. The fitting should turn freely, but doesn't. We hit it with hammers of ever-increasing size, and eventually manage to drive a screwdriver into the join and open it slightly. We drip in some release fluid and then by twisting with mole grips, we get it loose. We use an old cable tie to hold in the "umbrella" prongs and out it all comes!

After that it's a relatively simple matter of undoing the brake flexi-hose and the handbrake cable clip, take out all the bolts again and it's off!

And what a bleeding state it's in. This is the bit you can see looking in under the wheelarch when the wheel is off (ie the view in the photos I took last weekend). Note the weight-saving rusthole treatment and the wee crack just in front of it.

This is the view from underneath, showing that crack.

As if the bits you can see aren't bad enough, further underneath, the crack goes right along the length of the tube, opposite the rust hole.

The problem is that the end of that tube is open, so it gets filled with all the water and shite thrown up from the back wheel, which then can't drain out again. Well not till it rusts a drainhole into the tube. Looking into a solid structural component like this, and seeing daylight shine through the sides, is never normally a good sign.

In other words, dear reader, it's fecked.

And so is that spring. It's loose so could twist sideways and then the sharp broken end, ends up in the side of the tyre. Sharp metal things don't mix with soft rubbery tyres. I need to fix that, too. Question is, will I just replace the springs or will I replace the shocks as well while I have them off? The shocks were working ok so I am tempted to leave them alone, to be honest. They are also effing expensive so replacing them unnecessarily does not appeal.

I'll have to make up my mind once I find out how long the trailing arm rebuild is going to take - probably by next weekend.

:: Saturday, April 7, 2007 ::

Typical. Not a cloud in the sky, sun splitting the tress, the day of the TVR club meeting. And my car's broken. So it's off in the other car for the second month running (for different reasons though!)

First I have to arrange a courier to take my trailing arm down for repair. Except it's the Easter holiday weekend and the costs are therefore extortionate, so I'll leave it and send it on Tuesday for a few quid. Gives me time to extract the metalastic bush like I was supposed to, anyway.

When I get to the meeting, we have an excellent turn-out of 24 cars, including, again, some new faces including the man with the Vixen, who we met at Doune last year, and the man from Kinghorn who bought an S last year in the north of England. There's at least 5 of us there without our TVRs, so the place is fair heaving!

After having a good natter outside, and then lunch and more natter, we are all invited inside to watch the video of the Celtic Gathering, organised, apparently single-handedly, by Cami Broon Promotions Ltd, and to hear about upcoming events. For me, the main ones are the summer run in May, Thirlestane classic car show in June and (probably) S Club Heaven in England in July. We'll see what else comes up in the meantime.

First task is to get my car sorted, and get the chassis and suspension mounts painted before I have to put the trailing arm back on. I also need to replace the back springs and clean and repaint the shocks before I put them back on (yep I made the decision not to replace the shocks as they seemed to be working ok!). So it looks like I have a busy few days ahead!

Here's a few more photos taken at the meeting:

:: Monday, April 9, 2007 ::

Two or three things to work on today, just stuff I have brought back to the house to potter with till I get the swing arm back (and seeing as it isn't even away yet I'm not exactly pushed for time).

First, I need to get the suspension bush out of the arm, before I send it away. I don't happen to have a 20-tonne press so I need to use more basic methods.

Plan A (for arm). I thread a hacksaw through the bush and then cut two slits opposite each other. Unfortunately, as soon as I cut through the metal, the rubber expands and closes the slot up so that I can't cut through the outer metal sleeve.

Right. Plan B (for bastard). I get a drill and start to drill down between the two sleeves to remove the rubber. This also has only limited success - drilling holes is ok but joining them up isn't. Beside, the drill won't reach right through, and even if I drill through from the opposite side as well, it would still leave about 1/3rd of the rubber totally untouched.

Right. Plan C (for cut it out). I get one of those wood-cutting hole saws and wind that in. Although it cuts through the rubber it's nowhere near deep enough.

Right. Plan D (for Dremel). I get my wee Dremel thing with a sideways cutting bit thingy. That works ok but is still not deep enough.

Right. Plan E (for engineering solution). I get a gear puller and a selection of sockets the right size to push the bush out. After straining every muscle to tighten it, and hammering it to try to shock it free, I realise this isn't going to work either.

Right. Plan F (for fuck it I give up). It also stands for "Fone" - I think I'll ask if the bush definitely has to be removed. If he says yes then it's on to:-

Plan G (for get somebody else to do it) I'll take it to an engineering workshop and ask them to do it. Except they are all shut today for the Bank Holibags. First thing tomorrow then...

So I turn my mind to other tasks. First I take the springs off the shocks so that they are ready for painting. I check the shocks to make sure bounce and rebound resistance feels ok. This is the broken spring - the other one was ok.

Then I remove the brake cylinder from the backplate and wire brush the backplate, angle grinder stylee. Then I paint both sides a nice shiny black like what they should be.

It's threatening to rain so I decide not to paint the shocks just yet. Besides I'm knackered, and how shall we put it "in some discomfort" - I ate a pie this morning which I think was a bit past it's "best before" date and I seem to have poisoned myself, so tasks that require several minutes concentration, or being further than a short penguin-style sprint from a cludgie, will have to wait until another day.

I was going to paint the shocks silver but I think I might do them in the orangey-red colour that they were originally, if I can find something close.

:: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 ::

Still off work, so a number of wee jobs to do today. The dodgy pie seems to have done its worst too.

I phone the trailing arm man, who says it would be better if I got the bush out first, because although he can get it done, it holds things up. So it's back to Plan G - get somebody to do it.

My pal with the machine shop is still on holiday, so that option isn't open. Next door to him is the garage who have done the last 4 MOT tests on it, so I go in to ask. They remove the rubber centre by the simple expedient of melting it with a welding torch and pulling out the centre, so that I can hacksaw out the outer sleeve. I give Moses (he of the burning bush) a fiver for the kids charity box and return home.

I have booked the parcel force van for between 11:30 and 3:30, and they will probably turn out at the last possible monent, but I know that if I leave it till then, they'll turn up at 11:25, just through sheer awkward bastardism, and the parcel won't be ready. So I have to get on with it.

Plan H for hacksaw hacksaw hacksaw. After cutting for bleeding ages I realise that the groove I am cutting isn't getting any deeper - the blade has gone blunt. Bugger.

On to plan I for ignore finesse and hammer the bugger till it comes out. Or breaks. Or bounces over the hedge into the path of a school bus, killing millions. I don't give a shit any more (quite literally, after yesterday's e-coli attack).

Tools required: one cold chisel, one round punch and one large lump hammer. I start at the handsawn groove and fold the edges back opening the split, and at this point I notice that the bush is in two parts, ie half inserted from each end. With a combination of levering and hammering I get the bush split so that I can prise it out. The other half isn't so easy but shifts eventually when drifted from inside.

Parcel it up, enclose the cheque and it's ready, and it's only 10:30.

Now if I go round to the shed at the back door, I won't hear the van if he comes, so I have to stay in the house (or risk the wrath of my neighbour by wire brushing shock absorbers in my front garden). I can't go to the garage to paint the chassis, or go to buy paint either. Hope he comes soon.

Tum-te-tum...

Of course the parcel van man arrives at 3:25, just as I always knew he would. Bastards.

Anyway, that done, I nip down to Halfords to peruse the paint colours available. Ford Carnival Red and Rover Vermillion (that colour they used to paint minis) look the closest. Then I realise I have forgotten my wallet. Bastards.

Then it's on to a visit to the chiropractor who rearranges my bones more or less into the order they should be. I used to see cars for sale "due to ill health" and wonder how bad it had to be, but I am starting to understand that working under cars gets difficult when you start getting old.

Later I nip along to Dave's because he has a couple of springs. Magic.

I need to get the chassis painted tomorrow because if I don't, it won't be dry in time for reassembly (hopefully) this weekend.

Then repaint the shocks, polish up the fittings, refit the springs and make a new brake pipe, then I'm ready for reassembly.

:: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 ::

Last night's diary update was a nightmare, partly because I made a simple coding mistake 3 days ago, that the webserver seemed to accept at the time but then decided it wouldn't. Anyway, figured it out eventually so we're back!

What I did realise though is that there's lots of totally spurious html code all over the place, that I don't need. Most of this site is written in raw html using notepad, no fancy web design software here! I do occasionally use Frontpage just to experiment with setting things up etc, but I find that it generates tons of useless code that doesn't do very much but makes the page twice the file size it needs to be. Sometimes I have copied that code in because I didn't understand what bits were important to the actual operation of the page. Anyway, this morning I decide to tidy the pages up a bit, just so that they are a nanosecond faster to load.

After an hour and a half in Notepad I have finished editing all 85 pages (cut/paste is a wonderful thing, I wish it worked with trailing arms). All the files are smaller but the site should look exactly the same.

All this because I woke up really early... Now that the rest of the world is awake I get on with the rest of what I have to do.

So it's along to the garage with a tin of red Hammerite, to paint the rear suspension turret and the chassis member that the trailing arm mounts to. That's about it really, and I forgot to take the camera so there's no photos either. Bits of the suspension turret are against the bodywork so can't be reached with a paint brush. I'm taking no chances this time, it's all getting waxoyled after I get it back together again.

Back to Halfords, an d a new colour catches my eye - Peugeot Seville - it's a bit more orange than the Koni colour but it looks nice.

First wire brush off all the loose rust (especially around the top mount) and paint, then mask off the bushes and the damper rod and bump stops.

A couple of coats of white primer...

Then a couple of coats of paint, and leave to dry. They look a lot more orange than the colour on the tin. Nice enough though. And yes, I know I need to cut the grass.

Then I make up a brake pipe to fit from the wheel cylinder to the flexi-hose on the inside of the swing arm (good job I measured it before I sent the swing arm away, eh?), and fit the cylinder back into the back plate.

Then clean up the two springs and we're almost there!

:: Thursday, April 12, 2007 ::

See last night when I said "we're almost there"?

Well we're not. Adrian Venn phones at lunchtime and confirms that the swing arm has just been delivered at 11:30. This meets all of the requirements I paid for - ie delivery before noon - except it's 23 and a half hours late. "Next working day guaranteed" they said. We didn't allow for the (Parcel) Forces of the dark side deciding that their definition of a "working day" doesn't apparently include Wednesdays, like it does for the rest of us, so that my swingarm might like a sleepover somewhere between here and Coventry, tucked up nice and safe in a depot or a van somewhere so that it didn't get further stressed by being transported in the dark.

So it's ta-ta to any idea that I might get the car back together this weekend, then. Fan-bleeding-tastic.

I phone the Passel Hassle Unhelp Customer Knowledgebase Update Phoneline (PHUCK-UP) who live up to their new moniker by reaching a level of customer service that, if they worked hard at their quality control and customer relations, might one day improve to the extent that it might be described in a moment of misguided graciousness as "totally bloody useless". After listening to a gazillion different recorded messages telling me shit I already know, at squillions of pence per nanosecond, I finally speak to a real person. Sort of. Apparently I have to submit a claim form and then wait weeks until they get around to considering my claim, apparently because that department is really busy and needs more staff. Well go the foot of my stairs - who'd have believed that eh? My suggestion that increasing the size of the quality control department instead of the claims department might be a more constructive long-term business strategy, fails to compute with the cloth-eared bint on the other end of the phone so I give up. I'd have been better speaking to the recorded messages.

Ahem, anyway, about the car, where was I?

Oh yes! I was going to put the spring / damper units back together.

First fit compressors to the spring (which is too long to fit otherwise, as it is held under compression in the assembled unit, so that it doesn't all fly apart when you go over bumps.

Then squeeze the compressors down, shortening the spring. Then fit one of the nylon cups to the spring platform, then the spring, another nylon cup and then the top spring mount which slides in and is locked in place by spring tension when the compressors come off.

And here are the reassembled units!

This is one of the old front units, but gives an idea how those two units looked when I took them off the car. A bit of an improvement, I think.

No point in rushing anything else. Seeing as I have more time, I am going to do some more scraping and cleaning on the other side and along the sills, then some more painting, undersealing and waxoyling, to keep any more baby rust molecules under control.

:: Sunday, April 15, 2007 ::

Haven't done a thing on the car since Thursday. I twisted my knee last Tuesday, on top of the sore back (no it's not "on top of" the sore back - I didn't twist it that much) and I've been half-crippled and not in a mood for car-fixing. I was too busy on Saturday anyway.

I might have nipped along and undersealed the wheelarches and refitted the shock absorbers, except that my son disappeared for the whole day with the shed keys in his pocket. Too bad - no scraping / painting today!

Noticed that somebody bought a pair of front indicator lenses on ebay today. The original Leyland price was about £5.50 or so. These two sold for £82 a pair. The Kia ones I fitted cost less than £9 a pair. Some people have considerably more money than sense...

:: Tuesday, April 17, 2007 ::

Postman Pat, Postman Pat, better than any old Parcelforce Pratt
Early in the morning
As the day is dawning
Putting dirty huge trailing arms in his van.

You will no doubt have gathered two things from the above:

1. I don't half write a load of bollocks sometimes; and

2. The refurbished trailing arm was delivered Chez TVRgit this morning. Yes, Pat arrives at 8am, a far better service than Porcel Farce.

And very nice it looks too. Rustproofed, painted and waxoyled. The absolute collie's chuckies.

:: Saturday, April 21, 2007 ::

Dave helped me to put the trailing arm back on today, and bleeding hard work it was too.

I've written a page to help anybody else going through the same process, on this page.

I notice when we have finished that the car is sitting a little high at the back. I don't know the spring rates of the two springs I put on, but if they are stiffer than the old ones then I might need adjustable shock absorbers (or shorter springs) to bring the normal ride height back down. It might settle down after a run - it's only just been let down off the jack after all.

But it's sorted, the car is mobile again, thanks to Dave for his help and Adrian for his expertise and advice.

Except I don't have time for a trial run today but I have a feeling I might be out early tomorrow morning!

:: Sunday, April 22, 2007 ::

Extracted the car from the garage today (I don't know how I got it into the position it was in but it was bleeding hard getting it out again!) A bit of a dust down, take the roof off, and have a bit of a drive.

Within the first mile or so, the grief of a broken trailing arm is forgotten. The noise, the directness of the steering, the response to every control, the wind in my eyebrows... yep this is what it's all about. It's been a while since I drove the TVR (only once since the beginning of February when I got the Lexus), so the contrast is very noticeable. Don't misunderstand: the Lexus is a very nice car, lovely to drive (RWD too!) but this... this is so different, so much more alive.

I was seriously starting to think about selling the S - too much hassle, too much care required between drives, too difficult for an old git with a buggered back and buckled knees. But today I quickly realise that the drives make the rest worthwhile... I need to experience this - real driving - from time to time. There may be other faster cars. There may be more reliable cars. There may be more attractive cars (although that's a matter of opinion and I happen to think that TVR have made very few cars with better classic lines than the S). There are definitely more expensive cars. But more fun? Nope don't think so...

How could I sell this? How could I have even thought of it?

80 miles or so later we are home, my car and I. My S is tucked away in the garage and I am planning the next round of improvements before MOT time in May. Tidy up and properly rustproof the chassis (and the other trailing arm!), an annual service, and a good clean and polish before the first of the summer events in June.

Oh and anything else that crops up in the meantime!

:: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 ::

I decided today to make a couple of wee tools I need to clean and paint the chassis, especially the outriggers under the sills. The chassis tubes are tight against the body so muck accumulates in the space on top, and holds water which rots through the tube. Also, you can't get a paint brush in to paint the top of the tubes.

I had a quick grope up there at the weekend and there is indeed a lot of muck up there.

So I need two special tools: a scraper to get all the muck off the top of the tube, and between the tube abd the body, and some way of painting the top of the tubes.

And here they are. The hook is made from an old paint roller, cut, the end flattened and then curved to approximately the right diameter. I could do with angle grinding the tip down a bit to help with picking wee stones out. For painting, I bought a paint pad from a DIY shop, and then heated the plastic handle with a lighter and bent it to shape before it cooled.

So we'll see how it goes!

I also did a bit of work on the web site - I started off with the objective of making the typeface a tiny bit bigger (it's my age, see?) and again ended up simplifying the html code on each page and making it easier to change colours, formats (and font sizes!) etc in the future.

:: Saturday, April 28, 2007 ::

I have had a crap week - partly just not feeling too great, but also combined with several work jobs becoming "unforeseeably complicated" (bearing in mind that the client is always right). I have kept myself going on the promise of a sunny weekend coinciding with a TVR that's working...

And so it is - the sun is shining so it's off tp the garage to collect the car. I bring it back to the house and give it a proper 2-bucket was, rinse, chamois and micro-towel, clean and polish the wheels, degrease the engine compartment (well the bits that are easy to reach - I don't want to spend all day at this) then it's off for a drive and a vist to my old ma.

2 things slightly mar the day - one is a squeak squeak squeak squeak when the car is moving, that goes away when you touch the brakes but stays when you pull the handbrake on. That'll be a front brake squeaking then... sounds like the nearside (the sound bounces back better off nearside walls)

The second thing is a rubbing noise on right hand bends. A quick inspection shows an expanding hole in the fibreglass inner wheel arch on the front nearside, coinciding with rubbing marks on the inside edge of the tyre. No broken springs, no collapsed shock absorber so it looks like the arch doesn't fit properly. It was angled when I got it back after the bonet repair, so I straightened it up, but it looks like the mounting holes on the bonnert flange need to be moved.

Okey-doke, a couple of jobs for tomorrow then.

:: Sunday, April 29, 2007 ::

First job is to jack the front and turn the front nearside wheel - there is a very slight rubbing which I know will turn into a squeak at normal speeds. Dismantle the caliper, remove the pads, put a smear of copaslip on the back of the pads, the end of the piston and the pad slides. Reassemble and that should be it.

Now for that wheelarch. It's made of fibre glass and mounts onto a large stiffening flange on the insifde of the bonnet. This mounting flange is made of thick plywood. I see that it is shaped to fit the offside wheelarch exactly. Unfortunately, in true TVR tradition, the nearside wheel arch is a completely different shape which the flange doesn't fit at all. I few minutes with a pencil, a jigsaw and a surform plane, and the plywood is reshaped to fit the wheelarch better. This allows the arch to fit higher so that the tyre doesn't touch it. Glad I did woodwork at school...

Another run - after 3 hours I confirm that there's no squeak and no tyre rubbing.

I decide then that I will clean underneath the car before I take it back to the garage - easier than transporting the jetwash along there, and less messy. First I use the hooky thing I made the other day, to remove a ton of muck from the top and invisible back edge of the tubes. Then I get a scraper and after honing it to a keen edge by scraping it along my concrete path, I use it to clear out the gap between the body and the chassis.

Then I jetwash the remaining muck off the chassis and exhausts etc, groping as necessary to make sure the invisible bits are clean. So far so good - no sign of structural rust damage on the bits I can see or the bits I can feel. I just hope the one or two bits that are totally inaccessible, are the same.

Don't have time to paint the chassis and let the paint dry, before I have to take the car back. Besides I want to wire brush and scrape the old paint off first. I also want to waxoyl on top of the paint this time.

So I have another drive for an hour to dry the chasis, then put the car away.