:: Diary - July 2004 ::

:: Saturday July 10, 2004 ::

Return from a week's holiday completely knackered. I do remember to go and buy a couple of exhaust clamps in the right size. The weather is not conducive to crawling underneath to put them on though - ie it's raining.

:: Monday July 12, 2004 ::

I get home early-ish from work and decide to install the exhaust clamp to replace the one that got ground away on the ground. 5 minutes later and it's done. Start the car up and - the exhaust is still blowing. It's not as bad, but definitely still blowing. Jump (well sort of wriggle my fat gut) back underneath and I can feel no blowing around the clamp. The noise is coming from further forward.

Reposition fat gut at front, and discover small fingerprint-size hole in front of left hand downpipe. Coysies! Foiled again! Oh hang on, foil? I've got a bit of foil nad some exhaust repair bandage somewhere, left over from a repair...em... 5 years ago. I saw the box the other day when I was looking for something else. 10 minutes later the exhaust is bandaged...

Start it up and check for leaks - everything seems ok but I can still hear blowing somewhere - then I feel it on the back of my hand - it's a join in the catalyst that's burst (or rusted through). Only a tiny hole, barely audible at idle.

I leave it running till the bandage hardens then have a wee drive - you can definitely hear the remaining leak when the engine is pulling. New exhaust bits needed I think.

:: Tuesday July 13, 2004 ::

Brief research shows that catalysts (there are 2) are about £300 each. I can replace the catalysts with straight-through pipes (legally on a car this age) and get new downpipes, all in stainless steel, for about a fifth of the price of replacing the cats. The straight pipes give a slight power increase, a dramatic noise increase, and increase the likelihood of flame-shooting on over-run. This also then gives me a complete stainless steel rust-proof exhaust that should last the life of the car. Where do I sign?

I order a set from Peninsula TVR in Devon. 2 weeks to make them up.

:: Thursday July 15, 2004 ::

I take the car to work. Superb!

:: Sunday, July 18, 2004 ::

Disaster!!!

I set out today to finish a job I've been meaning to do for a while - that is, to clean and paint the rear suspension arms. Jack up rear, wheels off, and set to with scraper and wire brush.

The trailing arms, like the chassis, are plastic coated. The plastic coating gets chipped, water gets underneath and corrodes into the steel. So the technique is to find all the plastic cracks, scrape the loose plastic back to metal, wire brush the rust off, then paint the lot with two coats of red Hammerite.

The nearside is fine. I also clean up the suspension brackets and the suspension tower, which gets battered by any stones thrown up by the tyres.

Then I move to the offside. Same routine. I notice a tiny crack in the plastic behind the front bracket. Scraper in, and the plastic comes off in big lumps, with lots of rust attached. Oh dear.

After cleaning up, this is what I found. Two long holes in the suspension arm, with other pinholes in the side. Instant MOT failure. Imminent suspension collapse. Car unusable till fixed!

I don't know if this can be welded. I'll ask at the local garage (the proprietor has two e-type Jags so is more enthusiastic than most!). Otherwise I need a new trailing arm. If I can get one. And they're expensive. And a bugger to change - total dismantling of the back suspension and transmission required.

I paint the other side, and both suspension towers, then put the car away till I can work out how to repair it.

Me cry now. Bwah.

:: Tuesday July 20 2004 ::

Conflicting advice up until now on the trailing arm. Most say it can't be welded and must be replaced. Replacements cost £250, plus another £250 for fitting (although I can do that myself). I want to be able to use the car over the rest of the summer, especially this weekend for the Glasgow TVR club run, and don't want to put the car off the road while I order and fit a trailing arm.

The MOT Testers Manual doesn't say you can't weld it - it talks about highly stressed components must be replaced or "repaired to restore their original strength". Sounds good.

:: Thursday July 22, 2004 ::

The MOT garage next door to work has welded a little plate over the corroded bit, for £23.50. He says that is a perfectly acceptable MOT structural repair. It'll keep me going until the winter, if nothing else.

My exhaust bits arrived from Peninsula today! I need brass or stainless steel bolts, and I'll fit it in no time! (Famous last words)

:: Friday July 23, 2004 ::

Got home, had my dinner and then, at 7:30-ish, decided to repair the exhaust. Won't take long. I thought.

I had not foreseen, however, that the front sections of exhaust were in a considerably worse state than they appeared on external inspection. A combination of bolts rusted together, and rusty bits falling apart, meant that dismantling was a lengthy and delicate process involving copius quantities of brute force and liberal applications of sheer ignorance, both qualities which I displayed in abundance. After two hours I had all the bits off and had retrieved all the brackets and clamps etc I needed to put the new bits together.

At this point I disappeared under the car to fit all the new bits. After several false starts at assembling bits and not getting them to fit, I finally managed to get all the bolts in place and tightened all the ones underneath. When I wriggled my corpulent carcass from under the car it was dark. It was also 10:45. I gave up.

I now have 6 bolts to tighten and the job's finished. I hope. If it leaks after what I've been through there's a good chance it'll be parked in the driveway till March when I can bear to crawl under it again.

One problem is that the pipes seem to be slightly shorter than the cats, and also the front pipes are sloped upwards slightly to improve ground clearance. This means that when I tighten the exhaust clamps, the downpipes are pulled up tight against the chassis crossmember in front of the engine.

I am concerned that this will cause a resonant vibration through the whole car, which is not nice. I don't want to have to modify brand new exhaust bits!

:: Saturday July 24, 2004 ::

Tightened up the remaining bolts and checked that everything is fitted properly. A very slight blow from one of the rear clamps - easily sorted.

Test drive shows that car is much more responsive, much smoother and not only much louder, but also making a far better noise.

Two other highlights from the test drive:

(1) Driving through the main street of the next town, and hearing a car alarm go off as I pass. Yessss!!!.

(2) On the way back, with an 04-reg BMW convertible behind me - one of those big new ones, not the Z3. Group of 3 boys on the pavement give me big thumbs-up and shouts of appreciation as I rumble past. They totally ignore the BMW behind me. Cost of exhaust repair - about £100. Cost of car - about 1/6 the cost of the BMW. LOok on BMW-man's face - Priceless!!!!

The new exhaust clamps are big though and hit the ground on bumps - the old ones were worn away and didn't hit the ground as often. I need to investigate the ones that Davie has - give that little bit extra ground clearance.

:: Sunday, July 25, 2004 ::

A hoontastic day! Met the Glasgow TVR Club at the usual venue north of Glasgow, then a blatt in convoy to the north end of Loch Lomond for lunch and a blether. Despite an early pissing rain scenario, the day turned out warm and sunny. The new exhaust sounds fantastic and the car is going well, although perhaps running a little bit rich, as evidenced by the carbon on Dave's car, which was following me. Too close, if you ask me...

The exhaust is more prone to grounding, because the new clamps are enormous and stick down a lot. Worse than that, the other end of the clamp is against the sump, so there is a danger of punching a hole and losing all the engine oil, which is not generally recommended.

A later evening hoon results in a particularly serious grounding following by a distinct rattle. A brief inspection shows that one of the clamps has been ripped off and is now dangling from the pipe... New (more compact) clamps required! I order two stainless steel clamps from Demon Tweeks.

I also take the opportunity to tighten up the drivers side door mirror, which swivels back slightly due to wind resistance from about 60 mph upwards.

Then I dismantle the passenger side door to fix the electric window, which has stopped working altogether. It's definitely the motor connector, but I can't get the connector off the motor, and I can't get the motor off the door. I fix the cables into a position where the motor works, and put the door back together.

:: Tuesday, July 27, 2004 ::

A trip to Dave's to pick up two replacement wheels and photograph his, which are going the same way as mine and have never even been on his car!

:: Wednesday, July 28, 2004 ::

Got time to put the new exhaust clips on. A trial drive shows they are much better - no grounding at all now.

Also phoned the wheel refurbishers today. They are happy to have a look at the wheels, and repair if necessary. They do much moaning about how difficult lacquered wheels are, but tough - they should have told me that before they took my money.

:: Saturday, July 31, 2004 ::

Took the 4 wheels off and washed them. Took them away to get the tyres removed first. I also made up boxes from cardboard I have lying about, to courier the wheels back to the refurbishers. Wheels now boxed and ready.

I am also inclined to add a "todo list" to the site to show how work is progressing.

I notice that the outrigger bar behind each front wheel is very rusty, and needs repainting. I also need to get the chassis Waxoyled.