:: Diary - July 2008 ::

:: Thursday, July 3, 2008 ::

TVR Car Club "Sprint" magazine arrived today, and there was my little introductory paragraph with photo and everything!

Now all I have to do is think what I'm going to write about every month...

:: Saturday, July 5, 2008 ::

I have another car show tomorrow, this time for the Sporting Bears. I was hoping to give the car a bit of a clean but seeing as it starts raining, and doesn't stop, I decide that (a) I can't be bothered and (b) it's not worth it anyway.

:: Sunday, July 6, 2008 ::

I give the wheels a quick clean up, because they are really manky, then I set off to meet Dave to drive down to the car show - another 100 miles away (and this after 300 miles each way, a couple of weeks ago!) Then we go on to meet another group of Sporting Bears, before heading south. The decision not to clean the car was a good one - it's pissing down for most of the journey.

This is the first time that I have driven the car any distance since I replaced the steering joint last weekend, and I notice one thing though: the car drives as if it has power steering! I don't remember the last time the steering was this light and with a decent amount of feel.

When we reach the showground we set up the tent and then set about extracting donations from unsuspecting passers-by. I decide to enlist the help of a handsome bunny wabbit to hold the bucket (it's too heavy for me - if I hold the wabbit and the wabbit holds the bucket it's much easier).

I end up selling the wabbit to a young lady called Tamara who decides to rename him "Thumper". Magic.

One guy who turns up is thinking about an S and has a good look all over mine. He seems to like it. Then he mentions that he saw that the TVR Club has a new S-series editor, but hasn't recognised that it's me! He's off for a look around to see if he can find one...

The journey back is even damper than the journey down, but still a good drive. The car is running like a sweetie, very smooth with its new spark plugs and fresh oil. Still leaking a tiny bit under the right hand side of the dashboard - when I brake going down a motorway slip road, water runs off the back of the dash onto my ankle. You have to laugh eh?

:: Saturday, July 12, 2008 ::

TVR Car Club meeting today. First job as usual is to clean the wheels, and this time tvrgit junior produces his latest wonder product - a bottle of wheel cleaner which he has obtained from his pal who is a car valeter. He assures me it's non-acidic and suitable for bare alloy wheels, and that it cleans the wheels so that they look shinier than ever before.

I spray some on the first wheel, while he rabbits away in my ear about how his mate cleaned his wheels by spraying this stuff on and then driving in the rain. I brush it in and then rinse it off - and the wheel is covered in marks where this stuff has run down the face.

"It's not supposed to do that" says Git Jnr.

"Aye well it did and now the wheel's fecked" I retort less than wittily, being too busy rinsing this stuff off before the wheel dissolves into the ground.

"It'll polish out" he assures me.

"Oh I know it will" I assure him right back. He sets about the wheel with the old Meguiars metal polish while I go back to cleaning the other 3 wheels with the stuff I normally use (Hafords nano-technology wheel cleaner in the lurid green bottle, if you must know). Luckily for him, the wheel does return to something approaching its former state after a good polish.

I then wash and rinse the rest of the car before setting off to the club meeting. I meet up with Dave and Mike and after a bit of the usual banter we're off.

There are 22 cars there because a barbeque has been arranged, and very nice it is too. By the time we get to it, though, I've watched several fat greedy members (some of whom I barely recognise) stagger away under the weight of plates heaped like full scale models of Kilimanjaro, so there's not a lot left. The chef is trying to cook more but there's still a limited choice.

It's very tasty though, and by the time I go back for seconds (or to be more accurate, the other half of what I should have had in the first place) everything's fine. I do notice the hotel waitress staff clearing up plates that have more food left on them, than I started with in the first place. I have gone through life thinking (well, knowing - let's be honest here!) that I am a fat greedy bastard, but at least I eat everything I take. We never wasted food in our house - if you didn't eat it, your brother nicked it. Some people clearly have eyes much bigger than their bellies.

Anyway, with that rant over, the rest of the meeting was fine. I met a man who lives just up the road from me here who owns a Chimaera in a similar colour to mine. He's not had it long so I've never seen it about.

I arrive home with the best intentions to fix some wee jobs: lubricate the front brakes; replace the fuel sender; refit the rear numberplate (it keeps coming loose from its sticky pads); and replace the bolts holding the boot lock on, mainly because water is pishing into the boot past them, in the bottom of the boot channel. Unfortunately (!) it starts raining, and by the time it dries up again, I can't be bothered. The weather is supposed to be nice tomorrow so I think I'll do some fixing therapy.

Oh and the junior git's car failed its MOT today because the handbrake doesn't work (at all) on one wheel, so no doubt I'll be showing him how to fix that. Oh and his front brakes squeal so that'll be another thing.

Sometimes garage labour rates don't look so ridiculous, you know?

:: Sunday, July 13, 2008 ::

As I said yesterday, four things to do today: so I get up bright and early and then faff about in the house for about 3 hours pretending that I have to wait until Halfords opens, so that I can buy stuff that I really only need for the third and fourth things.

So it's off to Halfords for some bolts to refit the boot lock after I've sealed around the holes, and also some number plate sticky pads. Halfords staff demonstrate demonstrate their unique inability to stock anything of any use to anybody, or, in fact, to understand what it is that you're looking for anyway, so I go to B&Q instead.

Back home, jack up each front wheel in turn and remove the brake caliper, clean off all the old oil and greasy dust, lubricate the pad guides and slide pins and put them all back together again. Didn't expect that to be difficult so all going to plan so far.

Second job is one I've been putting off for ages. I bought a new fuel tank sender in October (I think it was) but haven't fitted it yet. Since I bought the car, the fuel gauge is strictly binary - the tank is either over half full (in which case the needle sits right at "full") or less than half full (when the needle sits at "totally empty"). I've had to judge fuel stops by mileage, but I noticed on the way to and from S-club last month, that I was stopping for fuel when the others still had loads left.

This Linky thing here contains lots of good advice and pictures of how to do it, so I'm not going to rival that. The writer is spot on though - you DO need two sealing rings with the new sender (because the casing is thinner than the old one). I also read elsewhere that it can be difficult to get a good leak-free seal, and so it is. The lock ring is held in by 3 wee "lips" on the tank aperture and these need to be bent or thumped back into shape so that the lock ring sits evenly all the way around.

When I started I thought that the tank was nearly empty, and just to be sure, I jacked the car up in one corner so that the petrol would tend to run to the opposite end of the tank from the sender unit hole (which is halfway up the side of the tank). As it turns out, my "empty" tank is full to about 1/2 inch below the sender aperture, ie still about 1/3rd full.

I connect up the electrical connections, switch on the ignition and yay!. The petrol gauge is between 1/3rd and 1/2 full.

The tank seems to be sealing but I'll have to put a couple of gallons in it and see what happens. I'm not going to fill it right up because if it does leak, I'll have to drive about 200 miles to empty it again so that I can take the sender back out!

Before I can start the third task, Git Jnr finally gets up and starts asking about fixing his handbrake while I'm putting my wheel back on etc. I try to stick to "hands off" distant advice but inevitably end up showing him how to get the caliper off, by doing it myself. The handbrake mechanism is siezed solid, and I pronounce it beyond economical repair (that's not how I pronounced it though, I only used one syllable). He sets off to buy another one, but returns empty-handed because the motor factor closed at 12. He should have got up earlier eh? The early git catches the worm.

I put the old one back on temporarily, to keep him mobile.

Right, back to the TVR. I stick the number plate back on with new sticky pads, but it's still not very good.

Final wee job, sounds simple. Another hassle since I bought the car is that the boot leaks at the right hand side (near the lock). I had problems because the drainage tubes were blocked, so I cleared them, then the drainage tube was loose in the body so I fibreglassed it back in again. It's still leaking though - every time I wash the car, stuff in the right hand side of the boot gets wet. I noticed the other day that the bolts that hold the boot lock in, were dripping wet after a rainstorm, so the water must be getting in there somewhere. The plan for today is to take the old rusty bolts out, and put new ones in, making sure that the holes are properly sealed.

I can't get a socket onto the bolt heads, so I hold the rear one with a pair of pliers and remove the nut inside. Easy peasy just like I knew it would be.

I can't get the pliers onto the second bolt, it seems to be recessed into the body. Strange. Then I realise that the bolt is completely detached from the car, and is held in place only by the carpet inside the boot. When I finally get it out (by cutting the carpet round the bolt) I find that there is no fibreglass bodyshell at all under the nut. There is a hole that I can stick my finger through! No wonder the bloody thing leaks! It's clear that it's been put together like this - there is no sign of the missing pece of fibreglass, either whole or in bits. I think this is the first thing I've found on the car in 5 years, that has been fixed but not properly.

I send Git Jnr off to Halfords again to buy a fibreglass repair kit, while I peel back the carpets that are glued to the inside of the wing. You can see a normal mounting bolt hole in the middle here, and the hole on the right is the channel drainage tube that I had to glass back in before. The yawning chasm on the left is where the second bolt hole should be.

Here's a closer view of the hole. While this is the worst and most obvious leak, the second bolt hole has a crack where the bolt washer has split the inside of the wing.

When he gets back, I stick some mat onto the rear of the hole, and then once that hardens a bit, I fill in the hole from above with chopped mat and resin, and reinforce the matting from below, working in layers to build up a good thickness of fibreglass. I also push some chopped mat and resin into the crack beside the other hole, before patching the inside.

After it's cured, I spread some more resin over the top and leave to set.

Then it's a relatively simple matter of re-drilling the bolt holes at the right spacing, making a new gasket for the inside of the boot (made out of that roll of trim tape) and bolting it all back into position. Reconnect the boot release solenoid (don't forget this bit!) and then check that the solenoid works before I shut the boot (or this bit!) and the job's a good un. The job that I thought would be the easiest of the day, has taken the most time.

I'm happy though - that's two jobs done that have been needed for a fair while (since I bought the car to be honest!). I'll need to give that boot repair a wee paint just to cover up the bare fibreglass in the channel.

TVRs are never finished - they are a permanent "work in progress".

:: Monday, July 14, 2008 ::

Git Jnr has managed to buy a new rear brake caliper so wants it fitted when I get home from work. He spends half the night getting the wheel off, then I change the caliper and bleed it in 20 minutes. If only everything was that easy.

:: Saturday, July 19, 2008 ::

First thing is to check if the fuel tank leaks when there fuel level is above the sender. I want to make sure that I don't have to waste fuel if it does leak, so I decide that I'll empty a 5 litre can in, and if it leaks, I'll syphon it out again, so that I can fix it. I pour in half the can. Fuel tank seal still dry. Empty the can. Still dry.

I take 2 cans to the petrol station and fill them, then empty another couple of litres in. Still dry. With both cans empty and the tank now 3/4 full (cos it says so on the gauge! Good or what?), there's no sign of any leak. I hope that's that - I'll check next time I fill the tank right up.

:: Sunday, July 20, 2008 ::

I'm a plonker. Yes, again. Why this time? Well you see, the Ford 2.9 engine comes with two different cylinder heads. The engine in my old Granada used taper seat spark plugs, but the TVR uses flat seat spark plugs with squashy washers.

Or so I thought.

The first time I changed the plugs I bought the plugs I had used before - taper seat NGK ones. When I took the old plugs out they were flat seat, so I took the new ones back and swapped them. Looking at the cylinder head, it's bloody hard to tell whether the seats are flat or tapered.

Or so I thought...

I discovered during the week that the cylinder heads have a letter stamped on them so you can tell the difference. As you look at the head, there are three plugs and three exhaust ports. On the top of the left hand exhaust port (ie the front one on the nearside head, the back one on the offside head) there is a larke embossed letter. If that letter is an "F" then it uses flat washer plugs. F = Flat right? If that letter is a "K" then it uses taper seat plugs. K = Knobhead, right?

Mine is a "K". It's had the wrong spark plugs in it since I got it.

I go and buy the right plugs - NGK BPR6EF, and swap them over.

Then I have a wee run to see how it's going - and it seems to be pretty good! I realise that for the first time since I got the car, everything works - the fuel gauge, all the panel lights, every electrical item, the brakes aren't as wobbly (still a tiny bit of vibration but much better than they were). There are only one or two teensy niggles - the front door still sags a bit and needs new hinges, and doesn't lock with the key either. The passenger door doesn't work the interior light. Oh and the bloody exhaust is leaking slightly again - I think it's had a leak somewhere or other since I got it.

Now this might not look like much, but it shows a line of working dials! Yay!

:: Monday, July 21, 2008 ::

I get under the car to check the exhaust - and yes, it is the downpipe joint to the rest of the system that's leaking. I stick another jubilee clip over the joint to clamp it tighter. That seems to work.

While I am under there, I notice that the paint is flaking off bits of the front outriggers. I give it a rub with my fingers and my heart sinks suddenly as my thumb presses into the outrigger. For that heartstopping second I think that I have found a rust hole, but then my thumb stops - it's just a dent! Closer inspection shows a series of tiny dents which I realise are coming from the edge of my trolley jack. The Hammerite is flaking off each dent leaving bare metal directly behind the front wheel. Yikes!

When I bought the jack, I covered the cup in carpet and gaffa tape, so that it wouldn't damage the chassis. Closer inspection of the jack shows that over the last 5 years, the cup has cut through the carpet. No time to fix that today though, so I go for a run instead, mainly to watch the fuel gauge go down because it's now working properly!

:: Saturday, July 26, 2008 ::

I find an old bit of carpet and cut out several bits to fit inside the cup on top if the trolley jack, and then one bit to fit over the top. I tape it all down to make a good thick pad on top of the jack.

Then I jack up the car under the main crossmember, and use a brush and white spirit to remove the waxoyl from the damaged area of both outriggers. Then I scrape off any loose Hammerite around the dents, and then paint two coats of Hammerite into the damaged areas.

That should do it!