TVRs and Stuff

:: Diary - September 2023 ::
:: Sunday, 3 September 2023 ::

Hello git-followers!
No updates for August for a couple of reasons.
First, I didn't go to the local TVR Car Club meeting last month because I was doing something else. "what can be more important?" I hear you ask... maybe not, but I'm going to tell you anyway. I was poncing up and down the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, in a blue and yellow academic gown, in a procession to mark the start of the Edinburgh International Festival. There's a thing by the way - that's it's proper name. In addition, there is "the Fringe" - originally unofficial events that happened at the same time, but not part of the official Festival. On the fringe, see? So there are two events - the Edinburgh International Festival, for famous and experienced performers, and "the Fringe, for up-and-coming acts looking for that breakthrough. There is no "Edinburgh Fringe Festival". Are you listening BBC? and you too, ITV? and nearly every other media outlet (including some north of the border that should know better)?
Em... yes. Where was I? Oh yeah - processioning up the Royal Mile. You see, despite my farcically comical attempts at fixing and driving cars, for the last 2 years I have been the Chairman of the Edinburgh Area Branch of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and this is one of the official duties, to represent the Institution at these things. This involves wearing a big robe, looking clever, walking slowly, and making sure that you went to the toilet first because it's early and you've reached that age. It also involves being photographed or videoed by every nearby tourist (and during the Festival and Fringe period, there are gazillions) so I know how celebrities feel - you can only walk slow, look clever and avoid pissing yourself for a limited length of time.
So, I missed the TVR meeting.
3 days later I was in hospital for a scheduled operation to remove my thyroid, for reasons that I won't bother to explain. In simple non-medical terms, it was fucked.
Although I was only in for 2 days and one night, it took a couple of weeks to heal and for me to recover from not being able to do much, to my normal state of being able to do a lot, but still unable to be arsed bothering.
So... no TVR news for August!
Which brings me to today... well, yesterday first. I took the Chevrolet to a local car show which raised over £4,000 for charity. I booked it in ages ago, and decided to still go. This is the first time the Chevy has been out since June 2022!
After a wee wipe down, a pint of oil and some air in a tyre, it looks not too bad!

There's loads of interesting stuff - too many to add here - but I particularly liked this. It's a Rover P4 which the guy rescued from a scrapyard with a crushed roof (it had a Ford Zodiac stacked on top of it). He made a custom roof for it and gave it a quick paint.

He said he was thinking about getting it properly painted - I said I think he should leave it exactly as it is, it looks fantastic!

Dave turned up with his Griffith - his first show this year since his place was flooded in January.

I also liked this - a Citroen DS - although I would be scared of the maintenance costs. Hang on - didn't I used to own a Cerbera? Couldn't possibly be worse than that! Could it?

Right - at last, on to today!
The weather promises to be nice, so we have all decided to have a longer run to the TVR meeting today. Jim has organised the route because he found a nice road that he thought we would like. I meet up with Jim, Dave and Eric at our usual spot, then we head north over the River Forth and into Fife, where we are joined by John. Onward we go, to Crook of Devon where we queue to join the main road and my car stops (mainly cause I staalled in the wrong gear) and won't start. I can't hear the fuel pump. This is the same problem that I had at Chatsworth in March.
Everybody has pissed off into the distance, not noticing that I'm no longer at the back. I've got no tools with me, so I manage to crawl under the car and belt the pump with a bit of broken fence post that I find nearby - still nothing. Then Jim phones and says they are coming back. I try the car one more time after battering the pump in frustration - and it starts!
I catch up with the others and on we go... where I stop the car without thinking, and then have to batter it again to get it going.

On to the meeting where I park the car, switch it off and then try to start it again. No fuel pump noise. I'll deal with that later, for now it's indoors for the usual banter, and a nice roast beef dinner, spoiled only by overcooked mushy vegetables and a feeling of dread that the car won't start.

It looks nice though!

Eventually, though, I must face the potential shame.
I get in.
I turn the key.
Fuel pump primes.
I turn the key further...
It starts!
Let's go before it changes its mind! I drive home without any problem, park in the garage and try to start it again - all ok!
Yeah, I've heard that one before - I need to figure out if I need a new relay, a new pump or (sharp intake of breath) a new ECU.
First, though, I have a few things to do. The Porsche's service and MOT is next week. Before that, Porsche Edinburgh are celebrating the 60th anniversary of the 911 (which first went on sale on 12 September 1963) and are setting up a "timeline" for a special celebration event on that date - and mine is in it! So I need to get the car back here from the farm and clean it up a bit. Which means taking the TVR TO the farm out of the way, while I deal with all the Porsche-related stuff, and also get the Chevrolet back along to the farm at some point.
Then I can bring the TVR back here where I can work on it and order any bits etc, without having to move it and without pressure of time (but hopefully restore pressure of fuel).

:: Wednesday, 13 September 2023 ::

Absolutely no progress on the TVR fuel pump issue, for various reasons, mainly because it's been along at the farm for nearly 2 weeks, while I've been doing other stuff - mainly Porschey-style stuff.
First, there was the Porsche event. The event was on Tuesday but I had to take the car in on Monday morning, so that they had time to empty their showroom of all the modern stuff, and refill it with real Porsches from the past. The Porsche Centre is on the far side of Edinburgh, and my wife came along for the run, and we had a very pleasant drive through (in dry weather!) to drop the car off. Porsche arranged us a taxi to the city centre where we had lunch and a wee wander around before getting the train home.
During our wandering, by the way, a woman with her son asked us for directions to the Pathology Museum - somebody else had sent her completely the wrong way. We sorted her out and then decided to go there and have a look for ourselves. Well, it was macabre, but interesting - although you can only spend so much time looking at bits of bone and pickled bits of human. There were jars with willies the size of your arm, and other jars with arms the size of your willie. Deformed skeletons, slices of belly and various other organs - and a surprisingly large collection of skulls and other bits that had been shot through with guns, cannons or splinter grenades.
Fascinating stuff. No "fingers that have been caught in a coil spring when the compressor slipped" or "noses split open when your drill suddenly reverses direction while you're drilling a power steering mounting plate" but we know what those look like already, eh? At least. I do...
So, on to Tuesday and the event itself. We arrive just after it starts, and I'm chuffed to find that my wee car is in the middle of the showroom with its own spotlight!

They have made up wee display info panels and it looks not too bad at all!

The event is well-attended, there's free drinks and canapes, and plenty nice cars to look at!

The bloke looking at my car in this photo is my old university lecturer. He was newly-qualified then, although he's now a professor. Although he is only about 10 years older then me, Adrian kindly points out later that he looks at least 10 years younger. It's good to have friends eh? I suppose...

Anyway, we all have a grand old time, although I must admit that I struggle to get enthusiastic about the more modern models - yes they're nice, faster than mine, more comfortable and all, but they're alse huuuuuge and just don't float my boat.
Then there are 4 speeches. Two of them are very interesting. Two of them aren't - mainly because one of them is delivered with various "sotto voce" asides or punch lines that trail off like a politician's "sworn commitment", so that you can't hear them. The other one is about art, and paintings of Porsches in particular. There are some examples on display around the showroom and they look pretty good to me, but again, it's difficult to hear. There's an artist painting "live" behind him - a GT3 RS something that's in the showroom - but I can't see what he's doing from the angle I'm standing at, so it's hard to maintain interest.
Now I like a good painting or sculpture withe the best of them, but as an aside to Tuesday's proceedings, I've found that the art world is so full of snobbish pretentiousness... Not everybody, to be fair, but a significant proportion who pretend to know what they're talking about but don't. A bit like people who look at you car and say "has that got a gazillion horsepower? Mine has got a gazillion-and-five, and I broke the dyno tester proving it, look, here's a laminated card with the power and torque graph that I keep in my pocket..." As if that's all that matters to people who aren't measuring their willy with a ruler every day - who actually gives a fuck?
Ahem, yes, well, anyway - we have a lovely time speaking to other owners, and also some of the Centre staff.
The next day, I have to go back for the car - 20 minute walk, train, another train, 15 minute walk and then a nice free sticky bun while they extract my car from the showroom.
The car has been all valeted (although I had it pretty clean before I brought it in) and looks great.

I also liked this, but forgot to photograph it last night.

Then it's a wee drive home and put the car in the garage ready for its MOT and service tomorrow!

:: Thursday, 14 September 2023 ::

The Porsche is due its annual service and MOT today - all done by a wee independent around 25 minutes drive from the house, and an easy bus ride back. Except I didn't find out until yesterday that the bus routes have changed so the bus doesn't go anywhere near the garage any more - so getting home will take longer than it took me to get to the far side of Edinburgh yesterday.
When I go back later, the net result is - MOT pass!
Not without a couple of advisories though... the most significant of which is that the front jacking point on the driver's side is rusty and starting to bend. It's not structural though, and you can still buy new jacking points to weld in.
Second advisory is that the exhaust has a minor gasket leak in the crossover pipe. He's marked it with chalk!
Third advisory is that the tyres are starting to perish and show those wee cracks on the outside sidewall, as they do.
There's also a couple of issues from the service:
Slight oil leak from the oil pressure relief valve. It's in the bottom of the engine and sealed by a copper washer. Tightening it could maybe seal the leak. Or it might distort the washer and make the leak worse. Do you feel lucky? Naah, I'll leave it until I can drain the oil and sort it properly.
Next, slight oil "sweat" from around the oil tank level sender unit - a rubber gasket that also needs the oil drained.
The seal on the cap of the washer bottle leaks when it's full. I knew that - my remedy to date has been "don't fill it right up".
Finally, there's a carbon canister under the rear wheelarch, as part of the emissions system. Basically, it absorbs fuel vapours from the tank and then the engine sucks them in and burns them so that you don't poison passers-by. It's connected to the tank and the engine by two rubber pipes. Or it was, but not any more, they're knackered.
Nothing especially urgent, although I do want to get the jacking point sorted, so I need to find someone who is willing to take it on, and can do it competently - this Porsche independent doesn't do welding any more. He says you need to lift the carpet and then there's a cardboard-and-foil heating duct inside the sill, and you don't want to set that on fire, because you can't get to it to put it out...
I called Porsche Edinburgh to join their "classic register" and to ask about this repair, and they said someone would call me back. They didn't.
So the Porsche stays here in the meantime so that I can take it to potential welder-uppers.
The TVR stays at the farm where I can't fix it (well I could, but only if I'm prepared to trot back and forth to collect tools, bits of wood, etc that I didn't realise I would need...)
The Chevy needs to go back to the farm at some point when the roads are dry so that I don't put it away soaking underneath.
It's all so complicated!

:: Monday, 18 September 2023 ::

Porsche mission update...
I've decided to start some of these wee jobs.
First job is to lift the car onto axle stands so that I can get my fat carcass underneath. Yes, they do make stands big enough.

I take off the offside rear wheel so that I can get to the carbon canister and pull it down into the wheel well. The hose clips are rusted solid and I have to cut them off with a Dremel.
The thin hose seems ok so I'll leave that in place. The other end of the thick hose goes into the inlet manifold behind the aircleaner housing, so I disengage 4 clips to take that off for access. The hose comes off in 3 bits.

I order another length of hose and put all that aside for now.
The next job is the exhaust leak. Here's the end of the crossover pipe and the flange that holds it to the heat exchanger. It's held on with 3 boltsthat go in from this side...

with 3 nuts that go on from this side. As you can see, after cleaning off the rust with a hand-held wire brush, there's nothing left of the bolt heads, or the nuts. It's only the rust that's holding it together... don't know how I'm going to get those out, they're solid.

Let's have a look at the oil sweat from the oil tank in the back of the rear wheelarch. I see that it's coming from an oil level sender, held in with 6 wee nuts and a rubber gasket. I give all 6 nuts a wee tighten in the hope that will compress the gasket enough to stop the leak.
Right - time to re-group thoughts while I figure out how to get that exhaust gasket out without dismantling the whole system to remove those rusted-away bolts... which means taking the heat exchangers off the cylinder heads, which almost inevitably leads to the studs in the head snapping off - so then you're removing engines and drilling steel studs out of an aluminium head. No thank you.
So instead, in a desparate act of sheer procrastination, I take the Chevy along to the farm while the weather is dry, and fart about there for a bit.
Not the most productive day, but lots to think about!

:: Wednesday, 20 September 2023 ::

Well, after 2 days of thinking, I still don't have a clue how I'm going to get those exhaust bolts out. You can overthink things, you know, so, it's time for the old "brute force and ignorance" approach, which regular readers will recognise is my particular special set of skills!
I get under the car with a wire brush in a die grinder and clean away the rest of the rust so that I can see what's what. The two bottom bolts seem to have nothing left of the nuts, so should knock out backwards (towards what's barely left of the bolt heads). I get a bit of 8mm steel rod and drill a wee "concave" in the end, and then batter it onto the end of the bolt with a lump hammer, after liberal applications of "shock and unlock" to both sides of the bolts and the front side of my face. It gradually moves, and eventually comes out.
I put a nut and bolt in the hole, to clamp the joint together to support the flanges while I batter the next bolt out - except I can't get the rod onto the end of the bolt with enough space to swing the hammer. At this point I remember that I have an air hammer with a wee pointy breaker, so I fire up the compressor, spray on more release fluid and attack with air tools. I don't use my air tools nearly enough, they're very satisfying in a practical and also recreational way, and the second bolt is out in no time... Again, I put a new bolt in and clamp up the nut for support.
The third bolt, on the top, is really difficult to access, but I can only just manoeuvre the air hammer in, upside down and left-handed back-to-front, with my head pressed against the brake disc and my other arm going numb cos I'm lying on it, and give it a wee tickle with the air gun. It moves - only slightly but it moves. Another spray, another wee tickle and it shifts a bit more, repeat until I can get mole grips on the other end and pull it out. Awkward, but much easier than swinging a lump hammer.
Then I can remove the two new bolts that I put in, and wiggle the old gasket out.
Here's one of the new bolts - 40mm long to Porsche spec - and here's the rusty remains of the three bolts that were in there. No wonder the joint was leaking - there was no nut, no bolt head left, and no clamping force whatsoever! I think I'll put stainless bolts in though, so that there's a chance it might come apart if there's a next time.

This is what success looks like! It doesn't tell you what it smells like though - but I'm going inside now for a bath...

:: Sunday, 23 September 2023 ::

Right - with various bits now delivered, lets see if we can get this thing back together!
First, the carbon canister hose. It pushes on to a wee nipple on the back of the air cleaner - except you can't really reach it between the air cleaner and the rear bulkhead - pulling it off - easy. Putting it back means taking off the air cleaner housing - 4 wee bots, 2 nuts and 2 screws and it fiddles out. Fit the hose then nut and bolt and screw it all back together.
Then I cut the other end of the hose to length and fit it to the carbon canister, along with the wee vent hose from the tank. Fix the canister up under the wheel arch and it's done!
Now for the exhaust gasket. Sounds simple - open exhaust joint, slip in gasket, bolt together. Easy!
No.
First let me explain what this crossover pipe does. Instead of an exhaust manifold as you would normally expect, each side of the engine has a heat exchanger bolted to the cylinder head. Think of the exchanger as one tibe inside another. The inner tube takes exhaust gases out of the car. The outer tube takes air from outside the car, into the cabin - heated from the exhaust.
The exhaust gases all go out through a pre-silencer on the left side of the engine - and then into the main silencer across the back under the bumper. The crossover pipe takes the exhaust gases from the right side exchanger, across to the left side exchanger.
Here's what the pipe looks like. The flexi-end fits to the left side, and the gasket I'm replacing is on the right end.

As I said before, you can't get that pipe out while the engine is in the car - because of the connector flanges, it wedges itself against the rear bodywork between the transmission and the bodywork. You can't even get it out without taking off one of the heat exchangers, and that is almost guaranteed to result in broken studs, snapped bolts and engine removal to repair. No. Just no.
So it's getting the best repair we can do while everything is still in the car. Despite that flexi bit, the pipe doesn't flex much at all, and it certainly doesn't compress - I have jemmys of various lengths but I can't lever the joint open at all. Eventually, though, I manage to slip a gasket in, and hope that I haven't damaged it too much in the process.
Here it is, all bolted back up! Unfortunately, when I start the engine, I find that it's still blowing a tiny wee bit. Bugger...

Still, at least I know that it's not going to fall out!
The only "proper" repair from here, is either to risk removing a heat exchanger (which doesn't appeal at all), or to fit the earlier model of crossover pipe, which came in 2 bits...
like this... You cut the old pipe off, and waggle the two bits out, then you can fit this through the gap, slip the short end on, then bolt up both flanges and then join the two bits. It's a fiddle, but less risky...

But that's for another day - we'll sort that over the winter. At least for the moment, it's mobile again.
Which means I can take it along to the farm and bring the TVR back so that I can look at this fuel pump!

:: Tuesday, 26 September 2023 ::

Back to TVRs! I swap the Porsche to the farm and the TVR back to the house.
Fuel pump - first step is to check the electrics, specifically, the relay.
I pull down the panel under the glove box and allow the car to disembowel its electrics over the passenger footwell. The yellow relay here is the fuel pump relay and the red one the fuel injection system relay. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that the yellow relay isn't right in its holder - it's slightly dislodged and at a slight angle...

I take out the relay and clean all 4 terminals with fine wet and dry paper, and then spray electrical contact cleaner into the relay holder. This out-of-focus pathetic effort shows the relay after I have cleaned it up.

With the relay firmly back in place I hold it in one hand while turning the ignition on - I feel a good firm click as it comes on and primes the pump, then another as it switches off when the car's computer realises that the engine isn't running. Start the engine and the relay clicks on again.

There's no sign of melting on the relay or its holder, but each time it has failed, it has been at the end of a decent run, when the relay is likely to be warm. I think the symptoms suggest that it's more likely to be the relay than the pump itself. Famous last words.
I order a couple of new Ford relays just in case. I'll leave the electrics out until I have the chance to give it a run. Probably in April...

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