Renovating a great 22 years old TVR Chimaera

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

Hello everyone. I recently won on a Classic car auction A lovely old TVR Chimaera 2001 MK3. 450.

I plan to renovate the interior, mainly the seating which is a little tired & sunk. The dashboard is Walnut fake with many cracks, Carbon fibre Twill weave ordered. The braking system. The rear with new grooved & drilled standard vented with new pads & shocks renovated. The front brakes are going to be completely changed out for larger discs Drilled & grooved , Focus st170 300mm & Brembo 4 pot calipers ( these need overhauling as they are used 7 series BMW items). Plus the shock absorber refreshing. Lots of other niggly jobs like the bonnet release cable is US. Ford Fiesta MK1 item.

The nice thing is i managed to find the chap who bought this car when new. He has sent me some pictures of it being made at the Blackpool factory in 2001. Plus him picking it up outside the building. The engine is far from standard & has been rebuilt to a great spec by TVR power back in 2008, after the block was found to be porous after being removed with head gasket problems 8 times by TVR.. So it was rebuilt from a new block with larger pistons, performance cam, vernier timing sprockets, new clutch ECU upgrade & much more. 286 BHP at the rear wheels which roughly equates to around 335 Crankshaft BHP. He loved his track days. I will be making many video’s of the progress if anyone is interested i will post links as i go. If not it will be out there on my youtube channel. Have a great Christmas everyone.

Steve.

[StueeeeParticipant @stueeee]

That sounds like a great project. And it’s nice to have some of the car’s history too. Interesting re. the porous block and the necessity for the TVR Power rebuild. Porosity (not to mention the slipped liner issue) is such a well known fault on the ‘big bore’ RV8 motors that you would think that TVR would have picked it up much earlier. I have a “New Old Stock” big bore ‘cross bolt main’ block here, fingers crossed that it will be OK when I build it up to use in my racer.

[Michael CallaghanParticipant @michaelcallaghan68621]

Years back when I was into cars, I had a go in aTVR. it was a death trap. Way too much power for the chassis to handle. When you do get it on the road. Do take care.

[simondavies3Participant @simondavies3]

Getting on 30 years ago, I had an aluminium head where the original casting had had the core move slightly – an issue with a particular batch of them. This meant that the thickness of aluminum in the crown into the water jacket was paper thin. I managed to overheat the engine and this resulted in firstly a crack appearing which was subsequently gas-axed open by the hot gases in the cylinder. Result was a rather unusably V7 engine with an efficient airpump.

A friend who worked on drag-racing engines welded the whole head back together to my amazement and deep gratitude (thanks again Dave) and we put the engine back together.

However the head had become porus around the repair area. I was pointed to a (long gone) company on the Slough Trading Estate who did pressure injection of resin to cure this problem. When I turned up, they had a number of identical blocks in a corner which I was told came from one of the local F1 teams – adding to my confidence. Once treated and the excess resin cleaned from various oil holes, there has never been any further problems from that area of the engine – some 80k miles later.
No idea if this is still a current treatment, nor costs (I suspect mine was paid for in crispy green drinks vouchers), but maybe worth investigating if porosity ever appears in the future.
Simon

[Simon Davies 3]

On Simon Davies 3 Said:

Getting on 30 years ago, I had an aluminium head where the original casting had had the core move slightly – an issue with a particular batch of them. This meant that the thickness of aluminum in the crown into the water jacket was paper thin. I managed to overheat the engine and this resulted in firstly a crack appearing which was subsequently gas-axed open by the hot gases in the cylinder. Result was a rather unusably V7 engine with an efficient airpump.

A friend who worked on drag-racing engines welded the whole head back together to my amazement and deep gratitude (thanks again Dave) and we put the engine back together.

However the head had become porus around the repair area. I was pointed to a (long gone) company on the Slough Trading Estate who did pressure injection of resin to cure this problem. When I turned up, they had a number of identical blocks in a corner which I was told came from one of the local F1 teams – adding to my confidence. Once treated and the excess resin cleaned from various oil holes, there has never been any further problems from that area of the engine – some 80k miles later.
No idea if this is still a current treatment, nor costs (I suspect mine was paid for in crispy green drinks vouchers), but maybe worth investigating if porosity ever appears in the future.
Simon

That is interesting Simon. I had the same problem many years ago with a Calibra turbo. Porous cylinder head. Which i changed for the better Coscast item which cured it.

Steve.

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

Hi all & I hope your new year is going well as mine is. So I have started the work on the car & posted my 1st video yesterday for anyone into cars & would like to have a peak. It is my 1st video of doing this sort of thing . So go easy on me. I will try to get better footage & lighting as I progress with the project.

Steve.

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

Resin impregnation is a standard method of reclaiming a porous casting.

The casting  is put into a chamber and the pressure reduced to as near as possible to vacuum, to draw the resin far into the porosity.

Quite impressive, but not 100% effective.

The difficulty, unless vaery carefully preheated, and slowly cooled afterwards, the welding closes the porosity, but shrinkage cracks then appear at ther weld parent metal boundary.

Howard

[Howard Lewis]

On Howard Lewis Said:

Resin impregnation is a standard method of reclaiming a porous casting.

The casting  is put into a chamber and the pressure reduced to as near as possible to vacuum, to draw the resin far into the porosity.

Quite impressive, but not 100% effective.

The difficulty, unless vaery carefully preheated, and slowly cooled afterwards, the welding closes the porosity, but shrinkage cracks then appear at ther weld parent metal boundary.

Howard

hi Howard. Way back Vauxhall had a cure for the porous heads by ceramic coating the Camshaft valleys with some success. I went the old Coscast route which were a better design & cured my problem.

Steve.

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

Hello old car enthuiasts. I have had quite a bit of success with the TVR rear suspension. For anyone wanting to take a look here is the video. Just to let you all know. Yes there are short adverts in the video. These are nothing more than a few seconds of some adverts. But it brings me in a small income. So in 9 months I have earned £ 206. You may think this is some sort of extortion but just to put into perspective. I have a Sony camera … Value just shy of £ 1000. A new DJI action 4 at £ 288. An old Gopro 5 session at £200. This is just to do filming. This does not include all the mounting hardware & a huge expense for power/ heating & mechanical equipment. Just to make content, which I enjoy doing. Not for profit, but as my dad used to say. It is a shame to die & not pass on your experience to others. I hope anyone watching will enjoy & support me. Or even tell me I am doing it all wrong & tell me the correct way. Long live the model engineers forum.

Steve.

Video link

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