Restoration Diary
(Click on any photo to see a larger version)

13th March to 23rd May

The reason for not having an update over the past month or so has mainly been because there haven't been a lot of varied things going on, more in depth and concentrated than varied!. Here's what's been happening:

In the last diary our engine was about to get taken away to get built, and there it still sits unfortunately! Terry Hird, who owns a specialist local company, injured his hand recently so has been pretty much out of action for over a month now. I went to see him recently and I was promised that he would at least get around to making a start within a week or so, but such is the progress in other areas, if no progress is made within the next 2-3 weeks, or we don't get a target return date, we will have to consider other alternatives.

For the chassis, once again, Justin Forwood gave us a day of his valuable time to help complete the brake piping. With his new all singing all dancing flaring tool, we made the decision to remove what we had achieved last time he came over, such was the assured quality of the new tool. It still took three of us all day to finish, much of it being due to inconsistencies with the flares themselves, but we are satisfied that they came out as solid as possible. There are now three 3 foot lengths of pipe pointing up into the air where the master cylinder will eventually sit, ready to be bent and flared accordingly.

Fuel pipes are also on, the main one from the rear to the engine bay, and a smaller return pipe. Although we've installed flexible reinforced tubing at the moment, this may change to be copper piping at some stage, as the flexible pipe can sometimes become brittle once it has been on the car for a while. This needs further looking into so will be left where it is for the time being.

Most of the exhaust system is back on the car now as well. Chris spent some time on the system a while ago, working with Autosol, and the results on the stainless sections are superb. There are some marks where the main box has been grounded in the past, but on the whole, it seems nice and solid. We're still on the lookout for a near side stainless manifold. The original one off the car has been sold (exported to the states of all places!), and we've acquired a brand new mild steel one, courtesy of Joolz (www.joospeed.net), which after a coat of VHT paint looks really good, but it still doesn't go with the rest of the system. If anyone knows where one of these is going spare, please let us know! We're getting to the stage of conceding and having one built, but we can make do with a solid second hand one if there are any out there!

That concludes progress on the mechanical side really - there have been other smaller things, I've taken the old master cylinder off the servo and have started to rub the rust off to prepare for a new coat of paint, (after it has had its innards replaced!) for example, but our major task these past weeks has been.....

Bodywork. Orange bodywork to be precise. I hate it, loath it, and am going to be glad to see the back of it. Not that I have a problem with orange in general (to pacify my Dutch colleagues), but when you're working with it, you become orange, and everything you touch becomes orange. Let me explain.

As I may have bought up in a previous diary entry, we've had a very competitive quote for getting our body re-sprayed, but to cut come costs, we decided to prepare it all ourselves. You may have noticed from the pictures, the orange paintwork wasn't in the best condition ever, and we had decided between ourselves to go for red. Just a flat red, nothing metallic or fancy, but a good solid red, in keeping with the era of the car itself. So the preparation involved (and still involves) sanding down all the bodywork, doors and bonnet too, right back to the gel coat of the fibreglass, then making any repairs that are necessary, and spraying everything with primer, so it can quite simply go to the paint shop and get it's top coat with the minimum of fuss, and expense.

Removing this paint, however, is an unbelievably painstaking process. Apart from large areas, the majority of the sanding has to be done by hand, and great care has to be taken not to sand down too far and eat into the gel coat itself. Any imperfections in the gel coat afterwards will have to be built up with filler, and will turn into a massive job trying to get the panels to look correct again, so the safest way to do it, we think, is the good old fashioned cork block and paper method. We're using aluminium oxide paper, as it it fairly quick at taking the surface off, but the second problem is the sheer amount of surfaces, or layers, to deal with. Both the front wings have had layers of paint in the sequence orange, light primer, dark primer, patches of yellow, orange, light primer, dark primer in places, gel coat. By the time the first layer of orange is eaten through, you think you're getting somewhere, but then when, after the primers, you get another one, the will to live is diminishing rapidly. But, we've stuck to our guns (having almost resorted to them too) and are now on the last areas of orange to disappear, the rear of the car, and the large sloping panel that reaches underneath. Everything else is down to the gel coat, and the vast majority of it done by hand. The condition of the gel coat isn't actually to bad at all - we were expecting star crazing all over the place, but apart from some stress cracks at the bottom of one front pillar, and some earlier impact damage on one of the rear wings, it seems to be remarkably intact! After all the remaining orange has gone, we'll have to spend quite some time going over the whole body, filling here and there, then sanding and re-filling as necessary, to get the surface all prepared for its primer coat. We're going to attempt the primer ourselves, with an electric spray gun and some recommended etch primer. We need to have a good finish to the primer, rubbed down with 800 grit wet and dry before it can be sprayed with the top coat, but from experience, this shouldn't be too hard to achieve, and shouldn't (touch wood!) take too long either. 

All of this bodywork preparation process, by the way, is taking place in workshop number two. Workshop two is essentially a garden gazebo with large tarpaulin sheets wrapped around to make a large tent type structure. This is sitting on the patio in my back garden, and will hopefully provide both protection from the elements, and stop too much orange stuff from contaminating the rest of the garden, the house, and the local area. This does, unfortunately, bring with it a whole new set of problems, in that due to the inclement weather of late, the whole structure has a habit of getting lifted off the ground in the wind, and shifting a number of feet this way and that, and swallowing anything in its path!! I've had a number of calls from my wife while I've been at work to say it's moved again, or collapsed again, but with a number of stakes in the ground, lots of rope, and quite a few bricks, hopefully it will stay in one piece until the body has been finished!!

And finally, our latest development is the wheels. Our set of five wolfrace alloys were in a sorry state. One, which has obviously been protected from the elements, was in fairly good condition, and with some effort, and more Autosol, began to look fairly good, but the remaining four were well oxidised, and needed professional help. Just two days ago, I took them to a company local to us, Pristine Wheel Refurbishment (01908 262826), to get them to do the necessary, involving blasting, diamond tip turning, powder coating for the backs, and high polishing. It will mean that we'll have to take great care of them when they are on the car, and any salt on the roads will have to be washed off regularly, but at their work shops, I saw several examples of their excellent work. Yes, it may cost a fair amount (£45 a wheel!) but I think the results will be completely worthwhile. On the tyres front, after much calling around, we've settled on a set of 195/70 VR 14's. The originals (which, I found out last week, were all tubed, even the one marked tubeless!!) were 185/80 14's, but to get these at all nowadays, let alone in a V rated tyre, is a nightmare. The 195/70's have a rolling radius which is a matter of millimeters out, so should make practically no difference to the speedo etc, and a local tyre company has given us a price of £213 for a set of four Fulda's, which is actually less than it costs to kit out my Astra!! They also gave us 5% discount for being members of the TVR Car Club, so if anyone is after similar kit, Motorcare of Leighton Buzzard (01525 372121) could be a good bet.

In the next diary, which should appear sooner than this one did, we're going to tackle the joy of TVR wiring, the wheels should be back, and we should have some carpets! And I might have got over my orange phobia!