Dusting off the TVR and giving it a much needed overhaul to make it roadworthy again.
My car has been languishing in the garage for a few years with a seemingly insurmountable list of tasks before it would be roadworthy again. First on that list was a sticky throttle which I had investigated a couple of times before, to no avail. Sometime in March I got stuck in again and narrowed the problem down to an issue with the pedal box, buried in the driver's footwell.
The pedals, brake servo and fluid reservoir are all part of a single unit that has brake pipes connecting it to a thru-body manifold. Not wanting to disconnect brake pipes or have to bleed the brakes, I opted for attempting to strip the pedal box in-situ.
After several hours of cursing and swearing, I managed to extract the main pedal pivot and found that it was swollen with corrosion, causing the accelerator pedal to bind. I removed the corrosion and applied plenty of copper grease during reassembly. The result was a smooth pedal action that snaps back to idle without any of the previous stickiness.
Spurred on by this success, I set about treating chassis rust and overhauling the suspension wishbones.
Re-bolting Everything
The chassis and suspension wishbones all had a lot of surface corrosion where the original powder coating had flaked off. My plan was to remove all the wishbones so that they could be treated and painted more easily. While doing that, I decided I might as well rebuild everything with new bolts. For this I found a kit on Ebay with everything helpfully bagged and labelled.
On the Bench
Starting at the offside rear corner, I stripped down the damper and both wishbones so that I could get them on the bench to assess condition. The rear dampers were in excellent condition, with just some surface corrosion on the springs. The wishbones had a lot of surface rust that needed to be cleaned off and treated.
The bolts were generally in much better condition than I expected, with just one partially seized bolt and one nut that required a size smaller socket for removal.
Offside Rear
Here are before and after pictures for the offside rear suspension and surrounding chassis. It was definitely the right choice to strip the suspension apart – it made treatment and painting much easier. The nearside rear was more of the same.
Offside Front
The before and after pictures for the front show a similar story – surface corrosion on the chassis beams and near the joints on the wishbones. Another couple of bolts that had to be drifted out but thankfully nothing completely seized. The nearside front had seen some previous TLC but still required a similar overhaul.
New for Old
I can't say the same for the front dampers. Both were badly pitted with corrosion and both were leaking oil. They were well past refurb viability so nothing for it but to splurge on a shiny new pair.
Going Strong
While the car was up on stands I also treated surface rust on the visible chassis beams and outriggers, and took the opportunity to replace a very corroded handbrake cable.
With all that done, I booked the car in for an MOT, expecting a TODO list of followup items, but was pleasantly surprised to get a first-time pass with just a couple of advisories. Just in time for a holiday Monday drive with the roof off.
