Griff Partial Refurb - Nearly There

[Marty V8]

TVR Dummy said:

Marty

Thanks for the tips. I picked up some used wishbones which had a bit of surface rust, started to prep them and got a bit carried away! Ended up using some Nitromors paint stripper to remove the old coating, they are now more or less back to metal on most surfaces, I did struggle with one of the lowers, the powder coating was much tougher to remove that the other three wishbones.

Just finishing off today with an angle grinder, wire brush wheel etc, trying to get a good key for the POR 15.

Thanks for the tips re leaving the joint faces un-painted, I have new ball joints and spacers and they are a tight fit.

Paint should arrive tomorrow I hope and Griff should be back on the road by the weekend.

Glad I could help. Its what we're all here for after all.

Post some photos when you've finished.

Regarding tight clearances on wishbones, you've just reminded me...I had one that was very tight as well. I managed to get the ball joint and spacers into the wishbone but had to sit one end on the ground and put pressure on the other end of the wishbone in order to open the gap out to accept spacers and ball joint. This then caused me problems when I tried to fit the wishbone - because I had opened up the gap to fit the ball joint, it had reduced the distance between the chassis pick-up points and I couldnt fit it.

Ended up stripping it apart again and filing the ball joint mounting faces of the wishbone flat and also dressing the spacers so that I could fit it all together without having to open the gap up to fit the ball joint. It also meant that the wishbone then fitted quite sweetly at the chassis pick-up points as well

[Marty V8]

TimJM said:

Fantastic looking engine bay - great effort, one day mine will look like that...maybe.

For now though I just need to get my radiator fixed. While the old one is out I like the painted shrouds on yours and may do something similar. What paint did you go use? Given that the shrouds are plastic but will still be in a hot/damp environment I don't want to end up with cracking or peeling paint.

Thanks.

Tim.

Hi,
Been away for a week so have only now got round to replying. Thanks for the compliments as well.

WRT the paint on the rad shrouds, its good old Smoothrite Silver. Its been heat treated several times now and shows no sign of peeling.

Regards

Marty

[Marty V8]

Veg said:

Great stuff and something I wish I could get round to doing! Time to get it dirty now.........

I have a vented bonnet (the original is in the rafters of the garage) and it makes a huge difference. I would just say do it and see for yourself.

The body tub doesn't get hot as the hot air is chucked over the sides, and the car sits patiently in traffic without the fans whirring all the time! On a long journey round France in 31C the cabin felt great and we even needed the heater on when the sun went down!

Thanks for the comments. The car has now got 500 miles on it since the rebuild, so yeah its been dirtied already.....

Info on the vented bonnet is good to hear so thanks for posting that. Just need to get my mitts on a reasonable secondhand Griff bonnet now.

Cabin heat (or rather the reduction of) is something I want to do more work on. I've already changed the heater valve which did wonders and have also increased the area of heat matting that I put around the inner wings during the rebuild. The vented bonnet should also assist with the reduction of heat soak, which can only be a good thing.

cheers

Marty

[Marty V8]

Thanks for the comments everyone. It makes the loss of skin, bleeding and sheer frustration worthwhile.

The vented bonnet project will be started when I can get myself motivated to look for a Griff bonnet. There's a TVR breaker about an hour north of me (Ashington) so this is probably the best place to have an initial look.
Ive got a weird perverse thought about grafting two sets of Chimaera gills into a Griff bonnet, one set immediately inboard of the other and siamesing them together, just to see what it looks like (probably bloody 'orrible).

After all the work Ive put into scrubbing it up, Im afraid I'm going to be a bit of a queen about it and take it off the road once the salt starts going down. I know for a fact that some of the nuts and bolts will start to take on a furry brown texture if I dont.

Onno - I like your project very much indeed and have been looking at your dash modifications. One of the things I dont like about the std Griff is the instrument warning lights especailly the 'out of line of sight' black warning panel. I want to get rid of this if at all poss, and also have warning lights that mean something rather than cheap coloured lights between the two major dials.

Cheers

Marty

Edited by Marty V8 on Monday 5th September 22:16