MIght be time for a new radiator...

[Wedg1e]

Believe it or not, this doesn't leak...!





First time it's been out in at least 16 years, must remember to replace all the fixings with stainless when it goes back in

[mrzigazaga]

Mmmm...I have seen that pattern before on the rad...Mine had similar but did leak..Very slowly over time...I changed it when i started to see a tiny bit of steam from the bottom corner...Best to nip it in the bud rather than risking it on a long journey...



I have replaced the mesh with a finer grade but still think a layer of air filter foam in-between the mesh would be a good idea to stop the finer particles smashing into it at 140mph......

[Wedg1e]

You changed it? I was going to ask my local radiator experts if they could re-core it but I suspect that the labour will be most of the price of a new one. Most modern radiators are assembled from bits of alloy and plastic crimped together but I know the guy who runs the place is old school... my old man used to send me over with rotten rads back in the 70s/80s!

[gmw9666]

Had to change mine last week as my otter switch fell off!!!!!

[KKson]

And had to change mine the week before on the 350i and end of last year on the 390SE. Bah humbug.

[adam quantrill]

Wedg1e said:

Believe it or not, this doesn't leak...!

I've seen worse - and that didn't leak either... it's just the extra fins rotted away.

[mrzigazaga]

Wedg1e said:

You changed it? I was going to ask my local radiator experts if they could re-core it but I suspect that the labour will be most of the price of a new one. Most modern radiators are assembled from bits of alloy and plastic crimped together but I know the guy who runs the place is old school... my old man used to send me over with rotten rads back in the 70s/80s!

Hi Ian..I would of removed it and taken it to the rad peeps but I'm parked on the street and the Wedge is my only mode of transport...Sooo...I bought a early Griff rad from Fleabag which was the same as the early EFI Rangey rads as used on the Wedges...It needed a recore so got that done then drove 70 miles on my leaky one to my good friend PK500 who removed mine and fitted the new one..The cost was around £240 to refurb it and it was £70 for the Fleabag one..Total £310...A new one was nearer to £500 and a refurbed one from the rad shop was £350 + Vat...Okay i had to pay the petrol but it was much nicer having a friend helping you who has a garage...A lift and all the tools....And i had a lovely roast dinner...All in all a good day out....

[RCK974X]

Had a rad in a Triumph 2500 which looked a bit like that, but when I prodded one of the wavy inner bits - the WHOLE THING FELL OUT, and the rad still didn't leak.... But I decided on a new core anyway.

Perhaps the older style ones can rot away gently in this way ....

[Wedg1e]

gmw9666 said:

At least your spoiler seems to have the mounting bolts in slightly more accessible places; on mine two of them were above the brake air ducts, inboard of the driving lamps. Couldn't get a ring or ratchet spanner on the bolt heads, which were so corroded an open-ender slipped off.
In the end I found I could get an air-powered 80mm cut-off disc in through the gap below the bumper and use fingertip feel to locate the edge of the disc on the nuts so I could cut the b45t4rd5 off. Only slightly cr4pping it in case I slipped and put the disc through the nose of the car!

I'm going to replace the mesh with some stainless (about £40 ), locate some new driving lamps as these have never worked in all the time I've owned the car... I only need one as the reflector silvering has peeled but if you're going to do a job - and it's probably time I resprayed the spoiler the right colour, I've only had the paint 10 years Of course that'll mean a new '390SE' decal as well... the last time someone painted it, they (badly) masked the bloody decal Bloody cowboys.

The oil cooler and rad brackets will be sandblasted and painted (or I might get the powdercoat gear out, either way it's not like you can see them).

[mike various]

What is the part number for the rads ?

Can you use an early range rover rad if so can it be an e bay job or where do you buy a rad at the right price ?

Thx

Mike

[mrzigazaga]

Hi Mike...I believe it to be ESR80 but some calling and confirming size is need...You also have to make sure that there is a single overflow on the top O/S front which was originally the bottom N/S front...

Be careful though as the newer ones have plastic tanks and copper/Alloy core

Aaron Radiators have always come up trumps and will know what you need, The early Griff rads are the same but will need the overflow welded on...
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=...

Ideally though its always best to get the original recored to avoid any differences ...


Hope this helps...




Ziga

[gmw9666]

Wedg1e said:

At least your spoiler seems to have the mounting bolts in slightly more accessible places; on mine two of them were above the brake air ducts, inboard of the driving lamps. Couldn't get a ring or ratchet spanner on the bolt heads, which were so corroded an open-ender slipped off.
In the end I found I could get an air-powered 80mm cut-off disc in through the gap below the bumper and use fingertip feel to locate the edge of the disc on the nuts so I could cut the b45t4rd5 off. Only slightly cr4pping it in case I slipped and put the disc through the nose of the car!

I'm going to replace the mesh with some stainless (about £40 ), locate some new driving lamps as these have never worked in all the time I've owned the car... I only need one as the reflector silvering has peeled but if you're going to do a job - and it's probably time I resprayed the spoiler the right colour, I've only had the paint 10 years Of course that'll mean a new '390SE' decal as well... the last time someone painted it, they (badly) masked the bloody decal Bloody cowboys.

The oil cooler and rad brackets will be sandblasted and painted (or I might get the powdercoat gear out, either way it's not like you can see them).

Yup, nicely positioned above each lamp. Could access the nut through the hole in the bottom. Think it helped the car having been re sprayed on 2004 so not all rusted up

[Wedg1e]

Well I took the rusted remains of the rad to the stout yeomen of Motorcool Services in Thornaby, a company that has been in business for so long that my old man used to send me to them with radiators for repair back in the late 1970s...!
I must admit I expected Eddie to shake his head sadly and send me off looking for a new one but he took one look and said "Range Rover? Take a couple of days, give us a call on Monday".
How much, I tentatively queried.
"Dunno yet, will have to order a core in, give us a call later today".
So I made sure I was sitting down when I called and when he told me the price I asked if they could also blank off the thermo-switch port in the side and left him to it.
I picked the refreshed rad up today (Monday), it looks a lot like this:



and this:



and this:



You can see the soldered blanking disc in the last pic. As you can also see they scrapped the rotten top and bottom rails and folded up new ones with fresh threads for the fan housing and oil cooler.
Actually, if you look closely at the oil cooler (pic below) you'll see that galvanic corrosion has eaten the bottom sides away where it's bolted to the lower support bracket; I had exactly the same problem with my Esprit but as the rest of the cooler is sound I can repair that. It won't be welded (tried that on the Lotus, got nowhere) but a couple of rivetted sections will give something to screw into. The top's OK and by the time it goes again I'll probably have kicked the bucket anyway



While you're under there, you can spot the scrawl of the chaps who were busy building my car... Malc and Pete, on August 4th 1987



You don't get that on a Porsche

In case anyone needs to know, here's the original 'Otter' switch from the side of the radiator. I don't know if it works as my car has had a Kenlowe 'stat for longer than I've owned it...



Off to collect a handful of stainless fasteners and some stainless mesh for the grille next... oh, forgot to say: £168 plus VAT which included fabricating the new straps and blanking off the switch port... £201 all-in. Bargain

Edited by Wedg1e on Tuesday 5th April 00:51

[Wedg1e]

The radiator was recored a few weeks back but for some reason although they're repainted the end tanks and the core they missed out the new top and bottom straps (the radiator shroud mounts to them) so I degreased them and blew some satin black Smoothrite over them.
The rad end brackets and oil cooler brackets were sand-blasted and powder-coated:



I had to fabricate some repair pieces for the oil cooler as the bottom sides had corroded away (see further up thread); the rest of the cooler is still sound so I'll be damned if I'm binning it just yet:



Next it was the turn of the front spoiler: not wanting to fanny about with rusty nuts and bolts in future I decided to glass-in stainless bolts to the spoiler.
I found some perforated stainless strip in the rack which was soon drilled and the bolts TIGed in:



Then I shaped the strip to suit the individual profiles of the inside of the spoiler.





Just need to lay-up a bit of mat and resin to secure them.

Meanwhile I'd been looking at my Cibie driving lamps... but that's another story

[HOTTY]

Hi Ian

Presume going to glassed the bolts into the spoiler, thought was standard as my 350 had your mod already done (made life a lot easier)

Was singing your praises to Mike the new owner of the 350 you breathed your magic on

hotty

[mrzigazaga]

Wedg1e said:

While you're under there, you can spot the scrawl of the chaps who were busy building my car... Malc and Pete, on August 4th 1987

I found this when my pod fell out a couple of weeks ago...Its written on the underside of the headlight housing...

[Wedg1e]

HOTTY said:

Hi Ian

Presume going to glassed the bolts into the spoiler, thought was standard as my 350 had your mod already done (made life a lot easier)

Was singing your praises to Mike the new owner of the 350 you breathed your magic on

hotty

Good evening Mr.H, long time no hear (or see!)... yes, I'll be glopping some GRP in there to secure the bolts. It could well be that the factory did it that way originally; my S1 Tasmin had glassed-in captive fittings in the sills but later ones I've seen didn't, so maybe it depends on how flush they were feeling any given week

The front airdam isn't the original, it actually has "HHCC spare 390SE" scrawled on the bottom of it so it's a fair bet that either Harrogate or Hexham Horseless Carriages had it in for repair in the late 1990s (I've had it since 2000).

My car was featured in a 'Sprint' mag photo competition sometime in 1997 for TVR's 50th anniversary year. I met the then-owner a few years later and (besides two box files of service history) he gave me some other pics that were submitted to 'Sprint' and in them you can see that the curved lower 'lip' spoiler (under the main airdam) was still present but it had gone by the time I got the car in 2000.
As Hexham would have been his closest dealer my guess is that the airdam and lower lip were smashed and only the airdam replaced (there are a few mysterious holes under the nose but none in the airdam itself suggesting the lip wasn't replaced).

The airdam also only has one shade of silver on it where most of the rest of the car has three or four, I can't decide.

The driving lamps are dated 1992 and 1998 which suggests at least one of them was fitted new in '98/99. They'd been wired in proper monkey fashion so they came on with the main beams - i.e. they were soldered across the headlamp plugs, not back to their intended connectors! I snipped the bodgy wiring out when I got the car but never got round to reinstating the DLs until now.
After 16+ years of swinging in the breeze the connectors were unusable so I've just had to strip the loom back and solder in new lengths of cable for the 'new' driving lamps I'll be fitting.

Somehow I thought you'd have that 350 for life, I guess times change

[Wedg1e]

mrzigazaga said:

I found this when my pod fell out a couple of weeks ago...Its written on the underside of the headlight housing...

You should have seen the Cerbera that TVR built for Beckham: apparently all was going well until the shell and chassis came together at which point someone saw the customer's name on the build sheet. From that point on it was graffiti'd mercilessly, from 'Man City forever' and 'Liverpool for the cup' to 'Beckham is a w*%£)r' and so on. When it came up for sale a few years later the carpets were peeled back and photos taken to prove the provenance - I think they made it onto PH at least once.

[HOTTY]

Hi Ian

Yours was a center spread, with only the staples hiding its modesty

20 years and 3 months is a life sentence (looked it up on parole with good behaviour).


Now have a story of selling the wrong car ! (this 400 has loads of work to do on it, their going to make me park round the back on the BAR run) you popping over for a beer and a catch up chat.

hotty

[Wedg1e]

HOTTY said:

Hi Ian

Yours was a center spread, with only the staples hiding its modesty

20 years and 3 months is a life sentence (looked it up on parole with good behaviour).


Now have a story of selling the wrong car ! (this 400 has loads of work to do on it, their going to make me park round the back on the BAR run) you popping over for a beer and a catch up chat.

hotty

Funnily enough I found a buckshee issue of Sprint in the loft earlier tonight, from 2000, and my car was the centrefold in that as well
Titled 390SE in a Scottish sunset or similar. The cover has '7 decades of TVR' on it. The 1997 shot was taken at Clunie Water.

I haven't been down your way in eons, something to do with international companies shutting up shop in GB and not needing our services. Either that or my boss got too greedy and there is cheaper competition, maybe.
May make the Fest, depends on what else it might clash with (when Nursy decides). Might even be in the bloody Wedge for a change, last couple of times I was on the bike! Park round he back, I had to park in the next county