Daily Duty Chimaera
Discussion
I've never been one for pretty cars. I normally run one vehicle and use it daily so they inevitably end up with stone chips, car park dings and quite a few miles on them. My last one was a B5 Audi S4 avant that looked good from no less than 20 meters away and had 170k miles under her belt, 'mechanically perfect but used' is the category that my cars normally fit into. I buy cars to use them as they were meant to be and then tidy them up when it's time to sell on.
I became bored of the Audi after the snow had melted last year, it was brilliant in a straight line but had to be pushed beyond stupid levels to be entertaining on a dry surface so I decided that I would go for something a little less refined this time and probably two seats. I was too chicken to go for a Caterham and Boxters, S2000s etc felt a little half hearted so I started researching Chimaeras. I fell in love with their set up immediately, I've got the ability to wave a spanner about so when I found out what all of the running gear and oily bits consisted of I knew that they would be fairly easy to maintain and play around with.
After a couple of months searching for a car I found one fairly local to me that ticked all of the right boxes, it was tatty but mechanically perfect with under 40k miles. I sent the seller an email and then in true PH style went off on a detective mission with the email address that he responded with and found his Facebook account. There were lots of pictures from over the years of his pride and joy, all of the bits of work that he had done on it and it was obvious from the posts that the car had wanted for nothing mechanically. I had bought it before I had even turned up on his driveway, but he didn't know that so I still managed to bid him down quite a bit too. Winner
The weekend after the quick email exchange I gave him a call and was standing on his doorstep within an hour, he didn't even get a chance to wash it. The car was exactly what I expected and as advertised, standard, solid and the reason for it being so cheap was the desperate need of paint. The outriggers had been changed by the previous owner and it had always been a 2nd/3rd car to play about in.
The first thing that I did was rub it with a soapy rag, take a photo to w
e it out on Facebook, then await the ridicule and comments about unreliability 
One of the other things that the car needed was the manifold gaskets changed, he had bought the gaskets with the plan of changing them but I bought the car within a couple days of it being for sale so he never got the chance. He threw the kit in along with the TVR bible, a bottle of Renovo for the roof and some furniture clinic for the interior. Bargain. Spent 6 hours swearing with a spanner soon after I had it home, definitely one of the most frustrating things to change on these.
I had soon put a couple thousand miles on it..
Next up was a quick fix on the dashboard as the wood had quite badly cracked and delaminated. £20 of ebay special and it all matched the roof, just a quick fix as I'm planing on changing the seats, carpet and the colour of the leather at some point.
Got a puncture. Drove to the nearest tyre place that google would offer, spacesavers are a stupid idea.
Then came the fogged up tail lights, the seals were all original so I cut everything out and tinted them a bit whilst I was at it..
You can see the crap paint in this one, the lacquer and paint has started to flake off at the top of the boot.
And a Pistonheads sticker..
Found out that the tyres are stupid sizes so decided that I needed new wheels in order to get better tyres at more reasonable
prices, man maths
Found a set of 5 Raceline RL7 (like the Cerbera has) in alloy off of a Cosworth, they come in magnesium too but are prone to cracking and I couldn't find a decent set.
Because I now had a set of 17 inch wheels rather than the 15 inch front and 16 inch back that are standard I obviously also needed some adjustable coilovers.
Next up was to get her ready for winter so bought some Rustbuster Epoxy from ACT and a couple cans of Bilt Hamber Dynax S50. The epoxy paint is good because it flexes a little so doesn't become brittle and flake off and the Dynax is the absolute nuts, runny wax that dries like rubber so that it just bounces off any stones etc.
The Dynax comes with a long tube so that it can be sprayed in inaccessible places..
I seem to have eaten quite a few tyres in the past 9 months
Then winter and the rain arrived, this car hasn't really seen the wet stuff in at least the 4 years that the previous owner had it and probably way before then too.. so it turned out to not be very waterproof. I spent a day with a hose and ended up replacing almost all of the mastic seals, treated the hood, cleaned all of the rubber seals and adjusted the roof and windows. I had a lot of trouble tracing down one final persistent leak that took so long to drip through that I could never figure out where it was coming from, until the leather started to fall off of the top of the dashboard
Pulled out all of the windscreen seal although it appeared tight, cleaned it up, used half a tube of Sikaflex and she was finally waterproof. Not impressed about the dashboard, that's going to be a nightmare to sort.
And this is how she is at the moment, 9 months and 5k miles on, utterly reliable, has only cost me service items (which are cheap as chips), petrol and tyres (that aren't as cheap) and has provided hours of giggling entertainment. Highly recommended and I can't see me wanting to move on for a very long time
I became bored of the Audi after the snow had melted last year, it was brilliant in a straight line but had to be pushed beyond stupid levels to be entertaining on a dry surface so I decided that I would go for something a little less refined this time and probably two seats. I was too chicken to go for a Caterham and Boxters, S2000s etc felt a little half hearted so I started researching Chimaeras. I fell in love with their set up immediately, I've got the ability to wave a spanner about so when I found out what all of the running gear and oily bits consisted of I knew that they would be fairly easy to maintain and play around with.
After a couple of months searching for a car I found one fairly local to me that ticked all of the right boxes, it was tatty but mechanically perfect with under 40k miles. I sent the seller an email and then in true PH style went off on a detective mission with the email address that he responded with and found his Facebook account. There were lots of pictures from over the years of his pride and joy, all of the bits of work that he had done on it and it was obvious from the posts that the car had wanted for nothing mechanically. I had bought it before I had even turned up on his driveway, but he didn't know that so I still managed to bid him down quite a bit too. Winner
The weekend after the quick email exchange I gave him a call and was standing on his doorstep within an hour, he didn't even get a chance to wash it. The car was exactly what I expected and as advertised, standard, solid and the reason for it being so cheap was the desperate need of paint. The outriggers had been changed by the previous owner and it had always been a 2nd/3rd car to play about in.
The first thing that I did was rub it with a soapy rag, take a photo to w
e it out on Facebook, then await the ridicule and comments about unreliability One of the other things that the car needed was the manifold gaskets changed, he had bought the gaskets with the plan of changing them but I bought the car within a couple days of it being for sale so he never got the chance. He threw the kit in along with the TVR bible, a bottle of Renovo for the roof and some furniture clinic for the interior. Bargain. Spent 6 hours swearing with a spanner soon after I had it home, definitely one of the most frustrating things to change on these.
I had soon put a couple thousand miles on it..
Next up was a quick fix on the dashboard as the wood had quite badly cracked and delaminated. £20 of ebay special and it all matched the roof, just a quick fix as I'm planing on changing the seats, carpet and the colour of the leather at some point.
Got a puncture. Drove to the nearest tyre place that google would offer, spacesavers are a stupid idea.
Then came the fogged up tail lights, the seals were all original so I cut everything out and tinted them a bit whilst I was at it..
You can see the crap paint in this one, the lacquer and paint has started to flake off at the top of the boot.
And a Pistonheads sticker..
Found out that the tyres are stupid sizes so decided that I needed new wheels in order to get better tyres at more reasonable
prices, man maths
Found a set of 5 Raceline RL7 (like the Cerbera has) in alloy off of a Cosworth, they come in magnesium too but are prone to cracking and I couldn't find a decent set.
Because I now had a set of 17 inch wheels rather than the 15 inch front and 16 inch back that are standard I obviously also needed some adjustable coilovers.
Next up was to get her ready for winter so bought some Rustbuster Epoxy from ACT and a couple cans of Bilt Hamber Dynax S50. The epoxy paint is good because it flexes a little so doesn't become brittle and flake off and the Dynax is the absolute nuts, runny wax that dries like rubber so that it just bounces off any stones etc.
The Dynax comes with a long tube so that it can be sprayed in inaccessible places..
I seem to have eaten quite a few tyres in the past 9 months
Then winter and the rain arrived, this car hasn't really seen the wet stuff in at least the 4 years that the previous owner had it and probably way before then too.. so it turned out to not be very waterproof. I spent a day with a hose and ended up replacing almost all of the mastic seals, treated the hood, cleaned all of the rubber seals and adjusted the roof and windows. I had a lot of trouble tracing down one final persistent leak that took so long to drip through that I could never figure out where it was coming from, until the leather started to fall off of the top of the dashboard
Pulled out all of the windscreen seal although it appeared tight, cleaned it up, used half a tube of Sikaflex and she was finally waterproof. Not impressed about the dashboard, that's going to be a nightmare to sort.
And this is how she is at the moment, 9 months and 5k miles on, utterly reliable, has only cost me service items (which are cheap as chips), petrol and tyres (that aren't as cheap) and has provided hours of giggling entertainment. Highly recommended and I can't see me wanting to move on for a very long time
Epic write up, had two Chimaeras, they never went wrong and also used them as my daily to work and back.
The wheels look chuffing lovely and the last picture looks like you've had a go at a land speed record across the Bonneville salt flats, pure genius and driving it like it should be.
Top Pistonheading
The wheels look chuffing lovely and the last picture looks like you've had a go at a land speed record across the Bonneville salt flats, pure genius and driving it like it should be.
Top Pistonheading
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