Is the Cerbera really more expensive to maintain....

[Pursyluv]

Gazzab said:

Wouldn't dream of selling mine - it has a wheel that needs a refurb, has a stone chip, a small scratch on the wing and a rattle from the exhaust. All that needs addressing. Almost undriveable as it is ;-)

With a list that long I'm not interested

[gruffalo]

Willtl said:

Is this on top of insurance, tax, petrol and consumables (such as tyres)? I was thinking (hoping!) £100 per month on top of the four items I listed, but guess I'm living in dream world. What is the average life of a gearbox and clutch and how much do they cost? My driving style is pretty clutch friendly and the only clutch I've ever had changed was on my old Ford Capri (but given that engine, gearbox, clutch and pretty much every important part needed replacing I don't put that on me).

No, tyres and insurance included, some years it will cost you very little others more.

[gruffalo]

ukkid35 said:

gruffalo said:

Mechanically they are very strong with the weakest link probably being the gearbox.

I might not have found the correct official spec, but a quick search suggests that the T5WC is good for 330ftlb, however a half decent AJP8 will produce 350ftlb or more, some are much more.

That is why I have driven to Stamford in my 928 for the Burghley house meet, but my Cerb is on axle stands at home. My 227k mile 928 is just so much more reliable than my Cerb it is laughable.

Hence why mine is now all quaife inside the standard a modified casing, looks the same outside but semi straight cut inside.

Should not break again.

[Willtl]

Gazzab said:

What this thread misses is the skimping... There are tons of cerbs that are run with problems ignored/left/unnoticed by owners. Many Tvr garages these days have to waste tons of time trying to help customers decide what they aren going to fix or how to bodge it.
Same with lots of marques. I sold my D2 today. I think the buyer got a bargain as chassis perfect, engine replaced, suspension air bags replaced and all small niggles attended to (and hardly a scratch on the bodywork). Most of the comparable d2's out there are all pending money pits. I've already spent the money, lucky new owner.

Interesting. Another thought that has crossed my mind, are those of you with the bigger bills driving/pushing the cars quite hard? For me, it will be more of a "trophy" car that will get quite an easy life in my hands that although I tend to use fairly frequently (probably 2 days per week) will not be asked to break out a sweat and mostly will be used for short 5-10 mile journeys, with maybe one or two 150 mile round trips per month. TBH, the costs mentioned in this thread have put me off as I'd really hoped 1-1.5k per year would be enough. I can stretch to more, but it seems selfish to spend so much on a hobby that could be used for family treats.

I'm going to scrutinise the service records of the 2 cars I'm going to see tomorrow to see what their average cost per year works out to and also get a better idea of what I'll need to budget for outside of the 2 year warranty I'm being offered. Sadly my excitement of becoming a TVR owner is quickly being replaced with the fear of being stuck with a car I know will require constant expenditure, a kind of buyer's remorse before I even buy it!

Edited by Willtl on Friday 10th April 23:26

[Gazzab]

Looking at their bills will confirm what they have spent but not what they haven't spent.

[Willtl]

True, but I'll be able to see when brakes, clutch etc were last replaced and how often.

[Tanguero]

Jubag said:

AJP8 is a very good engine. It's major service is somothing like every 24k.

Minor service 6k, major service 12k - and don't miss it unless you fancy running the risk of the valve clearances disappearing.

[CerbWill]

I'm coming to the end of my first year of Cerbera ownership and, having done all the spannering myself, I've spent the following:

Starter Motor - £200 - Fitted unit packed up 3 days after purchase. Replacement unit then developed a fault, aparently due to clutch dust ingress, which was fixed under warranty.

Recommissioned Air Con system - £350- Fitted a new condenser & filter-drier, had to have 1 new hose made up. Took it to Kwik-Fit to get it filled up, which was entertaining watching them try to get in it and start it despite my offer to do it myself or show them how to do it.

Alarm & Immobiliser - £300 - On removing the helmet holder I found that someone had replaced the original setup with a cheap looking aftermarket effort. Replaced with original spec setup from Abacus Car Alarms.

Clutch Slave Cylinder - £300 - My car had a history of clutch slave problems which the previous owner thought he'd got to the bottom of. Swapped the TVR unit for the upgraded Raceproved item. Hopefully sorted, but we'll see. Also took the opportunity to freshen up the chassic around the exhaust manifold where the powder coating flakes off due to heat.

Heatshielding - £60 - Replaced engine bay and prop-shaft guard heatshield whilst engine was out. Bought a roll of heatshield from eBay and got the Mrs to sew it as required.

Battery - £75 - The usual, wouldn't hold a charge. Got a barely used Optima Red Top from eBay.

Rear Brake Caliper - £110 - During a recent 12k service I carried out myself, with a lot of help from LincsCerb, I found the bleed screws on 1 caliper were rusted solid. Managed to get them out with an eazi-out but mangled the thread in the process. Bought a spare from Douglas Valley breakers.

Door Seals - £60 - Replaced the Mk1 type seal with the Mk2 type. Along with sealign the clutch cover properly it seems ot have stopped it leaking.

Interior re-colour - £275 - Used a furniture clinic repair and recolour kit. Also took the passenger seat to a local upholsterers to get a split seam re-sewn.

Add soundproofing & recarpet - £300. Soundproofing from a couple of different online stores, and carpet from Coverdale Carpets. Made a right mess of the passenger side carpet so I'll be re-doing that at some stage soon.

Coolant leak from O/S water rail - £10 - Replaced O-rings.

Wiper system refurb - Pretty much free - Disassembled, regreased, and reassembled wiper gearbox and rack. Resulted in much better operation.

Replaced stearing rack gaiters - Got these in a box of spares that came with the car.

Handbrake - A common problem with these cars, swapped the cable attachment point to the upper hole on the lever to get more leverage.

12k Service - £250 - Cost £250 ish for all oils, filters & plugs.


Total - £2290 and I've covered about 6k miles. God knows what it'd have cost taking it to a dealer, but much more than I can afford.

Stuff that needs doing.

Water temp gauge needs repair. Can't bear not running it for the 6 weeks it'll take Speedy Cables to fix it. I'll schedule it in for 1 of my trips away.


Stuff that I want doing.

1x Wheel refurb.

Exhaust could do with new a new mid section, and the welding on the back box looks distinctly amateurish too. However theres no holes or leaks so for the moment its serviceable.

Respray.

Stuff that I'm not bothered about (yet).

Windscreen starting to delaminate. Doesn't appear to have worsened during my ownership so hopefully the application of some tigerseal has stopped moisture ingress.

Looking at valve clearances the engine has 36k or so left in it before a rebuild.

[ukkid35]

gruffalo said:

Hence why mine is now all quaife inside the standard a modified casing, looks the same outside but semi straight cut inside.

Should not break again.

Would be good to get a ride in your car to see how much it whines. And anyway I'd need to be sitting down if you were to tell me how much it costs.

[LooneyTunes]

Willtl said:

Interesting. Another thought that has crossed my mind, are those of you with the bigger bills driving/pushing the cars quite hard? For me, it will be more of a "trophy" car that will get quite an easy life in my hands that although I tend to use fairly frequently (probably 2 days per week) will not be asked to break out a sweat and mostly will be used for short 5-10 mile journeys, with maybe one or two 150 mile round trips per month. TBH, the costs mentioned in this thread have put me off as I'd really hoped 1-1.5k per year would be enough. I can stretch to more, but it seems selfish to spend so much on a hobby that could be used for family treats.

You're often looking at two different types of expenditure for "pushed" vs "trophy" vehicles.

With the former people tend to not spend as much on maintaining them cosmetically but instead spend on consumables and racy bits. A lot of "trophy" car owners want them to look cosmetically great (which costs) and still suffer from annual servicing + upgradeitus (when you decide you need that set of nitrons/eibachs + fitting + geo you've just thrown £2k into the money pit). Of course, there are some that want both and end up with some serious bills, but the same applies with any marque.

There are ways costs can sometimes be trimmed (I know some will use s/h, or recon parts, or do some home spannering) but equally possible to spend "needlessly" (a car doesn't drive any better are a result of adding swapping the nasty standard filler cap for an alloy one).

With any high performance car there is a basic need to keep it properly maintained and it's probably false economy to cut too many corners as doing so can hit you at resale (although once you've had one for a while you'll have to force yourself to imagine a situation in which you'd ever sell).

BTW: have you checked the cost of insurance? If you're adding a TVR as an additional car (and don't have the NCB to deploy) then it can be expensive...

[Jubag]

Cerberaherts said:

Don't know where you got this information from, but I work on a lot of Porsche, and I can tell you that 997 coil packs are 28 quid. No problem with the IMS bearing on the 997 either. Your thinking of the 996 and boxster engine. Even then, if you extrapolate the number of IMS failures compared to the number of vehicles produced you would find the percentage is small. Water and oil mix? Lots of short journeys cause that, same with any other car, likewise rear main seal, any engine, in any car, can suffer rear main leak, the 997 is no more prone. Rusty brake disks? Yes, washing a car fitted with cross-drilled discs then leaving the discs wet will cause them to corrode. Same applies to any car fitted with the same. I agree with the bore score issue you mention, but the rest is just mis-information.

My point being was that you can talk about any car and come up with a list of faults that are irrelevant unless you actually have those problems on your car. As for the Boxter, 996/997, was it the fifth stab at the IMS problem that Porsche got it sorted? Lets keep our fingers cross shall we? Its the only car i have owned where you can actually buy an electric sump plug that warns you if it detects metal shards building up in your engine and that it is about to eat its self for lunch! Oil/water build up in the filler tube, all I can say is I used to to 50 miles every day in mine and had to clear the crap out of that tube constantly. Cross drilled or not Modern Porsche dics rust like buggary. RMS are a problem on Boxter 996 & 997. On the 997 alone the spesifacation has been altered more than once. Coil pack price was not really what I meant to allude to more the frequency in which you may need to replace them. I think on reflection using the Porsche as an analogy was a bit to easy.

Edited by Jubag on Saturday 11th April 11:08

Edited by Jubag on Saturday 11th April 11:14

[Willtl]

LooneyTunes said:

BTW: have you checked the cost of insurance? If you're adding a TVR as an additional car (and don't have the NCB to deploy) then it can be expensive...

Yes, without NCB it will cost me about £680. If I use my one year NCB from my BMW it will drop to about £380. If today goes well and I decide to buy I'll be part exchanging my BMW so I'll take the NCB from that until my insurance comes up for renewal around October. I'll then do some jiggling as I have an A6 taking all my NCB (more than 10 years) and I'll swap it over with the TVR if it will give me a saving over all.

[waveydavey1000]

These cars are brilliant...what you,ve got to do is look round and buy a good one (easier said than done I know) My main concern, having done some research was chassis and clutch/slave. The clutch was being done as I viewed the car and chassis good.

I,ve had the car almost a year and have devoloped a slight misfire, changed coil packs and lambdas and will change plugs and leads over the weekend (cost for parts around £350). I enjoy doing the spannering but I'm no "expert" but can use a spanner, so this keeps costs down.

There really is no car quite like it for looks and road presence. My mate has a Ferrari 360, it cost around £50k, mine was a 3rd of that price and he cant leave me!
The other day the Cerb stopped 2 teenage lads open mouthed as I drove past!

Its a TVR, but theres alot of crap written about the reliability etc. If you can use a spanner...great, just have a slush fund for majors and BUY ONE!

[jesfirth]

I have had a 400se and a cerb and now have a griff 500. The cerb was an awesome car but it is far more fragile than a rover engined car simply because it has a lot more power which breaks things. I think that if you drive it on the road at a modest pace and it is a good well maintained car it will be fine.

If however like me you do a lot of track time you will quickly find that they are made of soft cheese and will constantly break. In the 5 years I had mine I had 4 engine rebuilds, 2 gearboxes, 1 diff, probably 5 snapped drive shafts, a rear diff, a snapped rear diff mount every 6 months, cracked manifolds twice, At least 1 starter motor every year sometimes more, 3 clutch plates, a clutch slave seal every 18 months. Etc etc. it cost a fortune. Having said all that it was an absolute beast and when it was working I loved it.

I only got rid of it because I just could not afford the big bills after the world changed in 2008/9. I do exactly the same in the griff that I did in the cerb and in 4 years other than destroying an engine which was my fault as I did not have a baffled sump I have had no other major failures.

BUT. Cerbs are so awesome that I think at some stage in your life everyone should own one. Just buy one and don't worry about it - after all it's only money and life is short.

[cerb4.5lee]

When I had mine Jason at Str8six said it was the most expensive model to maintain in the range and he suggested to me that for my first TVR a Griff or Chim would have been a better option in terms of running costs.

As with any car its always the luck of the draw though in terms of whether it will be a good one or not, all the little niggles I had with mine seem commonplace from what the owners I used to speak to at meets said.

My main problem was that I am not handy with the spanners and I haven't got deep pockets either and you need to have one or the other...so that left me in no mans land!

[ukkid35]

cerb4.5lee said:

My main problem was that I am not handy with the spanners and I haven't got deep pockets either and you need to have one or the other...so that left me in no mans land!

You had a lovely car Lee, shame you had to let it go.

But you are absolutely right: you need one or the other, or it will end in tears.

[cerb4.5lee]

ukkid35 said:

cerb4.5lee said:

My main problem was that I am not handy with the spanners and I haven't got deep pockets either and you need to have one or the other...so that left me in no mans land!

You had a lovely car Lee, shame you had to let it go.

But you are absolutely right: you need one or the other, or it will end in tears.

Thanks for the kind words Paul and I always enjoy watching the clips of you enjoying yours and having fun in it on the track.

[LooneyTunes]

Willtl said:

Yes, without NCB it will cost me about £680. If I use my one year NCB from my BMW it will drop to about £380. If today goes well and I decide to buy I'll be part exchanging my BMW so I'll take the NCB from that until my insurance comes up for renewal around October. I'll then do some jiggling as I have an A6 taking all my NCB (more than 10 years) and I'll swap it over with the TVR if it will give me a saving over all.

That's not too bad - when I got mine I had a range of quotes.

Putting the wife on doubled a lot of them as she'd not previously insured on anything properly fast - still not driven it though (first time she offered it was dark and raining so a wine free dinner seemed like a better idea!).

[Willtl]

In the end, ended up driving a Griffith as well. I preferred the Cerbera slightly, but the Griff will be significantly cheaper to run. Also going against the Griff was the seat, pushed into my upper back. Dealer said they could do something about it though. Driving back though showed me how much more comfortable and smoother the BMW is (and I'd have to sell this to fund any TVR). Think I'll put the BMW up for sale on Gumtree and see if any interest.

[jamieduff1981]

Willtl said:

LooneyTunes said:

BTW: have you checked the cost of insurance? If you're adding a TVR as an additional car (and don't have the NCB to deploy) then it can be expensive...

Yes, without NCB it will cost me about £680. If I use my one year NCB from my BMW it will drop to about £380. If today goes well and I decide to buy I'll be part exchanging my BMW so I'll take the NCB from that until my insurance comes up for renewal around October. I'll then do some jiggling as I have an A6 taking all my NCB (more than 10 years) and I'll swap it over with the TVR if it will give me a saving over all.

Who's that with? My insurance costs £400 with NCD mirrored against one of my daily driver policies through ManningUK.

Don't get mixed up between maintenance and upgraditis either. This thread has a lot of confusion in it.