Tuscan Tales

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m4tti

Original Poster:

5,426 posts

154 months

Saturday 4th October 2014
quotequote all
I had a thread up in the home mechanics forum regarding a specific tool and after describing what I had been up to duly said that I would post a few words and some pictures detailing what I’d been up to with the Tuscan.. Usually people post as they go along, but as time was tight with other commitments I’ve made this a retrospective form of write up. It may need delivering in a few parts!

This is the story of a TVR Tuscan, running one and being hands on with one. I’ve posted this here as many folk on the TVR forum will pour scorn and insist it’s a highly toleranced beast that needs the fettling of a TVR magician. It couldn’t possibly be looked after by a mortal in a home garage.

It is a story of an enthusiast having a go, getting involved and getting closer to the car, and developing a better understanding of it. Making new friends along the way, but still getting help from old ones ?.
Some of you will read this thinking this is the sort of thing I want to get my hands on, others will look at it as warning of what can happen… and this is a relatively good example of a Tuscan! And be warned if you scan the Tuscan forum closely enough for experiences you will find far, far worse.

Sit back, put your feet up, get a beer and enjoy the tale!

And before any TVR fanatics get their pants in a knot, these are simply my conclusions from the investigations I performed. They may be right they may be wrong… but they are what I have chosen to do being a risk adverse kind of chap!
Background

I bought this car in 2011, from a very nice couple near st neots. I’d been looking for some time. I wanted a car that could be a project car. Preferably not too much engine work required but maybe some tidying, suspension interior etc.
After looking at a number of cars described as “immaculate” (by what I can only assume were magic mushroom abusers), I happened upon this car. A late 2001 Tuscan 4.0L. Ideally I wanted a car that had at least received a top end rebuild (explanation to come) and didn’t have enough water in it to be an aquarium. This car had, had what I had assumed was a top end rebuild the cams and followers replaced with what many regard as the leading and highest profile TVR specialist’s cams and followers. So I had confidence that the top end would be fine, it didn’t smoke, or over heat and the chap selling it said it used very little oil. It came with its original invoice and a folder of bills big enough to buy an entry level BMW. It had every single extra specified from Air con, Hydrtrack LSD, wool carpets in the boot, and above all I had a good feeling about the car and the chap selling it.

I took the train from Kings Cross one Friday after work up to St Neots and the deal was done and I was on my way home to Kent.


Why a Tuscan of all things!

I really wanted to build an Ultima GTR but I didn’t really have the time (4 dogs, wife etc) it would never get finished. I could have bought one but I wanted one with an LS7 and those were still commanding good money. I’d had a Porsche, it was great! Never went wrong, but just seemed a bit dull.

I’d also built a Peugeot 205 MI16 by ripping the engine and management system from a 405 MI16 and putting it into the 205. I enjoyed that as I like being hands on but those were more electrical challenges transferring the management system and putting a new loom together, with a few fabrication challenges on the way.
Shortly before I bought the Tuscan I bought a VR6 engine, which I was going to Turbo charge, but to get the 500 bhp I was looking for was going to require some serious parts investment so came to my senses and sold it all on.
Something that would go like this….

I came to the conclusion that the half way house, which would give buckets of performance and give me plenty to tinker with was a TVR!

I tried Cerebra’s but I’m fairly wide, and they just felt like driving around in coffins with their very square transmission tunnel.
Then one day I went to TAG11 – TVR’s at GoodWood 2011. There I saw Tuscans and Sagaris going round on track. I heard the speed six sound track and was hooked. In particular one car got my attention a navy blue Tuscan, which was Racing Green TVRs demonstrator and went like the clappers.
The Early Days..

I bought the car with the mindset that I’d track it with my Dad. He was a biker and loved the way the speed six revved up. He had recently been diagnosed with cancer and wasn’t in the right place to drive it, so got me to give him the biking fix and take him out in the Tuscan. He would urge me to boot it at every opportunity far harder than I was willing to on the public highway, giving him the feeling that he enjoyed on the bikes. He never did get to track the car, but I had some good memories taking him out in it during his last few months so the car took on a new type of sentimental value to me. It was here to stay…


Within 2 months of having the car the fantastic servicing by the previous garage shone through.. not!

Reversing into the driveway a jubilee clip let go between the rad to oil cooler hose. After shutting her down and investigating I saw the offending jubilee clip split in half. I went to remove it only to receive a cut to my index finger. Within 4 days I would be in hospital with an infection tracking up my arm to my heart.. you could physically see the red line going up the vein in my forearm, through my upper arm, and up to my neck. After intravenous anti biotics, and a short stay in hospital I was back on my feet.. but realised you didn’t even need to drive TVR for it to kill you.
And this was a car with 10’s of thousands of pounds worth of bills.. Seriously.

In the first year I did a 12k mile service on it including valve clearances and everything seemed fine, it pulled like a train (albeit one that sounded like it was about to explode) and would show most things it encountered on the road its shrinking rear number plate.
Due to work etc I only did about 1500 miles a year over the first two years. Plus my wife hated driving in it.
In mid to late 2013 I noticed that the oil was being used more frequently than I anticipated.. to the tune of 300 miles a litre. Something wasn’t quite right.

Problems..
So in November 2013 I set about diagnosing this sudden hunger for oil. I did a compression test and all of the cylinders had cracking compression, but two were higher than the others. Reviewing the spark plugs the cylinders with the most compression were also those with the blackest, wettest, fouled spark plugs.









There was obviously valve guide/seal related issues on the rear two cylinders. I was 99% sure it was this. The car demonstrated all the classic symptoms, occasional smokey hot start and if blipping the throttle having sat in traffic (oil at its thinnest) a puff of blue smoke would come from the exhaust.


But how could this be, the car had a top end rebuild in 2010.. I carefully went through all the bills and whilst they had the engine out doing investigating the top end tick the garage in question simply replaced the cams and followers with the latest spec higher quality products. They touched nothing else. Genius!
At this point having confirmed a few things and being confident of the issue I started looking around at parts suppliers and discussing requirements with them.


The Inherent speed six problem – a brief summary:

The head consist of 24 valves, consisting of 24 finger followers actuating valves as the cam shaft lobe drives the follower.
Its fairly widely known that the majority of the speed six engine issues from the early days were caused by components being manufactured using processes/materials which were simply not fit for purpose. Cams and followers were the primary cause, as the case hardening failed so did the cams and followers allowing metallic debris to move through the engine.
The performance parts power house that is “India” was used to manufacture some of the early parts… and we all know that only the highest quality engine parts come from India (in case your reading this and believing it.. this is pure jest..they don’t)
Some said it was TVR’s meddling with the original Al Melling design causing poor oil flow to the rear of the head and thus poor lubrication to the rear of the head… But then as rumour has it TVR ran the heads submerged in oil, and still there were valve train failures.

In my research having spoken to several leading experts one of which, had engineers reviews conducted on the design, it became apparent that there was more than simply lubrication problems. The reports essentially revealed that the geometry in the head would always result in some form of cam and follower wear regardless of material used (interesting pics to follow). Add to this, that there was also the rumour that the head castings weren’t the greatest quality and in some cases “were off” contributing to the valve train geometry problem, I had some thinking to do.


The Solution..
After ringing around and speaking to various suppliers I decided to use Racing green TVR. They weren’t a million miles away and could supply me all the parts I needed to rebuild the head as is using some of the best component suppliers in the world. Above all their MD Colin was willing to spend significant time on the phone with me taking me through all of the options available.

Initially the “as is” refurb is what I had in mind. Use the highest quality parts and refurbish the head. There was a nagging doubt in my mind about this strategy that due to some of the problems outlined above this could be a lottery. It could last 10k miles or 100k miles a lot would depend on a specific head casting. I wanted to eliminate that risk.
Racing Green had another solution though… to me this was the ultimate solution to the head “issues” the triple “f” – FFF which stands for “Finger follower Free.

That’s right.. no finger followers, in the hey day of speed six head issues they went their own way commissioning a new head design, which removed the finger followers and replaced them with buckets. This original design has evolved in to what it is now, the FFF2 and this is what I went for.

The FFF 2 is manufactured for Racing Green by Simon Armstrong of ultimate performance. Simon is well known in the performance world and has a F1 engineering back ground.

http://www.ultimatep.co.uk/shopinfo_company_backgr...


Each FFF2 is CnC machined by Simon and is simply a work of art. As well removing any inherent design issues, the FFF2 head, due to its evolved and highly accurate manufacturing process also delivers a power increase.
It was a lot more money than the simple head refurb but would give me piece of mind and a bit of a performance hike.
On top of all this it is completely interchangeable with the standard head.

Oh and there was the thought of it being able to produce this sort of power …..
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=3&a...

Decisions made- time to pull it apart:

Removing the Engine… Easy peasy (Not)

Once the decision was made to rebuild the engine I set about removing it. Fortunately I have a scissor lift type ramp in my garage. I decided I would drop the engine from below, onto a skid, which I made up from an old work top bought from a charity shop and a set of castors I found in my dads garage (he was a bit of a hoarder and I’d always shake my head wondering why he saved all this stuff but bizarrely these came in bloody handy).

Theres no magic to this, but it is a fairly length job. Everything needs to come off, Exhaust, prop shaft, gearbox plus lots of smaller parts. I had my best mate Mark helping me do the engine removal. It took us about 3 whole weekends of Sunday’s and I soon understood why specialist wanted about £1 – 1.5k to remove and refit the engine. In reality it was probably 2 Sundays doing and 1 staring at it with stellas in hand ?
The engine is canted over about 10 – 15 degrees. For it to clear the chassis it essentially needs pushing in the opposite direction… but its not as simple as you think virtually ever ancillary needs to come off to clear the chassis rails.. power steering pump, alternator, air con compressor, plus all of the oil hose which appeared to have never been touched so were seized in place.

We spent nearly a whole weekend scratching our heads as no matter what way we tilted the engine it wouldn’t clear the chassis rails. Many Stella breaks were taken at this point but with little inspiration.
After studying the engine some more whilst drinking one of the magical Stella’s it was clear that the only thing preventing the engine from being removed was the Aircon pulley. The air conditioning compressor is driven by a pulley from the Auxillary shaft located below the compressor. The pulley on the end of the auxiliary shaft sits tightly between the crank damper (literally 1.5mm ‘s from it) and the timing cover. The exposed end of the auxillary shaft was located at least 5 mm inside the pulley.. It looked impossible to remove, but sure enough after removing all of the locating screws and persuading it with a club hammer it was possible to knock it at an angle and clear the damper.. The things you wish you’d known before starting a job.

The ramp played a major part in the engine removal and it would be a pretty serious job to attempt without one. I have an engine crane, but you would need a seriously robust one with a long lifting arm on it as the engine is set a long way back and is physically long in dimensions. We did look at using the crane but when going to lift, it simply wanted to move forward and munch through the service bonnet..
One big hurdle out the way, and the engine was on the bench.










Edited by m4tti on Monday 27th October 12:18

RS Grant

1,416 posts

232 months

Saturday 4th October 2014
quotequote all
Look forward to this thread progressing.

Lad I used to work with had the tough dilemma of whether to bring a Cerb 4.5 or a Tuscan each day... some of the ownership stories he told me were brilliantly quirky and the amount of looks that either car got, even parked, was phenomenal.


Cheers,
Grant

200Plus Club

10,673 posts

277 months

Saturday 4th October 2014
quotequote all
Very interesting read please keep it going

LanceRS

2,171 posts

136 months

Saturday 4th October 2014
quotequote all
Good lad, always loved TVRs, looking forward to following this thread.

LanceRS

2,171 posts

136 months

Saturday 4th October 2014
quotequote all
Good lad, always loved TVRs, looking forward to following this thread.

Dr G

15,159 posts

241 months

Saturday 4th October 2014
quotequote all
Lots of very hands on TVR owners around here, a friend of mine runs a 4.5 Cerbera (ukkid35) and has had some similarly difficult days of head scratching keeping it going without professional assistance.

We got pretty good at removing the gearbox from it...

mwstewart

7,554 posts

187 months

Saturday 4th October 2014
quotequote all
Following with interest. It seems a shame that you will loose the finger followers, ut in that position I'd make the same choice as you. Looking forward to updates.

wongthecorrupter

2,382 posts

170 months

Saturday 4th October 2014
quotequote all
Great right up Matt, I didn't realise you had been through so much with the tuscan

m4tti

Original Poster:

5,426 posts

154 months

Saturday 4th October 2014
quotequote all
Hello Simon. Hope the trip went well.

Will put up the next chapter tomorrow and hopefully a link to all the rebuild pics!

wongthecorrupter

2,382 posts

170 months

Sunday 5th October 2014
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Trip was amazing thanks Matt, luckily the car was perfect. Hopefully your car will be bang on for years to come after your investment

purpleliability

627 posts

184 months

Sunday 5th October 2014
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Great thread so far, look forward to reading the rest.

m4tti

Original Poster:

5,426 posts

154 months

Sunday 5th October 2014
quotequote all
Part two...

In process of removing the engine there was the odd nice surprise.. I did find that there was an Race Proved slave cylinder fitted, which typically don’t fail so randomly or frequently and it also saved me buying one at £350.






Stripping it down

I spent the next couple of weekends systematically pulling the engine apart and putting parts into zip lock bags and labelling them accordingly, and taking pictures.
Again there was nothing particularly difficult at this stage. The crank damper seemed to have rusted nicely in place and trashed the harmonic damper removing tool I had.. it came off eventually with a 4 legged gear puller. Once removed the timing cover could come off exposing the timing chains, oil pumps and water pump.



Here you can clearly see the duplex chains (these would be going)



Measuring the existing timing

The speed six has absolutely no timing marks on it. You need a degree wheel and a DTI. Acquiring a large timing wheel in this country seem s almost impossible these days so I had a moroso degree wheel imported from the states. The larger the wheel the easier it is.



DSC_0092 by Barkley Dogue, on Flickr


I slowly chugged through it and eventually got the head off. Once the head was removed it became clear what the issue was. Looking in several of the inlet and exhaust ports oil was evident on the valve stems. Reaching into the ports I could physically wiggle the valves in the guides! No wonder it was using oil.



In fact the majority of the guides were fubar'd

DSC_0089 by Barkley Dogue, on Flickr

DSC_0085 by Barkley Dogue, on Flickr

DSC_0091 by Barkley Dogue, on Flickr

This is at 39k miles!!

There was plenty of oil on top of the pistons too.. it was collecting in the valve pockets!! At least the pistons wouldnt get stuck in the bores.yikes

Bit like an oil BBQ..








Edited by m4tti on Sunday 5th October 20:05

B'stard Child

28,324 posts

245 months

Sunday 5th October 2014
quotequote all
My new favorite thread

Why

1. It's a six banger TVR
2. OP is getting dirty with it
3. OP is sharing

Bookmarked for the journey

John D.

17,705 posts

208 months

Sunday 5th October 2014
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Great thread. I'd love to know how to do this stuff.

JackP1

1,269 posts

161 months

Sunday 5th October 2014
quotequote all
Bookmarked. Can't wait to see how it turns out!

amusingduck

9,396 posts

135 months

Monday 6th October 2014
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Bookmarked!

Mark Benson

7,498 posts

268 months

Monday 6th October 2014
quotequote all
B'stard Child said:
My new favorite thread

Why

1. It's a six banger TVR
2. OP is getting dirty with it
3. OP is sharing

Bookmarked for the journey
Agreed.

Also, 4. OP is writing a detailed, informative account of what he's doing.

Looking forward to further instalments.

mwstewart

7,554 posts

187 months

Monday 6th October 2014
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Interesting. The cam chain sprokets look to be quite worn too.

dom9

8,040 posts

208 months

Monday 6th October 2014
quotequote all
Following with interest!

m4tti

Original Poster:

5,426 posts

154 months

Monday 6th October 2014
quotequote all
Part 3.. The strip Down Continues

Stripping the head some more revealed more interesting (ish) evidence on its health. The cams looked all good, and the majority of the followers were ok… but as you reached the rear followers evidence of wear was visible. You could feel this wear when running your finger nail over it. When I first visited Colin the MD of Racing green I had said that I couldn't see any wear when I did the last tappet service, he'd said Id really need to remove the cams to see it and sure enough it was there, albeit in an early phase..

Front cylinder followers.. nothing too awful

DSC_0098 by Barkley Dogue, on Flickr

and again..

DSC_0103 by Barkley Dogue, on Flickr

Very faint markings laterally across this follower..

DSC_0105 by Barkley Dogue, on Flickr

Rear cylinders, markings clearly visible, almost scoring type of wear.

DSC_0095 by Barkley Dogue, on Flickr


Bear in mind these followers are almost in-accessible in situ as the engine is mounted a long way back, front mid. The last two followers sit under the windscreen. Essentially you wouldn't know this until you are this far.


Remember these had been replaced 10k miles ago with the latest cams and followers. Was it poor lubrication to the rear of the head or was it the geometry problems… who knows, but having got this far it confirmed in my head that the Racing Green FFF was the right long term solution.

A bit more work and I'm close to revealing the bottom end. The sacavenge pump is mounted in the sump, and both the sump and crank end plate are RTF'd in place. Careful patient removal is the order of the day. Levering things ends in broken ally engine parts. That's a pretend club hanner in the picture hehe

DSC_0109 by Barkley Dogue, on Flickr

Sumps off..

DSC_0111 by Barkley Dogue, on Flickr



And we're there.. main bearing caps pulled. Time to have a look whats going on

DSC_0114 by Barkley Dogue, on Flickr

DSC_0125 by Barkley Dogue, on Flickr


Once I was down to just block and crank I measured up the big end clearances and measured the end float. All looked in spec so I was relatively happy with the state of the bottom end. The bearings themselves looked reasonable in terms of wear, but there were some signs of metal having entered the oil system as there was some light scoring. The metal entering the oil system would have occured when the original TVR cams and followers failed (remember these have already been replaced)

IMG_0994 by Barkley Dogue, on Flickr


IMG_0993 by Barkley Dogue, on Flickr

IMG_0992 by Barkley Dogue, on Flickr

IMG_0991 by Barkley Dogue, on Flickr





And as a benchmark for those who are interested here's the a normal wear pattern..




End float...acceptable

IMG_1002 by Barkley Dogue, on Flickr


IMG_1003 by Barkley Dogue, on Flickr
I measured the big end clearances using plastigauge, which although not the ultimate in measuring equipment it was fine for what I was doing, and in fact as I had the crank measured to determine whether it was out of round (more on this later), which it wasn’t, which provided more confidence in the measurements.

DSC_0131 by Barkley Dogue, on Flickr

DSC_0135 by Barkley Dogue, on Flickr

DSC_0144 by Barkley Dogue, on Flickr

So, I'm reasonably happy at this stage.. but there's more surprises to come!!





Edited by m4tti on Monday 6th October 22:23


Edited by m4tti on Monday 6th October 22:54