De catted???

[WildfireS3]

Is there any way if I can tell if my car has been de catted?

Just after being under the car last/this week I have found an number of strange things:

The exhaust has the strange kink in the back of it, and the manifolds and down pipes have been replaced.

To add this to the other things, that I have found such as:

Citroen style electric mirrors
Later type dash, shown as a V8 S dash in the bible,
A switch panel that is not featured in the bible
and a manufactuer date of 1992, I was wondering if my car has been decatted?

Mainly this is so I can find out if I ave hydraulic tappets or not.

[Batty S4C]

If de-catted your car will not have two large cylinders on the manifolds infront of the engine.
as for the tappets i don't know. I spoke to a ford specialist who said only the cossie 24v engine has hydraulic tappets....
will find out soon....

[S3 Kieran]

'Fraid you can't link up any of the above - TVR were assembling what they had in the bin in those days!!

I have a late (J) S3, yet have S2 mirrors and round knobs for fogs/fan etc. Your 'V8S' mirrors and panel are how all S3s should look - mine seems like a half-way house. I'm told that the Chimaera style bonnet (see Podie's profile) was supposedly for the S3 onwards, but most S3s still have S2 bonnets, with the air scoop on top. As for catalysts - they even appeared on some S2s FFS!

I think the Lamda probes in the down pipes (on the first bend at the top) need to stay after de-catting as they replace the airflow meters of non-cat cars...

Podie may shed some light on this, as his is now 'without pussy'

[bridgdav]

My car:-

Late 'K' plate S3..
No Cats.
S2 Bonnet.(with scoop)
V8 Dash.
Electric Citroen Mirrors.
Driving lamps.
V8 / Chim aluminium roof bars.
Electric windows.


There is no method in TVR Madness..

[Podie]

S3 Kieran said:

Podie may shed some light on this, as his is now 'without pussy'

The bonnet on my car the S4 type (as per Batty S4C's)... the S3c bonnet has the driving lamps and the forward facing hump as seen on other V6 S series.


Switch panel layouts vary enormously from what I have seen... mine is;
[Rear Fog] - [Driving lights] - [mirrors] - [fan]


Some of the Cologne V6's DO have hydraulic tappets according the records... whether any of these ever made it into a TVR is a different matter though.


Strangely, Dangerous (rare poster on these boards) has the later (V8S style) heater controls, but the bonnet with the hump...


Now, back to the original question. My car was decatted, and therefore has two de-cat pipes...

I'll take some pics over the weekend and post them up, but basically I'd expect to find some bolted sections between the manifolds and downpipes about a foot in length...

[tvrgit]

Batty S4C said:

I spoke to a ford specialist who said only the cossie 24v engine has hydraulic tappets....

Your "ford specialist" is talking out of his bottom

forget about what type of bonnet or mirrors or whatever it has.

All Granadas with cats had hydraulic tappets. TVR seem to have stuck fairly well to the same rule. So if your car has (or had) cats then the chances are it has hydraulic tappets.

The S3C was sold with cats, that's what the "C" stands for. If they are still on the car you will see them - two large family-baked-bean-can-size cylinders in the downpipes between the engine and the radiator.

Now then to make the cats work, there has to be a lambda sensor in each manifold - it's a spark-plug sized thing with 2 wires, at the top of each downpipe. If you car has those, then it's had cats at some point in its life.

Also - the cat cars don't have air flow meters (the metering is done by the ECU and the lambda sensor). The air flow meters are behind the air cleaqner element at the front of the two corrugated air intake tubes.

So if you have lambda sensors and no air flow meters, your car had cats, and probably hydraulic tappets.

If you have air flow meters and no lambda sensor, then no cats. Probably.



>> Edited by tvrgit on Thursday 15th April 19:46

[trevytrev]

With regards to the hydraulic lifters check out this thread ..

www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=24078&f=11&h=0&hw=hydraulic

If you look at the updates to the Bible you should be able to work out whether or not you have them ..!

Trev

[RichardR]

On my '92 J S3 I have:

- Citroen mirrors
- Driving lights
- Forward facing air intake on bonnet
- Straight dash
- Switch panel with r.fog/driving lights/mirrors/fan
- V8S heater controls (built into veneer & illuminated)
- Air flow meters
- No catalytic converters

And I'm sure I have noisy tappets...

[tvrgit]

If you are used to adjusting tappets, then you'll notice the difference if you try to adjust one - it just doesn't feel "right" - the adjuster doesn't give the results you would expect it to. (I had a granada before with the same engine (but non-hydraulic tappets), so knew how it should have adjusted, and the TVR felt different).

I thought that somebody had bolluxed all mine up before I bought it so I adjusted them anyway - then because I was uneasy about the "feel" of what I had done I looked around and found they were hydraulic, so had to reset them. Which was a pain...

Air flow meters and no cats means not hydraulic. Probably.

[Batty S4C]

tvrgit said:

If you are used to adjusting tappets, then you'll notice the difference if you try to adjust one - it just doesn't feel "right" - the adjuster doesn't give the results you would expect it to. (I had a granada before with the same engine (but non-hydraulic tappets), so knew how it should have adjusted, and the TVR felt different). I thought that somebody had bolluxed all mine up before I bought it so I adjusted them anyway - then because I was uneasy about the "feel" of what I had done I looked around and found they were hydraulic, so had to reset them. Which was a pain... Air flow meters and no cats means not hydraulic. Probably.

can you tell from looking at the engine itself if it has hydraulic tappets?
any tell tell signs?
i have removed the rocker covers (gaskets are dead) so any signs? they look adjustable to me....

[tvrgit]

they looked adjustable to me too... and they are... if you want to bollux it up like I did!

The valve heads, rocker shaft and rockers etc are exactly the same, there is no difference (as far as I am aware) just by looking. The tappets themselves are at the BOTTOM of the pushrods (ie in the VEE of the block, where the camshaft is) so you can't see them...

As I say, if you have adjusted the "non-hydraulics" before then you would recognise the difference as soon as you put a spanner on (well I would now, but that's with 20:20 hindsight...) - the hydraulics ones just don't adjust in and out as you would expect - and all the gaps feel too tight to start with... and adjusting them seems to make no difference for about 2 full turns - by which time you've bolluxed it...

[tvrmark]

Cat cars also have a MAP sensor. Its a little black plasic box bolted to the bulkhead with wires coming out of the bottom and a tube (bottom I think)from t inlet manifold.

Mark