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

[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!

[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).

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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

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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.

[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

[Wedg1e]

Right, so I finally ran out of excuses and decided it was time to crack on with this job.

The radiator was refitted using all new hose clips and stainless bolts (OK, I couldn't find any stainless bar so the top spacers were turned from mild, I suppose I could have just cleaned the old ones up...). Fantastic pic from my camera, as usual...



I refilled the cooling system with water (no point in adding antifreeze at this stage in case it pees out everywhere!) and installed my home-brew pressure tester:



I pumped up the system but hadn't got to half a Bar before a couple of the hoses started seeping, so a quick tighten sorted them and more air was added...



I left the car for half an hour and the pressure didn't drop so I started the engine and warmed-up till the fan started cycling; the pressure gauge barely got above 1 Bar which is normal for the V8. The thermostat housing has a stupid leak which only shows up once the car has been stood for a while; when hot and under pressure it doesn't leak so I guess it's down to some distortion of its mounting face. Another job for another day...

Meanwhile I'd glassed the captive bolts in to the front airdam and cut some new stainless steel mesh to make a new intake grille. The top edge was stiffened in similar fashion to the original by being folded back on itself and rivetted to a length of stainless strip:



A trial fit of the airdam shows that some of the bolts don't want to slot straight into their holes so bit of fettling will be needed... watch this space

I'd also rewired the feeds to the front driving lamps but when I temporarily connected the lamps to the new wires and hit the lights switch, nothing happened. A bit of ransacking the old grey matter and a consultation with my fat file of 390 notes reminded me that the fuse labelled as being for the driving lamps is actually for the cooling fan and a spare, unlabelled fuseholder is the one for the lamps. Dropped in a fuse and Roberto is your Italian aunt's sister's brother. I think.

The Cibie driving lamps were used on quite a lot of cars over the years from the mundane Peugeot 205 to some big Yank tanks. They were available in chrome finish or a crackle black vinyl coating and with driving (long-range) or fog light lens patterns:



One of my casings had rotted away to nothing so I scavenged some more from Ebay. The fog laps tend to be more plentiful and cheaper but as all the parts are interchangeable you can switch them around to create what you need. I decided I prefer the black finish but only had one so I powder-coated one of my better spares to sort-of match it. I'll swap the lenses before I fit them; being clumsy I'm sure to drop them on the floor when refitting so I'll leave the fog lenses in for now!