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
I used window tint film on the inside of the clear lenses, it's inside out that way so looks dark without any light behind it but the lights show up really well when they're on, almost like they're not tinted at all.
Thanks for all of the nice comments people, it's good to know that I'm not the only one who thinks it's ok to get these things dirty
Thanks for all of the nice comments people, it's good to know that I'm not the only one who thinks it's ok to get these things dirty
Honestly I can't recommend the things enough, it's hard to lose money on them if you buy right and can work on them yourself. They're more or less depreciation proof and most of the parts are pocket money compared to what you would pay for comparable sports cars. The only bottomless pit is with the modifying, if you look in the Major Mods section then it's easy to see how carried away you can get, there's quite a few engine swaps/superchargers/turbos and an LPG conversion on here.
One of the big attractions for me over other cars that I was looking at is the obvious simplicity of it all, it's just a big go-kart so it would take a major failure to end up stranded somewhere. A reel of 2.5mm wire, a bag of cable ties a few spares and some hand tools will nearly always get you home and the majority of parts can be picked up in a decent auto shop. I've got an emergency kit in a rucksack in the boot, I'd struggle to do that in a Boxter or S2000
One of the big attractions for me over other cars that I was looking at is the obvious simplicity of it all, it's just a big go-kart so it would take a major failure to end up stranded somewhere. A reel of 2.5mm wire, a bag of cable ties a few spares and some hand tools will nearly always get you home and the majority of parts can be picked up in a decent auto shop. I've got an emergency kit in a rucksack in the boot, I'd struggle to do that in a Boxter or S2000
Edited by s p a c e m a n on Monday 20th January 20:53
Well yeah, there's not really that much to report, which is good because it means that it hasn't been causing me any problems. I'm starting to think that all of this 'unreliable TVR, bits falling off all the time, half of its miles spent on an AA truck' stuff was made up by people who have never been near one.
It's now somewhere north of 50,000 miles and the only times that it has come to a standstill at the side of the road have been through my own stupidity, the most recent of which involved me spending half an hour figuring out that I had snagged the live wire from the fuel pump whilst taking a shortcut down a potholed grassy lane to a friends house. It might have a Range Rover engine in it but it's definitely not an off road vehicle
By far the best thing that I have bought since the last update is a patch lead that allows me to connect my laptop to the ECU and run Roverguage. Being able to take most of the guesswork out of fixing little running issues is a godsend, all of my previous cars have been OBDII compliant so it was a slight shock to the system to know that something wasn't right but have no fault codes or sensor readings to give me a clue.
These engines run on a dizzy so have a mechanical advance etc controlled by vacuum, the pipe had a little split in it so my fuel economy was horrendous.. but I was getting some wicked pops and bangs from the exhaust on over run
Being able to plug my laptop into the car saved me playing around with the lambda/maf/temperature sensors etc. I'm thinking about getting a windows tablet and attaching it to my dashboard somehow as the screen looks pretty cool..
The two things that have gone wrong..
The near side manifold gasket started blowing slightly at the start of summer and I didn't have much going on over one of the bank holidays, so I figured that I would get bit of a suntan for a few hours and change it outside my house. A couple of days later after driving the car to work with no manifold gasket in it I used an air powered reciprocating saw to cut the head off of the manifold bolt that had defeated me
Had a strange flat spot in the steering, it felt like the rack had come loose or a bush had deteriorated. After an hour of having the car up in the air, wiggling loads of stuff, checking bolts and bushes I figured it out. They're not exactly well known for it, but it has happened to a few cars and obviously my car had gone from being a weekend toy to being fitted with coilovers and sticky tyres, used every day and occasionally thrown around a track. One of the top wishbones had cracked.
I figured this out late on a Saturday so I managed to bribe one of my mates to stay in his yard for an extra hour and weld some plates to it whilst I figured out where to get a replacement from. Luckily another PH member had a couple spare after buying a new full set for his car and not needing them all
The main reason for rarely bothering to wash the car was because the paintwork was in such a state. When I bought the car I really didn't want to throw a load of money at the paintwork as I use it every day, leave it at work where there are fitters flying about in vans and take it to Tescos where you know some idiot is bound to bounce their car door or a trolley off of it. It really was letting the car down though, to the point where strangers would come over to look at it and the second thing they would ask is whether it had scabies.
As the car had behaved more or less faultlessly, I don't think that it's cost me more than £100 in non service items, my emergency slush fund had not been touched so I used some of it for paint. Now I need to have the wheels painted because they look terrible compared to the rest of the car
The lacquer peeled scabies bum..
I had them remove the big metal Chimaera badge that was on the back whilst they were at it..
And I spent this weekend with a couple of bottles of Renovo roof rejuvenation and waterproofer just in time for the rain..
Still using it every day, hasn't become even slightly boring or annoying. It gets the occasional niggle, a spark plug lead will melt on the manifold, vacuum hose splitting, live falling off of the fuel pump. I've done both manifold gaskets properly now so they should last a good few years, that wishbone has been the only real breakage, it's surpassed all of my expectations for a 15ish year old hand built car used daily by someone who doesn't pootle about.
It gets quite a lot of attention, all of it good. People don't cross the road to talk to me but if they're walking past in a car park or next to me at the petrol pumps I often get a comment. I get let out of a lot of side streets, kids give me a thumbs up, no one has tried to break into it or shown any hate. It's just the right amount of different, people notice it but you're happy to pick your nose at a set of traffic lights without thinking that everyone is looking at you.
Next up, I really want to change the seats. They're not uncomfortable, I just think that they look very dated and the fact that the head rest only goes up as far as my shoulders annoys me. I'm going to have to paint the wheels too, probably anthracite or a very dark shadow chrome, but both of those things will have to wait until next summer as I'm still going to be spending most of my spare time driving it about with a silly grin on my face
It's now somewhere north of 50,000 miles and the only times that it has come to a standstill at the side of the road have been through my own stupidity, the most recent of which involved me spending half an hour figuring out that I had snagged the live wire from the fuel pump whilst taking a shortcut down a potholed grassy lane to a friends house. It might have a Range Rover engine in it but it's definitely not an off road vehicle
By far the best thing that I have bought since the last update is a patch lead that allows me to connect my laptop to the ECU and run Roverguage. Being able to take most of the guesswork out of fixing little running issues is a godsend, all of my previous cars have been OBDII compliant so it was a slight shock to the system to know that something wasn't right but have no fault codes or sensor readings to give me a clue.
These engines run on a dizzy so have a mechanical advance etc controlled by vacuum, the pipe had a little split in it so my fuel economy was horrendous.. but I was getting some wicked pops and bangs from the exhaust on over run
Being able to plug my laptop into the car saved me playing around with the lambda/maf/temperature sensors etc. I'm thinking about getting a windows tablet and attaching it to my dashboard somehow as the screen looks pretty cool..
The two things that have gone wrong..
The near side manifold gasket started blowing slightly at the start of summer and I didn't have much going on over one of the bank holidays, so I figured that I would get bit of a suntan for a few hours and change it outside my house. A couple of days later after driving the car to work with no manifold gasket in it I used an air powered reciprocating saw to cut the head off of the manifold bolt that had defeated me
Had a strange flat spot in the steering, it felt like the rack had come loose or a bush had deteriorated. After an hour of having the car up in the air, wiggling loads of stuff, checking bolts and bushes I figured it out. They're not exactly well known for it, but it has happened to a few cars and obviously my car had gone from being a weekend toy to being fitted with coilovers and sticky tyres, used every day and occasionally thrown around a track. One of the top wishbones had cracked.
I figured this out late on a Saturday so I managed to bribe one of my mates to stay in his yard for an extra hour and weld some plates to it whilst I figured out where to get a replacement from. Luckily another PH member had a couple spare after buying a new full set for his car and not needing them all
The main reason for rarely bothering to wash the car was because the paintwork was in such a state. When I bought the car I really didn't want to throw a load of money at the paintwork as I use it every day, leave it at work where there are fitters flying about in vans and take it to Tescos where you know some idiot is bound to bounce their car door or a trolley off of it. It really was letting the car down though, to the point where strangers would come over to look at it and the second thing they would ask is whether it had scabies.
As the car had behaved more or less faultlessly, I don't think that it's cost me more than £100 in non service items, my emergency slush fund had not been touched so I used some of it for paint. Now I need to have the wheels painted because they look terrible compared to the rest of the car
The lacquer peeled scabies bum..
I had them remove the big metal Chimaera badge that was on the back whilst they were at it..
And I spent this weekend with a couple of bottles of Renovo roof rejuvenation and waterproofer just in time for the rain..
Still using it every day, hasn't become even slightly boring or annoying. It gets the occasional niggle, a spark plug lead will melt on the manifold, vacuum hose splitting, live falling off of the fuel pump. I've done both manifold gaskets properly now so they should last a good few years, that wishbone has been the only real breakage, it's surpassed all of my expectations for a 15ish year old hand built car used daily by someone who doesn't pootle about.
It gets quite a lot of attention, all of it good. People don't cross the road to talk to me but if they're walking past in a car park or next to me at the petrol pumps I often get a comment. I get let out of a lot of side streets, kids give me a thumbs up, no one has tried to break into it or shown any hate. It's just the right amount of different, people notice it but you're happy to pick your nose at a set of traffic lights without thinking that everyone is looking at you.
Next up, I really want to change the seats. They're not uncomfortable, I just think that they look very dated and the fact that the head rest only goes up as far as my shoulders annoys me. I'm going to have to paint the wheels too, probably anthracite or a very dark shadow chrome, but both of those things will have to wait until next summer as I'm still going to be spending most of my spare time driving it about with a silly grin on my face
Little update, as I'm bored and waiting for my dinner to burn..
The rear number plate had been annoying me, they're backlit on the early cars and translucent. There's a recess behind the plate with two uplighters, a lot of people try to make the plate brighter and give it more of an even spread by sticking silver foil to the back of the recess so that more light is reflected through the number plate. That solution seemed like bit of a bodge to me, so I removed the original lights and blanked off the holes that they left. Then I stuck a 30cm smd strip in the centre of the recess, I also put one inside the boot as these cars were never fitted with a light in there. Finally I stuck down the edges of the number plate as there was a lot of light bleeding through and illuminating the bottom of the boot lid and the top of the bumper. Simple things, but it makes the car look less 'hand made by northerners'
The car had been losing a bit of coolant recently, about a litre a week. It took a while but I finally narrowed it down to the radiator. I could have had it re-cored but http://www.aaronradiator.co.uk/ make a nice shiny alloy one and they're only a 30 minute drive away from me, they give a good PH discount as well. Couldn't believe how light it was, I had to open the box before I drove away to make sure that there was actually something in there..
Finally pulled my finger out and started changing the radiator at 4pm, figured that there is loads of room for access and there are only a couple of bolts and hoses so I'll be done well before it gets dark
Took 2 hours just to remove the old one, only took an hour to fit the new and bleed the system. Was amazed at how much of a better fit the new radiator was than the old one, it took two of us pulling and wiggling the old one to get it out of the hole whilst I placed the new one in on my own in a couple of minutes.
Was definitely the old radiator that was causing the leak, the condenser for the air con was knackered too so I removed that and will use it to make sure I find the correct one for the summer..
Got to use my little infrared temperature reader to see how efficient the new radiator was and check when the fans cut in, I knew that I would find a use for it eventually
The rear number plate had been annoying me, they're backlit on the early cars and translucent. There's a recess behind the plate with two uplighters, a lot of people try to make the plate brighter and give it more of an even spread by sticking silver foil to the back of the recess so that more light is reflected through the number plate. That solution seemed like bit of a bodge to me, so I removed the original lights and blanked off the holes that they left. Then I stuck a 30cm smd strip in the centre of the recess, I also put one inside the boot as these cars were never fitted with a light in there. Finally I stuck down the edges of the number plate as there was a lot of light bleeding through and illuminating the bottom of the boot lid and the top of the bumper. Simple things, but it makes the car look less 'hand made by northerners'
The car had been losing a bit of coolant recently, about a litre a week. It took a while but I finally narrowed it down to the radiator. I could have had it re-cored but http://www.aaronradiator.co.uk/ make a nice shiny alloy one and they're only a 30 minute drive away from me, they give a good PH discount as well. Couldn't believe how light it was, I had to open the box before I drove away to make sure that there was actually something in there..
Finally pulled my finger out and started changing the radiator at 4pm, figured that there is loads of room for access and there are only a couple of bolts and hoses so I'll be done well before it gets dark
Took 2 hours just to remove the old one, only took an hour to fit the new and bleed the system. Was amazed at how much of a better fit the new radiator was than the old one, it took two of us pulling and wiggling the old one to get it out of the hole whilst I placed the new one in on my own in a couple of minutes.
Was definitely the old radiator that was causing the leak, the condenser for the air con was knackered too so I removed that and will use it to make sure I find the correct one for the summer..
Got to use my little infrared temperature reader to see how efficient the new radiator was and check when the fans cut in, I knew that I would find a use for it eventually
Edited by s p a c e m a n on Sunday 26th October 17:03
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