LS3 Chim at copart

[porterpainter]

https://www.copart.co.uk/lot/70087472/clean-title-...

Looks a bit sorry for itself, but probably salvageable or a nice donor engine at the least.

[Jordie Barretts sock]

That's an awful lot of money for an awful lot of work. And not worth a great deal at the end of it all.

Shame.

[TwinKam]

Jordie Barretts sock said:

That's an awful lot of money for an awful lot of work. And not worth a great deal at the end of it all.

Shame.

Are you Lucas, aka LucyP?

[sixor8]

Estimated value £35k. Really! Do copart often pluck such values from nowhere? Or is it just the original list price, more likely. With front and rear damage, just a donor for the engine is probably more accurate as said above.

[Classic Chim]

That looks like a very expensive/ competent engine swap ruined by a lack of skills behind the wheel.
You wouldn’t do all that work on a bum car so at the current bid of around 4.5 k and if indeed the chassis is good you have a lot of car for the money.

If you have the skills and friendly with a reputable TVR body shop that’s an easy repair. What 5k + whatever else is needed to get the motor running. 10-12k could see you with a running TVR with LS. A perfect track/ street creeper.
To do this conversion now could be 15k easily.
Someone and not necessarily a TVR fan could enjoy a great car if it’s basics are as good as it looks in the pictures.

Remember Tvr Tuscan race cars in the 90’s ripped fronts and rears off like this almost weekly so to a decent Tvr body man this is not hard to repair.
Depends on a lot of things but surely it’s worth a look if your into this sort of extreme motor car and enjoy restoring them.

Edited by Classic Chim on Wednesday 28th December 11:12

[Jordie Barretts sock]

Ha! No. But I did think the same when I posted.

It's at £4300 now, assuming it goes for that, how much to put it back on the road?

Or, how much is (assuming it's all good) the engine worth?

Unless you have the time and the gear to do it yourself, I think it's a lost cause.

[porterpainter]

Notes also say:

CHEVY LS3 6.2 ENGINE UPRATED GEARBOX 6 SPEED MANUAL NITRON

[glow worm]

I just hope it wasn't my insurance company that paid out £35k for that mongrel

[Classic Chim]

porterpainter said:

Notes also say:

CHEVY LS3 6.2 ENGINE UPRATED GEARBOX 6 SPEED MANUAL NITRON

And looking at the front wheel alignment its not had much of a shunt in actual truth.
With fibreglass it simply compresses until front wheels hit whatever your travelling into as wings offer no structural strength at all so any heavy front end impact will be transmitted through the chassis and front wheels again into wishbones then chassis lugs if the impact is so great as to bend wishbones backwards. Those big tyres full of air are like huge cushions in effect……
Ask me how I know.
Basically when you crash a Tvr it’s like being in a go cart. It’s the wheels that take most of the impact and energy. Under the huge forces of a front end impact the fibreglass might as well be made of paper. the Chassis rails are very strong though.
So in truth this car has not had a very big shunt at all looking at a few pictures( happy to be corrected)
It just looks bad.

Edited by Classic Chim on Wednesday 28th December 12:05

[ATM]

Interesting

I had an LS swapped car for a while. It was an animal. I got rid of it because it was impossible to drive sensibly. It was also a bit of a bag of spanners. At 4 or 5 thousand it's worth a punt. I'm not sure I'd want to take that punt. I'm older now and wiser. I'd prefer to drive a well balanced and well engineered car which any mechanic can fix than a specialist bespoke one off which scares most mechanics enough to say no thanks. Do you really want an extra 100 bhp [ or more you decide the numbers here ] you can't really ever use 99% of the time?

[LucyP]

sixor8 said:

Estimated value £35k. Really! Do copart often pluck such values from nowhere? Or is it just the original list price, more likely. With front and rear damage, just a donor for the engine is probably more accurate as said above.

It's neither. It's just Copart's opinion on the price that it could be retailed at by a dealer. It's meaningless. A purchaser will make their own assessment of what the car is worth, how much needs to be spent on it, and how much they can sell it for, and thus if there is any profit. The problem with Copart is that you cannot view the vehicles in person. You can only have a virtual viewing and you have to pay for that and I cannot imagine that they put the cars on a ramp as part of the virtual viewing.

And as has been discussed on here before, it's a write off and it will always have that stigma, and it's consequent affect upon the value.

The insurers did not pay out £35K for the car. £35K is a red-herring. The insurers will have paid out the market value of the car, which will not have been £35K, and then sold the written off car to Copart for whatever they could get for it.

And to TwinKam. Sexism is dead. Even in garages. If you mis-gender me again I shall make a complaint to Pistonheads. You should also be aware that under Section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986 it is an offence to use insulting language against someone with the intent to cause harassment. My name is Lucy. Use my name properly. Take this as a warning.

[Belle427]

Jordie Barretts sock said:

Ha! No. But I did think the same when I posted.

It's at £4300 now, assuming it goes for that, how much to put it back on the road?

Or, how much is (assuming it's all good) the engine worth?

Unless you have the time and the gear to do it yourself, I think it's a lost cause.

New front end grafted on and painted I’d guess somewhere near £5000.
Another £1500 to sort any other scrapes.
Chassis is probably untouched, hard to tell really without examining.
Maybe ok for someone to stick their body on it.

[glow worm]

The owner should be prosecuted for failing to alter the registration of the vehicle , and not changing the engine capacity as required to by law

[porterpainter]

Why can’t people called Lucas identify as either gender? Or no gender at all? I’m confused.

[glow worm]

I just call it , (T)IT

[TwinKam]

LucyP said:

(Stuff)
And to TwinKam. Sexism is dead. Even in garages. If you mis-gender me again I shall make a complaint to Pistonheads. You should also be aware that under Section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986 it is an offence to use insulting language against someone with the intent to cause harassment. My name is Lucy. Use my name properly. Take this as a warning.

Mis-gender(sic)? Sexism? Harassment? Where?
Forum 'names' are meaningless, all of ours, I can call you whatever I like (and likewise you, me). You're being just a wee bit oversensitive, Sweetcheeks, especially in the light of some of your contentious posts; you dish plenty out, be prepared to accept some back.

[m4tti]

TwinKam said:

LucyP said:

(Stuff)
And to TwinKam. Sexism is dead. Even in garages. If you mis-gender me again I shall make a complaint to Pistonheads. You should also be aware that under Section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986 it is an offence to use insulting language against someone with the intent to cause harassment. My name is Lucy. Use my name properly. Take this as a warning.

Mis-gender(sic)? Sexism? Harassment? Where?
Forum 'names' are meaningless, all of ours, I can call you whatever I like (and likewise you, me). You're being just a wee bit oversensitive, Sweetcheeks, especially in the light of some of your contentious posts; you dish plenty out, be prepared to accept some back.

Watch out TwinKam, she’ll get you in the “small names court”

[NeoVR]

Ouch!.

Thats easy a 20k+ engine conversion at Sportmotive
Could be a bargain to drop the running gear into another chassis.

[sixor8]

The fact there's a Chimaera 620 badge on the back leads me to think the car may have featured in PH somewhere before, it looks familiar. But a quick search hasn't revealed its presence. And is it really 'unrecorded' as stated at the top?

[Jordie Barretts sock]

Seems to have six digits on rhe odometer and the first digit doesn't look like a 0.