Body Off - The Naked Truth
Discussion
In all fairness to any of the specialists offering body off full strip down and rebuild packages, taking everything into account there is no questioning the amount of work involved. Spinning a TVR chassis over alone is not a one man operation, you need a lot of floor space and the job involves a number of skills tools and equipment.
I appreciate what the TVR repair specialists do more and more to be honest.
Ok they get into it easily but it’s still a lot of work and time.
I’m no longer suprised by the cost of this work from the specialists.
I hope more think of using modern paints rather than powdercoat though.
I appreciate what the TVR repair specialists do more and more to be honest.
Ok they get into it easily but it’s still a lot of work and time.
I’m no longer suprised by the cost of this work from the specialists.
I hope more think of using modern paints rather than powdercoat though.
The difference between working on Dave's or Alun's cars underneath and my rot free but Dinitrol'ed waxed chassis (not under seal) is this after I've finished , it was fine all them years ago but after 10 year plus its no longer a nice transparent beige colour , i come out looking like a miner if doing anything more than mild maintenance 
^^^^^^ 
This.
I remember being about 4 years old visiting my family in Wales and this bunch of blokes with hob nail boots chomping up the road in lines looking similar to the bloke above. Sort of marching proud.
They must have just finished a shift down the pit. Clothes and everything black. I didn’t understand but over the years soon did. Not every pit had showers I suppose!
Shocking to see for a small lad from middle England
Timing is everything. Car should be back on the road for April and hopefully a sunny spring Dave.
Bang on
Infact maybe later this week by the looks of the progress made.
This.
I remember being about 4 years old visiting my family in Wales and this bunch of blokes with hob nail boots chomping up the road in lines looking similar to the bloke above. Sort of marching proud.
They must have just finished a shift down the pit. Clothes and everything black. I didn’t understand but over the years soon did. Not every pit had showers I suppose!
Shocking to see for a small lad from middle England
Timing is everything. Car should be back on the road for April and hopefully a sunny spring Dave.
Bang on
Infact maybe later this week by the looks of the progress made.
Edited by Classic Chim on Monday 9th March 06:13
Edited by Classic Chim on Monday 9th March 06:14
Zener said:
The difference between working on Dave's or Alun's cars underneath and my rot free but Dinitrol'ed waxed chassis (not under seal) is this after I've finished , it was fine all them years ago but after 10 year plus its no longer a nice transparent beige colour , i come out looking like a miner if doing anything more than mild maintenance
Exactly Simon, working on my Chimaera was increasingly getting me down, I would always come out covered in Dinitrol and the situation seemed to get worse as the years rolled by, a few of the usual RV8 oil leaks will melt the stuff into into a filthy substance that sticks to your hair and skin like monkey poo 
However, rustproofing treatments do work and there's no doubt the Dinitrol treatment I had applied to my Chimaera chassis 10 years ago did its job, I always knew I was really just delaying the inevitable chassis restoration although the comprehensive steam clean and two stage Dinitrol treatment made absolute sense at the time. I bough my TVR 11 years ago at 30,000 miles, it's 12 year old silver/grey chassis had been Waxoiled all it's life so was by far the best example I'd inspected. It also came with four new front wishbones that had been fitted the year before I bought the car, so while the silver/grey chassis Chims were definitely way better than the dreadful early white powder coated efforts, there were clearly still corrosion issues with silver/grey chassis Chimaeras if wishbones were only lasting 10 years or so and after only covering 30,000 miles!
When I started the search for my Chimaera 11 years ago there was no Facebook and the Piston Heads forum was far more active, despite the majority of Chimaeras being only 10 years old at the time horror stories of chassis corrosion were rife and contributed to the fact you could pick up a really good low mileage example for around £8k, I had a feeling the cars had hit their low point so in May 2009 I paid £7,900 for my 30,000 mile example which only 12 years before had been sold new for over £30,0000.
I looked at a raft of 97/98 cars with their flakey white powder coated chassis, it was so demoralising I very nearly gave up on the idea of buying a Chimaera all together, fortunately I persevered and my persistence was eventually rewarded with the right car at the right money with a good chassis. The thing any prospective Chimaera should consider is if 11 years ago I was seeing one rotten 10/11 year old Chimaera after another they need to think long and hard about the condition of what's out there now 11 years later, it's not like this situation will have got any better and with lots of Chims receiving decidedly dodgy outrigger replacement work to rather suspect standards it's even more a case of 'Buyer Beware'.
Anyway, a year after buying my Chimaera and all too aware while I'd snagged one with a good chassis I wanted to make sure it would at least last as long as possible, so I decided the best approach was to rustproof the car while I saved up a war chest to get the chassis restored in the future, the plan was to buy myself 10 years or so while I got on with enjoying the car and improving it in other ways. I chose a company in Cheshire called Chassis Clean because their process while expensive was way better than anything else on offer and started with a full steam clean which removed all the old Waxoil and allowed me to review better what I'd bought.
The steam cleaning revealed a very sound chassis and the new front wishbones which were mint, but it wasn't perfect by any means as it was clear TVR hadn't prepped their welds properly before applying the silver/grey finish as there was patches of surface corrosion that I'd say would have broken out only a year or so after the car was made. Chassis Clean dried the chassis thoroughly after the intensive steam cleaning session, this was critical so as not to trap water under the two stage Dinitrol treatment, a day later with the chassis perfectly dry they hit it with 3125 wax followed by 4941 underseal.
My hope the Dinitrol treatment would buy me 10 years played out exactly as I planned and almost to the month, I'm really glad I invested the money with Chassis Clean to preserve the chassis but rustproofing waxes and unseals when softened with engine oil and or worse still ATF do get all over you when you work on the car so despite the fact they are proven effective I wanted to keep my chassis in a clean painted state following it's restoration. In summary, rustproofing treatments if applied correctly can buy you some time but they are far from being a magic bullet cure to a rotten chassis, the chassis needs to be in pretty good shape to start with, mild surface corrosion around the welds as mine had is fine but anything more than this and you really need to start replacing tubes.
It's important to accept you're really just buying yourself some time with these rustproofing treatments and ideally they should have been applied from new, the trouble is most of the Waxoild Chims you see have received a coating of the stuff to hide a multitude of sins and no amount of rustproofing wax is going to fix a rotten chassis hidden beneath. As these cars are now a good 11 years older than when I was viewing a succession of rotten chassis examples people need to be even more careful about what they're buying, indeed given what we know about Chimaera chassis corrosion and the fact most of our cars are 20-25 years old now I would go as far to advise people to walk away from anything that doesn't come with a fully photographic recorded body off chassis restoration and a clean un Waxoiled chassis.
To bring all this to life today with a real world example and some 11 years later, I've just been through my Chimaera hunting file I created when I was looking for my for TVR in 2009, I kept a record of some of the many of the Chimaeras I viewed back then.
While this 1999 example was the youngest I looked at, it was also by far the worst! Remember this car was just 10 years young when I inspected it but I'd never seen such a rotten chassis on a 10 year old car in all my days, it was worse than a Fiat, you could literally peel this Chimaera's chassis like a banana with the only 10 year old white TVR powder coat just falling away in sheets!
Fast forward to today and I've just run an MoT check on T715 JLA and it seems it made it through one more MoT before the car was taken off the road a year later in May 2010, maybe someone wrote it off in an accident but I'd say it's equally likely it failed it's next MoT on terminal chassis corrosion so was beyond economic repair, what a donkey! My point is if a 1999 Chimaera could get into that state within just 10 years of use, imagine how many completely rotten Chimaeras are our there now all skillfully disguised in a thick layer of Waxoil?
Conversely all this time later and I managed to get a solid 11 years of enjoyment out of my £7,900 Chimaera purchase before it was time for the body to be lifted and the chassis to be restored, I definitely bought the right car. However 11 years on and all those Chimaeras I looked at including mine are 11 years older now.... so they'll all be 111 years more rotten! All this means if I was out there looking for a Chimaera today I would only entertain one that's had a full body off chassis restoration with photos to support, I'd also be looking for one that wasn't covered in Waxoil.
These are the only ways you'll know you're getting a sound chassis, anything less and you really should assume the car will at least need its outriggers replacing at the very minimum so potential buyers must factor this in to their offer or better still walk away until they find one with a properly restored chassis!
Buyer Beware!
One with a properly restored chassis might be 15k though. If you can be buying them for 7K which seems entirely possible in today’s market let alone 10 years ago then rigger replacement doesn’t seem such a bad idea on an otherwise good car.
If I’ve read your post correctly what you are saying is it’s unlikely any of these older cars have sound Riggers unless already replaced which I find hard to disagree with.
See your silver chassis when steam cleaned revealed just as much rust around suspension lugs and area’s with sharpe edges as mine.
This silver is better than the later white ones which once was probably true no longer applies because the silver ones are getting old.
I’m hoping with my extensive experiment ( drive it hard for 2 years) we will see this epoxy mastic paint become the future. Only time will tell but according to every salesman I’ve spoke too Epoxy mastic paint is here to stay
If I’ve read your post correctly what you are saying is it’s unlikely any of these older cars have sound Riggers unless already replaced which I find hard to disagree with.
See your silver chassis when steam cleaned revealed just as much rust around suspension lugs and area’s with sharpe edges as mine.
This silver is better than the later white ones which once was probably true no longer applies because the silver ones are getting old.
I’m hoping with my extensive experiment ( drive it hard for 2 years) we will see this epoxy mastic paint become the future. Only time will tell but according to every salesman I’ve spoke too Epoxy mastic paint is here to stay
ChimpOnGas said:
Fast forward to today and I've just run an MoT check on T715 JLA and it seems it made it through one more MoT before the car was taken off the road a year later in May 2010, maybe someone wrote it off in an accident but I'd say it's equally likely it failed it's next MoT on terminal chassis corrosion so was beyond economic repair, what a donkey!
Classic Chim said:
One with a properly restored chassis might be 15k though. If you can be buying them for 7K which seems entirely possible in today’s market let alone 10 years ago then rigger replacement doesn’t seem such a bad idea on an otherwise good car.
I would seem quite mad to write off a tvr for a rotten chassis, not saying it cant happen, and I am still an interested outsider to tvr ownership, but while a chassis restoration on a taxed and tested car might be borderline economically, once you drop the value to 'scrap value' surely it would then become instantly economical? Even if it needed a whole new chassis! I cant imagine the market for parting out is high enough that loosing the mot wouldnt be a huge value drop?Obviously if someone new to the car hedged it, thats a very difference mater, and obviously something which can happen.
All I can say for sure is that T715 JLA was just 10 years old when I inspected it, and the car's chassis was already rotten as a carrot, and I mean shot!. It hadn't just got like that in the last year either, so I think its fair to say some Chimaeras were getting very rusty indeed just a few years after leaving the factory.
Read the above advert I saved, it's from May 2009 when I went to look at T715 JLA, no way was it a 34,000 mile car that had been garaged most of its life as the seller claimed. It really was a shocker with a very rotten chassis that had to have been sat outside for most of its life as the hood was rotten too, considering the only honsest thing about it was it was definitely only 10 years young it was also the Chimaera that nearly completely put me off the whole idea.
The silver/grey chassis cars were definitely better but as Alun says they are older cars now so it all evens out, to be honest is academic these days as even the youngest Chimaera is 17 years old and the average age is more like 22 years. Now consider there are still plenty of Chimaeras out there with an unrestored chassis, but I bet if you lifted the body on them not one would have a completely rot free outriggers.
For those looking to buy a TVR these days it all adds up to the best advice being to look for one that's already had at least the outriggers replaced, but better still a full body off chassis restoration with supporting photos to prove the work was done to a good standard. Chimaeras are now in the same place Lotus Elans were in the late 1980's / early 1990's, we saw many 20 year old Elans through the workshop back then that were still on their original Lotus backbone chassis but were completely rotten.
A Chimaera is just a grown up Elan, a steel back bone chassis all be it in tube not the sheet steel of the Lotus and both with a fiberglass body sat on top, in the late 80's/early 90's Elans were rather unloved by the snobby classic car buyer and so were cheap to buy. But people had started to restore them and the solution back then was always a new galvanised chassis from Lotus or Spyder which solved the problem in a stroke.
As they hit and passed through that dreaded 20 year old window things started to get a lot better for the Elan, but this history lesson shows us we are passing through the darkest days for the Chimaera just as the Elan passed through it many years before. It stands to reason we should look to see what happened to Elan prices when they reached 30 to predict the future for our Chimaeras, and at this point most Elans had been sorted with a new chassis so from the naughties on their values stabalised and indeed they started to rise quite rapidly as people realised what a bargain they were.
By 2005 an Elan that sold for £8k in the mid 90's was now pushing £15k and by 2010 they were nudging £20k, fast forward to today and you try to find a decent Elan roadster for less than £30k. The 20 year old point is a defining one for all classics and the Chimaeras like the Elan before it is no different, in the next 10 years for sure we will see a lot more of our cars having a proper body off chassis restoration and these will be the cars in 2030 that make good money.... just as those restored Elans with their new chassis started to make good money when they reached 30 years old too.
Those of us restoring our Chimaeras now are doing so at just the right time, we're getting our chassis sorted while they are still in reasonable order and getting our cars ready to enjoy for the next 10 years, when I come to sell mine in 10 years or so values will have risen like the value of 30 year old Elans rose and I will be offering a well sorted example to the market that would have given me 23 years of joy but will have many more years of life in it for the next custodian to take advantage of.
History is always our best tutor
, because history has an uncanny habit of repeating itself
Read the above advert I saved, it's from May 2009 when I went to look at T715 JLA, no way was it a 34,000 mile car that had been garaged most of its life as the seller claimed. It really was a shocker with a very rotten chassis that had to have been sat outside for most of its life as the hood was rotten too, considering the only honsest thing about it was it was definitely only 10 years young it was also the Chimaera that nearly completely put me off the whole idea.
The silver/grey chassis cars were definitely better but as Alun says they are older cars now so it all evens out, to be honest is academic these days as even the youngest Chimaera is 17 years old and the average age is more like 22 years. Now consider there are still plenty of Chimaeras out there with an unrestored chassis, but I bet if you lifted the body on them not one would have a completely rot free outriggers.
For those looking to buy a TVR these days it all adds up to the best advice being to look for one that's already had at least the outriggers replaced, but better still a full body off chassis restoration with supporting photos to prove the work was done to a good standard. Chimaeras are now in the same place Lotus Elans were in the late 1980's / early 1990's, we saw many 20 year old Elans through the workshop back then that were still on their original Lotus backbone chassis but were completely rotten.
A Chimaera is just a grown up Elan, a steel back bone chassis all be it in tube not the sheet steel of the Lotus and both with a fiberglass body sat on top, in the late 80's/early 90's Elans were rather unloved by the snobby classic car buyer and so were cheap to buy. But people had started to restore them and the solution back then was always a new galvanised chassis from Lotus or Spyder which solved the problem in a stroke.
As they hit and passed through that dreaded 20 year old window things started to get a lot better for the Elan, but this history lesson shows us we are passing through the darkest days for the Chimaera just as the Elan passed through it many years before. It stands to reason we should look to see what happened to Elan prices when they reached 30 to predict the future for our Chimaeras, and at this point most Elans had been sorted with a new chassis so from the naughties on their values stabalised and indeed they started to rise quite rapidly as people realised what a bargain they were.
By 2005 an Elan that sold for £8k in the mid 90's was now pushing £15k and by 2010 they were nudging £20k, fast forward to today and you try to find a decent Elan roadster for less than £30k. The 20 year old point is a defining one for all classics and the Chimaeras like the Elan before it is no different, in the next 10 years for sure we will see a lot more of our cars having a proper body off chassis restoration and these will be the cars in 2030 that make good money.... just as those restored Elans with their new chassis started to make good money when they reached 30 years old too.
Those of us restoring our Chimaeras now are doing so at just the right time, we're getting our chassis sorted while they are still in reasonable order and getting our cars ready to enjoy for the next 10 years, when I come to sell mine in 10 years or so values will have risen like the value of 30 year old Elans rose and I will be offering a well sorted example to the market that would have given me 23 years of joy but will have many more years of life in it for the next custodian to take advantage of.
History is always our best tutor
, because history has an uncanny habit of repeating itself 
Good thread chaps - have enjoyed watching the progress and the result.
Can I ask if there is/was any other work planned for the car - engine rebuild, respray, new carpets, hood etc. I’d be very interested in using Alex but my car needs (or rather I would like) to do the other bits as well. Any thoughts. Thx.
Can I ask if there is/was any other work planned for the car - engine rebuild, respray, new carpets, hood etc. I’d be very interested in using Alex but my car needs (or rather I would like) to do the other bits as well. Any thoughts. Thx.
V41LEY said:
Good thread chaps - have enjoyed watching the progress and the result.
Can I ask if there is/was any other work planned for the car - engine rebuild, respray, new carpets, hood etc. I’d be very interested in using Alex but my car needs (or rather I would like) to do the other bits as well. Any thoughts. Thx.
Hi Jon,Can I ask if there is/was any other work planned for the car - engine rebuild, respray, new carpets, hood etc. I’d be very interested in using Alex but my car needs (or rather I would like) to do the other bits as well. Any thoughts. Thx.
The reality is there's no such thing as a finished Chimaera, it's just different levels of how many jobs are left on an ongoing and never ending to do list. The trick is to try to knock the jobs off the list faster than new jobs appear on it, or at least keep the outstanding jobs at the same number which is typically where I'm always at with my TVR.
I have no plans for paint as my Chimaera enjoyed a front end respray at Surface & Design when it received the Mk3 headlight conversion, and my engine is strong so given there's always a list of little outstanding jobs I really don't want to be adding to it and spending unnecessarily. A Chimaera is kind of a flawed diamond, as such it's a car that goads you into making improvements, but it's all too easy to just keep throwing money after money at the car when what we really should be doing is just getting on with the fun bit....
Driving it
We are all effectively driving about in rolling restoration projects at varying stages of completion, as soon as you accept the process is a never ending one you realise the best policy is just good old fashioned preventative maintenance while keeping a close eye on component wear and corrosion. The way to think about it is we are all in a marathon trying to stay ahead of the inevitable wear and tear, corrosion and component failure; the trick is to stay one step ahead but to extract the maximum service life out of every component so as not to end up spending unnecessarily.
I measure the success of my TVR ownership on how much driving I can extract from it, I maintain the car without compromise but also try to keep my spending realistic and in line with the market value of Chimaeras. I need the car on the road as much as possible as all the time it's incapacitated being worked on it's time I'm losing not driving and enjoying my TVR, this means only replacing or restoring elements that demand attention but catching them in advance of the their imminent demise, I try hard to get this balance right which means resisting the temptation to replace or restore before the component has given me it's longest service life possible before I run the risk of it causing a breakdown or MoT failure.
The car must be ready to use at all times and 100% reliable, and if I do decide to take it off the road for something major like the chassis restoration it must be completed in the winter months when ordinarily I would be using the car the least, ideally it would be the wettest winter in living memory too which was achieved more through luck than judgment, but as it turned out I couldn't have picked a better winter to lose the use of the car.
In preparation for getting the car back, the other day I wrote a list of the outstanding things I want to complete on the car before the end of 2020, basically I ended up with 12 jobs, these are all works I will complete myself knocking two or three off the list every month. By the end of the year everything will have been crossed of the list, but I guarantee you they'll be 10 or so new jobs appear because the truth is I have never had less than 10 outstanding jobs on my TVR maintenance list in all the 11 years I've own the car.
However, I can also hand on heart say the car is immeasurably better in every single respect than it was when I bought it 11 years ago at just 33,000 miles in it's well maintained state, so while I've always kept very much on top of the general maintenance I have also been slowly but surely walking my Chimaera into a better than new state. I try to make everything I do to the car better than how TVR did it, and I try to make sure every component I replace is better than the part TVR used. The chassis restoration is just one good example of this policy, while TVR's effort lasted 23 years we've tried to restore it in a way that ensure it'll last a lot longer than that.
Better chassis protection, better engine management, better wiring, better suspension, better brakes, better tyres, better fuel economy, better performance, better seats and carpets, better headlights ect ect ect, these are just some of the things I've done already in the last 11 years in my bid to make the car better in every respect than when it left Bristol Avenue back in 1996. I've also completed all these improvements while trying not take the car off the road for too long, and while always staying one step ahead of the general maintenance too.
General maintenance of a TVR will always keep you busy, trying at the same time to make a Chimaera better built and dynamically better as well as more practical than it was when new is a real challenge believe me, doing so while keeping the car on the road at all times takes things to another level. Ultimately I'd like to think the my TVR could easily become my very practical and reliable everyday transport, this being my ultimate measurement of success and one I genuinely feel I've achieved...
Until that is the next thing breaks or wears out of course
V8fan said:
Is that an Excel? Or possibly an Eclat with later wheels; I recognise them. Maybe even an Esprit?
I’ll try and find out. I think it’s an Eclat. The guy has put some other kit car type fibreglass body on. Sort of like a La Mon car design with an enclosed cockpit. Maybe even an Esprit?I literally came across it like a barn find
The guy told me he works for a Lotus salvage company hence the spare parts! I’ve since been past and it’s not there so hopefully he has it at work and making progress.
Suprising how flimsy it looks compared to a Tvr Chassis. Ours reminds me of an F1 stockcar
ChimpOnGas said:
Hi Jon,
The reality is there's no such thing as a finished Chimaera, it's just different levels of how many jobs are left on an ongoing and never ending to do list. The trick is to try to knock the jobs off the list faster than new jobs appear on it, or at least keep the outstanding jobs at the same number which is typically where I'm always at with my TVR.
I have no plans for paint as my Chimaera enjoyed a front end respray at Surface & Design when it received the Mk3 headlight conversion, and my engine is strong so given there's always a list of little outstanding jobs I really don't want to be adding to it and spending unnecessarily. A Chimaera is kind of a flawed diamond, as such it's a car that goads you into making improvements, but it's all too easy to just keep throwing money after money at the car when what we really should be doing is just getting on with the fun bit....
Driving it
We are all effectively driving about in rolling restoration projects at varying stages of completion, as soon as you accept the process is a never ending one you realise the best policy is just good old fashioned preventative maintenance while keeping a close eye on component wear and corrosion. The way to think about it is we are all in a marathon trying to stay ahead of the inevitable wear and tear, corrosion and component failure; the trick is to stay one step ahead but to extract the maximum service life out of every component so as not to end up spending unnecessarily.
I measure the success of my TVR ownership on how much driving I can extract from it, I maintain the car without compromise but also try to keep my spending realistic and in line with the market value of Chimaeras. I need the car on the road as much as possible as all the time it's incapacitated being worked on it's time I'm losing not driving and enjoying my TVR, this means only replacing or restoring elements that demand attention but catching them in advance of the their imminent demise, I try hard to get this balance right which means resisting the temptation to replace or restore before the component has given me it's longest service life possible before I run the risk of it causing a breakdown or MoT failure.
The car must be ready to use at all times and 100% reliable, and if I do decide to take it off the road for something major like the chassis restoration it must be completed in the winter months when ordinarily I would be using the car the least, ideally it would be the wettest winter in living memory too which was achieved more through luck than judgment, but as it turned out I couldn't have picked a better winter to lose the use of the car.
In preparation for getting the car back, the other day I wrote a list of the outstanding things I want to complete on the car before the end of 2020, basically I ended up with 12 jobs, these are all works I will complete myself knocking two or three off the list every month. By the end of the year everything will have been crossed of the list, but I guarantee you they'll be 10 or so new jobs appear because the truth is I have never had less than 10 outstanding jobs on my TVR maintenance list in all the 11 years I've own the car.
However, I can also hand on heart say the car is immeasurably better in every single respect than it was when I bought it 11 years ago at just 33,000 miles in it's well maintained state, so while I've always kept very much on top of the general maintenance I have also been slowly but surely walking my Chimaera into a better than new state. I try to make everything I do to the car better than how TVR did it, and I try to make sure every component I replace is better than the part TVR used. The chassis restoration is just one good example of this policy, while TVR's effort lasted 23 years we've tried to restore it in a way that ensure it'll last a lot longer than that.
Better chassis protection, better engine management, better wiring, better suspension, better brakes, better tyres, better fuel economy, better performance, better seats and carpets, better headlights ect ect ect, these are just some of the things I've done already in the last 11 years in my bid to make the car better in every respect than when it left Bristol Avenue back in 1996. I've also completed all these improvements while trying not take the car off the road for too long, and while always staying one step ahead of the general maintenance too.
General maintenance of a TVR will always keep you busy, trying at the same time to make a Chimaera better built and dynamically better as well as more practical than it was when new is a real challenge believe me, doing so while keeping the car on the road at all times takes things to another level. Ultimately I'd like to think the my TVR could easily become my very practical and reliable everyday transport, this being my ultimate measurement of success and one I genuinely feel I've achieved...
Until that is the next thing breaks or wears out of course
^^^^^^^ Wot he said The reality is there's no such thing as a finished Chimaera, it's just different levels of how many jobs are left on an ongoing and never ending to do list. The trick is to try to knock the jobs off the list faster than new jobs appear on it, or at least keep the outstanding jobs at the same number which is typically where I'm always at with my TVR.
I have no plans for paint as my Chimaera enjoyed a front end respray at Surface & Design when it received the Mk3 headlight conversion, and my engine is strong so given there's always a list of little outstanding jobs I really don't want to be adding to it and spending unnecessarily. A Chimaera is kind of a flawed diamond, as such it's a car that goads you into making improvements, but it's all too easy to just keep throwing money after money at the car when what we really should be doing is just getting on with the fun bit....
Driving it
We are all effectively driving about in rolling restoration projects at varying stages of completion, as soon as you accept the process is a never ending one you realise the best policy is just good old fashioned preventative maintenance while keeping a close eye on component wear and corrosion. The way to think about it is we are all in a marathon trying to stay ahead of the inevitable wear and tear, corrosion and component failure; the trick is to stay one step ahead but to extract the maximum service life out of every component so as not to end up spending unnecessarily.
I measure the success of my TVR ownership on how much driving I can extract from it, I maintain the car without compromise but also try to keep my spending realistic and in line with the market value of Chimaeras. I need the car on the road as much as possible as all the time it's incapacitated being worked on it's time I'm losing not driving and enjoying my TVR, this means only replacing or restoring elements that demand attention but catching them in advance of the their imminent demise, I try hard to get this balance right which means resisting the temptation to replace or restore before the component has given me it's longest service life possible before I run the risk of it causing a breakdown or MoT failure.
The car must be ready to use at all times and 100% reliable, and if I do decide to take it off the road for something major like the chassis restoration it must be completed in the winter months when ordinarily I would be using the car the least, ideally it would be the wettest winter in living memory too which was achieved more through luck than judgment, but as it turned out I couldn't have picked a better winter to lose the use of the car.
In preparation for getting the car back, the other day I wrote a list of the outstanding things I want to complete on the car before the end of 2020, basically I ended up with 12 jobs, these are all works I will complete myself knocking two or three off the list every month. By the end of the year everything will have been crossed of the list, but I guarantee you they'll be 10 or so new jobs appear because the truth is I have never had less than 10 outstanding jobs on my TVR maintenance list in all the 11 years I've own the car.
However, I can also hand on heart say the car is immeasurably better in every single respect than it was when I bought it 11 years ago at just 33,000 miles in it's well maintained state, so while I've always kept very much on top of the general maintenance I have also been slowly but surely walking my Chimaera into a better than new state. I try to make everything I do to the car better than how TVR did it, and I try to make sure every component I replace is better than the part TVR used. The chassis restoration is just one good example of this policy, while TVR's effort lasted 23 years we've tried to restore it in a way that ensure it'll last a lot longer than that.
Better chassis protection, better engine management, better wiring, better suspension, better brakes, better tyres, better fuel economy, better performance, better seats and carpets, better headlights ect ect ect, these are just some of the things I've done already in the last 11 years in my bid to make the car better in every respect than when it left Bristol Avenue back in 1996. I've also completed all these improvements while trying not take the car off the road for too long, and while always staying one step ahead of the general maintenance too.
General maintenance of a TVR will always keep you busy, trying at the same time to make a Chimaera better built and dynamically better as well as more practical than it was when new is a real challenge believe me, doing so while keeping the car on the road at all times takes things to another level. Ultimately I'd like to think the my TVR could easily become my very practical and reliable everyday transport, this being my ultimate measurement of success and one I genuinely feel I've achieved...
Until that is the next thing breaks or wears out of course
In answer to Dave’s post, I feel I’m 80% there. Interior next, it’s just wear and tare.
Truth is with many of the upgrades/ updates I’ve added it removes so many problem area’s that my car usually costs very little to run on the road if that makes any sense.
The more you do the less to do... slowly over many years it simply gets newer and newer
TVR great cars
Truth is with many of the upgrades/ updates I’ve added it removes so many problem area’s that my car usually costs very little to run on the road if that makes any sense.
The more you do the less to do... slowly over many years it simply gets newer and newer
TVR great cars
dhutch said:
I would seem quite mad to write off a tvr for a rotten chassis, not saying it cant happen, and I am still an interested outsider to tvr ownership, but while a chassis restoration on a taxed and tested car might be borderline economically, once you drop the value to 'scrap value' surely it would then become instantly economical? Even if it needed a whole new chassis! I cant imagine the market for parting out is high enough that loosing the mot wouldnt be a huge value drop?
Obviously if someone new to the car hedged it, thats a very difference mater, and obviously something which can happen.
IIRC around 10 years ago the only option was a full body off which was mega money around £12k possibly, which was enough to write any Chim off.Obviously if someone new to the car hedged it, thats a very difference mater, and obviously something which can happen.
Then the outrigger only jobs sprung up and as I've already said mechanics became expert welders over night.
CoG looks a good job, re your last pic remember under the manifolds can also rot out, I know you've added extra coatings there
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