My 1973 TVR 2500M : Renew and Restomod

Titanium?

TurboFource said:

Titanium?

Yup!

Cool, welcome to the club! I have 4 plates and 15 screws in my neck.

Whoa, I've been on my own old man journey(hip replacement), and not checked in here.

Good work going under the knife, recognizing that getting strong is the best you can do, and trusting the Drs.

Speedy recovery, fella!

In reply to wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) :

Thanks!

I saw you mention somewhere you were having the hip replacement.  Is it already done?  How are things?

I bought a 3d scanner - an Einstar from Shining 3d.  I've wanted a good scanner for a while, and the price point dropped enough and the quality went up enough that I went ahead with the purchase.

Here's one of the first things I'm messing with - the HVAC duct that got mangled.  The vendor sent some fancy spray, so I tried it here:

My CAD laptop is having no trouble crunching the numbers.  In process:

I pulled the file into Solidworks and messed with it some. 

I'm still learning the tools, but I'm happy with the progress so far.  Here's an okay attempt at converting to surfaces.  Not quite there but the right idea for sure.

i just realized i still have the base gaskets for the mirrors.  I'll get them out today.

Thar's some very impressive technology, and I'm impressed that you can apply it. Does this mean you won't be needing my HVAC duct? I can still send it.

Stu Lasswell said:

Thar's some very impressive technology, and I'm impressed that you can apply it. Does this mean you won't be needing my HVAC duct? I can still send it.

For now hold off on sending that duct.  I'll pursue this for a while and if it doesn't pan out I know where to find you.

Looks like you've recovered enough, or are benefiting from better living through chemistry. Either way, it's nice to see that you already have a good head of steam back into this project.

Looked at the scanners. They seem to have great prices. Can't justify it yet 

Are you going to scan the body, drop it into the same drawing, align, and fill in the missing bit, or just more or less mirror what you already have? 

What size have the scan output files been? 

Keep up the speedy recovery or drug use. 

In reply to Slow_M :

Not really on any potent drugs anymore.  Just Tylenol and Celebrex.  Impatiently waiting for my 6-week check-up next Weds.  I'm hoping I'll get the all-clear to start doing vigorous exercise again.  Walking is fine, but I like a bit more elevated heart-rate.

The native scan data is pretty big - like 7 gig for that duct.  The OBJ files are not too crazy though - maybe 55-90 mb.  I've been working on generating the surfaces some more, and there is definitely no easy-button.  I did make a bit of a break-thru this morning - you can generate a series of 3d sketches across a mesh, and the resulting surface is very nice.

Here's the mesh with the sketches.  I used the big flat face as my reference plane:

Resulting boundary surface is pretty clean:

In other news, I bit the bullet and ordered refurbished Lucas front marker/turn-signal lights from Ebay UK.  Not cheap, but I couldn't find them anywhere else.  The PO(S) had some random Toyota lights mounted.

That is extremely cool and impressive stuff. The closest comparison I can draw from my meager experience is looking at a megasquirt map and smoothing it out with the topography map type feature manually. Then there is you capturing multiple files and seamlessly blending them together and creating an accurate digital model of a physical part. You are truly an artist Scott. 

Additionally, if you scan the whole car, put me on the list of people willing to purchase that file. The ability to 3d print a mold for body parts would be just about priceless. The glass openings might be of particular value. 

Great to see the MSI working out in practice! I was watching the latest Superfast Matt video where he was comparing another new scanner to his Einstar and noted that with his mongo video card Alienware laptop if he doesn't have the auxiliary power cord for the video card plugged in the scanning gets WAY slower...

And kudos for cracking on so quickly!

In reply to Jesse Ransom :

I think there's a misconception about gaming computers - that they'll be good for cad.  They're not.  Just different technology and needs.  I'm guessing Super-fast Matt knows this too, but probably just wanted to make something work.

I might upgrade the RAM in my computer.  It's pretty cheap to do, and might make a nice difference in my day to day work.

Tackled a job today that I've been putting off approximately forever.  I've done a couple of the body patches where the "roll bar" was, but needed to trim and bevel the rest.  So I did that today:

And I also cleaned up and beveled the matching spots on the body.  Last spot on the passenger's side:

Behind the driver's seat:

And in the back on the driver's side:

I think if I get hopping tomorrow morning I can get all of these patches in place and glassed in tomorrow.  That'd be a solid accomplishment, so I'm going to try and make that happen.

Part two complete!

I got a care package from England this week: refurbished front turn signals!

Yay Ebay-motors!  They're in really good shape.  I found a few small flaws but they almost look NOS.

TVR Scott said:

In reply to wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) :

Thanks!

I saw you mention somewhere you were having the hip replacement.  Is it already done?  How are things?

The hip is good. Not 100 %, but a lot better than pre surgery, and I understand more healing is yet to come. It appears your medical issues are coming along. Keep on keeping on brother.

Love the continued build.

I guarantee that those rebuilt lights are better than anything brand new you could buy.  I used original ones with new rubber.

The fiberglass patches look clean and solid.

Did you get the fuel filter leak taken care of?

In reply to JoeTR6 :

Couldn't even find reproduction lights.  They were only used in the Triumph Dolomite and a couple Lotus models.  Super rare.

Yes on the fuel filter.  Tanks Inc had a version that had AN fittings right on the fuel filter.  So one less fitting and no quick-connects there  anymore.  Probably they had people complaining about leaking messes and developed the different version!

Did some more work on the doors this morning.  Overall they're in decent shape but lots of little things need to be addressed.

I was originally going to leave the factory red paint behind the door-cards, but it was very thin and comes off with acetone.  Doesn't seem to be primer under all of it.

So I decided to take it off entirely and repaint whole the door.  I'm glad I did, since I found a few flaws that will need fixing.  Was neat to find that original paint, though.

Found more ugliness around the hinge pockets:

Every hinge spot has some cracking, though this one is the worst.  It's the top hinge on the passenger's side.  I'll grind it out and fill, then I'm thinking a patch of carbon at each spot will make it nice and strong for the future.

On the front sides, the holes for the hinges were very rough cut with big over-cuts at each corner.  I ground that out too, and will do some patching and smoothing.

Ground down some other flaws and will fill them too.

Last for the morning, I put the surfacing veil on the second door.  I'd done the first one a couple months ago, so that was a nice task to take care of after a morning of grinding and sanding.

I ground out the cracks in the door hinge pockets, and filled them with chopped-strand glass and epoxy.  Same for the areas I ground out above.

This morning I put on the reinforcements over the hinge pockets.  Four layers of carbon cloth with a single top layer of fiberglass.

The fiberglass will keep the carbon fiber from reacting with the metal hinge hardware - galvanic corrosion is a thing!

The pinkish-tan stuff is epoxy with micro-balloons stirred up to make a filler.  I had a little extra resin in the cup, so I used the extra to fill in these corner gaps and also some low-spots on the hood.

TVR Scott said:

Either of you have the spacer that goes under the pedal assembly?  Or under the brake booster?  Something like that?

Mine fell apart.

If I can get dimensions, I'll make those too.

Re-reading some of out old discussions about spacers as I'm nearing this point in my reassembly. I didn't realize it but I misled you here. I do have a "spacer" above my pedal box, just never noticed. Is this what you're referring to? If so maybe this image will help.

I only have two of those large cylindrical spacers, so I'm thinking that the pedal assembly may have been spaced at front but not at the rearIt's hard to tell from my pictures.

My steering colum mounting bracket also had two spacers, to move it away from the bulk head.

Not directly related to the car but still fun.  My younger daughter expressed interest in learning how to weld, so as a good father I had to encourage her interests:

So far we've done two lessons - each about an hour long.  First one was dedicated to just moving a puddle across a sheet, then adding some filler rod as well.  She did well and had fun.

Second session was yesterday afternoon, and we started cutting the sheet in half and putting it back together.  She did great with the real butt-welds.  The full width welds below are passes 2 and 3.  Penetration on the back side is not bad.

She's gotten accepted at several engineering schools and has her eye on doing mechanical engineering like me.  Formula SAE is one of her planned activities and she wants to be ready to contribute.  Proud poppa moment!

Man I want to attend the TVR Scott Welding School.  Great job.