My 1973 TVR 2500M : Renew and Restomod

Jeez, I never do updates anymore.  Here goes.

I spoke too soon on the integrity of the tent:

I went away for a week at the beginning of the month, and came back to this.  Must have rained a bunch.  I think it's actually fixable - I already 3d printed some beefier replacement brackets.  I think I'll add some pvc "in-between" spars to try and eliminate the saggy areas that catch water.

On to the car.  I'm getting farther along with the underside clean up.  Almost ready to make repairs.

The PO(S) had slabbed on a bunch of bondo (I guess?) in the rear wheel wells.  He trimmed the fender edge back most of the way.  Some of the underside glass looks trimmed too.  Then it looks like tires were still making contact - lots of stress cracks on the outside.  So bondo as reinforcement.  On the bright side it popped out in big chucks without much work:

There's also some rubber undercoating-ish stuff.  Not sure if that's or added later.  Comes out with copious application of elbow-grease.  I'm going to add a couple layers of carbon to the underside, since this seems to be a known stress point.

I've decided to get the repairs finished and then find a good body shop to take over and apply paint.  If I paint it myself I'll be mad about all the little flaws.  Best to just pay someone at this point.

TVR Scott said:

There's also some rubber undercoating-ish stuff.  Not sure if that's or added later.

Not sure where that thought was going, but it's not factory. As far as I remember, all M series frames were painted black, and that's it. The lack of rust protection was a thing people whinged about, in period. Tasmin frames came with a light gray powdercoat finish. Bottom of the bodies may have had some body color overspray, but nothing like the blackened salmon skin you're showing. 

In reply to Slow_M :

I just meant to ask if there was originally any undercoating on the wheel wells or body.  Sounds like not.

Were the bodies just bare fiberglass underneath?

TVR Scott said:

I've decided to get the repairs finished and then find a good body shop to take over and apply paint.  If I paint it myself I'll be mad about all the little flaws.  Best to just pay someone at this point.

Brilliant move. Isn't it amazing how much less some little things can bug you if you didn't cause them?

TVR Scott said:

In reply to Slow_M :

I just meant to ask if there was originally any undercoating on the wheel wells or body.  Sounds like not.

Were the bodies just bare fiberglass underneath?

Not is correct, re: factory undercoating.

Yes, just bare fiberglass, except for the overspray. 

I was just thinking about how rhino liner in those areas would be your friend, long term. Especially for covering the outriggers but for keeping the fiberglass in decent shape, too. You'd probably have to get some surface prep done that improves adhesion. That said, I think mine had a heavy coat of flat black paint on parts of the underbody and engine bay. Can't remember if that was original. 

Hi Scott, 

I hope you've been keeping well. Any updates? 

For a while, it felt like your progress was so rapid and so constant, that I would have thought you'd be doing car show events, by now. 

That's not a slight, in any way. More like me marveling at the quality and quantity of work you were maintaining, for a LONG stretch. 

In reply to Slow_M :

Hey buddy, thanks for reaching out.  Things have been pretty whirlwind for the last few months.  Losing my mom, then the dog, planning and running the memorial service, then a road trip to Vermont with my daughter.  I finally got to come up for air in the beginning of Sept.

It's been slow progress on the car this summer.  It's been wicked hot, so my excitement for grinding on the body in the heat is pretty low.  It is cooling off now, and I'm feeling some enthusiasm to get started on the body work again.

I did get the steering rack and related parts painted the other day, so I'll get that assembled soon.  A little forward progress.

Good to hear that you're back into it. Eagerly anticipating progress updates.

B 

Hey, I did some stuff!  Who wants to see a bunch picks?

A summer of being outside in the wind and UV wrecked the canopy on the pop-up.  Here's my set-up with a shockingly-nice replacement from the rain forest:

Then we got about of foot of snow at the beginning of November:

<Sad Trombone>

Long-time followers will know that this is the second pop-up frame claimed by this project.  Evidently I'm a slow learner.

Nice day yesterday, and one of my best friends stopped by for a morning hangout.  He gave me a lot of encouragement and constructive advice, so I was all fired up to work on things yesterday afternoon.  Filling holes and applying surfacing veil were the main tasks.

First the holes for the brake pedal mount looked a bit odd.  A little probing showed they were actually wallowed out quite a bit and then "fixed" with what looked like plumber's putty.  Thanks, PO(S).

The overview:

Here's a couple cleaned out and beveled:

I ordered up some of this epoxy filler to try instead of polyester filler.  Just did the one mix so far, but it's easy to work with, doesn't smell awful, and smoothed on pretty well.

Spread on.  You can see there were some low spots in the panel too.  A bit distorted for some reason.  I filled in throttle cable hole, since that will certainly not come into play on this build.

Added some surfacing veil to the rear fender arches.  Lots of spider cracking there.  Note: fiberglass layup in the wind next to a tree dropping leaves is not a great idea.

Driver's side:

Passenger's side:

The area down low between the tail lights needs some veil too.  I'll lay that up the next time I have the body standing on edge.

I also put veil on the hood.  I did the passenger's side a long time ago, so this completes the top side.

I took a lot more time and care on this section, since the P/S had some bridging and wrinkles.  The D/S came out a lot better.  I also learned to just tear the veil instead of using scissors.  Easy to adjust and add "darts" to let the fabric lay flat.  Less sticky scissors too.

That's all for now!

The reception on the previous post was so enthusiastic that I think I'll do another.  Got a couple good car sessions in.  Last weekend I bribed my cousin with fish and chips, so he drove up to help out.

Big project of recent is reinforcing the body where it mounts to the frame.  The holes as-is were totally blown out and cracked.  Serious structure was needed.

First we did a layup with 8 plies of carbon, two plies of Kevlar, and some fiberglass on the outsides.  Peel ply on the top and bottom, because pulling that stuff off sends me to tactile nirvana.

No pics during the layup, because we were totally covered in epoxy.  Under bag:

And here it is cured and unbagged:

Today I chopped up that plate into some 4" x 4" pieces and some 2" x 6" strips.  Sawzall with a tile blade cut the carbon with zero effort.

Here's the back end mounting spots with their strips glued in place:

The middle mounts where the seat-belts are attached:

And up at the front of the foot-wells:

A fair bit of work, but it should be a lot stronger now.

There was a body seam up front that had split and all the old filler was cracked and falling out.  We chipped all of that out and filled in the gap with structural adhesive.   This stuff is non-sag and made for gap filling, so I thought it would be worth a try.  Dispensing:

Crazy amount of force required to get it to dispense, but otherwise I like this stuff.  I'll use it to put in the sunroof filler panel.  That project is coming up soon on the to-do list.

That's all for now.  Enjoy.  Or don't.  I'm not your dad.

I'm digging it scott!

Looking forward to sunroof project, my car needs it. Nice work!

I'm still following along.  I'll try to use this as motivation to get out in the cold garage and set things up.  Work and the new house has me pinned down lately.

It's really coming along.

In reply to TVR Scott :

 "Peel ply on the top and bottom, because pulling that stuff off sends me to tactile nirvana." This cracks me up. Different strokes, I find it seriously annoying chasing all the threads out of a structural seam.

In reply to TurnerX19 :

I wondered if anyone was going to notice I slipped that comment in.  I've never had issues with it not coming off in one big sheet.  I'll count my blessings, I guess.

In reply to TVR Scott :

Very big issue on seams that require a diagonal cut on the peel ply. If you can run the edge of the ply past the repair it helps a lot. Never a real problem when making flat sheet panels. 

In reply to TurnerX19 :

I was thinking about this more, and I bet you could lay down the peel ply and then add a small strip of release film under the edge of the peel ply.  That would give you a section that isn't fully encapsulated by the resin.  A little pull-tab of sorts.