TVR Grantura Restoration - Stage Four - more difficulties!

Since the last post on this very topic almost 10 months have passed. Initially my dear TVR Grantura should have been restored and back on the road by now, but as always, things didn't develop as planned.
At least, in the meantime we have been able to separate the chassis from the body. Before we were able to do so the body had to be stabilized and partially fixed. What we found when we were able to look at the chassis the first time without fiberglass around it, was quite shocking! Longitudinal tubes were missing or totally rusted away! Others were not where they should be and some were repaired in a fairly bad way. So there's quite a bit of work that has to go into the chassis, we even have to consider a replacement item, if we can find one. But, the good news is, there can't be many more bad messages coming from now on. So, next stage will be all about fixing the chassis and in parallel, fixing the body as well. Only then we can start to reassembling the car. And hopefully it will go back on the road in 2011 still!

TVR Grantura Brochure and Price List 1961 - all the things you could have had

What you see here is a small budget brochure and price list for a TVR Grantura Mk2a of around 1961. £795 was the price to pay for a Grantura with Ford engine, £93 more you handed over for the MG A engine version and if you wanted the Coventry Climax version you the uplift was roughly 30% compared to the Ford version. That probably explains why so few Climax cars were shipped and why most of them received an MG engine during their life. It's also notable that only the MG version was homologated for racing. But even if you paid the £1045 for the Climax car, that wasn't the end. A full stage 3 race tune would add another £105 to the bill, but even the more moderate stage 2 engine conversion was £63. In comparison to this any other option you could order, like a heater/demister unit fresh air type (£15), windows screen washers (£2), leather upholstery (£10-12) or adjustable Koni shock absobers (£10) were quite affordable in comparison. Many people say the Germans have invented the car you can configure, but the TVR guys already had assembled quite a list of stuff to increase the price of your car. Interesting the fact that you could order a lightweight chassis/body combination, only the lightweight chassis or the lightweight body individually. But similar as today it was more expensive to get less. Adding all the bits you may have wanted together you easily could have ended up with a £1200 or 1300 Grantura, a car probably 5-8 times as expensive as a Volkswagen beetle.

Buying a British Sportcar in the early 60ties ...

Buying cars in the form of a kit was very popular in the early 60ies. Not only TVR, but also Lotus and many other manufacturers shipped their cars a kits and were avoiding some taxes this way. This made a huge difference for the buyers, but also offered them the challenge to finish the manufacturer's job.

Well, this meant a lot of things. First, of course, you had to check whether the kit delivered to your home was complete. On the first picture you see the parts list and the attempt of the buyer to tick off the parts actually delivered.

But even if everything was delivered this didn't mean completing the car was a simple task. Obviously this owner of a TVR Grantura had to "reinvent" the wiring diagram (by hand, see second picture) to make sure everything was correctly connected. In other cases a serious amount of adjustments or welding may have been needed. Especially as many cars were delivered without the gearbox and engine.

The good thing though was that the owner really know what he was driving and probably was able to fix things better than people buying finished cars. A bad aspect may have been on the other side that unskilled owners made a lot of shortcuts or mistakes that had caused bad consequences later during the life of the car.

TVR Grantura Restauration - stage three - one step forward two steps backwards

Here's another update from the TVR Grantura Restauration. In November it looked like we made progress quickly. Now things have become more difficult. To set the context it needs to be understood that this is a fiberglass car where body and chassis are bonded together. Over fifty years many things have happened and it's not that clear whether you can just cut off the body from the chassis without totally braking it. So, to give the body more strength we added a number of support tubes. While doing this, it became more and more clear that a few things are terribly wrong here. The right side of the car suffers from serious stress.
Sometimes during its "career" the body must have "fallen down" a bit and since then it's not symmetrical any more. Many stress cracks clearly indicate that this has been a problem for quite some time. Also we found out that some fairly important pieces were missing, for example the rear end of the chassis and part of the rear end of the body as well, not to forget quite a few of the chassis tubes.
Other things were just not placed correctly or not really mounted. Looking back I have been really lucky to not having driven the car before taking it apart.
With all of these things missing and that many things being wrong there was an additional need to find information on how it should have been.
Luckily enough we were given access to a sister car, neither in pristine order nor "concours", but highly original. So, using this other car, we are able to "reconstruct" the missing pieces and making sure that at the end our car will look right. So quite some time was spent analyzing the sister car with a yard stick and a digital camera.
With all this experience we have now much better chances to rebuild our car correctly. So the next step now is to partially "reconstruct" the rear end of the body. After this finally we should be able to cut off the body from the frame. But this is another story and will most probably be told in January I hope.

TVR Grantura Restauration - stage two - some progress

A few weeks have passed since I wrote last time about the TVR Grantura. In the meantime the car was taken apart, the engine has left the engine bay, the transmission was taken apart. The interior has been removed also. So there's not too much left, but the body is still bonded to the chassis. This will be the next step, to actually "divorce" chassis and body. That's going to be a painful process with lots of dust and dirt.
The engine already has been checked and partially repainted to make a good impression.
As always there are many strange things to be discovered, many mechanical issues to overcome. People in the past have removed parts that seemed not to be needed, but actually they are important. The most funny thing though was the "material" the initial assembler of the kit used to protect the body from the exhaust heat. To build the heat shield he obviously stole a parking sign! According to some English blokes it's really an original English parking sign. Well it did the job for almost 50 years and I hope people still were able to park their cars.

Kicking off the TVR Grantura Mk2 restoration project

I have talked about the old TVR Grantura Mk2 before. And about the plan to restore it. Well, soon the work will start. As this is not something that you do very often in your life combined with the fact that the experiences will be interesting for quite a number of people, we decided to properly document the restoration. So we started with a professional photo session of the car before the restoration. The picture shows the setup. We will document each stage of the restoration process and submit the resulting article to one of the classic car magazines if they are interested. If everything goes well, the work will be completed by next summer. Let's keep the fingers crossed. I will post updates on the progress on this blog from time to time.

The TVR Grantura MKII - short, light and very competitive

After a number of “one offs” TVR introduced the TVR Grantura in 1958. Grantura stands for “grand tourer”. The Granturas were featured in several prominent car magazines such as Autocar, whose favorable reviews created a lot of respect for the marque. In these early years, there really was no such thing as a "standard" TVR. Many engines could be ordered, anything from a Stage 3 Coventry Climax engine to a lowly side-valve Ford. MK I Granturas were praised for their excellent road-holding, although it came at the price of a punishing ride. The cars possessed many of the other key ingredients for a popular sports car: large brakes, 11in Girling drums, wire wheels, and sleek bodywork. Until mid 1960 TVR produced approx. 100 Grantura MK Is.
The MK I was superceded by the lightly modified MK II in 1960. Changes in the engine line were the main differences, the 1588ccm MGA engine now being the top offering, though the Ford or Coventry Climax alternatives were available too. Other changes included slight differences in lighting and fender flares. The car retained its chassis design and the stiff Volkswagen suspension. Continuous improvements led to the so called MK IIA representing again only minor changes to the engine line-up and other details. The largest evolution came from the standard fitment of Girling front disc brakes on all cars. Other performance modifications included an optional lightweight, aluminum cross-flow HRG-Derrington cylinder head. The last MK IIA was built in September of 1962 having been by far the most popular TVR produced to date, with nearly 400 examples produced. The car still retained the same body shell used in the first TVR Coupes produced in 1958.
The TVR Grantura had all the ingredients, making it successful in racing. Drivers such as Mitchell, Escott, Aitchison, Bolton, Rothchild, Woolfe, Haig, Donohue, Slotmaker, etc. competed with the light and small cars in national and international races. Scott-Moncrieff raced with his MK I, called “Coffee Bean” already 1959 at various events. Arnold Burton brought his MK II 1961 to the Tulip Rallye. Granturas competed at Monza, at the Nurburgring, at the Tourist Trophy, in Goodwood, Sebring and Daytona. In 1962 TVR decided to open a racing departments and brought three cars to Sebring and Le Mans. The success wasn’t great though. Even after the works race department was closed, Granturas competed in many races in Europe, USA and Australia. Specifically the improved MK IIIs were thanks to their improved suspensions and the stiffer chassis a great platform for race cars and are active in vintage racing until today.
This specific Grantura Mk II, 7/C/224, is a very early model of the Grantura MK II series. The car was first registered under “513 PRB” in Surrey, UK, in August 1960. According to its chassis number, the car must have had a Coventry Climax engine. At this time, the car apparently has been painted in “maroon”. When exactly the engine was changed to the still installed MG A 1’588 ccm unit (No 8746) is unclear. Also it’s not sure whether the car already received the HRG Derrington cross-flow head in the early 60ies or later. Also unclear is when the color changed from maroon to green, if it ever was maroon. For what is known the car stayed with the first owner in the UK until 1987, when it was brought to Sweden. Apparently the car was restored by the first Swedish owner and for use on the road registered as HKS 633. After changing hands in Sweden the car first came to Denmark and later to Switzerland. It was successfullly raced as an FIA car in both Swedish and Danish race series.
The TVR Grantura combines all the key virtues you would expect from a sportscar: It's light (less than 700 kg), small and well powered (roughly 120+ HP).

Restoring a TVR Grantura MK2

When I bought my little green TVR Grantura MK2 (1960) I didn't think of restoring it. I bought it as race-ready and thought I would do some little bits here and there and otherwise enjoy it. However when we started to look deeper into the internals of the car we found more rust than what we had expected. At the end of the analysis we had to say that the car could not be considered safe and race worthy. So, something more drastic has to happen, meaning cutting the fiberglass body from the chassis and restoring the whole chassis, replacing rotten tubes and rust protecting it again. Now, while financially this isn't probably the most viable thing to do, I very much believe in "doing the things right". The TVR Grantura is a fabulous car and it's certainly worth to preserve it.
And, at the end, it can't be so much work neither, right. Given people bought these cars in pieces and were able to assemble them in 30-45 hours.
This second picture comes from an old article showing all what you received when you purchased a Grantura in the early 60ies. This is pretty much comparable to what I will have after the car has been disassmebled with the exception that, as said before, I also need to separate the fiberglass body and the chassis. Now, this is pretty dirty work and hopefully it only needs to be done once for quite a long time. And I am very glad that I will have CCC (classic car connection) helping me with this.
If any of my dear readers have experience with doing this kind of work and can come up with some good advise I am more than happy to take it. And if anybody out there has some evidence on the history of 7/C/224 during the years 1960-1990 (before it was in Sweden) then this also would help a lot to complete the history of this nice green little car.