kws

Yeah i dont know what's up with that. Seems to only happen on mobile devices, and only on this forum. It's been mentioned before If its easier to look at the photos, its on my website too https://www.tasteslikepetrol.net/cars/tvr-tasmin/

Bits and pieces moulded into the fibreglass for things like door mounts and windscreen frame, but its mostly a fibreglass tub bolted to a tube frame chassis

I managed to wrangle the whole EFI manifold and plenum off a later TVR as part of the deal, so the option is there. Im going to try and get the Kjet working good enough to use, but the ultimate goal is EFI with my spare Speeduino. Probably use the dizzy as the trigger, and wasted spark.

Discuss blindly buying cars and how good of an idea it is....

Well, it happened again. Somehow awesome old British cars that need loving find me, and of course who am I to turn them down? This car has a bit of a weird story, but I guess it adds to the history of it all. It all started when I had the M328i listed on Trademe, back in March, and in amongst all the useless time-wasters asking me dumb questions, I got asked if I wanted to swap the black leather vaders for white leather seats from another M3. Of course this was a no, white leather is one of the worst wearing colours in the E36. The fellow wasn't done there though, he wanted my seats. The next question he asked on my listing immediately had my ears perk up, and suddenly I was intrigued. Yes, that's right, a TVR. After a bit of googling I worked out an 80s TVR would be a Wedge. Not the most loved TVR, but I like them, and any TVR is a good TVR in my books. It's 80s, it's British, how bad can it be? Of course I was interested, and let him know. Later that night I get a call and discuss the car. Its been off the road for a few years getting some work done at the "local" TVR specialist, in Auckland. Ok, no problem, except the owner is down in Christchurch (about 1000km and a large body of water away from each other, and I'm somewhere in the middle of that). It turns out that he wanted my car, because he was buying a convertible E36 M3, and wanted to swap my black leather into it. He also had thoughts of "Trevors last drive" by flying up to Auckland, picking up the TVR, driving it down to me, swapping to the M3 and for him to continue on his way down south. As I found out later, this would've been a big ask for the TVR. We discuss the ins and outs, and I'm recommended to contact the specialist and discuss the car. I give the specialist a call and discuss the car. Apparently it's all sorted, and basically ready to "fly through" a WOF and to hit the road. Its had various work done, including most of the hard work like suspension. He noted it does have an issue starting, which is possibly down to a failed fuel accumulator, but does run and could be driven onto a truck. His description of the car was that its a good solid, tidy car, but may need some carpets as they are a bit worn. I was very interested, but needed photos to see what condition it was in. Ok he said, he will try and sort some for me. To cut a long story short, I tried for months to get photos of the car, with every reason under the sun for not getting them from the specialist. On the other side of it, the seller of the TVR decided not to buy that M3, and couldn't find one he wanted, so no longer had a need or want for my car. I let him know I was still interested in outright purchasing the car but would need photos. Both him and myself followed up with the specialist, to no avail. Just before I went on holiday at the end of June, the BMW sold, but I still had no proof of life that the TVR even existed, so just left it hanging whilst I chilled out in the UK (more on that in a later post). When I returned, I already had a list of cars on Trademe I wanted to look at. I had basically given up on the TVR at this point, as during the month I was away, still no photos had been sent. I looked at a couple of cars, including an Evo 4 (which I came very close to buying, but the second viewing showed too many issues, and the unmistakable smell of weed inside) and a C55 AMG (nice car, if a bit dull). I wasn't quite set on them, but noticed that the TVR specialists website had been updated, with new photos, and what happened to be dead center in the photos, but a silver Wedge! Well, there was my proof of life I guess; the car did exist! I contacted the owner and confirmed the car was still for sale, and then did the stupid thing; making an offer for the car as it sits, without so much as a real photo. Offer was accepted, and a call was made to the specialist to make sure no money was owing, that the car could come with the spare parts, and that it would drive onto the truck.... oh wait, what's that, it suddenly doesn't run but you will "try to get it going"... I pushed forward anyway, sending my hard-earned money to the seller, and booking my preferred transport, letting him know that the car doesn't run but the specialist will "try" to get it running. After a long week of waiting, this showed up this morning. Yes, that's the proper good fella Brent from Classic Towing dropping off yet another project to me. Can't recommend him enough, as even when things go a bit pear shaped, he has it all under control, and he loves weird cars almost as much as I do. My first question to him was "did it run?" to which he replied with a no, and tightened the winch ready for laying the bed flat. Such a cool truck, it lowers the bed right off onto the ground. This is half way down Brent pushed the car whilst I jumped in and steered it carefully into the garage. This was harder than you would think, being that it was raining on the outside, and inside of the windscreen, and the wiper didn't work (well, it's not even fitted). We made it safely into the garage though. The brakes work, which is something. So, what is this weird little thing? A 1980 TVR Tasmin 280i It's more or less a Ford Capri in a fibreglass body with tube-frame chassis and some weird and bespoke parts. Powered by a 2.8l V6 Ford Cologne engine topped with Bosch K-Jetronic mechanical fuel injection, backed by the latest (for the 70s) in Ford 4 speed manual gearbox technology, and driven via the rear wheels through a Jaguar XJS diff with spiffy inboard disc brakes. The pinnacle of technology, and a real parts bin special. On the plus side it does get some pretty advanced gear for something that is the same age as my green Mini. Independent rear suspension, four wheel disc brakes, fuel injection, electric windows, bonded windscreen and a targa top convertible. It does have a lot of known quirks though, such as a multitude of wiring issues, a wiring loom that consists of only black wires (seriously), diabolical K-Jet fuel injection, and a dual fuel tank system that is no end of troubles. Anyway, this car is the 106th Tasmin off the line, and appears to be the 4th DHC (Drop Head Convertible) made (1st was a concept made from a chopped up FHC). Before the DHC was in production, the FHC (Fixed Head Coupe) was the TVR to have. The FHC was soon phased out though and only the DHC survived until the end of production, albeit with some big changes. Being a very early car, my one has some specific early only "features". The first, and most obvious, is that its a TVR Tasmin, not a TVR 280i. TVR dropped the Tasmin name later on and left the names to just be the displacement of the engine (280i - 2.8 V6, 350i - 3.5 V8 etc). A couple of other early features are the weird little mirrors hanging off the doors. Later cars changed to pods in front of the side windows, like a normal car. One of my favourite really early features though, has to be the gorgeous Stewart Warner gauges The later cars got boring, but arguably more readable (and probably reliable), VDO gauges. There is just something about the way the SW gauges are clocked, and the vertical odometer. So, now that the car has been delivered, how is it? Did i win the blind buying game, or get screwed? It's not as tidy as described, and it doesn't currently run. The battery was completely dead (to the point my ctek charger won't even detect it), but with a replacement battery the electrics are slowly coming to life again. Unfortunately, it leaks like a sieve and is full of water. I tried to dry as much as I could out, but the dehumidifer will have to do the rest. The roof seals will be the major contributor to this, as they are well buggered. The water ingress is what has ruined the carpet, it's literally rotting away. The boot, once I got it open, wasn't much better, with the lid being full of water and covered in condensation on the inside. The seats are in good condition, with no obvious rips or tears, as is the rest of the general interior. The wood grain has some cracks, but overall for a car I suspect spent a lot of time sitting outside, its in good shape. Apparently blue velour and vinyl stand the test of time. Bodywork is very good, with only some stone chips on the front. The rest of the paint appears to be good and will come up well with a polish. The top is also in good condition, with only some damage to the fabric on the removable section, and the rear window is very cloudy. Hopefully, I can polish that out, but it may need replacement. I don't know how the car is mechanically as it does not run. The previous owner advised (only after I had paid for it) that there is a strong fuel smell from the tanks when sitting, but it drove well otherwise. The fuel in the tanks smells like varnish, but cannot be smelt without opening one of the two fuel caps. I will need to drain this out and throw some new fuel in before trying to start. The starting issues could be a few things, but I will get to that in due course. One cool thing about TVRs is the convertible roof with a removable targa section. You can either have the roof up, down, or the rear section up but without the targa section, which fits into the boot (roof isn't locked in this photo, so looks a bit baggy) So that's the TVR. The plan is to get get it running, get a WOF on it and then take it to the British Car Day show in Feb. In between that, just take it out for some top-down Summer cruising. Oh, and keep fixing it. Can't forget that.

Yeah we use synthetic Dexron 6 as recommended by Caltex.

That video is mostly correct (i install the 24mm before starting, and level it down to a fine trickle, less coming out than on the video before installing drain plug). Have serviced a few of those, just make sure you check the trans temp via obd2. At work we would do a basic flush by filling and draining a couple of times, running it through the gears between drops before doing the final fill and using the overflow tube to level it. Not sure about filter, have never had to do one.

I tested the fuel pressure today. The FPR is rated at a max of 3BAR (43psi). At idle, with the vac line attached, I had 50psi. With the vac line attached, according to the manual, I should see 6-10psi less than 43psi at idle, so should have about 35psi or so. New FPR is on the way, so will see what happens when I replace that. Fingers crossed.

Another part of trying to sort the idle is to replace the idle control valve, which has been a bit suspect from the beginning. I don't particularly enjoy taking the intake off, but its the only way to get to the idle valve. I cleaned the idle valve a while back, but obviously it was still suspect. Even after cleaning I was still getting a reading of zero in DIS for idle air flow (I haven't had a chance to test since replacement). After some research it turned out that the S50B30 idle valve is shared with the M60/M62 BMW V8 engines, so although its bigger and not shared with the other I6 engines, it's not too hard to source one from an E34/E39/E38. I got a good used replacement, and got to work pulling the intake out again. Thankfully last time I had it all off I chose to fit a pod filter instead of the standard airbox, as that was one part that pissed me off a lot when reassembling; refitting the airbox. Taking the plenum off doesn't take too long, it's just a bit fiddly. Here we go again Out came the old valve. The only difference between the M6x ones and S50 is that there is a rubber grommet on the M6x ones. Once you pull that off, they are the same, even down to Bosch part number. It became obvious that despite me cleaning it, the original valve was still sticking, and it moved nowhere near as freely as the used replacement. An easy test of how freely they operate is to twist/shake the unit side to side and see how easily the shutter inside it moves. The old one needs quite a firm shake to move the shutter, whilst the replacement moves very freely. I suspect this is how the original one moved in DIS but may not be working correctly. With a full whack of voltage to fully open or close it (as the DIS test does), it works OK, but you can't finesse the movement and tweak it just a little. With one of my previous orders, I had ordered a replacement mount for the valve, as the old one was brittle and broke last time I removed it (hence the zip tie in the above photos). On went the new mount. I fit the replacement valve, reassembled, and tested. It seems the idle acts a bit better than it did, with noticeable changes when load is applied at idle, but it's still rough and misfiring at idle, so obviously the idle valve was an issue, but not related to my original fault.

Cams are standard, checked when I did the Vanos

In my quest to smooth out my idle issue, I wanted to remove and check the DME and VNC units. The DME (Digital Motor Electronics or ECU in normal cars) and VNC (Vanos control unit) are both stacked in a little compartment at the back of the engine bay, under the cowling. There are two things that these units are known for; A, getting waterlogged in that compartment and B, cracking solder joints. This is where they live in a RHD engine bay. On the LH side, and on the M3, behind the coolant expansion tank. ALWAYS start by disconnecting the battery. You don't want to short this stuff out. First, the coolant tank needs to be moved. This is clipped in at the back, and hooked into a tab at the front. The rear of the tank will just lift upwards out of its clip and then side toward the rear of the car to disengage the front tab. This allows you to undo the 5 screws that surround the black panel. A 1/4" ratchet was the best for fitting in here. The RH side of the panel is hooked into a little tab. You need to pull the LH side towards the front of the car, whilst holding the loom against the firewall (to unhook it from plastic panel), and then slide the panel to the left. Then you have a big gaping hole with wires and control units in it. This is the point where you can tell if it's been full of water in there or not. Mine, thankfully, looked pretty dry. A bit dusty if anything. On the bottom, with the big connector, is the DME. Up top is the VNC, with a smaller connector. I found removing the DME connector from the DME before sliding the unit forward, was a lot easier than trying to remove the DME first, as there is limited space due to the fuse box. To remove the DME connector, the silver metal locking tab needs to be lifted up, away from the DME. This will allow you to tilt the wire end of the connector away from the DME. The other end of the connector is hooked into the DME and to disengage it you need to tilt the connector away from the DME until it slides out. The DME is then friction fit into its mount. It will slide forward with a bit of pressure, and come out. With the DME out and on the bench, I needed to disassemble it to inspect the solder joints. Normally this requires bending tabs on the bottom of the unit, but my DME has obviously been open before, and these tabs are missing. Then there are a bunch of screws top and bottom. The little ones are Torx 8, which thankfully being an ex-Apple Computer technician, I have T8 drivers just kicking around. With all the screws out (including the four large ones in the below photo), the casing comes off and leaves bare boards Now, the DME3.3 used with the S50B30 is a two board setup joined by a ribbon cable. This is fairly straightforward, only complicated slightly by the fact that one layer of the boards has its own pins in the connector, and needs some specific conditions to remove the pins. The pins are the top layer In the bottom corner of the boards there are two little plastic retaining clips on each corner of the board. These pull apart to release the boards, and then the boards must be carefully prised apart. You need to separate them at least as far as the above photo, if not slightly further. Just don't damage the flex cable between the two. With the two boards apart, you need to carefully pry the layer of pins out of the connector. There are a couple of clips on the back of the connector that need to be undone (pre-broken off on my DME), and then using a little flat blade screwdriver, wedge it between the top of the plastic around the pins, and the lip just above them on the casing. If you have enough angle on the boards, this should allow the pins to pop out backwards The DME should then open out into two boards This is also the same procedure required to chip the DME, which I figure is why my DME has been open before. There were obvious witness marks on the tune chip socket. The chip that would be replaced is circled below Anyway, that's not what I'm here for (for now). What I wanted to check for, were cracked solder joints. Anyone who is a long time reader of mine will likely remember I fixed Nicks Vitesse by fixing solder joints in his ECU. This is the same thing I'm looking for here. A quick nosy around and I spotted a couple of very suspicious looking joints. Most of them were on the large diodes on the main board. I fired up the old soldering station, cracked up the temps, and went to work resoldering the joints. In the end I think there were about 6 joints that I resoldered. Reassembly of the DME is just the reverse of disassembly. Hook in the pins, press the boards together and then reinstall the casing and screws. Next was to remove the VNC. This is a weirder mount; you need to slide the VNC towards the rear of the car, and then down, to get it out. The connector has a tab that slides across to unlock and remove it. A bunch of little screws hold the top cover on, and once removed, reveal the magical guts of the unit that makes Vanos work. And as a reminder of how special these early M3s were, all the original VNC chips have a handwritten sticker on them. This is also the chip that gets replaced when you chip the car (both the DME and VNC need to be chipped). I completely removed the board from the housing, but found nothing out of the ordinary here, so reinstalled and reassembled it. Refitting the VNC to its mount is a pain. It needs to slide backward and up, and then forward to lock it in. The connectors and cover then go back on, and the battery can be reconnected. The result of this work was... nothing. No change at all. Still runs and drives the same, but at least I know it should be more reliable in the future. I now also know how to remove the DME and VNC to chip it if those "Group N" chips on eBay tempt me too much.

What I have done with my ramps before is jack the car up and drop it onto the ramps. Easier than stands, and you can drive off them afterwards. Bugger using bits of firewood though lol. When you said "wood as ramps" I thought you meant planks of wood laid on top of each other. Bits of cut up pallet is mint for that (and awesome for getting jacks under low cars for free)

They're very steep. I believe you can get extensions to make the angle less, which might help. You can also get grippy things that attach to the bottom of the front edge, but I tried a few things to stop them sliding and have only ever managed to drive a car up them once without them scooting along the garage floor. Polished concrete floors dont help either.

Better off jacking it up TBH. My ramps (supercheap ones) were a complete waste of money. As mentioned, they have a tendency to shoot out from under the car as you drive up them, so i never use them now.

They sound like an Evo... Not always a good thing.

Or maybe has other things to do in life than post on a forum? Just sayin. Pretty weird thing to troll about, and not like the normal bot posts you see.

No schraeder valve sadly, just lines tucked up under harness on firewall. Would've made life easier. S50b30 engine.

I need to test the fuel pressure on my BMW to see if the FPR is working properly, but getting to the fuel hoses at the rail is a real pain. Is there anything stopping me from testing the fuel pressure down at the fuel filter under the car?

Ah yes, that time again. It's not my M3 if it doesn't involve rebuilding the Vanos at some point. If anyone has forgotten, I have previously rebuilt the Vanos unit on my old M3, and what a nightmare that was. Lesson learned, don't use cheap tools. Being that this car has 300,000KM on the clock, and the previous owner has no history of the Vanos ever being rebuilt, I felt it was prudent to do it. This made even more sense, since when I first got the car I ordered a full Beisan rebuild kit, as the Vanos was completely dead (turned out it was just a sensor issue), so had a kit sitting around. The previous owner had the Vanos off the head back when they had the head work done, but when I asked, he confirmed that it was not rebuilt at the same time (argh, the hardest part is taking it on and off, why not do it then?!). This gave me some hope that maybe it wouldn't fight me like the last one did.... or on the flip side, there was a chance the previous owner had been kind enough to round off the bolts or something on reassembly. Anyway, with a nice clear day off work, I got stuck in. I won't do much step by step work in this post, as it's covered in my previous rebuild, and also on Beisans website. One reason I had been putting the job off a little bit longer was that the valve cover wasn't leaking, and I really didn't want to pull it off again in case it starts to leak. Oh well, Here goes. Argh, bugger, so much for not leaking. This little bastard never seems to want to seal. It's a new gasket, with a new rubber washer... and it's still leaking. The inside of this engine is bloody amazing for 300,000KM. Its obviously been looked after and well serviced. The previous M3, with 100,000KM less, was almost black on the inside. This is lovely and golden brown. Before you can do anything else you must get the engine up at TDC. This involves having the No.1 cam lobes for intake and exhaust pointing up and towards each other and making sure the crank pulley mark is lined up. I had a hell of a time last time, as the Beisan instructions are incorrect, and the timing mark is hard to find, tucked down behind the crank pulley. Strangely, on this engine there seems to be a critical change. Not only does it have the marks behind the pulley, but it finally also has it stamped into the front of the pulley! Not sure if this was a South African Market difference or just a difference between 1994 and 1995 engines. I still had to use my old iPhone to see it, but it's better than having to try and see it behind the pulley. As expected this little piston nut gave me some anxiety. To undo it, you use a 7mm spanner on the nut and a 4mm 6 sided socket on a ratchet to hold the shaft still. The 4mm hex is well known for just shearing off, and then you're having a bad day. Thankfully although it was tight, mine came off just fine. One part I have been asked about was to give more details on the removal of the oil pump driver when removing the Vanos unit. This is a little disk that sits on the back of the unit. It's circled here My previous unit was so sludged up that the driver disk was stuck to the unit, but in this case it was nice and free. The risk here is that if dropped, it takes a swift one way trip to the bottom of the sump. Turns out, it's easy to keep it in place. Use one hand to hold and pull the Vanos forward, and the other to hold the disk. There is plenty of space around it. The Vanos has been leaking externally leaving a mess down the front of the engine And on the underside of the unit Of course the unit got scrubbed clean, and the engine was given a quick scrub and clean. Removing the cylinder cover on the back of the Vanos unit gave me my first surprise. This is meant to have a seal pressed into it. The seal was sitting on the cylinder, having fallen out of the cover. It was well perished and crumbled when you so much as looked at it Organised chaos Part of the rebuild was to clean and test the solenoids again. I had previously done this when I redid the seals on the solenoids, but I wanted to be more thorough this time around. I got sick of having to try and jam the wires from the battery connector into the solenoid connectors, so quickly rigged up a tester using bits from the garage. Now all I have to do is plug the solenoid into the connector, plug in the 9v battery, and hit the button. Easy. I can use the same tester on injectors too, as long as they use the JPT connector. With the more thorough cleaning and testing the solenoids when from a nice click, to a firm crack every time they were actuated. I don't think it'll make a difference, but at least now I know they are working as good as they can. I also resoldered the solder points on the solenoids, as they were looking a bit old. I also chose to bridge the solder points. I don't know why BMW chose to run it through that little circuit board instead of direct (it literally goes into the outer solder point, across a track on the circuit board, and out to the solenoid via the inner solder points), but this is a common mod to ensure reliability. With the Vanos unit rebuilt, It was time to do the rattle fix on the splined shaft This one wasn't anywhere near as bad as the old M3s one, but good to take any play out of it. Reassembly was the reverse of disassembly. So, what's the story now? Well, the seals take a few hundred KM to bed in properly, but already the car has perked up down low and has noticeably more punch off the line. Up top is about the same, but it's quicker to get there. It's proper rapid. The idle issue has not changed. This is really disappointing; I was hoping it would be the solution to everyone that is having the same idle issue, but sadly not. Back to the drawing board on that issue. Since the WOF runs out at the start of next month I have decided to pull the car off the road shortly. I have a set of BC Gold coilovers and a purple tag steering rack to go in, along with some other bits coming from the States (thermostat, reinforcement plates etc). Once I get back from holiday, I'll book it in for a Cert, and see what happens there.

Any thoughts on this? I know its a weird question, but i'd be interested to know if its a doable thing.

You're a legend @cletus

Gosh, i lost some brain cells reading the comments on that post on FB.

if you still have it, want to sell?

Also see the post I quoted in this post, in the original post. Lol.

So in my case, the engine is literally on the 50% increase mark (190hp to 286hp), but the drive shaft is from the M3 (and is labeled as such on the shaft). No added turbos etc, just more NA power. Still able to scrape by without one?