TVR S3 Body off Restoration

 On one of the fine summer evenings at a meeting of the owners club a plan was drawn up and hatched to repair the out riggers on the S (affectionately know as Roxy).

Firstly some background

 Now this was not on my to do list but whilst working on the chassis cleaning and painting and chipping away, the chipping away seemed to be taking a long time and in no time at all I discovered the dread full truth a huge hole in the top of both outriggers, days of doom gloom and despondency followed with the thought of huge bills and will I have to sell the car or get a second job to pay for it.

I must point out at this time that this was the height of summer and the MOT had just expired so I had an open top sports car sitting in the garage and was missing many miles of driving  More doom and gloom ,

After phoning round and investigating news groups I discovered that this was going to cost me in excess of £1000.00

So I had some decisions to make

First thing inform her indoors.

Second was how to resolve said problem at a minimal cost to myself

Here enter Northants TVR club to the rescue.

A car club is all about helping each other whenever possible and finding solutions to quirks with TVR's and in one of these discussions with Dennis (Northants RO ) he suggested we do it within the club and pull on the resources available ,Primarily on Glen Wabby who had done a body off restoration before. So after some careful planning we set a date.

The first thing I needed to do was buy the steel for replacing the outriggers no problem I here you say well it wasn't that easy and it took a couple of days phoning round to find some , Next job was to find somewhere big enough to carry out said body lift now my garage is wide enough for the car and me to walk sideways up and down the garage again Northants TVR club to the rescue and a big enough garage was found so we were go I booked a couple of days off work and we organised the muscle for the body lift .

Friday came and the job was started first thing of was to get the exhaust off no great problems here as the exhaust was fairly loose 2 bolts at the back holding the chrome protector strip in place and the rear centre bolt were removed 2 mid chassis bolts and the exhaust clips undo and the whole section came off on inspection both down pipes were well ventilated and had more holes than Swiss cheese, so another set were ordered from peninsula.      

Next out came the seats again straight forward 4 bolts through the chassis on each seat and out they came. the next job were the body bolts 12 in total these were as followed               4 front bolts (2 passenger front footwall 2 drivers front footwall) 4 seat belt bolts  (2 for the arms and 2 for the seatbelt coils ) 2 in each corner under the seatbelt coils hidden under carpets (one of these sheared off)  2 under the centre console either side of where the radio sits so the centre console had to be removed this was held in by 2 little screws and the whole unit lifted up.                                     

 The bonnet came off next disconnect the headlamp and indicator connecters and undo vents and then the bonnet bolts and that was it 

Now all the disconnections start this involves draining the radiator and disconnect hoses from the swirl pot, heater and expansion bottle.

 Disconnect brake pipe from the servo and brake regulator and disconnect clutch pipe from the master cylinder

Disconnect electrical cable in engine bay not to tricky as there are only 2 central looms and remove battery don't forget to disconnect earths and throttle cable ,next was the steering another sheared bolt here .

Best now to get the car high up on jacks so you can attack the underneath and disconnect fuel pipe, handbrake,cable,handbrake,speedometer ,reverse switch ,sender and fuel pump wires,                                                                                                                               Well that is about it time for a test lift to make sure everything is loose as was to be expected it didn't budge but this was due to grit and dirt between body and outriggers so these were cleaned and success it moved and the body was ready to be lifted this was planned for the next day so the bodies would be available .  All in all this took about six hours from start to finish.