A Minor Landmark Moment!

It's been a long time coming, but the Vixen is finally back on 4 wheels (nearly) After shortening the rear suspension pivot bars and fitting all of the wishbones and lovely new shock absorbers + springs, It was time to refit the wheels!

The front wheels have rather a lot of positive camber, but I suspect that's partially down to the chassis still being suspended on the dolly I knocked up for it (none of the wheels are actually touching the floor yet!!) and partially down to the lack of an engine's weight.

Next job is to refurbish the differential, prop shaft and gearbox and refit them. Plenty still to do mechanically, thankfully the drive shafts are already done and the engine is 80% done too!

The differential is MG front

Bolted onto TVR's own rear casting

In the meanwhile I have treated myself (yes again!) to a lovely set of 3 'eared' spinners which should arrive tomorrow...I will have to clean and give the wheels a fresh coat of  silver paint to do them justice I think...

Onwards and upwards....someday in the not to distant future I'm going to reach the point where there are NO more crates of rusty stuff to bring back to life/junk and replace....someday...

Expense, Expensiver, Expensivest

Well another year has passed and since then bad and good things have happened with the TVR. Firstly the cracked rear uprights were sent off to a specialist welder who claimed they could be fixed.....and then promptly rang and said he'd tried and well.......they couldn't! At least I wasn't charged anything, but I had to source two newly cast uprights, which were EXPENSIVE!!!

So having had the new bearing shells pressed in by my local engineers, I proceeded to carefully tighten the drive flanges, crushing the newly installed crush tubes to the required end float. I then installed the reconditioned brake back plates and new brake cylinders, adjusters, shoes, springs and drums, along with new superflex bushes for the wishbones and upright.....ALSO EXPENSIVE!!!!

Finally I had to take a deep breath and order 6 new AVO shock absorbers and 6 springs from Adrian Venn at Exactly TVR. They look lovely but were also VERY EXPENSIVE!!!! I made my own lower pivot rods from EN14 steel, but as you can see from the photos, I need to cut them down a bit and cut some more thread on them as well as fabricate some spacers to fit between the upright and the shock absorber.

Next stop a rolling chassis!!