September 2014 - Engine transplant

My planned new uprated motor project is still delayed, holidays are approaching and the Blue car MOT is due soon - but it has no engine so what to do?
Answer: Swap the Sprint engine out of the old red car that will be scrapped soon.

Here it comes.

Sprint engine in its new (temporary) home.

We actually took the engine and box out in one go and swapped them straight into the blue car with only a pause for a cup of tea in between.  The car passed its MOT next day and went to the Tetbury Classic Car show the day after that.  Couldn't have been too bad because our club got the award for the best club stand at the show!

GLAVON group TR Register stand.

Since the show I have tidied up a couple of more items and swapped it onto the Minilite look-alike wheels that I intend to use.  The old Montego criss-cross ones have been sold.

Sort of finished look.

 Another "little" problem I forgot to mention is that the hood will not fold down because it fouls on the roll hoop. This is very annoying because it means the hoop will have to be repositioned/lowered to suit. Not an easy task as it will mean re-drilling the side mounting plates on the hoop.
I had naively thought that those pre-drilled holes in the hoop and the existing captive nut in the body are supposed to go together - but it seems not.
Luckily with winter approaching the top can stay up most of the time for the moment. I have enlisted a couple of friends and they will help realign the hoop while it is re-drilled to a new and lower position. Needs a nice dry day when we can all get together but no rush for the moment. 

May 2014, Blue car electrics etc

With the new engine being away at Maynard Engineering I had quite a bit to keep me busy getting the car ready to receive it. The old engine and gearbox were out so that gave me the chance to clean up the engine bay and sort out the wiring. There was a surprising amount of dirt on the crossmember and chassis rails apparently due to oil leaks from the old motor/box. I also wanted to have a good go at the wiring in the engine bay to make sure the dreaded TR7 headlamps raised and lowered as they should.  This is mainly a case of cleaning up all the plugs, contacts and the earth connections.  I cleaned them all and gave them a coat of dielectric grease to improve connections and keep out water.

Not too bad, but now is the chance to tidy up

 It was also an opportunity to add relays to the headlight circuits.  The headlight switch and dip switch contacts carry all the current to the lights. With the TR7 wiring being over 30 years old now these have all seen better days and with new halogen replacement light units they are prone to failure so its a good idea to install relays.  These mean that the switch contacts only have to operate the relays which in turn carry all the main power.  I made up a small panel which plugs into the standard harness so it can be removed to return to standard if required. The panel has a 4way auxiliary fuse box fed by a permanent live cable and three relays to serve main beam, dip beam and spotlights. The fourth fuse provides power to the Kenlowe electric fan. 

Auxiliary fuse box and headlight relays

 After problems with a leaky fuel pump on the old car I decided it would be a good idea to fit an electric pump which would also be OK for the twin 45's on the new engine. Like several TR7 owners before me I used the redundant wiring for the heated rear window to feed the pump which is mounted close to the tank outlet. It also means you can switch it off when required. I chose a Facet low pressure pump which comes with a small inlet filter which I expect will need changing often so may be replaced with something bigger. It also seems a little noisy so will need mounting on rubber later.

Facet pump with its filter mounted under floor

The front bumper had the usual TR7 droop problem and I found the rubber mounting blocks had failed completely allowing the bumper to be waggled quite a lot by finger pressure alone. There is masses of stuff written about ways to repair or replace these mounting blocks but the alternative is to use the bumper from a TR7 Coupe which doesn't have them. Its all about the original design of the cars back in the 1970's when they decided to include a "harmonic damper" on the DHC models to improve ride quality on country roads and which also includes quite large blocks of cast iron in the ends of the bumper. Simplest solution is to simply use the bumper off a Coupe which bolts straight onto the car and my old red car just happened to have Coupe bumper. Not any more - its now on the new one!

Droopy bumper

No droop after Coupe bumper fitted.

  
 Testing the headlights and sidelights revealed the next problems. The drivers side headlight suddenly didn't work on main beam, but dip was OK.  I was concerned my new relays were at fault but I found a nasty old repair in the wiring, its was wonder it had ever worked at all.

This was fixed by replacing the headlamp tail with a good one from an old headlight I had "in stock".

Next thing was the sidelights and dash lighting was intermittent. This fault was more illusive and took a while to locate but was finally traced to the fuse box. Sidelights and dash lighting are fed from the same fuse and I had blown it when I was messing with fitting the sidelights in the new bumper. I had replaced the fuse but this turned out to be the cause of the problem. It was a brand new shiny one I had recently bought but although it was the correct rating and length the diameter was about 0.020" smaller than the original Lucas one. Doesn't sound much but it meant the clips in the fuse box were slightly loose causing a bad and intermittent contact.  I replaced it with an old dusty Lucas one and the fault was fixed!
Motto:  new shiny stuff is not always good.

Another little job to do before the engine went in was to replace the foam seal on the fresh air intake to the heater. Its a bit fiddly to do but not so bad when you can stand in the engine bay to work!  I just scraped off all the old crumbly foam and then glued some new stuff on.  The new foam I used is about 2mm thick and often used to line the drawers in your toolbox but seemed to be just the thing here. Putting the vent to the "closed" position held it in place whilst the adhesive set. Now when I close the vent it actually stops cold air coming into the car when you don't want it. Excellent. At the same time I did the similar job on the fascia fresh air vents as well. They also work properly now.

February 2014. Blue car - New engine story begins

Sorry but its been a while since my last entry but I got a bit sidetracked by life, its got a habit of getting in the way of doing things on the car.

Anyway, in February 2014 I mentioned on the TR7 and Dolomite forums that I would have a standard 2.0 litre engine and stainless exhaust for sale. Almost immediately a guy from Brighton with a Toledo got in touch and wanted the engine, and a Welsh chap wanted the exhaust. Problem was it was all still in the car. Big rush over the weekend and the stuff was on the garage floor ready for collection.

 

No going back now!

 .......................................................................................

 I had already sourced a running Sprint engine from a very rusty Sprint automatic and that has been stored in the back of the garage for the past year.  The plan was to rebuild it with some mods to give it a bit more power. Turns out the engine had been rebuilt after some kind of mechanical "accident". the block and bottom end were excellent but the head had been damaged in no.4 chamber.

No.4 chamber on the left has material missing below the exhaust valves

Then I was offered an engine with a stage 2 head, fast road cam, twin Weber manifold and very little use - I was tempted.
 
Having decided to go for the Stage 2 engine I collected it from near Heathrow and had to dodge the floods all around the area, remember that?   I obviously intended to give it a good look over before using it and turns out it was a very good job I did.

Stage 2 engine looking good

Still looking good.

OK, this is not so good.

No pad on the tensioner!

TR7 8 valve pistons.

Well as you can see from the pictures the stage 2 engine turned out to be a nightmare. Whoever had built the engine was no kind of engineer or mechanic.  Every part I took off showed evidence of zero mechanical sympathy.
To list just a few of the things I found:- There were huge amounts of a black sealer which had hardened and got everywhere as you can see from the build up in the sump. The engine had an electric water pump conversion but the adapter fittings had been bodged. The timing chain tensioner had lost its rubber pad and the pistons were standard 8 valve TR7 ones.
The head and cam seemed OK, with some cleaning up of the ports. Enquiries revealed the head had been done by S&S so should be good. The cam was a Kent Cams DMS1 which is a fast road profile but was a re-profiled one so will need thicker shims.

So, decision time, what to do.  The best idea seemed to be to simply use the best parts of both engines, the bottom end from the rusty Sprint auto with the head and cam from the stage 2 engine. The moving parts were all dropped off at Maynard Engineering to be balanced and all was going well until I discovered some slight water damage in the block where I had kept it on its side for the past year or so. Obviously a small amount of water had got into the chamber - bugger!  The marks were just too deep to polish out so that cylinder would now need a liner.  this meant the block now went down to Maynards as well.

Water damage in block. Too deep to polish out.