Monday, April 20, 2009

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.

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