TVRs and Stuff

:: Diary - May 2026 ::
:: Friday, 1 May 2026 ::

I have a wee errand to do, and the weather is lovely - so I decide to take the TVR, just to put more injector cleaner from the tank, through the fuel system. It's getting better each time! While I'm out, the odometer clocks up 115,000 muiles. I bought the car at around 60,000 miles, so I've now done around 55,000 miles over the past 23 years. I really should use it more!

:: Sunday, 3 May 2026 ::

It's TVR Car Club day! Dave's not going, so it's only me and Eric from our wee group. Bobby turns up as well, though, but not in a TVR.
An odd thing happens though - I park the S up at Eric's for a wee blether, but leave the sidelights on for 5 minutes or so. When I get back in the car, it won't start - the speedo needle spins twice round the gauge, but it's as though the battery is flat... We put one of those wee starter packs on, and it fires up no problem.
We drive through to the venue, and have a nice lunch and blether, and discuss our trip to the big TVR Car Club meeting in England next weekend. Our main preparations are where to meet first, and then where to stop for breakfast. Everything else will take care of itself.
The drive home is uneventful, the car starts no problem. It's definitely running a lot better though - no misfire in those mid-revs unless you're really stupid with the throttle.
I put the car away. Next steps are to get the Vixen ready for next weekend - mainly by putting fuel in it!

:: Tuesday, 5 May 2026 ::

The TVR Car Club season opener event is a wee bit later this year - usually in April, but this year, it's this coming weekend. It's being held at Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire. Just as a wee history lesson, Henry the 8th gave it to the 11th Lord Willoughby de Eresby and his Spanish bride, Maria de Salinas, in 1516. She was a lady-in-waiting and confidante of Queen Katherine of Aragon, so she was in with the in crowd. It has stayed in the same family ever since.
Their daughter, Katherine, became the Duchess of Suffolk through marriage in 1533, but ended up as one of the "Marian exiles", who were English Protestants forced to flee to continental Europe during the reign of the Catholic monarchs Queen Mary I and King Philip.
The shit you learn, reading about old sports cars, eh?
Hang on... Duchess of Suffolk... falls into disfavour with English royal family... exiled abroad... this seems familiar, no?
So, not as good as "Batman's house" last year, although it has been used in "Bridgerton" and other films and TVR shows.
Anyway, to get back to the point, this means a 300-odd mile journey in a 55-year old TVR, and then the same distance back...
Some people still think that TVRs are kit cars - you buy the bits and build them yourself. That was true for some cars in the 1960s, when TVR offered cars as kits to avoid paying purchase tax on new complete cars. That practice stopped years ago though. Now, TVRs seem to be the reverse of kit cars - you buy a whole car, and it shakes itself to bits during your ownership. Only a lunatic would take a 55-year-old TVR on a 600 mile journey, like I did in June 2024. And again in September last year. Oh wait...
All you can do, is keep it sorted as best you can. With the exhaust welded since last time, and the carburettor rejetted, and the front suspension trunnions all stripped and oiled and rebuilt, and ear plugs packed (although the exhaust has a lot less resonance than before), what can go wrong?
OK, OK, let's not make a list!
Final prep today was to fill it with fuel - apply for bank loan, down to the garage (the long way) and top up, and then the long way home as well. Everything seems to be running well, except that I can hear the exhaust knocking on the chassis on some bumps.
When I get home, I lift the car and find that one of the webbing exhaust hangers has come loose, so I adjust it and tighten it back into position. This lifts the back of the exhaust about an inch, which might not sound much, but every inch is important (so I hear).
Then I pack up some tools and other odds and ends, just in case the "kit car reverts to boxes of parts" syndrome kicks in. I usually carry tools on "away-days" in any case - if you don't use them on your own car, you'll probably use them on someone else's.

:: Saturday, 9 May 2026 ::

It’s always the bleeding same, isn’t it? For the whole of this last week, the forecast has been for rain, and we haven’t seen a drop. Last night I gave up, and watered the grass. Naturally, it then proceeded to pish down, so my neighbours think I’m a tosser (or perhaps just feel that’s confirmed).
It’s still pishing down this morning, and that’s because it knows that we’re heading off to drive to the TVRCC Season Opener in Lincolnshire.
Undeterred, I extract the Vixen from the garage, and head off to meet up with Bobby and Eric and Margaret. After a few minutes of greeting and bletherings, and watching a man lose the rag at his own Audi TT for some reason we can’t quite see, we head off around Edinburgh and down the A1 through the borders. It’s still raining.

After about an hour and a half, we stop for fuel, and then for breakfast at Purdy Lodge. Eric informs me that I only have one headlight, which he noticed when I accidentally flashed them when I meant to indicate (1970s British column stalks are all arse-over-tit compared to modern stuff, and the Vixen / Triumph Herald arrangement is even more confusing). Not sorting it now. It’s still raining.
We set off again after breakfast, with Eric leading. He sets off before I’m quite ready, and the inside of the car steams up instantly, before we’ve even reached the main road. I can wipe the windscreen but not the back window, and I can’t open the passenger side window a bit because I can’t reach it with a 4-point harness on, while trying to peer through a misty screen and not-very-efficient wipers…
Adjusting the heater knob appears to make absolutely zero discernible difference…
An hour later we join a queue in Newcastle, where I’m able to loosen the harness, slip one arm free, and open the passenger window by about 2 inches to let more air into the back, but not too much rain. At last, I can see where I’ve been!
Onward we go, to meet Adrian at Wetherby. As soon as we park up, we have curious onlookers over to see the cars. At least it’s not raining… although I do, by this time, need a pee myself.

After a wee bit of cake, we head on for the last leg - and at last, after 200 miles, it’s dry! Well, mostly.
We reach our hotel and park up. There are a few other TVRs here, and we speak to some of the owners.
I also open the bonnet to look at the headlight, and find that if you touch the connector, it flickers on, but goes off again when you let go. Dip beam is ok though, so I decide to leave well alone, and postpone further connection investigation until I’m home.
Then it’s dinner time, lots of silly chat, and off to bed.

:: Sunday, 10 May 2026 ::

It's show time! We’re having breakfast at 8, so that we can head off to the event and be there shortly after 9, as requested by the organisers.
I’m still up far too early, so I have a wee walk, where I find a 1956 Commer Karrier fire engine parked in a front garden.

Further along, I come to an Aldi, and behind it, I can see a BP sign. I know that Bobby needs fuel, so we can nip in here before we head down the road.
Back to the hotel, where I find the other three all cleaning their cars, after the manky rainy shit-spraying drive yesterday. I decide that I'll do mine to pass the time, when we get there.
But first, a hearty breakfast, where we discuss the possible shortage of catering at the event. I have a bag of crisps and 2 chocolate biscuits that Mrs Git lovingly dropped into my bag yesterday morning, and I’m hardly likely to waste away anyway, but I pocket a couple of extra blueberry muffins on the way out, just in case.
We’ve agreed to leave at 10 to 9. I have some difficulty starting the car, until I remember I haven’t switched on the fuel pump… Eric appears bang on 10 to 9, so there’s a short delay until he’s ready, then we set off, a few minutes later then planned, but still ok.
First stop, this BP station near Aldi. When we arrive, I realise that there’s dozens of EV chargers, but no petrol pumps. Fuck it, there’s bound to be one on the A1 eh?
Down the A1, and there’s a petrol station just where we turn off for the venue. We wait for Bobby and then we have 10 miles along an A-road. The Vixen was built for a time before motorways, and although it copes, it’s not ideal. These A-roads, though, are where it feels at home, and I’m able to enjoy ticking along this last bit.
When we arrive, we’re directed to our parking spot - we’re in prime position, right in front of the castle, facing through the gate. Fantastic! And all thanks to Eric’s slightly late start, and then farting about for petrol. Everything has a purpose, to come right in the end!

What a machine, looking even better when the sun comes out...

and in such good company!

Time for a wee walk around! There's this white Vixen on the end of our row, which looks lovely!

A whole line-up along the front of the castle. The red Griffith at the far right there, belongs to a guy who used to own an immaculate V8S. The Griffith is prepared to a similar level of detail (I forgot to take a photo of it though!)

At the other end of that line, is this lovely Grantura 1800.

Andy's Sagaris. He was another owner of an immaculate V8S, and the Sagaris is prepared to the same detail.

By way of contrast, this Wedge is claimed (by its owner) to be the scruffiest TVR at the event.

Complete with "My Little Pony" taped steering wheel.

It probably is, to be fair, but there are a couple of others which, perhaps unwittingly, come close. But that's ok - if you own a TVR, you can enjoy it however you like, as long as you enjoy it. It's at this point that I remember that I never got around to cleaning the car this morning... but it still looks good, and properly used! Dave would have been horrified.
Outside the courtyard, there's a whole parade of all models of TVR (photo extracted from the "official" drone footage of the event.)

Although they are better viewed from ground level.

Including another couple of Vixens.

I brought along this months TVR Sprint magazine to read, but I only get through a page and a half - the Vixen attracts a lot of interest, from owners of all kinds of TVRs from the pre-80s up to Cerberas etc. After one particularly "robust" exchange of jokes and stories with 4 other guys, I turn to speak to 2 others - and it turns out he has a Vixen S4, that he has installed a Honda 2.4 VTEC engine in. He says it's an absolute flying machine. My arse clenches at the very thought...
But then he announces that he had to change the differential, to handle all that extra power, so he has a spare original diff, recently refurbished, that he's looking to get rid of. I suggest that he throws it in my direction, and we exchange phone numbers. He lives in Derbyshire though, so it'll be a bit of a trek to collect it.
And so the day goes on. People have started to leave, but our intrepid crew remains...

Eric has spent some time in discussions about another possible TVR purchase. Mum's the word for now though...
Meanwhile Bobby has agreed to buy a speedboat...
Then the man with the white Vixen, who has been speaking to me on and off all afternoon, suggests that we get a couple of photos of our 2 cars, and maybe ask the official photographer if he wants to help. Well, I know him, he agrees, and he sets up some shots which he's going to send through to us in the next few days.
In the meantime, though, here's a couple of previews...

By this time, nearly everyone else has gone home, so we set off too, with another "spirited" 10 miles back to the A1, and then back up towards the hotel, where we wave bye-bye to Adrian, who is going home today. Then it's time for a wee refreshment. And some sun cream, which might have been of more use if applied earlier in the day...
While we're faffing about, I get some photos from the differential man. He tells me that he's coming to Scotland for a holiday in a week, and will be staying at a camp site on the other side of Edinburgh from me. He can bring it up in his motorhome and I can collect it next weekend. The deal is done!
Then it's dinner time, more chat and then bed time.

:: Monday, 11 May 2026 ::

I'm awake early again, so I head off for another walk, past the fire engine but a little further. A little bit too far, it turns out, so Eric messages me and says that they are already in the restaurant for breakfast. I say I'll be a couple of minutes... when I arrive, I see them over in the corner, so I go to pick up some food from the buffet. When I get to the table, I find that they have been waiting for me, before they get theirs. I've inadvertently "done a Hugh"...
And so we head off for home, with a brief detour for fuel. 2 brief detours, because Eric goes to the petrol station we discuss, while Bobby follows me to a different one because I believe my sat nav more than I remember what I looked up last night. Anyway, all grouped back together, we set off up the A1(M), which must live in a bubble ocuopied by "the shitiest drivers in the UK".
We see extreme tailgaiting (both around us and directly behind us), undertaking, near-collisions due to last minute decisions, or indecisions, at slip roads, ridiculously high speeds (for the traffic conditions) including by one of those small-willy-compensating feckin' huge chrome-encrusted pickups, towing a Land Rover on a trailer, who is belting along and weaving in and out to get past anything going slower (which is about 98% of the other traffic). There's other folk battering along while on their phone, or worse, texting without looking up at the wall of traffic they are about to slam into.
After about 100 miles of this crap, droning along trying to keep out of the way of these nutcases while making progress, we turn off on to the A68 towards our lunch stop. Again, off the motorway, the Vixen comes alive, as we head up through the countryside to the cafe.
After lunch, we continue up the A68, where we catch up to a very nice Jensen Interceptor. He turns off at Corbridge and we continue north to Otterburn and then stop in Jedburgh, mainly to use the loo but also just to say cheerio to each other to close off our weekend.
Back on to the A68 to the Edinburgh City Bypass, at around 4 pm, where traffic is reduced to a crawl, for no particular reason except that it always is, and has been for years. I could start a separate discussion about that, but I had better not. Suffice to say that a decision on a long-required improvement is "imminent", and has been for bleeding years.
I'm home by around 5pm, turn off the car in front of my garage and listen to it ticking as it cools off after its first weekend to an event in England. It has covered 650 miles since Saturday, it has been absolutely superb, really enjoyable to drive or just to look at. I had that pre-80s TVR itch for a while and this was the perfect car to scratch it.
Every TVR weekend is special, but this was one of the best yet, although we missed Dave. Obviously.

:: Wednesday, 13 May 2026 ::

I have a couple of things to check after the weekend. First, I have to check that this differential that I bought, will fit in the boot of my car when I collect it on Sunday.
Here's one of the photos he sent me. It shows that the diff is mounted in a frame. I was pretty sure that my car doesn't have a frame - my diff is bolted straight to the chassis. Fortunately, I had access to a very comprehensive (perhaps OCD) website with photos of my diff, so I could confirm that before the purchase.

The frame was used in the very last of the Vixens, that were built onto the new M-Series chassis before that model was finally released. The M-Series was designed around different running gear, including the diff, and the frame was fitted as an "adapter" to fit the old Triumph Spitfire / GT6 differential into the new M chassis. The guy selling the diff said that his car was an S4, so the last of those would have been fitted like this.
Now I know that the diff will fit in the boot of my car, but you can see that the frame is much bigger. I don't want to start taking it all apart in a camp site in East Lothian, so I need to be able to collect the whole thing. So today, I lift the car so that I can measure what size I think the frame is. The distance between those two mounting bolts at the front of the diff (bottom of the picture) is 16 inches. The whole frame will therefore be a wee bit wider than that, and I estimate around 26 inches.
The diff on my car is again around 16 inches long, from the drive flange to the rear of the back mount, so again, the frame will be slightly larger. The boot is just under 1 metre square, so the whole thing should go in ok. If I can lift the heavy bastard high enough...
While I'm under there, I wonder if those 650 high-speed miles have blown all of the oil out of the diff. It certainly looks like it! But no, I remove the filler plug and it only takes a tiny amount of oil to fill it up again.
I do notice that the gearbox is still leaking from that rear seal, that I replaced last year. There's a lot of oil on the centre part of the exhaust...
Next job is to look at this wiring to the offside headlamp. I put the lights on and... nothing at all, not even sidelights! The back lights are on, so it's not a fuse... There are two connectors to the headlight loom - at one end, the connection into the headlight itself. At the other end, beside the radiator at the offside bonnet hinge, there's another connector into the main loom, for both headlights. That one has come part somehow. I push that back together and I'm back to where I was on Saturday - the wee sidelights and both dipped beams are ok, but only the nearside main beam comes on.
I touch the white connector behind the headlights, and they flicker on... but go off when I let go.
Also, the sidelight in the offside main beam has a broken earth wire, so isn't working now either.
Jesus, where do I start? Well first, I see that the wires from the sidelight bulb (the one built into the headlight) are very short, and the earth has broken out of its connector bullet. The live cable is also very loose. I can see that those wires are a bit stretched, and need to be lengthened by a couple of inches so that the rest of the wiring is more "relaxed".
First I cut all the cable ties holding the wiring to the hinge bracket, and re-route the cable towards the main loom. I also re-route the end of the main loom to give a bit more slack at the hinge.
Then I cut off the existing sidelight connector bullets and solder in extra wire, and then crimp on new connector bullets. That's the sidelights sorted!
Main beam is still flickery when I touch the connector though. I pull that connector apart and use a tiny screwdriver to bend in the female sides of the connections, then clean with contact spray. When I clip it back together, the headlights stay on, however I twist the connector. Looks like a success!

Then I cable tie that part of the loom on to the bonnet hinge bracket, making sure than none of the connectors are over-stretched. It's not as tidy as I would like, but I can't make it any tidier without splicing extra wire in.
Next... the car smells of petrol after you fill it right up. I don't usually do that, I only put in a few gallons at a time, depending on where I'm going. For these long weekends, though, you want to get "maximum range" to keep in sync with the others, so I filled it till the pump clicked off. Since I fixed the breather 2 years ago, it fills really fast (compared to the S) and when the pump says "full", it's full. In the S, the pump says "full" after about every 10 pence of fuel goes in, so you learn to ignore it. Not in the Vixen...
I filled the tank before I left, and then again at Purdy Lodge, and again near Grantham. Each time, I was aware of the smell of petrol for a good few miles, until I had used up some of the fuel and lowered the tank level. When I got home on Monday, Mrs Git pointed out that all of my clothes were stinking of petrol, including my jackets that had been just lying in the back of the car.
It's obviously leaking from the top of the tank then, not the bottom. Unlike the S, the tank is inside the car, not under the bodywork, so any leak is going to honk.
The first possible culprit is the sender unit for the gauge. It's screwed into the top of the tank, and I had that out not that long ago, and made sure that it was sealed properly. Nevertheless, I'll check it again, along with all the hose clips and the filler neck.
So the first task is to lift the boot floor, after I empty out the awayday tool bag, the awayday cleaning bag, and the petrol-infused gray wooly blanket that I have been using to keep prying eyes away from the boot contents, which are otherwise set out under that enormous back window like a "nick-your-own" shop display. This means bending your ancient carcass over the front seat, and into the rear, between the top of the roll bar and the roof. Every time I do this, I feel like a potholer venturing into a cave area that he might not be able to escape from. I tell myself that the worst that can happen is that I have to keep breathing until Mrs Git comes to look for me after a couple of days. Maybe.
With the boot floor removed, the first possible culprit is the sender unit for the gauge. It's screwed into the top of the tank, and I had that out not that long ago, and made sure that it was sealed properly. Nevertheless, I'll check it again. All of the screws seem to be tight though...

Here's the filler neck. It doesn't look like it from this angle, but when the tank is full, fuel comes up to round the level of that tie wrap. If that bottom clamp is loose, then there's a possibility of a fuel leak. It's tight, but not as tight as it could be. I also tighten those two upper pipe clamps.

There's a metal filler in the middle (under what looks like a crack) with a take-off for the smaller breather pipe.
You can also see the state of that wiring for the rear lights. It looks like a bleeding rat's nest, but it all works, and I'm not touching it until I have to.
The nearside wiring is marginally better. Marginally.

I don't put the boot floor back together yet - I'll take the car and fill it with petrol, and check again for leaks, like a potholer checking for gas. With a match, maybe. Not today though. Aside from anything else, the local rag is reporting that many garages around here are selling contaminated petrol. They don't say what the contaminant is, or which garages are selling it, so they are about as useful as an ashtray on a motor bike. I'll wait a bit before buying fuel, I think.

:: Friday, 15 May 2026 ::

Since Dave wasn't there at the weekend, Adrian took over the mantle of "Ooooh... that's not right..." comments on other folks' cars. In my case, he spotted that although the exhaust has a chrome trim, the rest of the exhaust looks rusty, and at least 3 inches of it is visible under the rear valance. I'm not going to rise to his minor jealousy and criticism. Erm... yes I am.
I remove the tailpipe support under the rear of the chassis, and disconnect the joint so that I can take the last section of pipe off the car. Then I give it a light sand, just to remove any loose rust.
I mask off the chromey bit of tail pipe, and spray the rest with matt black high temperature paint.
There, that looks better!

That's all for today - the next task, of filling the petrol tank and checking for leaks, can wait for another day, when the fuel contamination rumours might have died down - oh and a day when I might be arsed to bother doing it.

:: Saturday, 16 May 2026 ::

First thing today, I nip out to fill 2 jerrycans with superunleaded motion potion, and pour it into the Vixen until I can see that the tank is full, to part way up the filler neck.
I can see a very slight fuel "sweat" around the sender unit, so I tighten that down until the leak seems to stop. I also spot a slight dampness around the fuel pump outlet hose, so I tighten that clamp as well. Then I leave it all to evaporate a bit, with the help of some blue paper roll. Start the engine, check every joint careffullyt again for leaks. There's no smell of petrol now.

Then I replace the boot floor, the side trims and the carpet.

Each entry to the boot space involves having the seat forward as far as it goes, and then the backrest folded as far as that will go. Then left foot on the floor behind the seat, duck head through door, use the roll bar to pull myself in with the left hand, until I can get my right knee on the back of the centre console. Then twist around and reach over the roll bar but under the rear screen, to the connections / boot screws / trims.
Getting out is nearly as hard - twist right food backwards out of door, reverse arse out, tuck head down, then hop backwards 2 or 3 steps to extract left foot.
By the time I've done that a gazillion times, I feel like I've been put through a mangle. The classic car lark gets harder every year!
So here's a gratuitous photo of a Vixen in a driveway.

:: Sunday, 17 May 2026 ::

A wee trip to the seaside today - or specifically, to a camp site in East Lothian where a man awaits, with a motorhome with a Vixen differential in the back. Lift diff into boot, a wee exchange of some spondoolicks, and we're off!
As you can see, all the worry about "will it fit in the boot" was a waste of energy - it fits in easy-peasy.

Another photo on the "copyright carpet" shows that it seems to be in good nick. There's no backlash compared to mine, so it's a simple matter of swapping them over. I don't need the black frame - that's for the later M-series chassis only - so the diff itself will be smaller (and lighter!) when it comes to fitting. Except that it's not simple, is it? It is, in fact, a right pain in the arse...

There are two methods:
Option 1. Remove rear window, remove hatch in boot floor, lift diff upwards through back window space. Some Vixens (like mine) don't have that hatch, so you have to cut one. Then you have to hope the back window comes outin one piece, then goes back in one piece, and then seals properly. You also have to make up a panel to fill the hole in the floor. Too many possible pitfalls in this option!
Option 2 - remove from under car. Remove complete suspension from one side - driveshafts, spring / damper, wishbones, hub and brakes. Then, apparently, the differential only just wiggles out sideways, and the new one wiggles in. Then rebuild suspension etc. That's a lot of work, but maybe more certain than option 1.
Either way, I'll need a helper to lift / wiggle it into position - it's far too heavy (for me at least) to lift and wiggle into position while lying on my back.
I'm not in a hurry to do it anyway - I have another trip to England in 5 weeks so I'll not start it before then.

:: Monday, 18 May 2026 ::

Let's see just how heavy the diff is. First I remove it from the frame. The frame weighs just under 10 pounds (around 5kg if you've been metricated).
Here's the differential itself. It weighs in at 55 pounds (or around 25 kg). Lighter than it was, but still bleeding heavy.

Just for interest, the gearbox out of the S (see November 2024) weighs 86 pounds, or 39 kg, and that was a heavy awkward bastard even when you were pushing straight up from underneath it (according to Dave).
The bottom chassis rails are 7 inches apart. The diff is 10 inches wide, so it won't drop down. Maybe if you turn it on its side? Nope - the diff is 8 and a half inches high, and those front mountings are 16 inches apart, so it won't come out on its side either.
Here's the differential in the chassis. This photo is taken from the level of the top of the bottom chassis rail. The top chassis rails are further apart, so the diff should come out sideways through that space.

There's a shitload of work to get to it though - nearly all the bits you see in this photo have to come off. Then there's an awkward "lift and slide and support and insert mountings". I need to find an octopus that's built like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

While I think about that, I go back and remove the boot floor over the fuel tank, and find that the pump outlet is weeping very slightly when the pump is running. I tweak the hose connector in by about a turn (scared I'll break it if I turn further) and that seems to sort it.

:: Tuesday, 19 May 2026 ::

Last night, Andy sent through the photos he took last weekend, so I thought I might show a small selection. Not too many - don't want to be boring after all!

Right, back to reality. Mrs Git is away this morning, visiting a friend, so I have again been left unsupervised. What to do? Well, I've noticed when I've been trying the car out this week, that the exhaust sounds very "raspy" at around 2,000 revs. I know that you expect a TVR to be loud, and some folk go silly trying to achieve "ultimate loud", and end up with a car that sounds like a Citroen Saxo that has just ram-raided Halfords. Personally, I think that the quality of the sound is important, not just the volume, and "raspy" doesn't fit on that quality scale.
I lift the car and get underneath to check the exhaust from end to end with the engine running, and I can hear a "blow" but cn't place it. I run my bare hand along the exhaust, and find a split in the bottom of the centre silencer (well, the only silencer to be fair).
After half an hour of levering and battering to separate joints, I get the silencer out on the ground. It's hard to see the crack because it's covered in oil, leaking from the back of the gearbox and running back.
With the shit cleaned off, you can see a crack about 4 inches long, in the bottom of the silencer. Now I'm not the world's best welder, and I don't own the world's best MIG welder machine, but I think I can clean that up a bit more and weld it up to stop it leaking.

And here it is. I think I had the wire speed set too high, so it's a bit "blobby". It's not pretty, but it's sealed (I think!).

I fit it back on the car, realigning the front section from the manifold to lift it a touch, and re-fit the back pipe. When I start it, I find that it's still blowing very slightly in a couple of places (you can't feel it by hand but the "tissue test" shows them up). I weld those up with the exhaust still on the car, and with a lower wire speed, the welder works a lot better, even upside-down.
Finally sorted, lower the car and take it for another test. Exhaust rasp gone!
Am I happy or what? No... there is still a smell of fuel after left-hand corners and roundabouts. The sender is in the top right of the tank, and I because I haven't put the boot floor back, I can see that it's obviously still leaking when the tank is almost full and petrol sloshes over in that direction. I'm going to have to take it out, when I've lowered the fuel level a bit, and find a different way to seal it.
One step forward, 2 steps back. That's TVR ownership for you!

:: Friday, 22 May 2026 ::

Right, I've had a couple of days off, so it's back home today and back to this leaky-reeky fuel sender. First task is to syphon about 5 gallons out of the tank to be absolutely sure that fuel isn't going to spill out when I take the sender out.
Then I mark up a bit of cardboard with the screw positions, and make a wee hole to keep each of the screws in the right position (just in case the holes in the tank are a slightly different size - I know that at least one of them is). Then I remove the screws one at a time and stick them into the card in the appropriate slot.

Then I can pick out the sender, making sure that I get all of the gasket and nothing drops into the tank. You can see here that the gasket is in a sorry state - it has broken through at the screw hole at 5 o'clock in that photo, and more important, the screw at 7 o'clock (bottom left of the picture) had missed the gasket altogether. Not the finest example of my mechanical skills... no wonder it was leaking!

Last time, I made the gasket to fit the measurement of the tank flange - 62mm outside diamater, 45mm inside diameter, so the gasket material was only about 8mm wide round the hole. Then I fitted it without sealant, because "THEY" said that the nitrile cork should be enough, and it has obviously distorted enough to miss that screw.
This time, I'm going to use Permatex sealant, and make sure that the gasket is stuck properly to the sender before I fit it to the tank flange. I'm also going to make sure that there's sealant in the screw threads - I didn't think of that last time. The most important change though, I think, is that I'm going to make the centre hole in the gasket smaller, at 37mm. That means that there's at least 12mm of gasket width all the way round, which should hold it stiffer and help prevent it distorting when fitting.
I ordered the sealer on Tuesday but it's not here yet. I'll have to wait before putting this back together.

:: Sunday, 24 May 2026 ::

I still don't have this gasket sealant that I ordered for the Vixen's fuel sender unit, so progress on that has been temporarily curtailed. I did find a very (very very) old nearly-empty tube of blue Hermetite, which I think is basically the same stuff, so I'm tempted - but no, I'll wait for the right stuff, if it every arrives - the "parcel tracking" hasn't been activated yet so I'm not even sure that it has been posted.
Instead, I spend some time adding a couple of cars to the "cars I have owned" page over there on the left - the Chevrolet and the Porsche.

:: Tuesday, 26 May 2026 ::

Here we are, a week on, and still no sign of this gasket sealant. In fact, the Royal Mail Tracker says that it hasn't even been posted yet! I decide to try the blue Hermetite anyway.
I cut out a 3 inch square of nitrile cork, and cut a 37mm hole in the centre, and make sure that it fits over the float and the sender mechanism. Then I spread a thin layer of Hermetite on to the top side of my gasket, and stick it into place.

Once it has stuck, I trim around the edge of the sender so that it will fit into the tank flange. You can see here that there's a far greater width of gasket than there was on the one I took off.

The next step is to spread another thin layer of Hermetite onto the bottom face of the gasket - not too much, you don't want it squeezing out, and dropping into the fuel tank. I fit the screws through the gasket and make sure that there's sealer on each of the screw threads. Then I fit all of that into the top of the tank, and tighten down the screws - again, not too much, but enough to compress the gasket slightly so that it won't leak.
I leave it for a bit and then have a wee drive, with the tank half-empty. There's still a whiff of fuel after left-hand corners. Whenm I get home, I refill the tank from the jerrycan, and there's still fuel leaking out around the sender. I think there's not enough sealer around the sender flange in the tank.
Now I'll just have to wait until the Permatex arrives... In the meantime, I make up a new gasket that fits snuggkly into the tank flange (slightly bigger than the diameter of the sender itself).

:: Friday, 29 May 2026 ::

Still no sign of the Permatex that I ordered last Tuesday. The tracker shows that it wasn't posted until Wednesday night (that's two-days-ago-Wednesday, not nine-days-ago-Wednesday, the day after it was ordered). It's not "Royal Mail" as per the order, but Evri, whose business model appears to be to cast it adrift on a raft and hope that it will float past the recipient eventually.
By last night, it showed that it had reached their depot at Luton Airport, with a "date of delivery" of Wednesday, which had already passed.
This morning, the tracker shows its location in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, about 400 miles off the coast of Ghana. That's a long way for a delivery raft to float in one night. I suspect that their tracker system is a load of shite.
So... fuck knows when it might arrive, or even if it might arrive at all. All I can do in the meantime is start to draft the ebay review...

:: Saturday, 30 May 2026 ::

Yesterday was my birthday - I won't say how old but did somebody shout "70" from the back there? Hush yo' mouth!
Anyway, Mrs Git has arranged an afternoon tea get-together today, for family and friends, and has managed to fill a room with 50 unwilling participants. She is going in early to perform the usual pre-event arrangements and rituals, so as part of the "treat" she has arranged a lift for me. I'm to be taxied there by Bobby in his V8S.
Now, despite being involved in the TVR world for 23 years, this is only the second time that I have ever been driven in somebody else's TVR. We don't get very far from the house before I realise that the V8S is a lot - a LOT - more powerful than the V6 models, and sound great into the bargain. By the time we've reached the venue, about 5 miles, I'm thinking that I need one of these...
She has had a topper made for the birthday cake, which includes my 2 grandsons, both TVRs, a tool box with manky rag, and my "Beep-beep" hoodie that I wear in the garage. There's also a wee tribute to my late son't football club. It's absolutely superb!

The TVR crew are in attendance of course, including Adrian who has come all the way from Yorkshire with his wee family. I'm honestly lucky to have the friends I have, considering how I treat them...
While I'm out, the Evri delivery man sneaks up to the house and hides a wee parcel containing the gasket sealer. When I say "hides" I mean "leaves it" on the front door step in full view of passers-by, instead of round the back like I asked them to". Anyway, it's here, and in only 11 days from mid-England. The pigeons must be knackered.

:: Sunday, 31 May 2026 ::

Right - with my brand-new tube of Permatex in hand, let's see if we can seal this Vixen fuel sender...
First task is to syphon off around 20 litres of fuel, just to lower the level a bit.
Then I inspect the sender flange looking straight down through the back window with a torch. It seems to be slightly bent downwards near one of the screw holes. I use a pair of pump pliers, very carefully, so as not to "ding" them off the tank and create a spark, to tweak that little bit of the flange upwards so that it looks flat.
Right - first I install the sender unit "dry" and mark the position of the screw holes on the inside of the flange, so that I can position it later to get the screws in.
Then I smear a coat of sealer all the way around the sender hole, then on to one side of the gasket. Then I stick the gasket into the tank flange, and smear more sealant on top of the gasket, and around the edge of the sender unit. I also leave a blob of the sealant on the cardboard that I pushed the screws through. Then I leave all of that to dry out for about 15 minutes (until the solvent has evaporated out of the blob on the cardboard, and it has started to get tacky).
At this stage, i start to install the screws - lightly at first, so that they just go through the gasket and bite into the holes in the tank. After another few minutes, I start to tighten the screws down gradually, working in a cross-over pattern so that the gasket and sealer is compressed evenly. I can see sealer comprssed around the edge of the gasket. Then I push some more sealer around the outside edge, then tighten it down fully, and reconnect the wires.
I'm not going to refill it with fuel, or even drive it, if fuel might slosh up on corners, until it's fully set. The "control sample" blob on the bit of cardboard will be my guide.

I haven't got any more photos of the process, because my hands were sticky with sealer and I was focussed on getting the bloody thing together!
After yesterday's wee run, I had a look at V8S TVRs for sale, but didn't see anything I liked. In the cold light of day, I think that I maybe just need to re-aquaint myself with my own S - so I extract it from the garage and have a great wee drive around for an hour or so. It's brilliant, and not worth changing to inherit some other mug's problems, when I've got mine pretty well sorted. So it's staying!

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