TR6 Going to see a TR6 this week...

[AltaKnight]

Re: She's here!

Hi Bash....
When I got my TR6 the first things I did for safety reasons was to replace the wear components on the front end including the upper ball joints, lower trunnions, lower outer bushings, front shocks, tie rod ends. On the rear I didn't have to do much other than refill the lever arm shocks.
Certainly the front end is the most safety sensitive part of the car although I also checked out the brakes all round, I was lucky that the DPO had replaced the brake cylinders already.
After that it was more or less fix the targets of opportunity, I kept copious lists of things/parts needed and just worked at it slowly.
Good luck and enjoy the car, when you finally get it going (and stopping/steering)right it's a joy to drive.

 

[drooartz]

Re: She's here!

Congratulations on the new homecoming. Hope you enjoy many grease-filled evenings!

 

[Guest]

Re: She's here!

Bash, if you're in Somerset then you're about 10 minutes from me, Hillsborough is the town right next door. Small world, I'd love to see your car sometime.

OK, I'm not real familiar with the emisions controls on the TR6. My car is a 73 so it doesn't have any of that crap, but on other cars I've owned from the era of the dawn of US emissions controls I would ditch the following. Catalytic convert (if any), remove this sucker ASAP, it is a notorious horsepower robber, especially if you are trying to set up a free flow exhaust system. If the guilt of destroying our high quality NJ air is keeping you up at night you can get a high flow universal racing cat from some high performance shops like Summit Racing and the like, but they are not cheap. Unfortunately, if you ever do get stopped at a roadside inspection, or ever have to have the car inspected at a state inspection station this is the first thing they will look for. It is also the easiest thing to see missing, they slide a mirror under the car and see if the thing is in place or not, if they don't see it then you're in trouble. I've had friends that have taken cats and gutted them, then ran a straight piece of pipe through the middle of it and welded the cat shell to the pipe. This way when they look under the car they will see the cat in place, but it's basically just a shell and doesn't effect flow. This works as long as you're not required to actually test the emissions on the car on an analyzer. EGR valves and related plumbing. I had removed these on some of my Chevy's and Fords, had to fashion a small blockoff plate for the port on the intake manifold. Air injection system and pump. Pulled this crap out of my 76 Cobra II, had to plug the ports in the exhaust manifolds until I was able to get a set of headers on the car. You may have to go to a shorter V-belt once the air pump is gone, since the pathway will be shorter (not sure on the TR6). Again, these are just the things I've done on other non-LBC's. I'm sure someone else here can give specifics as they apply to the TR6.

 

[vettedog72]

Re: She's here!

A friend related how the CAT on his '78 MGB was a real hazzard when he pulled off the high way and set some dry grass on fire under his car! He was wondering what the smell was when he saw some smoke and looked under the car, he saw some flames. I did not realize the TR6 ever got a converter.

 

[Guest]

Re: She's here!

I don't know if any TR6's got cats or not, I was speaking more in general. The first year that US cars were required to have cats was 1975 I believe. If 1976 TR6's didn't get them I would wonder why not. Was there some loophole for imported cars that they slipped through?

Friend of mine had a 78 Camaro, we were going down the road one day and the car starts running really poor, almost to the point of dying and theres a funky burning smell. We pull over and start looking around in the engine bay and whatnot. He looks under the car and the cat is glowing cherry red, turned out some of the reaction matrix inside had broken apart and clogged the darn thing up almost completely. That one got the gutting. The burning smell was actually coming from inside the car, it was the insulation and carpeting that was cooking from the heat coming up through the floorpan.