The start of something big. Frame off restoration

[justin_mercier]

Sounds to me like it might be time to consider multi-port fuel injection. That could reduce the space required and give you a lot more control over the mixture, etc.

Dan B.
So. Charleston, WV

TR4A EFI https://forum.britishv8.org/read.php?3,4507

My plan is actually to go with fuel injection in the future after its' on the road and my wallet recovers. I was going to go with Rick Patton's TBI kit, which should work just as well with a dual or tripple intake.

 

[DanB]

We have a TR6 in our local club who went with the TBI setup on his triple carb car. He is really pleased with it, but the reason for my suggestion was to deal with your clearance issues. You could fit a multi port manifold, fuel rail and throttle body in there under the hood without cutting. Since you don't have to worry about maintaining the "stock look" it might be something to think about. Going with the TBI setup you still have the carbs and filters in the same configuration. The carbs are just acting as throttle bodies, so you still need to work out the hood clearance.

Dan B.

 

[DNK]

Justin you could use the stock PI set up and change it over to EFI like this

If you go with the 3 ITBs don't know if they will fit.
If you want I could measure the length from the head

 

[Gordon_Dedrick]

What a beautiful thing it's going to be when you are done Justin. Your attention to detail is without equal. I followed your progress from the beginning here and now I need to know where the rotating liquor bottle stand is going to mount in this car! (be careful none drips on that gorgeous dash!)

Gordon

 

[Simon TR4a]

What a beautiful car!
I must admit I had never heard of them before reading this thread, but I am really impressed. The headlight shape in the fenders is very interesting as it predates the Aero Morgan, but is quite similar, a lot of details bring the traditional Morgan to mind- so much prettier than the crude Arkleys etc.

The only problem is going to be all the compliments you will get- "Nice MG!"

 

[justin_mercier]

What a beautiful car!
I must admit I had never heard of them before reading this thread, but I am really impressed. The headlight shape in the fenders is very interesting as it predates the Aero Morgan, but is quite similar, a lot of details bring the traditional Morgan to mind- so much prettier than the crude Arkleys etc.

The only problem is going to be all the compliments you will get- "Nice MG!"

I got a lot of "Nice MG" comments driving the TR6 around =D

The morgan aero 8 / morgan aero supersport are my favorite modern car, and there's a definite kinship in style with them. Probably one of the reasons why when I first saw the kit I said "i have to have it"

 

[davidk]

[/quote]My plan is actually to go with fuel injection in the future after its' on the road and my wallet recovers. I was going to go with Rick Patton's TBI kit, which should work just as well with a dual or tripple intake. [/quote]

Not sure how much room you need, but remember with the Patton inserts, you don't have to put the carb domes back on.

 

[Brosky]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:]I got a lot of "Nice MG" comments driving the TR6 around[/QUOTE]

You'll probably get a lot of "Nice Jag" comment with this one.

 

[justin_mercier]

I've been spending this week cleaning (still) and doing some prep for mounting the front and rear sections of the body. I've got all the fuel hose and fittings I should need for now. I'll be using 5/16 soft line the whole way down the chassis, and have purchased some heat wraps and heat shielding for the exhaust pipes in the Tshirt area, as well as a padded foil type wrap used for wiring harnesses that run near exhaust components. In the future, when I go TBI, the 5/16 line will turn into the return line, and I will run a new 3/8" line to the new regulator/pump/etc. For now the extra bung hole in the fuel tank is being plugged with a brass plug.

I have not yet finished mounting the gas tank, as with the tank sitting just an inch or so above the muffler, I wanted to build some sort of heat shielding. Since there's not enough space to have a good air gap on both sides of a heat shield between the tank and the muffler, what I'm going to be doing for the heat shield is taking a polished section of aluminum diamond plate and putting some fiberglass ducting insulation between it and the tank and then affixing it all in place. The aluminum diamond plate should be both a good reflector, and something to hold the insulation in place. It may or may not be the best heat shield, but it'll give me piece of mind that my gas tank isnt only an inch from the muffler with nothing in between.

I had been thinking about what to do with the underside of the fiberglass, when I remembered something that I think Tush recommended for the under side of fiberglass when he used it before. I went out and got some truck bed liner, and have been doing the underisdes of the front and rear sections with truck bed liner after I finish cleaning the years of dirt and dust off them.

I just got 100$ in stainless nuts and bolts and washers from amazonsupply.com, so I now should have all the fasteners I need to put the body on the frame, and then put the fenders on the body to get everything lined up and fitted.

My goal for this long weekend is to have the front and rear body sections assembled on the frame, the fuel system all hooked up, and the fenders rough fit.

 

[justin_mercier]

In working on the heat shield this weekend, I could not find a good way to mount it so that it wasn't going to either A) Look like crap or B) be able to rattle or bump around. I instead made some new mounts for the muffler to lower it about another inch or so underneath the tank, and I will be using a thin layer of foil faced heat duct insulation on the bottom of the fuel tank. In addition, I have never liked how close the fuel and brake lines are to the exhaust through the Tshirt of the frame. Since I was un-mounting the muffler anyways, I just pulled the whole middle pipe section along with it, and have now fiberglass exhaust wrapped the pipes through the center of the car. That combined with the fuel hose heat shield that I've bought should be plenty for piece of mind.

The front section of the body is fully mounted, and the hole for the battery box has been adjusted to fit the stainless battery box (aka 1/2 size catering tray !)

I'm working on the rear body mounts and supports before I drill the holes to final mount the fuel tank, so that I can be sure that the filler neck lines up with the center of the spare tire well.

 

[justin_mercier]

I got the sub-frame mounted on the rear body section, but I need to get some proper bolts that wont look bad in the interior or under the tire well than just hex bolts. I need to make some wide shims for the rear too, in order to close up the tops of the door gaps. I need about 1 inch of lift at the rear under the sub-frame, the frame was made slightly short so doesn't quite reach down as far as it needs to. It was welded together from some angle iron, some square tubing, and a piece of 1 and a half inch flat bar.

Here you can see the front section all mounted up and ready to go. The alignment is as good as I could get it, but it might still be off a tiny bit, hopefully it can be shimmed and shimmied into perfection by playing with it and the fenders.

I want to drill out the hole for the fuel neck in the center of the spare wheel well before final positioning the gas tank to be bolted down, but here we can see the nice fit of the tank under the rear with it all mocked up but nothing bolted in place.

Tomorrow my goals are to mount the electric fuel pump, mount the gas tank, run the fuel line, and bolt on the rear section. If I get that done in a reasonable amount of time, which I should, then I will drill the holes for mounting the fenders, and start rough fitting the 4 fenders.

 

[justin_mercier]

The fuel pump is mounted, the gas tank is mounted, and the rear section is mounted (although I have 4 more bolts to fit still, but in order to drill the holes for them, I need to take the rear wheels off, so that'll happen tomorrow. I fabricated some spacers for the rear to get the door-gaps as close as I could.

The one thing that I didn't get done today that I was planning on was running the fuel line, because I realized that I didn't have any clips or fasteners to hold the fuel hose to the side of the frame, since I cant use the original clips for the steel line. I need to figure out the best way to hold this hose to the frame now down the length of it. I mounted the fuel pump, which is a pusher pump, more or less right under the rear shock tower, with an in-line filter just in front of it.

I still need to wash down, clean, remove tape residue, etc the rear section, but that will be a lot easier to do with it mounted.

I rough fit the two rear fenders, just drilling 2 holes out of the 15 or so on each of them, and was going to do the same with the font fenders, but I need to figure out how to properly support the fronts of the front fenders before I do so.

Here's a photo of the rear, where I got some proper hex button head bolts and cut out the hole for the fuel neck. As you can see the tank fits perfectly. I've put a zip-lock bag over the neck to keep bugs or mice or whatever out of the tank while I'm assembling.

 

[Darrell_Walker]

Justin,

It looks like it is coming together very quickly, at least on this side of the screen!

You probably mentioned it before, but what color do plan for it?

-Darrell

 

[justin_mercier]

Justin,

It looks like it is coming together very quickly, at least on this side of the screen!

You probably mentioned it before, but what color do plan for it?

-Darrell

My plan is for a two tone paint job, black fenders & light housings, and silver center, with a black interior.

 

[justin_mercier]

Not a whole lot that looks different today than from yesterday, but the last bolts and holes are drilled in the rear section for it to be fully mounted now. I had to take the rear wheels off to drill the last few holes, which I needed to line up properly with the suspension tower mounting holes.

With the wheel off I was able to get a photo of the underside of the rear with the body mounted and the gas tank in place. As you can see there's a decent sized space under there. Originally I was thinking to cut a hole in the back of the rear shelf and put some storage space back there, but I think I have a better idea. Once this car is on the road, I'm going to want a half decent sound system, but without it looking obvious that I've got one in there. I can hide the head unit in the glove box area, but this space back here will allow me to fit an 8 inch powered subwoofer without having to have a large box inside the car itself. I can mount it on the bottom to the rear differential cross member, and just have the subwoofer face pointing into the center of the cockpit.

Once I got the final bolts put on for the rear center section, I dragged one of my seats down to try to figure out the positioning and fitting. it'll be tight at the top of the door, but that actually gets much better if i raise the seat up 3/4 of an inch or so by putting sliding rails under it. The rail kit that I have only has 1 inch studs on the bottom which might be a little short to fit through the thick plywood core fiberglass floor, but I'm pretty sure I can figure something out which will work just fine. The seats are from a Shelby Cobra MK3 roadster, and are actually quite comfortable to sit in. My only real worry right now when it comes to 'driving' this once it's together is how cramped the pedal space is, I hope that I dont have to find skinnier shoes !

 

[justin_mercier]

I'm attempting to tackle the problem of the kit not coming with any front fender supports right now. It's a hassle because in order to get measurements for fabricating front fender supports, I need to mount the front fenders... but to mount the front fenders, I need front fender supports.

I've got one side roughly mounted, and figure that I will create my supports with slots instead of holes, so that I can adjust the fit by loosening the bolts and sliding the position in the bracket to change it around a little. The front fenders are surprisingly flexible

 

[justin_mercier]

I got a set of MGTD hinges, and there's both good news and bad news. The good news is, they can be made to work, the bad news is, you wont be able to use the 'default' mounting points made in the mold at the B-pillar. The problem is because of the nearness of the rear wheel fender and the bend of the end of the hinge, the hinge doesnt fit in the bottom mount.

Now this can be fixed however by moving the bottom hinge up several inches to create clearance. This does however put them at slightly different 'depths', so you either need to move the hinge up enough so that you can file down / in the slight half centimeter bump to be level with the top, or add material at the top and recess the door side hinge slightly so that the pins are aligned for a single axis of rotation.


Despite this slightly annoying problem, I will be using these hinges (as I already paid through the nose for them and now have them!) I will probably make a metal plate with the thickness of the center of the door pillar, so that I can keep the hinges as far apart vertically as possible. Some slight modifications will be needed, but I'll make them work.

In picture one, you can see the top hinge fits perfect. The bottom hinge however, not so much. In the 3rd picture you can see that if you move it up about 2 inches it will fit there, but would have to recess into the door itself further, and the top hinge would have to move out a little to fit as well. That's what I think I plan on doing. I'll be making either some metal plates for inside the door, or wooden supports (like the mgtd used) to bolt the hinges through, I never like putting 'weight' hanging from only fiberglass in the center of an attachment.

I also bought on Ebay today the windshield pillars that I need from a Bugeye Sprite, as that's apparently what the originals used. However at the same time I purchased a pair of the lower windshield mounts from an MGTD, with the fold down windshield, so that I can play with them and see if I can adapt them to my purpose as well. It'd be cool to have a fold down windscreen on this thing =)

Here's a photo of the door gaps as well. There's a good bit of filing and shaping to be done at the rear of the door where the hinges mount, but they're molded proud and without the hinge mounting locations cut out, so that's perfect for me since I'll be using different spots.

 

[justin_mercier]

This evening has been front-fender support bracket fabrication. I found some Stanley 10 inch by 1 inch 'support straps' at the hardware store that just happened to have holes spaced exactly the distance apart that the bolts on top of the fulcrum pin are. This led me to create the following bracket, by chopping apart a pair of heavy 90 degree 8 inch angle brackets and drilling some holes and doing some grinding. By mounting the plate across the top of the fulcrum on the inside, and feeding a 5/16 bolt from the bottom, I have made for myself a captive-bolt which I can get access to the head from the bottom for tightening and loosening, but which cant come out. This bolt allows me to pivot the L bracket that I made and hammered to shape to fine adjust the fitting and support of the front fenders.

I'm waiting to put the passenger side fender and bracket on until I change out my exhaust header this next week, so that I dont have to take the fender all the way back off and put it back on again.

Here's the driver side bracket, the curve to the bracket is fairly slight. I had not yet drilled the hole in the fender and bracket and put the bolt through them in this photo.

Lastly here are the two sides of the driver-side bonnet sitting in place showing that the fender and bonnet all line up properly

 

[Silverghost]

I know this may seem like blasphemy, but have you considered hinging the doors in the front? You have a nice long straight edge at the front and plenty of surface/area for mounting plates/hardware, etc. It wouldn't be a totally bad thing to do it that way?

 

[justin_mercier]

I thought about it briefly, but because of the angle of the front door, if you hinge it at the front the door can never stay open on it's own, which would make getting in and out of the already very cramped cockpit even harder as you'd have to hold the door open the whole time. In addition there isn't room between the seats and the door for the door latch to be in the back, the space is VERY tight in there.