1975 BMW 2002 Project Car- More Than Sensible German Engineering.

I like pretty much all cars. When the wife takes an interest in a particularly cool car, I naturally support and nurture her interest, especially when we may be able to score said car for a low price. Now the cost of 2002's seems to be climbing. I have been watching the scrolls for a while now to find a good deal on a clean and usable 2002. There are no good deals, especially on "roundies." The wife has been noticing these cars for a while, and since I'm jonesing for a new project that I can waste a ton of money on, I got serious about finding one "for her".  I don't want a rust bucket, and I also don't want to pay 5 figures. We found this little "square light" fixer upper in the San Francisco Bay area for sale. It has an automatic transmission (a must for my wife) that is failing. The engine doesn't run so good, the interior is deflated, it needs paint, and the sunroof mechanism is in pieces. Never-the-less, I made a deal with the seller for $3,000. Yikes.

The upshot is that it came with a spare engine, two spare transmissions and a truck-load of extra, probably useless parts. I'm in the 2002 business now. The body is absolutely 100% rust free and accident free. I am going to be restoring a worthy vehicle. There are service records back to 1975. The only body damage is on the drivers door, from where the limit strap broke and the door folded into the front fender. Oh yeah, it has a broken engine mount too.
                                    

Hauling home the next project in December '14 behind my trusty and capable 390-powered 1974 Ford f-100 Explorer

1990 Mazda 323 rag top!

I really like compact hatch backs. I found a good excuse to own one back in 2008 when I was out of work for 6 months waiting for my broken back to fully  heal. I was on state disability, which barely covered the mortgage. My savings were being chiseled away from other monthly necessaries like medical bills, groceries, insurance, house utilities, and such. I was driving a Jeep Cherokee that was good for about 15 MPG. It was killing me in a time when I both had to be super frugal and also wanted to get out of the house as often as possible. I sold the Cherokee for $2200 and bought a beat little fuel sipper for $1200. I was up $1k for expenses, and had a vehicle that would go just as far as the Jeep on half the fuel. Score!

Mind you this was also during one of the times when fuel was selling for nearly $5 per gallon. So I had the 323. I also considered many other little hatch backs, but as fuel prices were rising, so were the prices of economy cars on the second hand market. This was the best I could do. It has a 1.8l ohc engine and a 5 speed manual transmission. The heater worked and it had a radio. It wasn't long before I laid into it to make it a little more personal...I found a set of Miata wheels and bolted them on (I know, there goes the savings). The car looked way better. I added some "futura" badges taken from my Falcon project. The best modification by far, though, was the sliding rag top.

I have always thought it would be really cool to own a Renault Le Car with the full sliding roof, or say, a 2CV, or an original fiat 500. Either way, I decided that there was no reason why Mazda shouldn't and couldn't have fitted a leaky, finicky sliding roof to this 323 back in 1990. Shame on them!

I wonder if I can drive like this?

1970 VW Westfalia (the travellers companion)

I love vans and always have. Growing up, my folks shuttled my brothers and I around in a 1978 Ford Econoline 150. It was an ugly root beer brown, but had a 351 V8 engine and a 4 speed manual transmission! Cool! My favorite book in second grade was one about custom van conversions of the 70's. I used to stare at those pictures and dream one day of our stripped-out Econoline looking like one of the posh Taj-Majal's on wheels that graced those pages. That never happened though, sadly. However, just after high school, a friend and I hatched a plan to go cross country for a few weeks, and we'd need cheap accommodations. I bought a smashed up and gutted blue and white 1975 VW Bus (no pictures). It had the fuel injected 2.0l engine, and man alive, that thing was fast...as long as it was hitting on all 4 cylinders....which it only did from time-to-time...

We never took our cross country trip, but we drove that van for the better part of the summer out of high school.  I was not able to figure out how to make that injected 2-liter run like it was supposed to, so I sold it down the road for about the same $400 that I had paid. The thing was, even though it ran terribly, I was entirely hooked on the experience of hanging out in the van with friends, of hunching over the steering wheel creeping up long grades, of hanging on at wide-open-throttle when the power would intermittently kick in, and generally I was hooked on van ownership.

It would be ten years or so before I had my next van, a white 1968 genuine Westfalia. I picked up the van through a coworker, somewhere near Grass Valley, Ca. It hadn't run in a few years, the registration was expired, and the interior was shabby and missing a few pieces, but we struck a deal and I got it for $300. Score!

                                       

1968 Westy- a little rough around the edges, but up for anything! Cosmetically, all I did was paint the wheels, add new hub caps, and wax the paint. I may have popped out a dent or two also.

1962 Ford Fairlane 500 (the ordinary man's luxury vehicle)

I picked this sled up in 2006 to take a little of the wear and tear off my other car at the time. I needed a cheap and stylish runabout to get groceries and run mundane errands. This car had a smooth V8 engine (221ci), smooth shifting two-speed automatic, four headlights, round tail lights, and tail fins. It checked all the boxes.  Cons: The carburetor was leaking gas, the drive shaft was about to fall out due to shot U-joints, the tires were cracking, the interior was shabby, the drivers fender was smashed, and both bumpers were hammered. But there was something nice about the way it drove, so I struck a deal and bought it for $1400. I think I over paid.

                                     
After work, a trip to Lake Natoma in Folsom for some evening Kayaking. Trusty, versatile, and luxurious Ford Fairlane "500". (2013)

Nitrous fed 1985 BMW 325e

I picked up this 85 BMW sometime around 1999. The coupe body has clean styling and the inline 6 cylinder engine has good torque. The steering is precise and the brakes are excellent. These are awesome driver's cars. These cars represent some of the best of BMW- straight forward engineering without a lot of excess for excess' sake. Power, performance, reliability, classic lines. I wanted to turn it into a dual purpose street and track car. I installed a 6 point roll cage, a 50 hp nitrous oxide system, and some chassis stiffeners. The cage precluded the existence of a back seat, which was fine, it added to the cool factor. The nitrous made it a bit of a sleeper.

The paint was a cheap respray in the original blue that was fading and chipping, and I wanted to go Alpine white with BMW factory racer-style graphics. I achieved the white, but it looked so clean and subtle that I left it that way. I found a euro-spec rear bumper in the junk yard to replace the large American spec unit, and failing to find a nice slim euro bumper for the front, I simply shaved it.

Stock 325e, lowered on Eibach springs.

1974 Triumph Spitfire 1500 (Part two)

I drove the Spitfire almost exclusively year-round with the top down for about four years. There came a time when my modified engine no longer passed the strict California Emission Control test guidelines and I couldn't legally register it in that configuration. Also the transmission was starting to sound really bad in first gear. I decided to park the car and tarp it. It sat on the side of my brothers house for about a year and a half. I pondered how to overcome the smog check issue and hatched a plan. I decided to buy an earlier model Spitfire "donor car" and "convert" my '74 1500 to a '71 Mk4. At that time a 1971 was exempt from smog laws, but it would be  a few years until the '74 was exempt.

                                           
                                   This car, even faded and tired had good charisma. You can see plenty of                                                     red paint peeking through from where the cheap burgundy paint is flaking away.

1974 Triumph Spitfire 1500 (part one)

I grew up around convertibles and always wanted one of my own. It was the summer of 1996 and I had managed to scrape together $900 through months of careful saving and probably from holding on to my tax return. I decided that it was time to buy a convertible. I scoured the Sacramento Bee classifieds to see what the coolest convertible I could get for $900 was. There were only three viable options in my range: A 1971 Fiat 124 Spider in Antelope, a 1960's VW dune buggy in Citrus Heights, and a 1974 Triumph Spitfire in Roseville.

                                     
               Complete and full of potential, this little Spitfire was a perfect fit for a kid on a tight budget.

1987 C4 Corvette (a cheap skate's dream super car)

One day a few years ago I was convincing a buddy of mine that the absolute best bang-for-the-buck in automotive performance was the 1985-up C4 corvette. 300 horsepower, posi traction rear end, 4 wheel disk brakes, and all aluminum suspension! How can you go wrong. A quick search of Craigs List showed him that there was no shortage of supply for under $5k!! Well, I ended up just convincing myself really. I found this gorgeous 87 TPI Corvette for $3200. The body was near perfect, leather interior like-wise, but it drove horribly. The tires were out of round and out of balance. The add-on adjustable fuel pressure regulator was set too low so the engine pinged and had no power....And it had 215k miles.

                                      
              I don't have any better pics left of this car unfortunately. It was a nice subtle shade of gray.

Cheap cars, no will power

In the past, I have bought cars just because they were cheap...and why not? I love cars. I'd like to own every car once in my life. I've always said I like them new, old, shiny, dull, running, dead, pristine, dented, exotic, pedestrian, rusty or clean....I like them all. A few cars I had just for a short while since they were cheap and seemed like a good idea are the following: 1960 Ford Ranchero, 1977 Toyota Corolla "lift back", 1982 Toyota Tercel, 1966 Pontiac Le Mans, 1977 MG Midget.....

I was going to school in Fremont, California back in 1998 when I spied this seriously beat-down Ranchero on the side of the road with a for sale sign in the window. Me, always being a sucker for a cool old American car that looks like it's going to be cheap to buy, I pulled over and jotted down the phone number. I  later called about the car. It sat funny, because, as the seller explained, it was missing the right front coil spring...(Huh?) How does that happen? Someone removed it and couldn't figure out how to put it back in I guess. The drivers door had been replaced after having been side-swiped and the B pillar was a little messed up. But it ran!!! It had a 6 cylinder and two speed automatic (which leaked ATF from the front pump seal). The car was pretty shabby inside and out, but I bought it anyway for $400. Score! 

I cut and re welded the B pillar so the door would close normally and slathered a little sloppy bondo here and there and took to painting her in hardware-store cans of white and black primer. I used it as a commuter and to move stuff occasionally. It was a fun and comfy no-frills car that was cheap to own. It was, however, a worn out jalopy, and I sold it down the road after about a year and a half.

                                     

      I bought it in gray primer. I parked it on the street away from my apartment so people wouldn't associate        it  with me.

The fleeting 1971 Toyota Celica ST

One of the coolest foreign cars I've ever owned was this 1971 Celica ST. It had a 2.0 liter engine and a 5 speed transmission. I think it was one of the first years that Toyota imported the Celica. The body had great lines reminiscent of a cuda or camaro. The fuel filler was at the very rear of the car hidden under a trim plate. The hood was adorned with faux vents like those from a '66 Chevelle SS. Bucket seats and a full complement of gauges made this car cool looking and cool to drive. The two-liter four cylinder engine had plenty of power when fitted with a Weber down-draft carb and slightly tweaked ignition timing.

I spied this car sitting in a field in Penryn, Ca one day among a bunch of other cars. I stopped in and knocked on the door of the house attached to the field. I eventually made a deal for the car- $300 and I towed it out of there. It needed a clutch. Well, it also needed some interior work and general cosmetics.
                                   
                             Mis-matched paint and general scruffy appearance, but if you look past all that,                                            it's got great lines and a pretty tough aggressive look to it.

2000 Yamaha V Star 650 Chopper project

I was between motorcycles in 2008 and nursing my broken back from the motorcycle accident that claimed my beloved Buell. I was on state disability as I couldn't work with the broken back, and my monthly mortgage payment was depleting my savings fast. Since I was off work and had a lot of spare time on my hands, I was itching to get back onto two wheels, but I didn't have much money to do it with. A friend of mine had a clapped out V-star sitting in his side yard. He bought it new and racked up 54k miles on it before parking it. I bought it off him for a few hundred bucks.

The paint was badly oxidized, tires balding, clutch slipping, seat cracking, but fundamentally, it was a solid bike. I went to work stripping it down and cleaning it up. I sanded the tank and rear fender and applied a semi-gloss black coat of rattle can paint. I shelved the front fender. I relocated the license plate, bobbed the rear brackets and built a straight pipe exhaust system from steel tube stock. I cut down the seat and reshaped it and then had it professionally recovered.

I rode this bike for over a year. It was comfortable, easy riding, but a little light on power and a little bouncy on the freeway due to it's light weight design. It was a good bike and ultimately it sold me on the cruiser motorcycle.

                                     

1965 Ford Falcon wheel selection

I really liked the idea of the centerlines on the car. I wanted that mean 80's street-machine vibe. When it was all said and done, I wasn't satisfied with the pairing of the wheels to the car. I tried old slot mags, of which I am a huge fan, but I think the white  walls kept the cool factor down so they had to go. To my eye, the black steel rims and white walls looked cool, but unfinished. I had considered some original hubcaps with spinners, but feared loosing them during spirited driving. I tried some Summit brand torque thrust knock-offs, not quite right. I ended up settling on some Cragars, and when I did, to my eye, I had the perfect rim. I can't see anything else on the car. There's a harmony to the polished edge and light gray center, the sharp, crisp edges of the spokes that plays well with the lines of the car.

My original concept for the finished Falcon was 80's street-machine, the look didn't suit the car. These are 15x7 rims

Granada organ donor for the 65 Falcon

I'll get to the red paint shortly, but I think here is a good spot to insert where I sourced most of the heavy mechanical parts for the Falcon. Sometime in the future I will post an homage to donor cars with pictures of all the vehicle's who were condemned to the junkyard by my hand. I'm not proud, or particularly thrilled about sentencing otherwise usable cars to the crusher, but sometimes there is no better option towards the relentless and passionate pursuit of my goal.

I picked up this lovely 1977 Ford Granada in the S.F. Bay Area and drove her all the way home to Sacramento. I paid $1400. She had 53,000 original miles, was equipped with a healthy (but smogged down) 302 V8 engine, a C-4 transmission that shifted right and power disk brakes up front. This car also had everything I needed for the 5 lug conversion and more.

                                      . 
The day I brought the Granada home. It was a really nice looking car on this side. Good clean lines and I even like the color. All original paint, 1 owner car. This was around March, 2008.

undoing the 1965 Ford Falcon Futura for restoration

My first impulse with the car was to just pop an engine and transmission in and drive her a little, while slowly fixing her up. I really just wanted to drive the car. After a close scrutinizing inspection, it became clear that the car was just too wasted to even try. I didn't buy this consciously aware that I was going to have to do a full resto, but there again is my rose-colored glasses for ya.

Tearing down a car with no engine or transmission goes pretty quick and easy. I started by removing the putrid moldy interior and hosing out the inside. Then a thorough scrub down with Simple Green and a stiff bristle brush took care of any moss and accumulated dirt. The cool thing about an empty car is you can hose out the cowl heater channel, the trunk wells, everything! A few late nights after work is all it took to have her stripped to the shell.

 Floors are mostly just surface rusty. The heater was missing and much of the dash trim had to be bought.

1965 Ford Falcon Futura, my second Falcon (2007-present)

Falcon 2. The day I sold my first Falcon in 1994 I regretted it. Every day since, I've wanted another one. But I  just couldn't settle for a  Falcon of any year or style, I had to have another 65 Futura hardtop or nothing.  I liked the styling, I liked the seating position, and I liked that it was a relatively unique vehicle. I am a big fan of the jet-age styling that the car has with it's twin afterburner taillights. More cars need round taillights. I found this car advertised on Craigslist for $900. It was in some old guy's back yard for almost 20 years. Sadly his health was failing and he knew he wouldn't realize his dream of restoring it. I looked the car over. No keys, signed original pink slip from around 1980, no engine, no transmission, interior absolutely shot, windshield busted, and I couldn't look in the trunk as it was locked and there was still no key. Oh yeah, it had early Toyota Celica rims that looked atrocious. So I bought it. Hey, the body was in-tact and all Futura trim was present. That was late 2007.

                                      
           This was my first glimpse of the car after the owner pulled off the tarps. Mostly straight body. I had to             replace the passenger door, however.

1965 Ford Falcon Futura, my first car. (circa 1992)

My first car was this 65 Falcon hardtop. It was a 26 year old car and had more than it's fair share of dents around its body. The interior was decent and the 289 ci V8 engine was peppy. I didn't know anything about working on cars, but I figured I could tackle the body work. It was not easy and it didn't turn out the best, but it looked very presentable and was a nice car to be seen in after that. I drove it in various shades of primer my entire junior year in High School. I painted it in my back yard over summer break and had a swanky Classic to drive my whole senior year. Score!

 Before I was old enough to drive it, my father had pick it up and done a little work to make it safe and comfortable. I painted the hood black as it was from another car and didn't match at all.

2002 Buell Cyclone M2 (perfection de-evolved)

I had never owned a new car or new motorcycle, and except for this Buell, I still haven't. I don't know if that made it more special or not, but I really loved this motorcycle. It was the only bike I was completely satisfied with. It was the only bike I had never thought of trading/selling away.

I bought this in 2004 at the Harley Davidson dealer in Rocklin, Ca. That's right, a brand new 2002 Buell, purchased in 2004. I was specifically looking for a big displacement twin motorcycle with a carburetor and a large gas tank and no weird deviant design or engineering craziness. I wanted a straight-forward ground pounding muscle bike that I could tune and maintain without any special equipment, and I wanted to go far between gas station stops........
                                             
These colors were Molten Orange and Volcanic Grey...I think. All orange parts were powder-coated and held up very well. Just look at that awesome V-twin under slung like that!

Motorcycles rule.

When I was about 9 I was first captivated by the motorcycle. I remember the moment vividly: It was 1984 and I was riding in the back seat of my folks car on North-bound 101 just outside of San Francisco, heading through Marin. I looked over to the slow lane and there was this scruffy 1970-something Japanese motorcycle of an unappealing shape and color buzzing past our car. The rider looked like a haggard bum and his bike looked worse. I think there was a milk crate strapped to the back. I remember being confused at the thing. Why would someone have to ride something like that? Then it hit me. I fixed on the 4 cylinder engine and long chrome tubular exhaust artfully arcing away from the cylinder head and gracefully turning backwards, gradually up turning and flaring out towards the end. That engine...wow,right there...exposed...that machine wow...within a window of about 10 seconds it rode into my brain and rode on past, but the memory is burned permanently. I stared until the motorcycle was gone. And that was it. I yearned for a motorcycle of my own. I seized upon the opportunity two years later during a moment of parental weakness.

I found a 75cc Suzuki dirt bike for sale in the local paper and somehow conned my mom into taking me to see it. I had been saving up paper-route money for some time and had about the asking price of $250. We went to see the motorcycle and I looked the little yellow thing over as if I knew what I was looking at. The man selling it had rehabbed it and was just looking to offload. I didn't even know how to use the clutch and I didn't have the concept of shifting. He kick started it and I got on. With a quickened pulse I stepped down on the shifter and the bike lurched and died. The man quietly said I had to use the clutch, and I, not wanting to let on to mom that I didn't know what the heck I was doing, replied, "oh, yeah." I used the clutch. I scooted away, no more than 100 yards. Figuring I'd gone far enough to make a good show of it, I turned the bike and rode back and stopped and shut it off. I bought the bike.

I don't know how I managed to ride the short circle, but it happened. That was the last time I was able to ride the bike for about two weeks as from that point on for a short while I could not move the bike without stalling it. Well at some point I got the hang of it and loved every minute. One of my pals in Junior High School also had a motorcycle and lived on a Dairy ranch just outside of Petaluma with many thousands of acres. I stored my motorcycle out there and on occasional sleep over weekends we'd go riding through the pastures, up the trails and over mountains. It was a blast.....

                                         
Here I am doing the superman (before there was a name for it) on my 75cc Suzuki when I was about 13. I lived to ride this thing. All day every day.

My $200 1966 Dodge Dart Gt (circa 1996)

Winter was approaching, and back in the fall of 1996 my transportation stable consisted of a Honda Nighthawk motorcycle and a Triumph Spitfire. I had attempted to winterize the soft top of the Spitfire once before and had horrible results with window fogging and water intrusion. No, the Spitfire was not a winter car. I had a nice one-piece rain suit for the motorcycle as well, but, come on man. So I needed a winter car, but I was a young minimum-wage earner who was living on my own, pretty much hand-to-mouth. A co worker of mine had been given this cool '66 Dart GT to use as a parts car to fix the broken front suspension on his '71 Dart. He was rather unmotivated to do anything with the two cars, so one day I hit him up about the '66. I offered him $200 for it and he didn't hesitate to accept. The problem with the '66 was that it had a broken crankshaft. Other than that it was a reasonable, complete and sound automobile (I thought).

I towed the car to my brothers house where it occupied an otherwise abandoned and forgotten horse stable-turned-single-car garage. There I yanked the engine and set about rebuilding it with a replacement crankshaft. This was my first engine job and I didn't have a manual, or any real idea how to pull and work on an engine, but somehow I managed.

                                      
 Mostly original paint and a nice original black vinyl interior that was in exceptionally good condition. I recall having to restitch the sun visors though.

Triumph TR3A interior installation

When we got this car in late 2010, the interior was shot. This poor thing had been sitting out in the elements in Bodega Bay, Ca for years unprotected. That's why everything was so shot on it. There were barely remnants of carpeting. The seat upholstery was 1/2 missing, 1/2 crunchy. The seat frames were rusted away with the floors, the seat tracks were un-identifiable from rust deterioration. I had to cut the floor fasteners away because the heads of the bolts were misshapen from rust. The door panels were warped almost beyond suitability for taking patterns. The cockpit cappings were torn and the metal sub-structures of the door cappings were rotted beyond reuse. There was no option but to purchase a complete replacement interior and some replacement capping frames for the doors. I got a nice set of reproduction door capping frames from Moss, and the rest of the interior was ordered from 2Tall Interiors and Fabrication out of Ohio. 

 My garage looking like a production upholstery shop. Seats, panels, carpet and cappings strewn about. Also note the freshly powder coated 60 spoke wheels shod in new Firestone f560 tires!

TR3A to Miata radiator hoses and miscellaneous stuff.

The radiator hoses took a bit of research and trial. I found Summit racing's website handy for these. You can choose hose diameter and angles and lengths pretty easily. I ordered up some random shapes and took to cutting them to fit. They were all reasonably priced and shipping is always quick. Mostly I just needed some 90 degree bends with some length. The lower water inlet on the engine is on the drivers side of the engine block and the corresponding radiator port is on the passenger side of the radiator. I had to get creative with routing and hoses and space. The upper engine outlet/thermostat was a bigger problem. The original Miata outlet pointed sideways directly towards the passenger fender and the corresponding port on the radiator was centered. I ended up finding a Mazda Protege (same basic engine as Miata) thermostat housing/water neck that is oriented straight up, so a simple 90 degree hose with a slight jog fit perfectly.

After that, it was time to finalize the electrical  in the interior and begin final assembling the body. I added two small 4-way fuse blocks under the dash to power up the body electrical. The original TR3A has only 2 fuses for everything! Me, I like a little more protection. I added a horn circuit, wipers, head lights, and signals. There is room to add on in the future too. 

 Final radiator hose strategy. The silver pipe portion of the lower radiator hose is a stock Miata piece with it's bracket cut, and re-welded in a slightly different orientation for a custom and clean fit. I took pictures of the labels on all pieces of hose for reference should I ever need to replace them.

TR3A Retrofitted Jaeger Tachometer

I may have lost a little sleep thinking about how I was going to get functioning instruments in the car. One of the bigger internal arguments towards retaining the original engine and transmission was so I could enjoy the action of the original, larger than life Jaeger speedometer and tachometer. You see, the TR3's original Jaeger Tachometer is driven mechanically by a cable from the engine's distributor. Since the Miata engine neither has a distributor nor tachometer cable, it wouldn't be compatible. I researched instrument suppliers and most of the aftermarket stuff available wasn't as large and certainly didn't have the character or "the look." While taking a break from the engine install I decided to crack open the Miata's instrument pod. There I discovered that the tachometer was a serviceable part, that is to say that it is removable as a whole unit. Well, well, well...
                                    
On the left is the Miata tach removed from the pod. On the right, the original TR3 unit out of it's cup. Similar in size, eh?

TR3A twin cam. And then there's the wiring...

The refurbished and re branded engine looks great tucked into the freshly painted inner fender structure. I spent hours in the garage just staring at it in that state. It's clean and unencumbered. At night, after brushing my teeth and shutting down the house, I'd often creep down to the end of the hall and quietly open up the door to the garage for one last look at it. I couldn't help myself. I always hoped the wife wouldn't notice the level of obsession.

Well it didn't get to remain unencumbered. The wiring had to be added. And there's a lot more to an EFI car than to the twin side-draft car. It is challenging trying to lay a harness into a different car. There were way too many important circuits to just willy-nilly start cutting and manipulating as I saw fit. No, I had to figure out how to mesh the existing Miata lengths harmoniously into the TR3. This took days. It doesn't look  like it by the pictures, but it was a looooong time to get there. The one main rework I made was for the Mass Air Flow sensor (MAF). On the Miata it's situated on the left of the engine. On the TR3, it's going to be on the right, directly in front of the throttle body. I had to restring the 6 or so wires. Not too big a deal.
                                           
 Trial fitting new harness to an original TR3 harness path way opening in the fire wall

Triumph TR3A Mazda Miata swap fundamnetal challenges

A complete engine change brings with it so many more considerations than any rebuild or repair. One can spend hours or days pondering on how to find/make reliable radiator hoses. I know, because I did. The original TR3A radiator no longer fits because the protruding water filler neck's space is now occupied by a twin cam valve cover. Finding a suitable "off-the shelf" radiator is challenging too. Fortunately,  there's not too much new under the sun in the engine swap world, so a little online research yielded some good advice. I found a page where a guy (and I can't remember what swap or who) used an aluminum performance radiator from a Honda Civic. Turns out they are plentiful and inexpensive. The Civic radiator is for a 1.8L and boasts extra cooling capacity. And it was less than $100. Score.

[Update: the inexpensive two row aluminum radiator was not keeping up with cooling demands, I purchased a more expensive 3 row Civic radiator from Summit Racing and also added a manual override switch for the electric cooling fan which have together kept the engine temp exactly where it needs to be.]

                                             
 Clearancing of the right inner fender for the throttle is evident here. I had made some relief cuts, massaged the metal to it's new shape, welded, filled, sanded and repainted the area.

Miata to TR3A engine and trans adapter plates

There were a few considerations in engine swap choice. The engine had to be short front-to-back so as to not interfere with the steering center link, and so I didn't have to cut away any fire wall. I was trying to find one with the exhaust exiting on the right side so as to not interfere with the steering column. Turns out there aren't many (if any) commonly available RWD compact 4-cylinder engines with a right-side exhaust manifold. It had to be fuel injected. If I was going to go through the hassle of conversion, I really wanted to make it worth-while.

Modifying the TR3 was surprisingly easy. I stuck with the Miata engine mounts and built some brackets out of  1/8 thick 2" square tube. I had to measure the original angle of the Miata mounts in the car. Then, I just matched the angle, cut it into the square tube with my trusty Porter-Cable angle grinder (which by the way I used from day one to dismantle rusty frozen fasteners and cut away rusted sheet metal-I highly recommend this tool).
                                       
Angle finder and Angle grinder. 2" square tube cut to match Miata engine mount slope.

Miata engine swap into the Triumph TR3A

This was a very agonizing decision. A few posts back I lamented the condition of the supplied engine and transmission. The straw that broke the camel's back, as it were, was a mess up with some new piston rings. You see, I was already suffering for how much money the engine alone was sapping from me (I am not a rich man). Then, after springing for the new piston and liner kit, it turns out they supplied way over sized rings. Every step of the way I had stumbling blocks in trying to get this engine built.

It was a lovely Saturday afternoon and I had resolved to make some progress. The crankshaft was fresh with the viton rear main oil seal conversion, the thrust was set precisely to spec and the main bearings plasti-gauged out and caps torqued. It was great. Then came fitting the pistons...I had several sets of figure 8 gaskets and I had shiny new 86mm jugs and slugs already fitted to my refurbished rods....then the piston rings...would not compress...the ends overlapped by a solid 1/8 inch. Madness.

TR3A engine- a hiccup in my optimism

SO when I brought the car home originally, in pieces, I stored the engine and transmission out of the way and ignored them until it was their turn for the rebuild. Yeah, the engine looks a little rough, but if you had been wearing the rose-colored glasses that I wear, it isn't so bad. And yes, not only was it really really rusty on the outside, it was also seized on the inside. Locked up. After having pulled the head I spent a few hours knocking the pistons free. The crankshaft was rusty. The camshaft was rusty. The cylinder liners were beyond atrociously rusty. The crank pulley was too rusty to count on to not shred a fan belt. Etc, etc, etc...I spent hordes of cash on new pistons, machine work to the crankshaft, block, and a completely rebuilt head. I had hordes of money yet to spend on the engine. I was becoming disillusioned, not with the project, just with the engine. I feared that I would have several thousand invested into turning this rusty boat anchor into a decent running engine that would still leak, over-heat and smoke. I pondered. I pondered some more. I fretted. I still didn't know how the transmission was going to look when I opened it up, but at this point I think we all can pretty much guess...

 This is what a seized Triumph TR3A engine looks like perched next to a likely junk 4 speed transmission

TR3A differential and rear suspension

I hoped that the one good thing left on this car was the rear differential/axle assembly. Unfortunately, just as the reality of having to separate the body from the frame quickly came clear, so did the complete over haul of the rear differential. On a cheery spring day I endeavored to remove the cover and gaze upon the majesty of well protected gears only to find rusty bearings. All the carrier and pinion bearings were rusty!! I should have expected it, given the crunchy feedback I got when turning the pinion flange by hand.  The gears were clean though. Go figure. Even the outer axle support bearings were rusty (recall that this car has been non-operational since 1986!). So I had to dive in head first and basically replace everything but the housing, carrier and gears. I had to figure out the nuances of the TR3A rear axle first, though. I found the original factory service manual very helpful in this regard, though it was still a difficult process requiring the use of a press, a freezer, hammers, indicators, a time-out and an enormous amount of patience and sobriety.

Call me overly optimistic, but I look at this and think..."hey, the innards are protected by gear oil, it'll probably be fine!"

TR3A front suspension build

I spent a lot of time thinking about and researching potential low-buck front suspension upgrades. A full rebuild was inevitable as it was all shot. The right upper control arm was cracked and it looked like it was about 25 road-miles away from complete failure. Crazy! I wanted to achieve some negative camber (don't we all). I found a very interesting study posted online that a fellow did on a TR3 using a suspension modeling program on his computer. The gloss is that one can shorten their upper control arms to achieve a reasonable amount of negative camber, while at the same time improving the entire camber curve through suspension travel. I'm in! No extra parts to buy, just cut out 3/8 of an inch and weld them back together! Did it! Not happy with the end results, I have way too much negative camber. As of this writing I am planning to convert the lower trunnions and upper a arms/ball joint to lats TR4 components. In this way I get some caster and go back to a more reasonable camber setting that will be modifiable in the future if desired.

 I sand blasted the frame in a friend's open field and later painted it with POR-15. These shabby saw horses provided a nice working height. The frame is light enough for me to carry solo.

Ode to a garage

Having a garage is great. It's one of my favorite rooms in the house. I decided on the purchase of my most recent house largely because of the garage space. Turns out it really wasn't enough. My garage through the years has been at my parents house, friends houses, my brothers house, a college dorm carport, my apartment parking lot, my apartment's living room, backyard patio, the various shops I have worked at, a temporary back yard shelter, and of course, the actual garage attached to my house. To me it is primarily a work space, but very importantly, secondarily it is a place to stand and stare and dream. I get lost in my garage, not physically, but mentally. My wife has had to on more than one occasion rescue me after the passage of many hours of  inactivity in the garage staring at stuff and imagining the creative possibilities. I like to restore old cars. I like to own and look at cars and sometimes just sit in them while they are parked in my garage. I also like motorcycles.

Motorcycles and muscle cars! My (former) '66 Pontiac Le mans, my brand new (at the time) Buell Cyclone, a couple of BMW's a very used jet-ski. This was my brothers 7 car garage with lift and bathroom.