What was the biggest pile of scrap car you ever owned and tell us a bit about it. ( Volvo content )

Telejester

Anyone ever buy a TVR and got any reliability nightmares to share ?

NickL

Telejester said:

Anyone ever buy a TVR and got any reliability nightmares to share ?

My dad had a mid '70s M series. It spent most of the time he owned it in the garage with the body off the chassis, and he eventually sold it as an unfinished project. When it was still in one piece, it had a major issue with carb icing making the engine stall at motorway speeds, largely because he replaced the big Ford air filter with a shiny chrome one that didn't draw warm air over the exhaust manifold. The chassis tubes rusted in all the usual places - using sound deadening felt between the body and the chassis where it would soak up rain water was a bit of engineering genius from Blackpool's finest. Other than that most of the problems were electrical. The ignition switch self-destructed so it needed hotwiring to start. A short circuit in the horn button meant it would beep when steering round corners, which quickly became tedious. The headlights were pretty useless even when working, but once gave up completely on the M25. Half the switches on the dashboard weren't connected to anything, while others didn't do what the labels said. At least it had coloured wiring, though not in the same colours as the diagrams in the manual - believe it or not some others from that time had all black wiring with yellow ID tags that fell off.

Telejester

I don't think Top Gear tested Tvr's or Alfa Romeos much on the track because it was dubious as to whether each of them would complete a lap without breaking down.