Dear Ride Drive,

I was wondering if you could give me some advice. I have bought myself a used 1996 TVR Chimaera 400 from the official TVR importer/dealer here in Switzerland in spring 2002. The car h ad about 35,000 km on the clock and serviced by this dealer according to the service book. Ever since I had the TVR I had problems, and after about one year the engine started to show strange behaviour. This got steadily worse and last winter (2003/2004) I took the car out after it had spent a few weeks in the garage (I don't drive it in winter very much) there was a lot of smoke coming out of the exhaust and it was very jerky to drive. I thought it was because it was standing around so I drove a few miles to load the battery and it got a little better but still not good.

The next day I started the engine, but it took quite some time to get it going. Finally I got it to run, but after a few minutes it stopped completely. I had the car towed to the workshop, no the original one that I had been dealing with as I had changed to another after having so many troubles with the one I bought it from. There are only a handful of specialists in Switzerland capable of servicing TVR’s and so my choices are limited. The one I have found is a very good one that deals with all kinds of british sports cars.

After a few weeks of testing and analyzing, together with other specialist, it was figured that the engine had literally broken, which included camsfaft, valves, just aboyt everything. By this time I had put about 20,000km on the car, so it was now at 55,000km. The technician said that my engine looked like it had covered double the amount of miles shown as everything, especially the camshaft, was so worn that he believed there must have been something that had gone wrong with the engine at sometime that was never fixed correctly. He said he could tell that at sometime someone had taken the cylinder head off.

To come to the point, I was wondering if you have seen similar cases where an engine was blown with about 55,000km (35,000 miles)? I can’t think this is normal, especially if you have had all services done and don't drive like an idiot. I have never taken the car to a race track or anything like that either.

Thank you very much,

Best regards

Martin Luethi

Reply

Dear Martin,

I have investigated the cause of your problem with Racing Green Cars and have been advised of the following.

The Rover V8 engine that is fitted to all of the Chimaera range is generally strong, but does suffer from problems. Often the lead up to a head gasket failure is the timing cover/water pump gasket failing, which causes a dramatic loss of engine coolant.  If this happens the temperature gauge will remain on zero and if the leak goes unnoticed the consequential damage of running without coolant can be major and immediate.

If this was the reason for the head gasket being changed in the first place there could have been further issues at that stage that were not addressed.  A typical camshaft can wear out at 40,000 miles on these models. There are a number of engines that have weak camshafts and the Rover engine is one of them.  The replacement cam and followers costs about 800 pounds sterling in the UK.

It has to be remembered that the cam fails through wear and if left long enough the lobes can all but disappear.  At this stage the engine will be hard to start and have little power as the valves are hardly opening. The cam failure leads to a lot of metal in the sump oil, elements of which will get picked up by the oil filter but not all.  TVR service centres recommend a product called 'Filtermag' which is a very powerful magnet which attaches to the outside of the oil filter canister pulling steel based metallic fragments out of the oil flow. This unit removes particles down to 2 microns in size which is far better than an oil filter can. These particles are trapped by the magnet but on the inside and these are then thrown away with the old filter instead of continuously circulating and wearing down the whole engine. The elements of metal in the oil can lead to substantial wear over a period of time

I hope this is of help?

Julian Smith

Ride Drive Ltd.

Response

Hello Julian,

Thank you for your detailed response. I met with my mechanic yesterday and he showed me everything. The engine has suffered from so much internal damage at almost every part of it is ruined so that it doesn’t make sense to restore any of it. In view of this I have decided to have a new engine fitted to my Chimaera.

Since I have to buy a new engine I was thinking of upgrading it to a 4.5 or 5.0 litre. If I am to have a 5.0 litre, would I need to upgrade other parts, such as brakes or transmission etc. I am looking at having my TVR shipped to the UK to have everything done in its country of origin.

Thanks and best regards,

Martin

Reply

Martin,

I have forwarded your email to Racing Green Cars and they will answer you direct re the supply/work on your car.

I hope that one day you will have the car you thought that you were buying.

Good luck

Julian

Ride drive Ltd