Tvr chimaera starting problems this weekend...

Didn't get that much done on any of my stuff this weekend but an interesting one helping my dad out with one of his cars,he's had problems with the fuel pump relay on his tvr before but the usual fix of swopping the relays around didn't get the pump buzzing.
After moving his austin healey out the way (it's a hard life) we had a little look...

After checking all the fuses were ok i tried checking the terminals for the fuel pump relay,using the neutral on pin 85 i found there wasn't 12v on pin 30 or pin 86 to power or switch on the relay? At this point while i was turning the car over a bit of smoke seemed to come from under the bonnet, my dad muttered it's been doing that for a while, using a torch we could see a large diameter cable with no insulation and a melted wiring loom, bugger!
Figuring anything can be fixed i started stripping the plenum chamber off the engine to get a bit of access, the main battery to starter motor cable was so burnt i could pull the 2 halfs apart, surprising the starter worked at all or more worryingly that it didn't catch fire! The loom didn't seem to badly damaged other than the outer conduit, a check at halfords pulled a blank for battery cable so that was it for one day!

Luckily i had to go to our office sunday morning for a few hours and under my bench was a 5 metre length of 16mm2 battery cable i'd bought for the split charging system on my van, it was slightly smaller than the original but we took a committee decision (british leyland in the 70's style) and decided it'd be fine, at least an hour of wrestling and we had power (again) Still no fuel pump though?
To confirm the pump worked we bridged the pump supply from the relay next to and it started, during our coffee break i scoured google for a tvr chimaera ecu wiring loom diagram, all i found were people asking for the same on forums! Eventually worked out the ecu loom is a range rover standard item, on a pdf website there was a 1992 ecu diagram which i figured must be close. The colours were wrong but the gist of it is probably the same.
This time we went a bit deeper into the relay wiring, and put the black lead of the multimeter on the negative of the battery, now there was power on pins 86 and 30?
It turns out there was no neutral going to the relay, with a wire run direct from the battery the pump worked a charm, but it then wouldn't start! After a bit more multimeter work we realised that a suspect relay had been put into the main ecu slot next to the fuel pump relay, so original fault was a duff relay and no neutral. Whether the relay blowing took the neutral out we're not sure,that neutral comes from the ecu direct. With a different relay job done, fired up a treat.

Plastic bumper fixing..

It's car related so i suppose i'll mention it, the technical director turned up monday with a nice little mod to the rear bumper of his 2 month old audi a3 convertible, he seems to think we can fix anything so asked me if i could pull it out....

I wasn't that hopeful but had a go anyway as it was sunny, there's no way to get to the rear of the bumper so after removing a stack of torx bolts the bumper started to get a bit looser, found some more fixings under the light and with the scary cracking noise of the clips releasing got that side of the bumper away from the car, after getting Big Col MD to help (my dad) we just about got the main dent pushed out leaving a fist sized dent under the line running around the bumper.

At this point a heat gun was suggested as the remaining dent seemed to flex back in when you pushed it, the parking sensor just unclips so with that out the the way a little gentle was applied to the inside to try not to damage the paint, amazingly when you've got it warm you can rub the inside with a cloth then hold it until it cools and the original shape returns! You can see a slight crease but only if your looking for it...That could of gone a lot worse, i got out of there before he checked if the parking distance and light cluster etc still worked!

There was no way i thought this would work, as usual my dad turned out to be right....

The story so far...

This weekend after many years of putting it off and moving the MG from one garage to another I finally rolled it out into daylight with a view to turning it into my everyday car, thankfully it did still roll and after accidentally finding out that my shin is the perfect thing to stop your mgb rolling into the a near by mercedes sprinter that you left parked to close we were all set...

I've tried resurrecting the car a few times and have added an electronic fuel pump and an electronic ignition distributor over the years as the points in both are a pain, new for this attempt was a recon starter motor and starter relay which i picked up from the very helpful wrexham mg centre when i picked up the mgb i bought on ebay, (don't ask..damn stella, computers should have a time lock as well as your credit cards, lets face it nothing you buy at 2am is something you want to tell your mam about)

After narrowly avoiding the almost comical (if it's not you) starter motor hitting you bang in the head when you finally get it off, the parts went on pretty easily, the only battery i had in the van was a car sized brand new leisure battery,this didn't really get things working with little engine turn and a lot of relay clicking, no worries i had a back up, the grey 43kg battery in the photo above, with them both wired in, (excuse my rather rubbish jump leads,they are more for quads...) it was turning over at an ok sort of rate.
At this stage i whipped the plugs out (new previously) and gave them a clean, a squirt of easy start in each carb and before you know it engine running for ooh maybe 4 seconds, but life non the less!
After slopping a fresh gallon of unleaded in and draining the carb bowls with a shringe so the fresh could get in there, + finding that the choke lever on the carb shaft was slipping and not really giving choke the engine fired up and even ticked over to a certain degree, tickover still way to fast tho and the engine doesn't seem to want to slow down unless you push the carb end with your hand, maybe it needs a new spring?
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The link is the engine running, but it's missing when you rev it and doesn't seem to happy, with what i considered at least a partial sucess under my belt and after a few 10 foot drives forward and backward on the drive time to have a look at the driver's door. I never had the correct roadster dropglass when i built the car so it hadn't been considered that the gt glass that was filling the hole didn't fit properly.

Now the correct glass was in the garage, (and had been for years!) thought this might be a nice little job to tick off the list, anyone who works on cars can see where this is going.... stripped the door in no time and released the old glass, quaterlight and the rear support, tried to reassemble and manage to pull the rail that is clamped to dropglass off the window, bum, nipped to me parents place where the car i got from wrexham is improving the value of their house and stripped the door on that, amazingly considering the rusty mess that is the rest of the car all the bolts came out easy and didn't even shear on the quaterlight. After a bit of polishing back home for the final bolt up and a stand round basking in what i had achieved.
No matter what which way the parts are assembled the window wouldn't wind up, about 3/4 of the way up the glass jammed solid and got stuck. If i only wanted the window to come 3/4 of the way up i suppose i could call this a success but... after telling my mates about the problems with the door it dorned on me what had happened, unfortunately inexperience and youth, (i did a good bit of the welding on this car when i was 15 before i'd worked at the MG Centre cardiff, or could even really weld) many years ago i'd had to fit 2 door skins to this door as the first when went badly wrong (didn't get the swage lines lined up) on the 2nd attempt so much of the door frame had been ground away the door skin could move a bit on the frame, i think what's happened is that the door frame is to far back on the door skin not leaving enough room for the glass and quaterlight, both of which are a set length, so even so the door fits the car well and is rust free paint matched and has cost me 2 door skins so far it has to go!
Such is working on old cars, i could reskin it again but haven't got the heart and am not confident it'll be any better so ebay for a hopefully rust free original door then see if it's fits the car!