Craig's TVR T350 - Its a TVR, its bound to end up been a project thread!!

[Craig]

Here’s a few quick pictures (no time for a photo shoot just yet!) of the new addition to the fleet; a late 2004 TVR T350. Its finished in Lotus laser blue with magnolia over blue hide interior, it’s currently on 19,000 miles and is in outstanding condition given the cars age.

It’s been mildly fettled, like most TVR’s have parts seem to get replaced with superior after market items. At the moment it’s running GAZ Gold Pro Coilovers with a geometry set up from X-Works Service, has a JP Racing Exhaust complete with ACT De-CAT’s and a TVR Power De-CAT EPROM chip to suit... safe to say it’s got a nice noise to it!







If any levels need checking or topping up, it’s simply easier to remove the bonnet than risk spilling fluids all over trying to get into a small gap.



Powered by the legendary all alloy 3.6 Speed Six engine, currently producing around 370bhp... or was, haven’t checked to see if it still starts today. :P



More pictures to follow once the rain has receded, that’ll be in six months time!

[setra]

Very nice!!

[CraigMillwardCroft]

Looks nice

[mattCSLnut]

Wow! that's a bit of a swerve to the far left Craig Shame that CSL you were sniffing @ didn't work out for you in the end
Nice looking "Trevor" I hope it comes with a bullet proof "AA" recovery membership (only kidding mate)
Enjoy the new toy

[SachaR]

I miss my T350, great cars and great fun to drive! If you look after them and use them, they are reliable!!!

[toplad]

I've had one of these, nice loooking thing, mine didn't last long as I found it lacking overall grip and the suspension was poor too. I'd be interested to know how it drives with the gaz gold setup.

Is it your first TVR?

[Craig]

Yeh this is my first TVR, and I agree the mechanical grip doesn't feel to be amazing however there's room for improvement especially with a few small tweaks of the current suspension... However, I've got an e36 for track use so I really don't want to go turning this car into a track car.

I’ve mentioned to a few that when I got the car, first day of ownership wasn’t as smooth as it could have been, so here’s the story;

When bringing the car home I noticed the water temperatures were a little erratic at times and reading a little on the high side. Previous background info on the car brought up the fact it might need a new water temp sensor which feeds the gauges, however I wasn’t convinced.

First port of call was to bleed the cooling system, and although there was a minor bit of success this had not cured the issue. After an extended test drive I noticed a faint wisp of coolant under the bonnet.



Now this can be common... not just because it’s a TVR, but because the cooling system doesn’t have an expansion bottle so in higher temperatures if someone’s slightly overfilled the coolant, the coolant rises up the tower (where the blue cap is in the picture below) through expansion then it can self level itself all over the engine and floor, great design!!



I wanted to investigate further and ran a series of temperature gauges both infra-red and physical, this showed that the water temperature in the block and heater matrix was higher than that leading to the radiator which seemed strange. After a short while, and lots of panic that I’d have shagged the engine by running it hot, I decided to whip the thermostat out and test it in a pan of hot water.



Sure enough, the thermostat was goosed and wasn’t opening so I fitted the housing back onto the car and filled the cooling system with boggo water to see how its temperature management was this time round. Perfect, the car maintained temperature there was no fluctuations in the gauge and the fans were clicking in and out at the right temps. A new thermostat was ordered at a great cost of £18.44, £8.50 of which was postage. Upon its arrival it was promptly fitted and the cooling system was flushed through and re-filled with Silkolene Pro-Cool.

Now the car was running fine it was time for my first real drive, I took it to Specialist Cars of Malton’s Breakfast Meeting which raises money in aid of the North Yorkshire Air Ambulance. The car ran fine all the way there, and back... it’s a real hoot to drive and gives massive smiles both when on it or just cruising at steady speeds, here’s a few more pictures of the car after the drive out sat waiting to go back in the garage!

[toplad]

Good read
It's still one of the best looking cars

I came close to buying another a few times, but was always disappointed on the test drives

[AlexGTT]

Lovely car Craig. Congratulations. Look forward to seeing and hearing it.