For all things Rover V8, the TVR Griffith and Chimaera and TVR T-Cars
The Rover V8
Peter Wheeler was inspired when he went for the Rover V8 engine in the Wedges. He transformed the Ford V6-engined car, which lacked customer appeal, to one which grabbed the attention of the public, including those who could afford such cars.
The engine was cheap, powerful and, just as important, exotic because of its many cylinders. This was posh people’s power. The S-type was transformed when fitted with it but the real step forward was the Griffith. It was unfortunate that what many people believe to be the most delightful of all Wedges, the Speed 8, hit the stands at the same show as the Griff. It didn’t stand a chance.
Over the years TVR Power, once a wholly owned subsidiary of TVR and later an independent company, still going strong today, modified the engine but in essence it was the one produced by Rover.
It has a reputation for being bullet-proof. This is not really the case.
The engine can be divided into two ‘types’, the 3.5 litres and those of 3.9 litres and above. Those fitted to the Griff and Chim fall into the latter. The difference between the two types of engine is the bore and herein lies the problem.
As the engine is made of an aluminium alloy it needs the bores to be lined with cast iron or similar to give it any life expectancy. The are two main types of liner: dry and wet. The RV8 is described as a dry liner engine, in other words the liner does not provide a seal for the coolant. This is taken care of by the alloy casting. However, this is not always the case.
A description showing the problem can be found on Flanged liners. Briefly, the boring out makes the walls of the water jacket very thin and this can lead to leakages. Water seeps into the gap between the liner and the wall and makes its way up to the joint between the head and the block and then into the combustion chamber.
Even worse, as the liner is in interference fit, the liquid can provide a lubricant,
causing the liner to slip. Both these problems require major surgery.
The 3.5 is not troubled by this problem to anything like the same degree.
A further problem is camshaft life. Whilst it is hardly unknown for cams to run for 100,000 miles or more without problems, everyone knows someone who has had to have their cam replaced at 50,000 or before.
Whilst there seems to be no common cause for early failure, a sensible precaution is to change the oil and filter at the specified intervals.
Whilst cam replacement is not a difficult, nor expensive, job, the problem is that bits of metal would have found their way around the engine and bearing failure is common after the cam gives up its metal.
So is the engine reliable?
The answer has to be ‘Yes’ but with caveats.
The porous bores problem can affect even the most carefully serviced engine. There’s nothing one can to to lessen the likelihood of it happening nor is there any mileage below which it is unlikely. You are in the lap of the gods.
However it is not a common problem. No one seems willing to put a percentage although most will say less than 10% but below that those in the know become quiet.
Camshafts will go sooner or later. Here a good quality full synthetic oil will put back the wear. Warm the engine before stretching it and you might well reach 100,000 or more with no problems. Behave without mechanical sympathy and you might not even get sympathy from friends.
My last four saloon cars were all serviced regularly and all were well over 140,000 miles when I sold them on. I know one that went on to 165,000 without problems. The same sort of dependability does not go for the Rover V8 which is old technology and also tuned to a higher level than was originally anticipated.
But the parts are cheap, it is an easy engine to work on. So the suggestion is that you have little need to worry.
Everyone knows . . .
That TVRs are unreliable
That TVRs are unreliable
Griffiths and Chimaeras
The reliability of the Rover V8 engine has been discussed in another feature and it is accepted that even in 3.5 form it is not as bullet-proof as people suggest. Once bored out, problems with porosity are in evidence and camshafts in all sizes of engine can go at low mileage. The engine was, after all, designed in the 40s with a team with little or no experience in designing aluminium engines.
Engine aside, what can go wrong?
I researched reliability of Chimaeras and Griffs for an article and contacted 17 current owners. The average length of ownership was 3.5 years and the average annual mileage 4,500. The cars were generally young and over half of the owners had had them since new.
14 owners had experienced no breakdowns and had had to buy nothing for the cars outside normal service intervals. About half had experienced flat batteries but these had all bought trickle chargers and the problem had not reappeared.
Of the remaining three, one only drove his car three times a year. He experienced a number of minor electrical problems and had broken down on the Continent more than once. He had not, however, had to buy anything for the
car apart from batteries and, given the reoccurrence of the problem, it would appear that they were not required.
One of the remaining two had bought a car without a service history and again he experienced minor niggles and more serious problems. As his ownership extended the car became more reliable and, given that the price he paid for it was below the norm at the time, he accepted he had taken a risk and it had not come off.
The final chap bought a car that looked immaculate but had in fact been involved in a major accident. He paid top dollar for it but on its first service it was pointed out that he had major problems. A slight pulling to one side was a twisted chassis and cracking of the fibreglass proved to be a very shoddy repair that required a full front end replacement. There were other faults as well. He ended up paying almost as much again as he paid for the car to get it to the quality that he wanted.
Oddly enough, to me that is, he was quite philosophical and has put it all down to experience. After all, he said, “I’ve got a really good car now.”
Cerberas, Chimaeras and Griffiths are no longer in the first flush of youth. My Chimaera is coming up to 17 years old and as such problems over and above normal reliability issues tend to come to the fore. The most popular Google type search that finds this site is misfiring, with overheating a close second. These are problems of age and have little to do with initial build quality.
The advantage of Griffs and Chims is that they are quite simple in structure and build and are easy to work on.
Remember that they are hand built. When I took my dash apart and replaced it with a temporary one – some 18 months ago now – I was immensely irritated to discover that, despite taking precautions, I wired the heater switch incorrectly. I had drawn pictures of the wiring but had obviously made an error. However, as an extra safety measure I had taken photographs of all dials and switches before removing the wires so I was somewhat surprised to find that I had rewired it the same way as it was originally. It seems that for 12 years the previous owners had not noticed that the heater switch went from off to low to high to medium. Further, I found an earth wire with a bared end just flopping around. The bare end looked as if it had never been crimped or been in any clamp but just to be sure I contacted a chap who had wired up Chims in the hay days of TVR.
“Don’t worry about spare earths,” he said. “You’ll find more than just the one.” I trimmed the end, put some insulating tape on it and stuffed it behind a bit of fibreglass to stop it moving about.
It is, you see, a TVR.
An early Griffith and Chimaera, both with subtle modifications.
It must be crap: the papers say so
There is this strange belief that if it is written in a ‘broadsheet’ newspaper it must be true. Unfortunately this is not necessarily so. Read Goldacre’s Bad Science, still in the best seller’s list as I write, and see how they are implicated in the MMR scare, which resulted in pointless child deaths. No bandwagon is safe, no statistic will be a bar to a headline and research is something that can be put off until the lawyers demand it.
The Times ran an article in July 1996 in which they stated that a TVR Chimaera went more like a Trabant. This tended to suggest that the author had driven neither a Chimaera nor a Trabant.
Peter Beech did a little research - he’s no newspaper journo - and came up with this:
The article described a new Chimaera bought by Jeremy Moore in February 1995 from the TVR Centre in Arkley, Hertfordshire. Although the specification wasn't given, the price was quoted as £32,000, including air conditioning (about £1,875 extra) and a radio that cost an extra £1,200. This makes me think it was probably a 'cooking' 4.0. The article doesn't say specifically how long Mr Moore owned the car, but it does refer to "fifteen months of misery", from which I suppose we can hazard a guess. The car was apparently off the road for four months during 1995, and was recovered five times by AA Relay. Problems mentioned were:
1. Engine overheating.
2. Unspecified electrical failures.
3. Faulty air conditioning.
4. Faulty wipers.
5. Rattling exhaust.
6. ‘Rear suspension' needed replacing.
7. Rain coming in between windows and top, into boot and into driver's footwell.
8. Speedo packed up.
9. Radio reception very poor.
10. Doors locked themselves once while the car was left with the engine running. Phoned factory who advised breaking a window. Owner got in by opening hood with a broom handle.
11. Three occasions when windows suddenly steamed up while driving.
12. Engine repeatedly stalling and not re-starting for two or three minutes. Happened 32 times (sic) on one journey into the West End (presumably from owner's home near Watford).
The owner took his complaints to TVR Engineering (presumably after taking them to the dealer, although the article didn't actually say this), wasn't satisfied with the response and wrote to Peter Wheeler asking for "the courtesy of a reply". The article quoted Wheeler's reply as saying "I am convinced you do not know the meaning of the word". At one stage (it did not say whether this was before or after writing to Wheeler), Mr Moore went into the TVR Centre "shouting and waving my arms around and saying the car was rubbish". He was threatened with an injunction banning him from the premises.
The TVR Centre agreed to sell the car for Mr Moore and got £28,450 for it. The article implied hat the dealer was reluctant to do this. They also asked him to agree that "neither he nor any associate of his shall at any time in the future purchase a new TVR", which he refused to do. At some stage in all this the owner contacted The Times who made their own approach to TVR Engineering. They received a response from solicitors acting for the TVR Centre who said that there were numerous inaccuracies in Mr Moore's story. The case had also been taken up by the Legal Protection Group at some point, who said that Mr Moore had been "tolerance personified" and that they had received ten similar stories about TVRs breaking down.
That, more or less, is it.
Now, since this is a review I'll indulge myself by making some comments.
1. I don't understand why the TVR Centre were reluctant to sell the car for Mr Moore. This is, after all, what dealers do for a living. I am guessing that the settlement they reached involved giving up their sales margin, but the article is silent on this.
2. If you'd been writing the Times article, wouldn't you have tracked down the new owner of the car and found out whether they were having problems with it too? [Rumour has it that the TVR Centre got a letter from the new owner saying they were completely happy with the car, but the Times wouldn't publish it.]
3. Wouldn't you have commented on the fact that any car had managed to retain 89% of its value after fifteen (ish) months? Sounds pretty good for a hunk of junk.
4. What happened about the problems? Did the dealer fix any/some/all of them? Why was the car off the road for four months and what the hell was going on during this time?
5. Was the factory really as offhand as the article implies? If anyone reading this has found it necessary to take a complaint to the factory, it would be interesting to know what sort of treatment they got.
There are many things you would want to ask both sides in this matter: that’s Moore and the TVR Centre. When I was editor of Sprint I had a number of complaints put to me about dealers and other advertisers’ performance. It wasn’t my job to take up such matters, especially as many suggested they were looking for legal remedies, but I normally would approach the dealer or advertiser in question and ask their point of view.
One was, rather oddly, totally unaware of the criticisms of the customer.
“If we’ve made an error we’ll put it right.”
My advice to the chap was to contact the dealers, which he did.
The norm with the other cases I took up was that the dealers generally have records to show that the customers were, to put it nicely, mistaken. As one mechanic put it:
“If the chassis is rusted through and it collapses when we lift it, he should be grateful we found the fault.” So they felt that they did not damage the car when it was being moved around the workshop.
There was often a major disparity between the ‘sides’ and the paperwork tended to support the dealers’ points of view. One offered to repair a fault that was discovered when the car was in their care: a lack of compression on one cylinder. They offered a 50% reduction on labour for the diagnosis, i.e. removing the head. This was taken as a sign of guilt. The dealer was adamant that it was just to keep a customer happy.
“If we got the remedial work we’d probably drop the charge completely. But it looks good.”
The car was in for a service/MoT and the problem was discovered when a plug was removed.
It is probable that there are four versions of this event: that of Moore, that of TVR Centre, that of The Times and what actually happened.
There are two factors that have changed since 1996: it is no longer possible to buy a new Griffith or Chimaera (or any TVR apart from old unsold stock) and the cars are aging. What this means is that the teething problems have been, in all likelihood, overcome but that the problems of age are now appearing.
To take the latter bit first, my car is 17 years old. Things that have worked perfectly in the past now, for no particular problem, stop working. (Sighs from other people my age.) So the reliability issue is something which is changing as the cars age. Buy one of the last off the line and you will probably have a very reliable car where all the problems have been sorted.
Buy one from the middle 90s and you have to accept that this is classic cars territory. It is unreasonable to expect day to day reliability without bit of effort on your behalf.