Hi all listers, Dave Terrick here in el ninopeg. (We've had a Toronto
winter so far and the bottoms of the Vw's doors have disappeared).
I have two chamelion stories, one of my VW and one of the TR6 (RIP). For
those with little patience, the moral of the stories is "there's one for
every marque, and there's one born every minute". I, it sems, have more
than one life going at once!
I bought CF14... a 74 TR6 from it's third owner in 1989. The original
owner wrote off his 73 and bought the 74. Immediately, he installed the
balanced, blueprinted, SAH cammed, webered 73 motor into same. The
mechanic, a not-so-gruff-old englishman (well, 50 at the time) who did the
original work assured me it was a hell of a motor. "Oh, but replace the
bearings and oil pump asap as a precaution".
Enter the DPO. He bought the car on credit and with no mechanical smarts.
Bad combo For a hi po TR. The "experts" at an un-named local foreign car
repair shop "tuned" the webers a bit too much and melted a piston. So I
figure, because two weks later there was a $400 bill to change from webers
to stronbergs!!! Customer to supply carbs (double)!!. You all know this
as a 1 hour job at best. Nice work if you can get it.
The day I took delivery of the 74 the motor let go at a bout 5,000 RPM.
The post mortem revealed one BRAND NEW piston, with no balance marks like
the others had (at 90 k miles). New rod shells but totally knackered
mains. A camshaft totally shot on a lobe or 2 (lumpy idle?!?).
The owner ofthe shop ice raced in our local series and was a hi dollar hi
profiler. At the first sponsorship organizational meeting of the year I
arrived in said TR6 to collect my sponsor kit. His mouth dropped open
(knowingly). He knew what he'd done and what would have happened eventually.
Part 2, the GTI. I bought my '85 as a minty daily driver when my beemer
bit the dust. Said GTI had a Horo sport cam, header, free flow exhaust,
dropped an inch on stiff springs, etc. It went like hell!
The next year, while at an ice race, I shut the car off and it never
restarted, mysteriously one of the ignition computers puked. After a
wallow through the Bentley manual (you think a TR's manual is detailed?) I
diagnosed the problem, purchased a used 'puter and got it running. Only it
had no guts under 3 grand and idled like a funny car.
Running out of time, I took it to another so called "expert" at the
recommendation of a club member who sponsors a car (Never, NEVER do that.
Some look at it as a way to recover their sponsorship cost). I left on an
impromptu ski holiday and the car was there for 10 days. I phoned to check
on progress. It wasn't done for 2 weeks. They found $1200 of work to do
and after all that I suspect it was the fact that the camshaft belt had
come loose that caused the power problem - the only reason it was there to
begin with.
A year or so later I was replacing the valve cover gasket and inspected the
cam. No longer did it have "Horo" stamped on it.
Is there any wonder places like this list exist? Some of us are too smart
to be taken more than (uh) twice. Thanks to all for their input and to
mark (et al) for "hosting"
Dave Terrick
Winnipeg.
PS wanna buy a TR "5" motor, realllly cheap?
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