Monday, November 23, 2009

The Spanish connection again.

Ramon and Joe's Nagari is decidedly incomplete and now that they are getting serious about rebuilding it, they are going to need lots of advice and help. Already they have discovered that there is a distinct lack of manuals or other publications to help them. It is not their intention to build a race car but if that plan changes down the track, they want to have an operative road car to begin with anyway. There are just so many items needed for the car that it might be a good plan to deal with this in stages and kick off with the immediate needs which are listed below:-
* front windscreen
* side windows
* tail lights
* front direction indicators
* all the rubber seals
That's a good start and all comments would be welcome and if you want to take it to Dino's forum that would be good too.
What I thought was funny was when I asked Joe if it had any suspension. The answer was "no". This was later qualified with the fact that it did have the original suspension but they didn't like it much which led to questions about improvements, things that have changed over the years and new suspension kits.
Apparently about 4 years ago the chassis was was stripped down, sand blasted and sprayed and the body was fully repaired and sprayed as well. At about that time when in England to buy a TVR Tuscan, they picked up a Cleveland V8 and a couple of gearboxes. I'm thinking now, at chassis no. 44, Bolwell were still using Windsors (or were they?) and there may be the need for the odd modification to squeeze the Cleveland in.
A nice car being left at a workshop and the owner never coming back reminds me of a time when I lived at Parkside and one of my neighbours who had retired from his spray painting and panel business and did a few paint jobs in the shed in his back yard, was presented with a red BMW coupe not unlike this one to repaint.
This he did, and did a beautiful job on it and, you guessed it, never heard from the owner again and had no contact details. For years he regularly started and ran it just to make sure it would be ship-shape when the owner did turn up. It was quite a few years before he eventually put some rego on it and used it for country trips. Eventually he died and the riddle was never solved.

1 comment:

John L said...

Peter G asks "would a late TVR replacement chassis fit under a Nagari - with mods?" Just looking at the Chaemera in the Classic Adelaide, the track and wheelbase seem about the same. Can't say I know much about the modern TVR chassis without going to Google. I do know the very early ones had the bodies bonded to them. Something Bruno would be very aware of as he attempts to strip his down. He should be used to that, he's got a Milano as well.