Driving a vintage car as a daily driver may not be a common occurrence, but there are plenty who do so. Generally, you see these cars, after their owners have givent them a restoration. You don't see the ugly, the rusty, the dirty, or the frustrating.
There is always a danger in buying any used car as a daily driver, this goes double for a vintage daily driver. Frequently the previous owners use them only as a pleasure car, or worse, they sit and waste away in a shed. In any rate, they age, and the less an aging car is driven, the more sins it can readily conceal.
After a week or so of pleasure driving it was time to resolve whatever known issues had come up so that it would be reliable on a daily basis. From early driving the alternator had needed replacing. The more I drove the car, the less the battery charged. This is not a good thing. Keep in mind that this is a nearly 30 year old car at this point.
As I started diagnosing the electrical system the more challenges I found. Age, heat, PO bodging, and corrosion had eaten much of the charging circuit on the TR8. Now, normally this wouldn't phase me as it wouldn't be my primary car. In this case, however, it's a totally different story. That paired with my desire to drive has caused these issues to give me total fits over the past few days.
Once the alternator was replaced and the battery would still not charge it was time to start checking the rest of the charging circuit. Initial research showed me that the engine harness had been bodged and subsequently fried at some point. This is not an uncommon occurrence on TR8s. Come pruning, splicing and wire replacement remedied the engine harness. Stil, no long term charging.
And so my attention turned to the negative and positive battery cables. The negative cable grounds out in the trunk of the car. Over time this had corroded pretty badly. A good cleanup improved the voltage drop dramatically. Still no charge. Voltage drop tests returned 0.6 on the positive battery cable.
Utterly frustrated I opted to replace teh positive and negative wires. The negative went in easily. The positive cable requires removing most of the interior on the passenger side of the car. All this done and out, I located the factory spade clip that drew power. These are unobtanium from what I understand. Resuing this was a failure, and I had to create and alternate set of wiring.
Finally, with all of this done, the car ran beautifully, until the aged starter died. Now it's time to replace that. And here I am, still not driving.
