I was gifted the 280i from my father who has a pension to purchase old  British sports cars, drive them for a few years and then move on to the next thing. Also important to this story, he doesn't work on his own cars  which runs directly in the face of owning cars notorious for their reliability. Despite the local mechanics best effort to keep this car on the road, I think both had run to their wits end. The TVR became too much of a money pit along with constant issues meant it was hard to enjoy knowing you could break down at any moment. 

I've never had a project car and mused how it may be fun to work on this car and to my surprise it was delivered to my door. I've taken a look over the car and compiled (an ever growing) list of todo items which I plan to document here along with tips and links I discover along the way. I've so far found the TVR community to be small but very caring and quick to offer a tip or suggestion on the message boards. I hope to rebuild this car and get it running reliably. Assuming my wife doesn't run out of patience with the spare car occupying all my time I hope to pull the motor this winter and straighten up all the years of leaks and wiring issues.

• I've got several more oil leaks it's hard to tell how many are old and which are still active leaks.  My plan is to do a compression test while I have the space to get to the plugs and then assuming that is good, wash the engine and then monitor the leaks. Front main seal and oil pan have signs of leaks but its hard to tell how old they are. 

• Jan 2026 - Working on replacing the coolant line I cracked along with the other sketchy ones. Details here.  I also removed the AC compressor and lines to clean up the engine bay since the AC doesn't work anyway.  

• Dec 2025 - I think I found the intermittent problem, I found the connector for the Hall sensor on the distributor was bad. Currently unable to find a replacement cable without buying a whole new distributor.. I was able to extract the pins and replace them and the resistance seems stable now.   You can read more on the issue section

• Dec 2025 - Valve cover gaskets are replaced.  See the details here

• Dec 2025 - Brake master cylinder arrived from Germany and fit great. I havn't added fluid because I want to finish the rear brakes and diff seals and then bleed it. Details here