This morning our baby was with my parents, so we took the chance to both go out in the TVR, and to get a tank of the catchily-named Shell “V-Power Nitro +” as the car always runs on premium fuel, preferably V-Power.
There was a risk of showers, so we left the roof on.
The drive to the fuel station (20 mins to Shell) was fine, and we filled the car. But on trying to restart the car, it wasn’t turning over or managed half a turn. After failing to crank it also displayed “Tamora v6.0 Shutdown”.
It the past it has sometimes been reluctant to start from hot, but always worked after a couple of attempts. This was showing no promise after multiple attempts. Cold starting has always been good.
It was a bit awkward, and cars we queuing behind us for the pump. I got out to push the car forward, and the chap from the car behind came to push as well. We decided to roll start it, so I got in the driver’s seat and my wife and this chap pushed (she wasn’t sure about roll-starting).
On a slight uphill incline, it worked on the second attempt, firing immediately and going into a contented idle.
When we drove home there was some really heavy rain and I was glad we had the roof on. Just my luck to take the car out to catch the only rain we have had all day. Dried the car before putting it in the garage and put some garage ventilation on to help dry it off.
A quick look at Pistonheads found a few articles on this, typically suggesting that it could be a bad earth or a failing starter. Example thread here.
I then gave TVR Power a call and was put through to Dom. The car is going there for a service in August, and he suggested, in line with the Pistonheads threads, that earthing or a failing starter with the likely suspects that they would look at.
I asked about their uprated starter motors which are used in the 4.3 rebuilds, but he suggested that would not be necessary for the car, and they have a good stock of 2nd-hand starters (probably from their rebuilds) and one could be swapped in at much lower cost. Sounds good to me, but maybe an uprated motor would be an investment.
Until then, I will have to be careful about hot starts and hope this doesn’t happen again.