durleydude

The models im refering to are the Griff, Cerbera, and chimeria...any owners comments would be appreciated greatly as im considering a purchase.

Scoobybits

my mates on his third tvr.. very few probs has owned a chimera a cerberra now got a tuscan..few if any probs.BUT he hardly uses em..and when he does its nice weather..the cars are always garged and serviced early..

durleydude

yeaH, that would be a prob as i dont have a garage to keep em in. doh !

Scoobybits

hmmm...what exactly are you wanting??and how much are you spending?second car or daily driver?all deciding factors if you ask me..

ScoobySnack

On my fourth one...........................

If you pick a well kept car, keep it up to sratch using a TVR Independant garage and know its weak points then it will be reliable.

If a person buys one expecting VW/BMW type ownership, leaving it outside, long service intervals etc it will take its toll on reliability. These cars at their simplest are crude high performance machines that need maintaining.

Love em




Don't forget www.pistonheads.com for all things TVR in the forum, and also a great book known as the "bible" by Steve Heath.

http://www.scoobynet.co.uk/bbs/threa...hreadid=286799

J

TVR Gary

I had mine for 7 years and it was a great reliable car. You really do need a garage though and to use it as a second car.

Griffs and chimps are getting on now so any niggles should have been rectified by the formal owner.

If it was down to me i would have the griff, its the most desirable of the two and will give better re-sale value in my opinion.

Engines are big old rover V8's so pretty easy to work on and source parts for.

The cerbera im not so sure about, TVR engine so you have to get parts from them and reliability was suspect on the very early cars.

I would have another one tomorrow though ...

Gussie Cup

Sold my Griff 500 recently after 2 years of ownership. It was a fantastic car and I know I'm going to miss it this year.

I bought it as a second car but ended up driving it every day for the first 10 months I had it. Very few problems as any niggles had already been done by previous owners over the years.

I had a shock when I relaced discs and pads plus a few other bits at a major service and the bill came to nearly 2 grand.

If it has a full history and has been used fairly regularly then it should be ok as long as you're prepared to keep up with services and maintenance.

I may even have to get myself another one this summer!

Ben

carl

I've owned a Cerbera for two months now. TBH if you're expecting Scoob reliability then forget it. The 'standard' recommendation is to put aside £200 a month. Some years you'll be quids in, some you won't.

Things that have gone wrong with mine:
1) Driver's side window stuck down. Fixed itself
2) Passenger's side window stuck down. Trip to dealer to fix (dodgy wiring in the door)
3) Small lake formed in driver's footwell. Dealer masticked everything -- appears to be fixed, but I can't be sure.
4) Small oil leak from the front of engine. Suspect it may be the colostomy pot (no problem if it is).
5) Small oil leak from rear diff. Suspect if might be due to caning it before the diff's warmed up (engine oil warm, but rear diff can take an age to warm up and the oil's like treacle, so the cogs can whip it up and chuck it out the breather)

OTOH, performance is astonishing. Bit of a b*gger to keep hold of in the dry though. Sound is amazing as well (I have the sports exhausts).

From what I can work out, the engines go like this in order of reliability:
Rover V8 in all its variants (most reliable)
AJP V8
AJP 6 aka Speed 6 (least reliable)

TBH I think half the problem is that the AJP8s (and I presume the sixes) can only be rebuilt at the factory.

megabusa

This was my Cerbera;



Only owned it for a few months, never was any trouble for me, but needed stuff doing to it if I was gonna keep it. Sold it to a nice chap, had it checked over and it was given the all clear, then the throttle cable snapped on the lad on his way from my house! Bugger!
BTW it was by far the most rapid car I have ever ever been in.

mn_angrybeats

I had a 4.2 V8 AJP8 Cerbera a couple of years ago and would never buy one again...poorly made and also cus Peter Wheeler and the dealers in my experience were very poor...

BAD
In 12 months had

Wipers broke
Boot badge release problems
One of the bonnet pins fractured, bonnet lifted over 80mph
Anti Roll bar brkt snapped
Exhaust fractured at joint
Aluminimum Air-Con pipe fractured
Poor running and idling
Overheating
Crude handling and braking


The Auxillary shaft fractured losing oil pressure 4 weeks off the road

Finally after getting the car back a month later the engine went bang in a big way and took the muppets at TVR 17 weeks to get it rebuilt...after getting it back an hour later the car fails to start due to a buggered starter motor..

So off the road 6mths in 12mths of ownership

Good
Bloody quick
Turns heads like nothing else and everyone seems to like them
Excellent interior and driving position, you feel special
Excellent dry traction
Easy to drive in the wet even slushy condition :-) just dont boot it

Buy from a main dealer and make sure the oil pressure on the AJP8 anyway is strong 60-70psi....

Oh and make sure you have a 2nd car, I also know another 3 TVR owners who will never buy a TVR again..

There are some good ones out there apparently, I hope you get a good one..

[Edited by mn_angrybeats - 1/2/2004 9:20:27 PM]

megabusa

I dont think I would own another, but its not because the 4.2 put me off them, quite the opposite in fact. Thing was, I had wanted one for 6 years, bought one, bloody loved it, sold it. Enjoyed the experience immensely.

Tiggs

had a chim for 6 months in the summer- failed to start 2 or 3 times and leaked if left in hard rain.

i wouldnt bother again, its a hassle (if its the main car) knowing that you cant go out in:

heavy rain - it will leak
heavy traffic - it may overheat
hot weather - was always VERY hot place to sit.

best use is driving home from a pub on a warm summers eve just as the suns gone down...nice weather, no traffic....but a lot of money to have for that!

T

mn_angrybeats

The bloke that bought my car also broke down on the way back from mine, he overheated on the M6 going back to Staffordshire

megabusa

LOL angry, seems like the best thing to do is to get it delivered on a trailer if you buy one, should be ok then!!

mn_angrybeats

You said that not me

Gussie Cup

heavy rain - it will leak
heavy traffic - it may overheat
hot weather - was always VERY hot place to sit.

best use is driving home from a pub on a warm summers eve just as the suns gone down...nice weather, no traffic....

******************

I agree with all the above but if you're prepared for that..... sometimes its very easy to forgive it

I'm used to 60s and 70s cars with all their faults and idiosyncrasies. It can be used everyday but isnt the most comfortable or practical car in a warm summer traffic jam/thunderstorm...

Ben

carl

Mine has aircon
It isn't wonderfully effective but don't buy a coupe TVR without it IMHO. Those engines generate a significant amount of heat

PS: not sure 60-70psi is necessary for the AJP8 all the time. As long as it's 40psi at idle it should be OK. The middle of the gauge is 50psi, and gauges are supposed to read "somewhere in the middle" under normal operating conditions.

[Edited by carl - 1/2/2004 10:25:07 PM]

David Brent

Its a shame that TVR stands for Trevor, its owner/developer I think?
They look and sound fantastic, never owned one so cant give an
educated opinion. (nothing new there then!)

mn_angrybeats

At idle as you say 30-40psi is fine it should rise once the revs increase...

mn_angrybeats

Oh and has your badge / boot release switch buggered yet ??

Those TVR's well Cerbera's anyway are Sooooooooo easy to get into to the boot to manually release the doors it's scary

carl

No, mine's still working though you have to wiggle the badge around a lot. Boot light doesn't work though

TBH, although I know "the secret" for getting in with a flat battery (nearly had to use it the other day after I disconnected the door and window control unit to araldite the connectors back on, then nearly closed the boot....), unless you knew about Cerbs it would take forever to find the manual door releases anyway. They're not exactly obvious (even though they are red), nor particularly accessible. There's generally not that much space in the floor of the cabin -- I've noticed it's damn near impossible to adjust the rake of the seat back without opening the door.

durleydude

So...to be honest it sound like overall they arnt too reliable as an everyday car...Bugger

carl

I think they're actually more reliable if you drive them every day. Just not too far, because they hoover fuel (mine does about 16mpg)

As the bloke in the TVR dealer told me: "If electrical niggles and the suchlike are going to bother you, then don't buy a TVR"

[Edited by carl - 1/7/2004 8:34:55 PM]

mn_angrybeats

I had mainly mechanical problems with my Cerbera, very poor design and development on lots of the components....the anti roll bar brkt that fractured for example was just poorly designed if they took another year developing a car then things would improve no end..they should employ people who know what they are doing would be a good start

mn_angrybeats

Shame I'm in work I would glady help

medders

I had a griff 500 and mine was a dog.

bad points

cam lobe fell off
crank shaft seized
5 speedo's (then gave up)
drivers door catch cracked where attached to body
Leaked
overheated more times than i can remeber.

Lovely motor when it was going in Summer.
Not good in Winter.

If I had another it would have to be a second fine weather car

carl

I think they solved this by removing the ARB on the later cars. What age was your Cerb? They certainly don't have a lot of R&D so the quality improves throughout the lifetime of the model. In '98 Cerbs got a lot better, and again IIRC in 2000. The '96s and '97s were more trouble "out of the box" but by now a lot of them will have been fixed.

LeeMac

iTrader: (1)

i was close to getting one about a year ago, did a fair bit of reading from www.pistonheads.com and decided against it, get a lancia delta for a bit






[Edited by LeeMac - 1/8/2004 12:47:44 AM]

Markys 2

I have a 4.2 98 Cerby, had since July last year covered about 3000 miles. Only problems have been dirvers door not opening, whaich was a easy fix and a couple of the desh lights not working again another easy fix done myself. Do expect them to cost a lot to run as at some point in its life it will go bang in a big way. Having said that I do get more MPG from the TVR than I do my STi 7.

Howee

As is always the way in all manufacture, especially if the said product is thought to be highly desireable, the marketing people will leak photo's/drawings/information to the public and all of a sudden the demand is so high that the development gets shortened to get the product out ASAP. That means that the product is never developed fully and the first ones out of the factory are subject to modification/recall. All the major players are guilty of this to some extent but TVR have a reputation of being the worst: they usually flaunt a new concept as a shell and if the reception to it is big enough they release sooner rather than later. Think of all those lost orders if they didn't . Unfortunately the team at TVR look at the short term gain rather than the loss later on due to poor reputation. Let's be honest, if you saw a new TVR 6 months later it would still blow your socks off.

We still love em tho I will have one soon enough.....