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Here's it's mate in the shed...gzg50 1GZFE V12

When I was a kid in perhaps the mid/late 80s, my brother and I were playing on the beach building dams in a little stream. By and by, my great uncle came driving down the beach (the only way to access his bach house) in his Rover SD1 V8. He saw someone he knew, so he stopped the car down in the path of our dam and got out to chat. I couldn't believe the opportunity for mischief that this presented! We quickly scrambled to break the dam and direct the water around the wheels of great uncle's SD1. The car got stuck in the sand and blew a radiator hose, sending clouds of steam everywhere. I bet he was pleased, being 50m from his house and far from civilisation... I suspect he put a curse on me, that I would one day buy a Rover SD1 and it would be rubbish and burst its radiator hoses and lose me a lot of money.. This great uncle, who had reached his late 90s, died just the other day. The curse must have lifted with his passing, because eerily around the same time, a madman contacted me interested in buying my SD1. I know he's mad because he has owned a full twenty of the cars in my buyers guide "LEMON: 60 Heroic Failures of Motoring".... This car is now SOLD to Zebra Dude.

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Great move, Ben. So sad to hear, Ben. You, dear reader can make that statement fit your preferred party in this torrid tale of SD1 passion/loathing.

Ben - do this..

^This. It has an epic snarl for something so close to death! Must be from burning ALL of the petrols, some of the oil and some of the coolant in its perfectly imperfect furnace of suffering.... This would also explain the smoke it makes. You guys were brave to give it the beans on its longest trip in a year or two (though this was probably necessary just to keep up with your Triumph). I'm glad you made it home! You mean Roverheated? And that's because it knows it's home! All I have left of it now are my memories, the Roverspeed warning device and this cheese board. Edit: Oh, and an oil stain on my garage floor.. And on my lawn, just yesterday blanketed in the darkness of the evil Rover, once again there grows a single flower.

haha, dont worry sam, all signs are pointing to wipeouts already. took it for a test at the velodrome carpark yesterday, as usual a lot of time pulling carb apart and then trying to find all the bits on the ground. reminds me of summer haha. first impressions - sheit, might need to put gearshift on the handlebars, it's about as wheelie-happy as it looks. motor seems ok, a bit spluttery in places. too rich with the filter on, see new airbox design exhaust is loud and splattery, tick standard clutch tests have resulted in spinning the hub axle/mincing gear change cable so that needs sorting out. it somehow also threw and jammed up the rear chain at the same time, sparks and all. for gearing comparison, the carpark was a 1st gear affair on the villiers, flymo was happy tootling around in 3rd.

This is getting picked up in less than 2 weeks..... I have been stupidly distracted while i should be doing uni assignments with sourcing bits.... Am still after a steel front grill and a pair of front struts to cut up and make coilovers Quick procrastination shop for thread

Oh God what have I done!!!!!!! Change Thread to my name? Horror in store

The original machine is now in the shed and operating. much coffee happiness this morning.

This car has a glorious engine note above 4500rpm. I was sitting in the passenger seat as Ben repeatedly gave it plenty of welly on the motorway heading home, leaving a blnding trail of smoke behind him.

Managed to get the ol Bug into the booth on the weekend. Came up pretty sweet and I only put one run in.. I'll cut that off and it'll buff out sweet as apparently.. Started chucking some stuff back in tonight, just taillights and loom stuff. Will hopefully get the brakes and a few other things sorted this week and then slot the motor and box in on the weekend. Then do some skiddies. Cool

LSD1 plz

Not a lot has been happening on the Trump recently (probably a good sign). All I have done is replaced the rear hand brake cable as the last one had stretched, the Triumph can now be left on hills unsupervised. Unrelated, a couple of photos of GreenTC and VKZAC out in Maraetai.

Not very much has happened recently, but now hopefully back into it. Most of that time was spent trying to figure out how to clamp the chassis down so it is all straight before welding on the boxing plates. Decided to make some trestle like things that are bolted to the floor, then put some spacers in between them and the chassis to get it all level. Chassis is then welded to the trestles to hold it in place. Managed to get most of it within 0.1 of a degree. So I'm hoping it comes out quite good. (Probably better than it was from factory anyway) Will bring the boxing right up to the front crossmember, just need to do some cutting to get the plates fitting. Thinking we might need to close-tack it all together, then fully weld the top and at least tack the new crossmembers in, so it can then be flipped to weld underneath of the boxing. That should then hold it all together without twisting too much, I hope.

Lock before and after Have had issues with rear brakes binding, thinking it was possibly due to piston over extending due to pads being so low so put some new ones in s13 top hats fit with a slight file to the holes, camber is sitting around 6 degrees front, 5 degrees rear awaiting throttle cable

cleaned the car out and took the sunroof out. somehow the sunroof glass got broken and the rest of it got fucking mangled so the cunt of a thing can never ruin another car. 2015-10-11_12-08-19 by sheepers, on Flickr so now its onto the roof. I've got to get a couple of patches fixed before Peter can do the sunroof. this is what it looks like now. 2015-10-11_01-08-37 by sheepers, on Flickr 2015-10-11_01-08-27 by sheepers, on Flickr 2015-10-11_01-08-45 by sheepers, on Flickr this picture gives a good indication of just how ripply the roof is. how the fuck they managed to fuck it that bad i have no idea but Peter sees no problem in fixing it. oh, and he's going to make some new gutters for it too because they've been hacked off. 2015-10-11_01-08-55 by sheepers, on Flickr

Engine bay blasted and zinc primed.

The Rover blew a small hole in an old cooling system hose, making a mess as all the pressure in the cooling system sprayed radiator stop-leak everywhere. So I went to Pick-a-part and got a Falcon hose to chop up to mend poor Rovie. By now, the cooling system is so pressure-tight that I'm concerned something very inconvenient could happen, such as an explosive heater core rupture. Time to put a bullet in the big six. Ideally at this stage I would find a cheap V8 manual SD1 for sale with the body beyond saving.

I cant stop looking at it on the drive, I love it. It has already laid waste to my crisp clean concrete.

Small update, have the prototype of the remote working. Throttle is black knob, down is off, to left is idle and turn it clockwise for full power, also a mode switch (yellow) and power switch. Easy start, just turn it on, throttle to min, then up to max for a second and back to min and it begins the auto-start process, to turn it off you just rotate the throttle knob to zero, much easier than trying to hold an RC remote or using the Ground Support Unit. I'll get some nice stickers made up at some stage. Got another lot of stainless with nice pre-formed bends and it's ready to start being built.

I used to have a v8 sd1 was lush as with twin 2.5" pipes into a single 3 chamber flowmaster dumping at the diff she sounded like a big block was moderately good on gas and could pull a half decent burnout. What it couldn't do was hold its spider gears in. 2 diffs in i sold it broken. Fit an ls1 and a decent diff you'll be in heaven just dont ever fall asleep in one the giant rear window will dehydrate you like a piece of fruit.

Cripes, you don't half ask for much. You're lucky I'm such a nice chap.

That is amazing. I will have to change the engine, I love the car, I hate,hate,hate,hate 6cyl Rover motors, they are the scum of the universe. Expect big things Can we have a name change here too

Oh Lee, so sad to see a veteran Wagooneers member flying the coop. lucky you've got such a lush replacement wagnats wont be the same. spotted by a workmate, headed south on a transporter through Dubtown. 'saw this bloody falcon wagon with one of those oldschool stickers on it. numberplate said cooon jees he's takin a gamble with that one aint he' Jeah

Nice work with the start up/idle stuff, can be some of the bigger headf*cks when tuning at times It's strangely rewarding tuning something that just runs and drives like a normal car, haha. Yay after this rant I ended up tuning a mate's Skyline which had a nicely setup fuel system (yay, ID1000s etc) so I was cautiously hopeful that things might go nicer than some of the recent outings I've had have gone. This tune was EASY, biggest stress was that it's a stock and already pretty well used RB25 and the owner wanted pretty serious solid power considering it's used exclusively for track racing. Everything went pretty smoothly and settled on 21psi on E85, and I'm pretty impressed with the power delivery: This is with a pretty cheap Masterpower R595 turbo with a .63a/r hotside on knock off intake and exhaust manifolds and the thing was still happily picking up more power with additional boost (17-21psi went from 326kw to 368kw), the gate was opening at ~.9bar at comfortably under 3500rpm and 21psi it was still opening by 4000rpm so very decent performance for the price - well impressed and would seriously consider these things as a viable budget option after this performance.

This is what happens when you let your car sit in a damp garage too long. Luckily all surface. This is post POR15. Next mission. Install these. So yeah, yesterday was spent taking out the RHF suspension set up, both control arms, spring and shock, pretty grubby. Then it was cleaned back and given a solid coat of POR15 - it's never going to be a show car, so I just want it covered and clean. All came apart with a bit of persuasion. The brake callipers were rebuilt about 3 years ago, since then it's done about 15km. So I will redo them. New hoses are a definite. Rotors are seeming like a good idea. Fucking money pit. I have tie rod ends but was thinking I might do those a bit later when I bin the Armstrong and put in power steering. Just a matter of locating the right PS mount and getting all those bits rebuilt. But first. This job. /edit: No the jack is not on the sump, the car is on stands.

Oh so after some blathering about idle speed, I datalogged the Echo tonight. 20 deg is about 2200rpm! An engine that happily idles at 630rpm when warmed up starts out at nearly 4x that. A graph, because Roman: I've set the Carina to same goal RPMs in the Link so tomorrow I'll adjust idle throttle angle targets to match those above and see how it goes.

Collected this thing today. Looks much worse than the pictures I was sent and I assumed it was a manual... It's not. Which also means it's single carb. Probably need a tetanus injection after touching it too. Ah well. IMG_1194 by GuyWithAviators, on Flickr IMG_1195 by GuyWithAviators, on Flickr Only eventful thing that happened on the 8 hour trip was the balljoint that undid itself. Hellastance bro. IMG_1204 by GuyWithAviators, on Flickr Got it to run when we got home. Has at least 3 gears, street wasn't long enough to find 4th. Couldn't find reverse either so will give that another go tomorrow. Also has no exhaust. Since the auto block is different to mine I will most likely sell it as a running engine/gbox combo. The autos have a habit of breaking if not looked after I've heard. Little things like the wiper switch and bootlid make it worth it to me. Seats are worse than mine sadly. IMG_1200 by GuyWithAviators, on Flickr Finally, here's a photo the neighbor took of me showing how stoked I am with the purchase. Discuss: //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/35012-guywithaviators-1974-austin-1300/

May 2015 went drifting at Taupo, only difference since meremere was that I whacked in some T3 30mm RCA's which must have put a bit more tension on the castor arms as the auto steer was super responsive in comparison to the last outing, some new 165/55 xr611 nankangs in the back and also tightened up the handbrake. Unloaded in the morning running on 3 due to a dodgy injector wire, some GC with a soldering iron in his pocket came along to the rescue, drifted all morning till one of the wires came off it's lug for the efi relay solder guy to the rescue once again, skidded all day again till i chewed a drivers side brake hose due to rub on full lock drove down to repco 5 mins down the road to pick up two new ones, fitted and bled up then drifted for the rest of the day till I rain out of fuel. Since then I've managed to unlock 4.1 ratio locked centre on a nice sunday drive but have recently put in a 4.3 replacement. Going to enjoy a few more days this year then rip out the oem ecu, loom, intake mani and throw on my link g4 + ITBs for the new year and might expirment with my new 86 front susp and arms

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Ben 2 Ben transfer.

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I'm pretty much all over town like mad womans shit, tomorrow. PM me an addy, I may be able to throw it through your front window.

Hey Rusti, is it one of these? I have this one and don't use it apart from shocking unsuspecting victims, yours if you want.

Good to catch up! Here's a few photos. More from the stuff for sale that caught my eye in the Spotted Thread. IMG_1135-Pano by GuyWithAviators, on Flickr IMG_1127 by GuyWithAviators, on Flickr IMG_1173 by GuyWithAviators, on Flickr IMG_1134 by GuyWithAviators, on Flickr IMG_1133 by GuyWithAviators, on Flickr IMG_1132 by GuyWithAviators, on Flickr IMG_1130 by GuyWithAviators, on Flickr IMG_1129 by GuyWithAviators, on Flickr IMG_1125 by GuyWithAviators, on Flickr IMG_1123 by GuyWithAviators, on Flickr IMG_1122 by GuyWithAviators, on Flickr IMG_1121 by GuyWithAviators, on Flickr IMG_1120 by GuyWithAviators, on Flickr IMG_1119 by GuyWithAviators, on Flickr

Good news everybody! My pump was field reversible, it was dead easy to do too. It was a matter of swapping the driving gear's location with that of the driven one and putting the front cover back on in the opposite direction. While it was in bits I was able to ditch the flow limiting valve off the back, drill and tap the housing and make it like a conventional pump. I didn't take any photos though. Here's some shit I did take photos of. Some nice shaped hoses for the radiator. A new fuel tank mount. And best of all a MDF Hydraulic pump mount. That I converted into 6mm steel and stuck on the front of my motor. And a tensioner. Looks like it might work, I'm not sure a micro V belt will be able to transfer enough force to make it work. Time will tell. Next to do is to re fit the carb and exhaust.

To think midnight blue pearl was my least favourite MR2 colour up until about four years ago (it still isn't my favourite, but I've warmed to it considerably). Also it was pointed out to me recently that I didn't own any blue cars so this rounds off the colour spectrum rather neatly. Anyway, fuck my life, this just got listed on Kamikaze Auto: http://toyotacars.kamikaze-drive.com/ktmory2otad220807.htm Rarest of the rare, white/gold Super Edition hardtop with half-leather, basically the pinnacle of AW11 collectability and only 20,000 yen more than the FOB price I paid for mine. Why didn't this come up for sale six months earlier?

Hey guys, Since we had such a fantastic time here last time we went, and it is certainly entertaining watching all the bearded fellows eat ribs, we are going back to 1841 BAR & Restaurant in Johnsonville. They have a daily deal on Thursdays with $20 for any main and $12 jugs MENU I have booked a table for 15 at 7pm. So shall we meet in the carpark (Southern end of the Countdown carpark) at 6.45 for some vehicular admiration before heading in? -MAP- Discuss Here

Have a look at the Penrite HPR stuff at Supercheap

Haven't had much luck with this car! I was on the way home from a Funeral in Putaruru yesterday and the wastegate pipe of my exhaust manifold cracked through and blew off on the Turangi side of the desert road. Somehow I managed to make it 180km without being pulled up by a cop, despite the car being horrendously loud as the exhaust manifold had a hole in it before the turbo! This also meant that I had next to no power, too. Foot to the floor in third going up hills and losing speed is amusing.

hey, it runs! smoked out the workshop on 20:1.

610 brake booster Can buy new from Datsport http://www.datsport.com/hydraulic-brake-booster-master-cylinder78.html

Gidday Guys, Wee bit of an update. She is now painted and looking pretty bloody good. Just needs some love and attention to the smaller details from me and it will be looking factory new (or pretty close to it for a 37 year old car). Some pictures below, look forward to better quality ones once I get it in the daylight with my DSLR. What I have planned for it in the next couple of weekends: Affix AA badge to the grille Swap out interior wood for less weathered stuff from the donor car. Swap out centre console for the non cracked one from the donor car. Swap out mint condition dash from the donor car. Repaint the flaking black areas on the hub caps and polish the chrome. Give all the windows a really good clean to get 20 years of salt grime off them. Give all trims a light polish. Replace thermostat cover with a non rusty replacement. Give anything in the engine bay a repaint/polish where possible. Keep an eye out for a very good condition rear bumper to replace the current one.

A workmate was showing me some light aviation magazine with a few microlight (or ultralight..if there's a difference i don't know what it is) airplanes powered by jet turbines. The turbine units only looked to be the size of a small bucket. Of course the first thing that came to mind was WOULD MAKE KEMPYS BIKE SO MUCH MORE DANGEROUS

Saw him when he came over a couple of years ago, fucking awesome describes it well. Good interview with him here http://www.ted.com/talks/yves_rossy_fly_with_the_jetman Have a short run on the jet engine here mounted on the test bed, getting up to 105,000 rpm which is about 60% thrust. https://youtu.be/Q-5ps-kWI50

damn you are getting old, whinging about how cars ride and being too loud

I put my faith in that copper stuff, using ®over recommended paint thickness around the end cylinders because I never got the head surfaced. Zing, shiny! Then I thought I could lift the head on myself, because the manifolds weren't in the way. Not a good idea - to get it done before the copper stuff dried, I ended up standing on the strut towers trying to gently move a heavy head into position below me without damaging anything, and without any locating / guide studs to help me line it up. What a rough bastard I am. But I got the head bolts in, torqued them up, put the manifolds back on, all the wires, vacuum lines, cooling system, ignition system etc all back together, put the timing belt back on, totally guessed the tension for it, poured some oil over the camshaft, refitted the rocker cover, turned the engine over by hand to check the cam timing was right, flushed and filled the cooling system with water, disconnected the coil, cranked the engine on the starter motor to circulate some oil, reconnected the coil, crossed my fingers.. It fired right up. Sputtered for a bit while it burnt off all the stuff I spilled in it while it was apart, but a little bit of throttle and it settled down. So the big six is rolling. At minimal cost, baby. The best part - it's day two now, I've taken it for a gentle drive each night, and still no bubbles in the cooling system! Why look, here it goes outside the garage: I washed the dust off and vacuumed out the cobweb this evening. Now the car needs that repair for a WOF, then I can start on all the stuff I was holding off on until I had a running engine again.

I got fishtailfred over to help me lift off the head... "Yep, this would fit great in my ute, with some cable ties and about 20psi of boost.." The head gasket wasn't clearly broken anywhere, but Fred reckoned cylinder 1 had been leaking around the bottom of this photo: http://www.axys.co.nz/ben/rover/headgasket/chamber1wet2.jpg The gasket wasn't circular at this point and probably wasn't fitting too well: From the other side, some carbon can be seen across the ring bit thingy: So the head's gonna be taken to a cylinder head man, to be cleaned / checked / have the face machined flat / etc. Cylinder head man will no doubt be looking at this rather white valve: http://www.axys.co.nz/ben/rover/headgasket/chamber3burntvalve.jpg And he'll no doubt be laughing at the high quality British casting that has resulted in the pitting around the number 6 exhaust valve seat: Also, see how the gasket ring gets eaten away where it overlaps the cylinder wall into the coolant passage: http://www.axys.co.nz/ben/rover/headgasket/ringeatenaway1.jpg So here's the engine bay now: http://www.axys.co.nz/ben/rover/headgasket/headlessblock2.jpg I have investigated this statement: "..for production ease, the bore of the inlet manifold is appreciably less than the mating bore in the cylinder head, and the same step-up can be seen on the other face where the exhaust ports lead into the inlet manifold." ..and it's absolutely true. The inlet manifold port diameters are several mm less than the ports in the head. So much so that you can see it by eye. That means "Cleaning up these passages and blending their junctions would be an easy first step on the road to more power.." Current plans for the Rover if the engine can be fixed: [*:1yt7nh61]Get WOF (some steering/suspension joint needs doing) [*:1yt7nh61]Remove engine-driven cooling fan and replace with electric ones for less noise [*:1yt7nh61]Remove all intake piping before carburettors and replace with ramflo filters for more noise [*:1yt7nh61]Replace rear air shocks preferably with original self-leveling ones from ebay [*:1yt7nh61]Replace steering wheel with something smaller and more circular [*:1yt7nh61]Consider replacing breaker points and distributor with DIY electronic ignition [*:1yt7nh61]Try not to let Fred talk me into a custom larger-bore inlet manifold with DIY EFI...

I took off the rocker cover. At this stage I'd like to thank my therapist, who has been working with me on my fear of dismantling engines. Check out the Rover big six's revolutionary OHC design - one high performance cam lobe per cylinder! For.. um.. just because! Unfortunately with my torque wrench set to the factory's reusing-an-old-gasket setting of 103Nm, none of the head bolts moved. This means I'll need more therapy sessions, because I see no alternative to taking the head off.