kws

I cant judge, my Vitesse is running a standard coil, through a locked out distributor (advance controlled by link) and runs like a bloody charm. I have heard there are issues with crossfiring or something when using this setup, but its working for me for now.

Use Chrome with the Photobucket embed fix extension.

Just a quick fix today, getting Tess ready for the show. The waist mouldings on Tess were in terrible shape. Most were cracked, some missing chunks and all of them were hard as a rock. They didn't look or feel good. I believe these had been swapped once already in the past, as they had signs of being cut by hand and not factory fit like the original ones on Effie. There are also some printed/faxed/copied documents showing different styles of trims in my box of receipts. These are fairly quick to swap, with the hardest part being the removal of the old ones as they get stuck in the holders and break apart when you try to pull them out. I used some needle nose pliers to gently pull them out. I used a thin coating of silicone spray on the part of the seal that locks into the trim, and it just slips into place. For such a simple job, it makes a big improvement. I purchased the seals from Rimmers and knew they would be decent as I replaced the ones on Effie over a year ago with Rimmers seals and they still look and feel good Effie goes for a WOF on Friday, so everything crossed she passes, or Tess will be alone on Sunday at the show.

Finally, something that isn't coolant related! A while ago I picked up a pair of good condition re-covered D-Pillar trim from the Whanganui haul. The ones on Effie were beyond stuffed. All the material was long gone, except for the torn bits around the edges. It looked haggard as. After doing the work on the engine today, I quickly swapped them over for the good ones. To remove the trims there is one screw up near the top of the trim. Remove this completely, and then there is a hook near the bottom, so the trim needs to be lifted up towards the roof/front of the car to unhook it. It takes some practice to do, especially refitting. Getting that hook back in can be a pain. These are the old trims And the replacements (albeit a tad dusty) And fitted 110% improvement with little effort. I'll keep the old ones and maybe recover them for Tess one day (when her ones wear out).

Another day, more coolant. I'm quickly running out of time to get Effie ready for the show this weekend, but I needed to fix the leaking coolant first. The British Car Day show is in 5 days, Effie is leaking coolant and doesn't have a Warrant. Time is running out, and I still have some work to do on Tess too. I'll at least have Tess there, but I would love to have both Rovers in the show. So in my last post I detailed the issues I was having with a leaking under intake pipe. I couldn't drive the car far as I didn't want to risk an overheat, so I haven't been able to get a WOF for it yet. The other day I put the urgent call out on the OldSchool forum for someone to weld my steel pipe to the threaded boss. This was a crucial step towards fixing Effie, but not having the tools to weld it myself, I was stuck. Thankfully a member on the forum ( @Get it done ) came to the rescue, and yesterday he did an awesome job of machining down the boss, and welding the pipe into it. It was good timing, because today was a public holiday (hey Kiwi's, happy Waitangi Day!) and this gave me a whole day to work on Effie, so there might be a chance of getting a WOF this week. This is the engine, in all its wasted spark coil glory The first step is to dump all the coolant, and like usual, still no drain plug so it goes everywhere. With the coolant everywhere but your drain pan, its time to start ripping everything to bits. This isn't a small job by any stretch of the imagination, in fact, it's a bigger job than the "big injection hose" job I did this time last year. Off comes the intake piping, and the plenum. I'm getting pretty good at this particular part of the job The smart person I am, made this job easier for myself by putting plugs in the main engine loom, so that it can be disconnected from the section that runs into the car. The engine harness has to be completely removed to make life easier, otherwise it will get in the way. My plenum base had some oil residue in it. This appears to be normal for injected SD1s, and despite having drain holes in the bottom of the plenum base (at the bottom of the trumpets) this little pool of oil just chills out at the back. This is the whole reason for this job. Coolant on the valley gasket. It builds up until it overflows the black clamp, and then spills over the bellhousing. Six bolts, and off comes the trumpet base, leaving just the inlet manifold and injector setup. The loom is still fitted here, but it was removed, along with the injectors. The injectors and rails have to be removed to gain access to the manifold bolts under them. I was hoping to leave the injectors attached, but it wouldn't be worth the hassle. I also chose to remove the whole throttle cable bracket from the head, which was easier than removing the two cables from it. Before I could remove the inlet manifold I had to remove the leaking coolant hose. Yeah, the end of the pipe is FUBAR. I had been slipping the hose further and further forward to get it to clamp on good metal, but eventually the rust just poked its way through another part of the pipe anyway. The inlet manifold is held on with 12 bolts. The two at the front are longer than the others, but the manual recommends keeping the bolts in order (which is why they are lined up on the valve covers). The manifold isn't actually heavy with all the rest of the bits removed. This is the pipe in question. Nowhere near as bad as the donor in my last post, but the end was stuffed and coolant was weeping out through one spot where it had rusted through The same process as the donor worked on this too. Cut the pipe as close to the threaded boss as possible, and then using some Ugga Duggas, spin that thing out. Easy. I'll be using the parts from this pipe to try to work out how to completely replicate the pipes. Another thing I noticed, and another reason i'm glad I did this work, was that the connection from the waterpump to the manifold (which I think feeds this pipe) was 95% blocked with rust and crud. I shone a light in from the back of it, and this was how much shone through. One small spot. Compared to after I had cleared it I took the manifold outside and gave all the coolant passages a real good blast out with the hose. A few big chunks came out, but over all the cooling system is actually very clean in this car. Its possible the breaking down pipe was just circulating rust. I also took this time to give the manifold a quick degrease. It came up a lot better. Quality parts Next I removed the valley gasket. The old tin one had lasted well really, with no damage or rust. I guess the coating of oil from the old leaks helped that. With the gasket removed I got to have a good look at the cam and lifters. The cam looked really good with minimal visible wear. I didn't rotate the engine to check the cam lobes, but I have no reason to suspect cam issues anyway (and it was replaced not long ago). I noticed one of the coolant ports was completely blocked. This is a blind hole anyway, as its blocked by the intake manifold, but it was ugly, so I cleaned it out. I had often heard talk of the injected engines having a cutout in the port for the injector to spray the back of the valve, but until now had not really seen it. This little notch, circled, indicates original EFI heads. Carb engines don't have this. This is the replacement pipe. Fits like a glove, with some thread sealer on it to make sure it doesn't even think about leaking again. A new valley gasket, of the black coated type, went on with some new seals and clamps. The clamps were bit of a prick to fit as the seals sat slightly proud in the corners. Got there in the end though, and on went the inlet manifold. All bolts were torqued up in stages to 30NM, working outwards from the center. I was about to refit the injectors and rail, when I chose to check the hoses, and this is what I found. FML. More severely cracked fake R9 injector hose. Its been a constant battle against this stuff, but damn i'm glad I caught it now as those cracks are the worst I have had. Two hoses on the fuel regulator, and the main fuel feed hose all got replaced with the good Codan stuff I picked up a while ago. I gave ALL the other hoses a real good, close up inspection and they are all in good condition still. The issue seems to be when the hose is bent. With the hoses replaced I refit all the injectors, and reassembled the rest of the engine. With it all back together, i gave the fuel system a decent prime to check it was sealed, and then filled the cooling system A trusty 50:50 mix of Nulon Long Life green coolant, as used in almost everything, because it's good stuff. Effie would know, she's gone through bucket loads of it. So has my garage floor. See? At least I tried to catch it. After bleeding the cooling system, so far she has been keeping her coolant where it should be. The heater is hotter than before too, so obviously it's getting better coolant flow now. I took her for a quick drive, and gosh she is lovely to cruise around in. So smooth, refined, comfortable, and grunty. I'll need to monitor the coolant for a bit to be sure we are all good now, but tomorrow i'll be calling up and asking for a huge favour... a warrant inspection this week. And then we can go to the show. Hopefully.

Is the car jam record of engine numbers as accurate as inspectors get? So many “rusty/covered/blank” numbers on there.

Huge thanks to @Get it done, who like his name, got it done. Now to fit it to the car and get it ready for the show this weekend. Fingers crossed for no more surprises.

These are cheap as anything and easy to wire up. They are smart coils so have integrated ignitor. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Ignition-Coil-032905106-032905106B-221603006-221603009-for-VW-Audi-Seat-Skoda/162859466227?hash=item25eb2e3df3:g:vNwAAOSwEVZaYXV2&vxp=mtr Only issue is needing custom leads as the terminals on the coil end are similar to LS1, but not really an issue.

PM'd and yes, its a coolant pipe for my Rover. Its hidden under the manifold, so just needs to hold water but doesnt need to be a stack of dimes

Man, coil packs are cheap. Just grab one from a subaru or VW at pick a part and then you have a sweet setup.

Hi guys, Is there anyone in wellington/lower hutt that can metal glue some steel together for me in the next few days? I need a steel pipe welded to a steel boss, and a bead of weld stuck on the end of the pipe (so a hose wont slip off). This is the steel boss, and i have the pipe ready to go. Needs to be water tight, but doesnt need to be pretty.

Shower with it. Aww yeah.

Sigh,This game again. Effie is leaking coolant. I have had a guts full of doing coolant on this thing. I thought I finally had it sorted but last time I drove her I noticed that the coolant light had come on and the expansion tank was low. I topped it up, but it didn't stay full after a drive. We had a leak. I did some investigating; I had a hunch that since I fixed the leak from the waterpump bolt (by moving the crank sensor mount to a different bolt), that it would be coming from the damn under intake coolant pipe. I checked the rear of the engine and sure enough there was some bright green coolant in the back of the Vee. I tried slipping the coolant hose further up the pipe and tightening the clamp down, but it was still leaking. There aren't many places it can leak that will end up with coolant in the back of the vee. Under the intake manifold, in the Vee, there is a steel pipe that feeds the heater core. These pipes are notorious for rusting out and causing issues. The biggest issue is that you cannot see the pipe, let alone fix it, without removing the whole intake manifold. Lame. Heres a spare manifold I have, showing the long, rusty, metal pipe (the lower one. The top, black one, is for early EFI cars and mine doesn't have it) Here's the problem. This pipe would make a good garden soaker hose. Its full of rust holes, and no matter how far you slip the hose along the pipe, it wont go far enough because of the mounting bracket. My plan was to remove this pipe from the manifold, and use the hex fitting that screws into the intake with a new pipe, and then fit that to Effie. The first issue, is how the heck do you remove a steel threaded fitting that has been in an aluminium thread for 30+ years? I tried with a spanner and lots of penetrating fluid, with no luck. I tried using my weight as leverage, and it didn't budge. I asked on Facebook what the best option to remove it is, and it sounds like anyone that has done this job before, has had the same issue without luck. I don't give up though, and the best option came to me the next day. An angle grinder and rattle gun. Time to get serious. I used my angle grinder with a thin cutting disk, to cut through the pipe as close to the fitting as possible. It took two seconds. A hacksaw would do the same job, but slower. I removed the pipe, and then using a 13/16" spark plug socket, which fit perfect, a long extension and a rattle gun, I beat on it for a minute or two. I did a couple of ugga duggas forward and reverse to try to break the seal, and then bam, it spun off freely. I really need more impact sockets... It was clear the threads were full of oxidation. It screws back in again fine, so once its out if the threads are cleaned up, it can be reused. Funnily enough, the pipe had even more holes on the top side, that you couldn't see when it was fitted. The pipe measures an OD of almost 16mm (this is important as the hose that goes onto the pipe needs close to this OD to seal) and the ID of the fitting is 13.78mm. If it can be reamed out to a smidgen over 14mm, and a 14mm pipe sourced, it could be slipped inside the fitting and soldered in. I need to look at my options for opening up the end of the fitting as I don't have a lathe. As long as a bead is on the end of the pipe, the hose will be able to clamp down on a 14mm pipe OK. 16mm pipe would be better, but then it would need to be welded to the end of the fitting. I'm going to put my thinking cap on tomorrow, and see what Bunnings has in the plumbing department for pipe. Copper pipe would be good as it won't rust, and is easy to work with. It would also be good if I could work out what the thread on the fitting is, as if I can work that out, I could reproduce the whole pipe from end to end. These pipes have been NLA new for a long time, and despite multiple requests to Rimmers, they havent started to reproduce them. The EFI SD1 was the only RV8 engine to have this pipe, as the carb engines have a different design (which is available new), and the Range Rover eliminated it completely. Either way, I need to sort a pipe for Effie from what I have here, or she isn't going to the show.

One of the things that has bothered me about Tess is the wipers. The RH one sits too high, and they are the weird old pin fitting. Being the sneaky one I am, the plan was to swap the standard J-Hook style arms from Effie to Tess, so that I could easily get replacement blades instead of just refills. You can see how much higher the RH wiper on Tess sits compared to Effie here. The wiper on Effie is almost obscured by the bonnet and well within the dark strip at the bottom of the screen, whilst Tess sits high and is visible in the drivers vision. It's a real small thing, but bothers me. Wipers are easy as to remove on these things. Just a 13mm nut to remove and then the arm can be wiggled off the spline This is the difference between the two. Tess has the one on the left, where the blade is held on by a metal pin. The one from Effie on the right uses a standard J-Hook. Replacement blades to suit the pin style are less common, whilst J-hook ones are everywhere as its standard on a lot of modern Japanese cars. Good and bad news, the arm from Effie fit Tess But the arm from Tess didn't fit Effie. The spline size is different for some reason; Tess has a bigger spline and the arm won't engage on Effie. I had to swap them back over and live with the pin arms on Tess, but at least I did manage to align the arm height better. The LH arm can't go lower without catching the windscreen surround but that's fairly normal. With that disappointment I moved inside the car to have a play. Mrs Petrol pointed out my ugly missing label on my computer the other day and reminded me to fix it Luckily I have some spare buttons, so I harvested a label. I could swap the whole button over, but to do that you need to remove the front panel, which means risking ruining the whole thing as the front panel is the only thing holding all the buttons and springs behind them, in place. I used a razor blade to carefully pry the label off the button and stuck it back on with its existing adhesive. If it comes loose I'll look into a dab of glue to secure it Don't worry, I have started cleaning the grot too, but that's another post, when I have finished. I removed the dash mat for the first time and to my surprise, it was hiding some goodies. No idea what the rubber gasket goes to, but the screws and washers are for various dash trim bits, and the spanner is for my collection. So that's where Tess is for now. I really need to pull finger and start getting her ready for the show, but unfortunately I'm going to have to spend some time on Effie very shortly as once again, she needs some coolant work

After driving my "new" Mini for a bit, i forgot what torque was. And then i drove Tess again.

Yeah the previous gen mitsi triton was terrible for egr carbon in the intake. Used to be two cans of shumma intake cleaner, a can of brake clean and a couple hours labour to fix.

They can also use walnuts (?) to media blast the valves and inlet ports to clear the carbon. Quite common on VWs and BMWs.

For the first time this year, Tess finally made an appearance out of the garage. Since replacing the rack a couple of weeks ago, and getting the wrong tie rod ends from Repco, I've been waiting patiently (hah!) for a pair of new ends to come from the motherland via Rimmers. It seems no one else in NZ has a listing, let alone the ability to supply them. When getting a Warrant of Fitness inspection on a car, if it fails you have 28 days to return for a free recheck without having to do another full inspection at your cost. Yesterday was 28 days from the initial inspection where the car failed.... So on Tuesday, with one day left, the new tie rod ends hadn't arrived yet and I was out of time. When I removed the old rack the RH tie rod end was seized into the knuckle and unfortunately the boot got torn to bits removing the joint. Finding a universal boot locally was a pain in the ass. Repco had nothing, Supercheap Auto thought I wanted a boot liner for my car, BNT said they had them on the phone but somehow magically lost all of them 20 mins later when I went in.... but a huge thanks to Autolign in Petone who not only had a decent range in stock, but actually managed to sort me out one that fit perfect. I really didn't want to reuse these joints but with no other options it's all I had. They were good enough to pass the initial warrant check, so they would still be OK to pass the recheck. I just didn't want to use old and worn parts on my lovely new rack. Anyway, I reassembled the steering, did a quick spanner check, and began to refit the wheels. One thing I wanted to do when refitting them was to replace the wheel nuts with some spares I have. The current ones are all pretty rusty, and although the replacements are old and used, they're far less rusty. Original on the left. Interestingly they are actually different, with the original ones having a shorter hex, and a bigger domed cap. They all went on, got torqued up and Tess was on the ground once again A quick test drive shows that the alignment is slightly out and the steering wheel is off to the right by a couple of degrees. Everything else is working properly, as it should, but the steering rack doesn't feel as smooth as the old 30+ year old one. Hopefully it'll wear in and get better. Yesterday I drove Tess in and went for the recheck. A few minutes later, after checking the rack had been replaced, this ugly thing was stuck to my windscreen So that's a great success, the first warrant since 2013. Getting Rego (road tax) was a bit more of a pain. I swung home after getting the WOF, and swapped my plates over to the personalised plates I will be running and went to VTNZ for the rego Unfortunately there was a nationwide system outage for the rego label printers, meaning no one could sell me rego, take the cars rego off hold, or swap the plates over. Eventually I managed to get the post shop to sell me rego without printing the label. This meant I could use the car last night, and the worst I could be ticketed for would be "Failure to display licence label in the correct manner". Better than driving an unregistered car, but this did mean I had to swap back to the original plates again. I'll change to MEH another day. One of the other things I needed to do yesterday was to change my oil again. Back when I did the shifter bushes I also changed the 4+ year old oil with some nice, expensive VR1 10W40 as used in Effie. Unfortunately Tess didn't take too kindly to this thin oil, and started smoking heavily when getting up the revs. She blew a little smoke before the change, but this was like a Bond smoke screen. The oil that the previous owner had been using was a 20W50, so I thought something along those lines would be a good start. I ended up picking up some Penrite HPR30 20W60 with "full" Zinc. I drained out the 5L of expensive 50KM old engine flush oil, and filled up with the Penrite. I didn't change the filter, there was no point as it was barely used. The oil came out a little darker, but still golden. With the HPR30 in her, the smoke has lessened a lot, and the oil pressure is still very good. It's thicker than I usually prefer, but every engine is different and this is what Tess likes. It's also cheaper than VR1 which is good (not to mention coming in 5L and 1L bottles, which is great when a drain and fill takes 5.5L. Two bottles of 5L VR1 isn't cheap) Driving her last night was great. Sure, it was pissing down, but gosh it drives god. The Falken ZE912 tires seem to be working well in the wet and dry. Compared to the Supercats on Effie, it's like comparing apples and chewing gum. I can still over power the Falkens, especially when it comes on cam in second gear, but otherwise it was nice and grippy. The new shifter bushes make a huge change in shifter feel, with far less movement, and much more accuracy. The gearbox is still very noisy, and has a great trick of sometimes popping out of 3rd when you let the clutch out (uncommon though). I will try Ramon's recommendation of flushing with white spirit, and then using an engine oil with Molyslip and see what happens. Worst case, I have that spare box in the garage. So that's where we are now. The car is fully road legal and usable. I need to swap the tie rod ends and get an alignment, and the damn boot still leaks like a sieve. One step at a time, but now I get to put some Miles on her.

Ah ok, kinda makes sense i guess. Was hoping there was some leeway instead of just lapsing instantly. Thanks lads.

Out of curiosity, say my car which was last registered in 2013, and has been old hold until today, had its exemption expire and I didn’t renew it. What happens tomorrow, does it instantly get deregistered? If not, when does it lapse? Usually it’s 12 months from rego expiry, but it’s way passed that. Surely not 12 months from exemption expiry? i have renewed the hold, but curious to know how close to death I was.

lol great minds and all that

Not my thing at all. Have you considered removing the rest of the paint/bog and rusting the whole tailgate panel, if you're going to keep it that way? Would look better than the patchy half done look atm. Its a mean wagon though

It isn't a fun job, but it's one I needed to do. To get Tess on the road I needed to replace the steering rack. But first, let me wish everyone a Happy New Year! Tess (yes, the cars now have names. Tess the Vitesse and EFI, pronounced "Effie", the EFI) failed her WOF on a leaking power steering rack, and boy was it leaking badly. I suspect it was the original rack, and may have just failed either due to time, or from sitting for years. Either way, it needed to be fixed. My first thought was to get the rack reconditioned, as surely this would be more cost-effective and quicker than ordering a replacement rack... but how wrong I was. No one was too interested in actually doing the work, with the only workshop in Wellington able to do the work quoting about $600 to do it plus labour to remove/fit if needed, and the only other place I was recommended was in Auckland, which was "about $800", excluding me having to remove the rack and send it to them. Not only that, everyone was busy and being only days away from the big Christmas shutdown, there was no hope in me having it back before mid Jan or so. Eek. The next option was to source a used rack and fit that, but in the end I ruled this option out as it was probably just going to be money down the drain when that one eventually succumbed to its 30+ years of age and also starting leaking. The only option left to me then was to order one from the UK. The pricing wasn't great, but considering its a brand new unused rack (albeit made in 1986) that has been reconditioned with new seals, it's not a bad deal. Even better was the next day when I went to place the order, the rack was suddenly on sale at only 200 Pounds! Win! After much calculating we worked out that it was cheaper to buy the rack with a set of replacement standard Vitesse height shocks and springs than it was to buy the shocks at a later date... oh what a shame, so they got tacked onto the order. $400 of just shipping costs later, and the parts were on their way. I had a good laugh when the Fedex site said ETA for delivery was the 27th Dec.... 5 days after it was ordered, but I'll be damned if I didn't get a call from Fedex the morning of the 27th to say it had cleared customs and I needed to pay the Government to clip the ticket, and then it would be out for delivery. And there it was, later that day, 5 days after the order was placed in the UK, and two days after Christmas. One box full of springs, and the other with a steering rack, four shocks and some door window seals. Amazing. HUGE thanks to Rimmer Bros and Fedex for the great service. Yes, a BRAND NEW "Cam Gears" rack. Not used, and not an old used rack that has been reconditioned. Bling Bling. Like usual getting the car in the air is the standard low-car faff, but once up I whipped off the wheels and began poking around. Interestingly someone at some point has swapped the standard two hose 4 pot Vitesse calipers for single hose 4 pot calipers. The disks are standard Vitesse vented disks, so not performance loss, but an interesting change. Filthy as hell and covered in multiple layers of paint. They need a clean and probably a repaint. Be a good candidate for an XJS big brake upgrade. Braided Goodridge hoses to the calipers. Yes, the standard strut legs have been painted yellow also >_< That's enough poking around, let's get to the real work. Removing the rack. I got really stuck for ages trying to get the tie rod end to come free from the knuckle on the RH side. The typical way to remove these (and all taper fit ball joints) is to give the side of the item the ball joint goes through a few hard smacks with a hammer. This will usually shock the taper free and it will pop out. This happened on the LH side after a few whacks, but the right side just didn't want to pop. This is the offending article I suspect it was original, and was rusted in the knuckle. In the end I used a couple of Pickle Fork style ball joint separators to pop it. It didn't go without a fight though, and unfortunately it made a mess of the boot in the process. A win is a win though, this meant I could move on. The next step was to disconnect the oil hoses. I believe the correct thing to do is to remove the hoses from the rack, but I just couldn't get a spanner in there to undo them on the car, so I chose to disconnect them from the pump. This also allowed easier draining and cleanup of the fluid. One pipe in the back of the pump is a 5/8" hex and the other is just a standard hose clamp There aren't many photos of the next part of the process because it's a hell of a messy job. Even with barrier cream all up my arms it took ages to clean the grease and oil off me. The rack is held to the crossmember with four large 17mm bolts, the nuts of which are visible in the above photos on either side of the jacking bump on the crossmember. A spanner held on the bolt on top of the rack, and a rattlegun on the nut under the car and they were undone quickly. The one bolt at the back on the RH side cannot be removed with the pipes in place on the rack. I just pushed this up as far as it would go, using the pipes and hoses to hold it in place. Next is to disconnect the steering coupling from the spline on the rack. This was bit of a pain as mine had been there for many years, but a good soaking in WD40 helped. Completely remove the 1/2" nut and bolt (has to be completely removed as the bolt locks the spline in place) and then use a thick chisel driven into the split to open up the coupling and release the spline. There wasn't enough room to move the steering shaft to free it from the rack, so I had to push the rack forward to free it up. This is a great time to also check the rubber disk on the coupling for any splits or damage and replace if needed. Before the rack can be removed the engine needs to be lifted a few inches. I ummed and ahhed over this for ages, until I just bit the bullet and did what Haynes recommends. Use a jack, and a block of wood under the sump. Because I only needed clearance on the RH/Drivers side of the car, I removed both bolts on the RH side and removed only one bolt and loosened the other bolt on the LH side. This allowed the engine to sort of pivot on that bolt when it lifted, so when it was lowered again everything was easy to align back into place. Keep in mind that I don't run the standard radiator fan and shroud, so I didn't have to worry about moving or removing these before lifting, but may cause issues on standard cars. The engine is held with two 17mm bolts/nuts on each side To gain enough space to remove the rack I also had to remove that yellow brace you can see over the rack boot. This is bolted through the RH mountings for the sway bar The engine does have to come up quite high With the engine up, and the rack unbolted all that is needed to do is to wiggle and jiggle the rack out. The rack MUST be removed from the RH/Drivers side of the car, and to get it out meant that I had to rotate the rack upside down, so that the pinion pointed downwards. It also helped if I raised the LH side of the rack. Eventually it will come out and you will wonder what all that fuss was about. The original "Cam Gears" brand rack as used on the later SD1s. Apparently the best for road feel of the three brands used at various times (but all interchangeable) The hoses came through with the rack with no issues, so I see no advantage to removing them on the car other than gaining a little more space from being able to remove that one mounting bolt. The hoses are held onto the rack with two different sizes. One was a 17mm and the other was smaller, and I used a 9/16" spanner for it. They were easy to break free off the car, but the smaller pipe took some careful coaxing to spin in the nut. These hoses need to be transferred to the new rack, and MUST be kept clean from any dirt entering them. I ziptied a glove over the end to keep them clean upon refitting. Take note of how the pipes are run on the rack too as they need to be oriented correctly. Before refitting the new rack you need to center it. There is a port on the rack for checking the centering, and apparently locking it, although I didn't need to lock mine. its a 1/4" hex to remove this plastic plug It's hard to photograph, but there is a dimple in the rack that can be seen through this hole when the rack is centered. When it's not centered there is just solid, shiny metal that can be seen Not centered Almost centered (rack needs to go slightly to the right) Centered Apparently you can insert a bolt into here to lock it in place, but I didn't find this was needed, and I just used a mirror to check it was still centered when it was on the car before fitting the steering coupling, and again when the coupling was in place. Pipes were refitted and had a very quick clean. I ensured that the pipes and hoses weren't hard up against each other or the rack. Refitting is just the reverse of removal. Wiggle and jiggle the rack into place, being careful to route the hoses over the crossmember and under the sump, and to not damage any of the boots and threads. The rack comes with good protective covers on all the threads and splines which helps. Remember, like removal, turning the rack upside down helps to refit (but isn't good for taking photos). It'll eventually just fall into place, and then it's time to install that damn steering coupling again I had my lovely wife help this by holding the steering wheel straight whilst I wiggled it all into place. I needed to use a chisel again to open the coupling so the spline would slide in nicely. I also applied some copper grease to the spline, so that it wouldn't rust together again, and that helped to slide it together. Once that's in, drop the rack bolts through the crossmember. There is one bolt on mine that is longer than the others. This goes in the front RH side hole. It's obvious if you have put this in a different hole as it's a fair bit longer. Then start bolting it all back together. Check the hoses are in the right place, and then the engine can be lowered down again and bolted in place. This is good for space under the car, and not having to worry there is an engine above your head holding on by a jack and one bolt. Once everything was bolted back into place, I refit the hoses to the pump with a new hose clamp. This is where I would usually be fitting the tie rod ends but unfortunately that turned to rubbish. One of mine had a damaged boot from removal, and both were looking aged and generally a bit blegh. I didn't just spend hundreds on a new rack to fit old worn out parts back onto it, so I went to Repco and picked up the last two that they had in stock for an SD1. They are TRW JTE224. The TRW website lists them as the correct part for all SD1s including the Vitesse and the photo looks OK As does the technical info and measurements of them Unfortunately what was in both of the boxes isn't quite right. It doesn't look like the photo, or the old part, and more importantly the threads don't match up. The old one has a 12mm thread, the new one 10mm. Either this is a mistake and a bad batch, or the TRW part is wrong. I'm going to check tomorrow if any other stores have them in stock and if they can source me a pair to match up. If they can't, I will have to resort to ordering a new pair from Rimmers. In the meantime I have refilled the system (with the same ATF as I used in the EFI), loosened off the PS pump so it can be spun by hand and hand filled the rack. Once the level was stable, I tightened the belt and secured the pump and fired up the engine. I ran the rack lock to lock to bleed the air out, and refilled the pump until the level stopped dropping and then that was done. Now I'm at a halt until I can get a pair of tie rod ends. Once I have those, I can fit them, put the wheels back on and take it for an alignment. Then its WOF time!

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Too many photos even for me