kws

Too many photos even for me

I need less posts here.

Gosh thats a lot of scrolling.

Replacement steering rack arrived from the UK yesterday, crazy fast shipping via FedEx. When they said delivery target was the 27th Dec i laughed. Somehow they made it, even with Customs taking their cut. Now i need to work out how im going to change the rack out. I suspect my single garage at home is too narrow to withdraw a rack from the side of the car.

I had some time off from work today, so I finally got around to servicing my auto transmission. Hey, here's a car I haven't worked on in a while. Cant let the Vitesse have all the fun now can we? I purchased all the parts to service my auto a while ago, including the fluid, but have put it off. Rimmers doesn't have a lot of the parts available anymore, but because Rover used a standard old GM auto, I was able to order parts for a GM TH-180 (Turbo-Hydramatic 180) which was used in heaps of different cars, even the old Commodores. I ordered the gaskets from a place in the states called Makco but there are heaps of places that can supply these parts. In regards to which oil to use, there is HEAPS of discussion on it, but I chose to use a Semi-Synthetic Dexron compatible Penrite "Multi-Vehicle' ATF-MHP. This meets the requirements for the fluid type, but has the added advantage of being a semi-synthetic. I didn't want to go for a full synthetic because I'm not flushing the trans so would be mixing synthetic oil with whatever is already in there. Not keen. Obviously the first step in this game is the first step in most games.... jack the car up. Thankfully the EFI is at standard height and doesn't need any special work to get it in the air. Once in the air it was obvious why she smoked like crazy when sitting for a few days. The trans was leaking badly onto the RH exhaust pipe. The oil, as oil does, had travelled everywhere on the underside of the car. Makes a good rust preventative though I guess. Looking around I could see oil traces coming from two main places; the dipstick tube seal and the inhibitor switch. Both are common areas to leak from, so I pre-ordered the seals required to try to fix them. It also appeared to be leaking from the oil pan gasket itself. No surprise really as most of the bolts at the rear of the pan were barely finger tight. I know the torque setting is low on these, but that's just being silly. I'm not sure when the trans was last serviced, but it had been worked on at some point in the past. The GM trans of this era doesn't have a drain plug in the pan, so the only way to drain the trans is to make a mess. This was my first time working on an auto without a drain plug, so I wasn't so sure what I was in for. I loosened off all the 1/2" pan bolts, more so on the side that the exhaust wasn't hard up against, with the rear ones looser than the front ones so that the pan would drop at the rear. After breaking the sealant seal on the pan, it all started to dribble out, and most of it ended up in the drain pan I had placed under it. When that stopped dripping I removed the rest of the bolts whilst supporting the pan with my other hand, and when it came free I just tipped it straight into the drain pan. No mess, no fuss. It probably did help though that the oil level was low.... It should have drained about 2.8L, but only 2L came out. The fluid color was dark, but still had a definite redness to it. It didn't smell burnt, and no worrying chunks or anything were found in the pan. I was under the impression that most auto pans had magnets in them to collect the metal particles in the oil. There was no magnet in my pan, and the bottom of the pan and filter were covered in a fine layer of sludge. I thoroughly cleaned the pan, making sure there were no traces of oil, sludge or old gasket. With the pan off I could see the valve body and filter. It all looked pretty clean in there, and although I don't really know much about what I was looking at, it all looked like I feel it should The old filter got removed. This is held in place with three 1/2" bolts and then it just comes free. Apparently they can be cleaned and reused, as they are just a mesh filter, but a new one was cheap enough that it wasnt worth cleaning. I picked up a replacement gasket for the filter too. There was some confusion when ordering the gasket for the filter, as the parts book and Rimmers show a different style gasket to the one supplied by Makco. I ended up ordering both so I could replace it with similar to what came off. This is what the book shows And the gasket that came off (and what Makco supplied) I refit the square type, just to stick with what was already working before. Next up was to remove the dipstick tube and replace the seal. There were two different kinds of seal that I came across, so once again I ordered both. It turns out that the type used on the SD1 GM180 was the Top-Hat style Interestingly, the one removed from the car was smooth inside and out, whilst the replacement was ribbed inside and out. I used a thin smear of sealant on the end of the dipstick tube where it fits into the seal just to ensure it doesn't leak. Getting the dipstick tube in and out is a job that I wouldn't wish on anyone. It is a damn nightmare of a thing. This is what I have named the "Bitch Bolt" It's the only bolt holding the tube in place, but it's almost impossible to work with. It's a 9/16" head, but you cannot get a ratchet on it, and can only barely get a spanner on it to turn it 1/8th of a turn at a time. Getting it out wasn't the worst thing in the world, but getting it back in was terrible and took far too long and used up my daily quota for swearing. I even enlisted the help of my lovely wife as no matter what I did I just couldn't get the bolt hole in the block to line up with the bracket on the tube. We got there in the end, but my god what a shit of a job. One other tip I will say, is that a 14mm ratchet spanner is very close in size to a 9/16" spanner... this makes tightening the long bolt up a lot quicker, but no less painful. After that fiasco I cleaned the old gasket off and refit the pan with a new cork gasket which I installed with a thin smear of sealant on both sides and torqued all the bolts up to their super low setting of 9NM. The inhibitor switch was the last part to get some special treatment. This was easier to work with, but was soaked in oil. A while ago when I was bored I reconditioned a spare switch I had. The GM180 switches are NLA now, so I couldn't get a new one. They are common for wearing out and either not allowing starting when in park, or the reverse lights not working. My reverse lights don't work, so I hoped that reconditioning and replacing my switch might fix this (sadly it didn't, so I need to look elsewhere). This is the GM180 switch. Nothing fancy. Mine was sealed, and the clips broken. I used a sharp blade to open the two halves The contacts weren't looking good Its a fairly simple device. On the bottom housing there are three contact sets. Park, Reverse and Neutral. Sprung pins in the moving insert bridge the terminals when the selector is moved Both the contacts and the pins had heavy wear, and were badly oxidized. I cleaned up the terminals with some fine sandpaper Half and half I got a bit more fancy for the pins. I carefully removed them and spun them up in a drill and used some fine sandpaper to clean them Everything got a good helping of dielectric grease and reassembled. I used a thin bead of superglue to re-assemble the switch. The replacement switch does everything it should, except the reverse lights still don't work. Oh well, at least I know it should be a reliable starter. One of the biggest reasons for me to do all this work (other than to fix the leaks) was to have a known quantity of oil in the pan. Since getting the car I haven't been able to get a clear reading on the dip stick, even after adding oil to the trans. Obviously now I know it was low, but since I know how much oil went in, I can monitor it correctly. I poured in 2.1L, and then as per the instructions I started the engine up and ran it through the gears three times. With the engine running, and in Park, I checked the oil level. It needed to be above the triangle on the back of the dipstick. It's hard to see but the oil level is below the Min mark, but is above the triangle on the rear of the dipstick. This is good. The new fluid was a lovely rich cherry red I took her for a drive to warm the fluids up, and burn off the oil and brake clean from the exhaust (boy does it smoke), and upon my return I once again cycled the gears and with the engine running I checked the fluid level. Now it should read between the two Min-Max marks; to which it was a little low, so I added another couple of hundred ml of oil which brings it to bang on. I'm not 100% certain this will fix all the leaks from the trans; they are well-known for leaking from new and being impossible to fix due to bad design, but hopefully this slows it down and reduces how much oil is ending up on the pipe. This also allows me to correctly monitor the oil level now. So how did the test drive go? Well, the trans is quieter, smoother and shifts better. It was already pretty good by 1980s standards in my opinion, but now it shifts like a trans made some time in the late 90s. Smooth and almost unnoticeable shifting. Now to put more rego on, and take for more hoons before its WOF expires again next month.

A replacement steering rack from Rimmers has been ordered. Brand new, but reconditioned to replace any seals that have perished from age. Also ordered a suspension kit, with new shocks all around (as mine are very soft and I was told it wont pass the next warrant) and standard Vitesse height springs. Now to wait for shipping, hope it gets through customs OK, and then fit it.

Upon returning home after the WOF check, I felt it was time to sort the bucket of porridge shifting. When the car was in for its WOF check I had a quick poke around under the car and confirmed my suspicions that there are no shifter bushes in place. There is a lot of oil all over the gearbox, and the rubber bushes just gave up and crumbled away. Obviously I couldn't do anything about it at the time, so as soon as I got home I got stuck in. First issue, was how do I get my jack under the car? My usual trick is to just drive up on a few bits of wood and then the low profile jack clears the spoiler, but the Vitesse spoiler is just so low that even that didn't work. I ended up driving onto bits of wood, then jacking the car from the side lifting point (sill behind the front wheel), putting MORE wood under the wheel, and then the jack would clear the front spoiler. Phew. Of course I popped a couple of axle stands under the car, and then had a poke around. Before I start on the shifter bushings I had to have a quick look at the steering rack issue I failed the WOF for. I was shown that the rubber boot was full of oil and sure enough, I gave it a squeeze and more oil poured out. I snipped the Zip-Tie and had a closer look. There was a lot of oil on the innards too, so I gave it all a wipe down, and then fired the car up. I swung the steering lock to lock a couple of times, and then had a look to see how bad the leak was. Yep, she's leaking alright. Anyway, nothing else I can do to that, so I reinstalled the old boot with a new zip-tie and moved onto the bushes. Look mum, no hands bushes (excuse the blurry photos, it was really hard to fit myself and a camera under the car) Oh look, is that the remains of a bush?! Yup, wasn't doing much. You can see that underside of the remote has actually been rubbing on the drive shaft. Not ideal I purchased the replacement Poly bushes from eBay and they arrived the other day. SuperPro SPF0355K. Listed for a Triumph but work perfect. This job wasnt anywhere near as hard as I was expecting. I read some horror stories about not being able to access the top bolts, but using a 3/4" ratchet, a really long extension and a 1/2" socket it was a doddle. The bushes come in two halves, and you need to reuse the existing metal sleeve from the old bush With some wiggling and bashing of knuckles I managed to sort it. The trick I found, was to do one bush at a time (one bush = two halves, a metal sleeve, bolt and washer) and leave the bolts in the others until it's their turn. I started with the hardest to access which is top RH side, doing it mostly by feel. Once the sleeve was in both halves of the bush I slipped the bolt in and spun it a few threads so it wouldn't come out. DO NOT tighten fully though, you need the remote to move so you can get the other bushes in. I did the same to the top LH bush, and then moved onto the lower side ones. These were actually a bit harder to do. With one side in I needed to use a small pry bar to give me enough space between the bracket and trans for the other bush, and then it was just a case of wiggling and strategically tightening the bolts to align all the bushes. If you have trouble getting the side bolts into place, I found that tightening the top bolts can help align it all. New bushes in place. This lifts the whole remote up, and leaves little to no movement in the remote. I should probably find out where that leak is coming from. I swear it appears that some of it is coming from the fill plug. I haven't driven the car more than just out of the garage, because I also did an engine oil and filter change (and im 1L low on oil and haven't bought more yet) but already the shifter feels so much more direct. There is still a little movement in side to side in gear, but I believe there is an adjustment for that. It's not a major. Just as a reminder of how bad the shifter was And this is what its like now Huge improvement, well worth the money and effort to install the bushes. Now to top the oil up and work out what to do about the steering rack.

The Vitesse had its longest drive in a long time today, to see if it would pass a WOF. Well unfortunately it didn't pass the Warrant of Fitness test, but for a car that has been off the road for about 4 years, and done bugger all mileage in that time, I think failing the WOF on one item isn't too bad. What did it fail on? The steering rack. Unfortunately its filling up the LH rack boot with oil, so it's leaking passed the seals. This means an instant failure, and not just a quick degrease, clean and pass. I'm looking into my options now. It's a toss-up between taking the car in and getting a pro to rebuild it; removing the rack and having it rebuilt; rebuilding the rack myself, or just replacing the whole rack with a reconditioned one from Rimmers. Either way its a pain to get the rack out, and I'll need to make sure I order the right parts if im going to rebuild it (as there are a couple of different brands of rack). Of course it wouldn't be my SD1 if it didn't mark its territory.... Thankfully just a dribble from the overflow. I suspect it needs a new cap. The trip in for the check was OK, although the shaking from the steering got a bit tiring. It was a 50km round trip, and since getting the Vitesse I have clocked over 100km total and its running like clockwork. After failing the WOF check I shot over to get some new tyres fitted. I went for a set of Falken Ziex ZE912 in the standard 205/60R15 size. Other than looking better and having a decent compound, they completely eliminated the shaking from the old flat spotted tyres. Driving back home afterwards was complete bliss. I got one of the old tyres put onto the spare wheel, as it turns out the spare was even older than the 15+ year old tyres on the car! The tech changing the tyres said I should give the old spare to a museum It turns out that the spare and one of the tyres on the car also had a tube fitted. Yes, a tube. I honestly didn't think they still did tubes in passenger car tyres, and apparently they shouldnt.... but hey, it's all sorted now, and im back to completely tubeless. Getting with the times eh. So that's where I'm at. I need to replace the shifter remote bushes are they are literally completely gone and then fix/replace the steering rack. I have 28 days to get it rechecked, or it has to have a complete new WOF check, so I best make a call shortly.

Another familiar job; A pair of upgraded rubber gaskets to replace the leaking cork ones. I did this job on the EFI a while ago, so I wont go into too much depth here, but once again I had an oil leak from the Rocker Cover gaskets. The passenger's side gasket was leaking quite badly. Strangely it wasn't leaking out of the gap between the cover and head, it was leaking out of the screw, straight down onto the exhaust manifold. It was quite a substantial leak, as you could watch it seeping out when the engine was running. So, lets begin. Take one super low Vitesse with extra low front spoiler, and try to get it into the garage without ripping the spoiler off. Needed some planks to get it over the bump, but it wasn't too much of an issue. Then take one yellow monstrosity And rip it to bits. I'm getting good at this, it took about 5 minutes to have the plenum top off, including finding my hex socket. The trumpets look good, with minimal oil. With the plenum top off, four screws and off comes the rocker cover. Pleasingly the valve-train looks in great shape, very little browning and no sludge at all. Heck, it even looks cleaner than the EFI did. The cork gaskets were in better shape than the EFI ones, but still not great. It was clear though why the oil was leaking through the screw. The gasket had pulled away from the hole so it had direct access to the oil, nothing to stop it leaking out. There was also clear signs of leaking through the gasket at the rear of the head Since the cover was off, and no one ever seems to do it, I serviced the breather. There is a tiny little hole in the middle that usually gets blocked. Mine was blocked, and took a lot of brake clean and poking with various bits of thin wire to clear it. I carefully wiggled and jiggled the new rubber gasket and cover into place and tightened it down. It pays to make sure none of the gasket is pinched, and that the metal collets the screw goes through hasn't fallen out. The other gasket was in similar condition, except for a tear in the back of the gasket The other side was fitted with a new rubber gasket and that was that job done. Easy. But I wasn't finished yet, I had to do something about that horrible yellow plenum. It just sticks out too much and doesn't fit the look of the sleek, gorgeous Vitesse. I had two spare plenum tops. One was painted in a battleship grey but the paint wasn't in good condition, and the other was bare aluminium with red lines in the top. In order to make the transition as easy as possible, I swapped as much as I could from the old plenum to the replacement. I swapped the throttle linkage, throttle pot, and over-run valve. I also thoroughly cleaned the plenum; cleaning out the breather passage, and throttle body. Speaking of over-run valves, I capped it off the other day and unlike the EFI I noticed no difference. I wondered why, and found out today. These are the two valves from the plenums. The one on the left is from the Vitesse, and the right one is from the spare plenum. The one on the Vitesse has been "adjusted" to completely closed and will not open on deceleration. I'm not sure that the one on the right is correctly adjusted, but you can see the gaps between the coils of the spring. The one in the EFI was correctly adjusted when I refitted it, so obviously that's the reason why blocking it off had different effects between the two cars. I fit the closed off valve back into the Vitesse. With a thin smear of sealant on the plenum mounting face, I fit the replacement plenum top Much better. I did find one thing out, if you have the hose clamp for this hose in the wrong position, it will act as a throttle stop, and when you fire the car up to test, it'll hold the throttle open a crack and rev straight up to 3100rpm. Sounds awesome, but not so good for an idle speed. This is the correct position. Rover didn't think very hard when they designed the placement of this clamp. Terrible access. The red stripes don't fit the Vitesse so much, so I may paint them a different colour in the future, but for now its a huge improvement over the yellow. A couple of interesting observations, firstly the old setup must have had a huge intake/vacuum leak as it needed a lot more idle screw to idle normally, and the engine now pulls like a freight train. Its much smoother, idles better, pulls harder and runs nicer. I'm very happy with it; I didn't expect any improvement in its running. WOF day is two days away, so now that it's not pouring its oil everywhere I might almost be ready for it. Eek. Goes hard for what it is and all that.

Hopefully this works. Let me know if the photos are borked again. It rained heavily the other day, for the first time since getting the Vitesse…. and it leaked. Damn. I’ve been spoilt by the EFI being water tight since I sealed the tail lights, but the Vitesse got caught outside in a downpour and ended up with a swimming pool in the boot. A bit of poking and prodding and I noticed that there was water inside the tailgate glass seal, between the metal and seal. There was also some minor rust where it was wet, showing it had been leaking there for a while. I started off by removing as much rust as I could from under the seal, and then using rust converter to slow it down so I can deal with it properly at a later date. I suspected that the water may have entered the seal higher up, and travelled down. Inspecting the seal showed some old gunk in the top corners of seal, possibly old sealant that has broken down, which has pushed the seal away from the metal. I carefully removed as much of the old gunk as I could and taped off the area. I noted that when blowing compressed air at the seal to clean it out there was a section of seal down the side that wasn’t stuck down I carefully used a small scraper and some Sikaflex and filled the gaps in (the seal was later cleaned of excess sealant) The issue was present on the other side too I had also been told the washer jet could be a source of water ingress, so I used a thin smear to sealant on the gasket for that Whilst I waited for that to dry I decided to open Pandora’s box. The rust bubble under the windscreen. I wasnt expecting good things. Just looking at it was bad enough, all the paint was bubbling and crunchy. A couple of pokes with a screwdriver showed that all wasnt lost, there was good metal there So I hit it with the wire cup on my grinder until I got good metal Now, I’m not silly, I do realise that what I can see is probably just the tip of the rust-berg, but its all I can do without removing the screen. This will hopefully slow it down until once again, I can afford to replace the windscreen and have the metal fixed. I slammed on some rust converter to get anything I didn’t, and tried to get it in under the trim and into the hole Once that was dry I used a very thin skim of Sikaflex to seal the hole Whilst this dried I moved onto some other things that bothered me, like the ECU that was just chilling out in the passenger’s foot well I don’t know exactly how the previous owner had the Link secured, but my plan was to use the original ECU mounting plate I found in the spares, to mount it in the factory location. With the Link removed, this is the clusterfeck of wiring that was left The relays were just zip tied to their original bracket, instead of being nicely secured to it. I straightened the mounting tangs, and fit the relays into their correct home Then I set about fitting the Link to the plate. Link ECUs are a bit of a pain, as unless they changed it in later models, they have no real mounting brackets on them. It’s a box with no holes, no tabs, nothing. Because of this, I used two original mounting holes and a couple of zip ties to stick it in place Since that was kinda working, I drilled another pair of holes and used some more zip ties. Nice and secure. This arrangement allows me to access the connector with the inspection plate removed Offered up into place I found some screw in my stash to secure it, and tucked all the wiring away This allowed me to refit the glove box. Finally, the car is kinda complete Moving back to the rust patch, the Sikaflex was dry now, so I masked off and hit it with some etch primer And whilst that dried, off to fix another issue I went. This time it was the coolant warning light that wasn’t working. When I got the car I noticed that both of the expansion tank sensor connectors and the one on the radiator were disconnected, yet the light wasnt lit, so obviously it was missing a bulb. A quick removal of the binnacle cover, and sure enough, a familiar sight. Seems I’m two for two on my SD1s both having the coolant bulb removed. I reconnected the connectors in the engine bay Whacked a spare bulb in And guess what, the system works. Light on for ignition check And turns off a couple of seconds later, as it should This car seems to be a bit hit and miss with its coolant level since I got it. It seems to be steady at the correct level now, though time will tell. At least having the light working means I can keep an eye on it easier. The binnacle cover is a bit rough. Not sure what I will do with this, it’s not TOO warped but the vinyl is shrinking and pulling away, and it’s missing two of the mounting pegs Anyway, the primer was dry, so on went a couple of light coats of gloss black paint. It’s not an amazing job, and I didn’t bog it up or anything, but it should slow the rust from spreading. When I machine polish the car I might be able to knock down the harsh edges of the new paint and blend it in a bit nicer. Hopefully it’ll rain in a couple of days so I can see if my leak fix worked or not, but until then it should have some time to cure. The next job will be replacing the valve cover gaskets, which will be in the next couple of days so it’s done before the WOF. When I do that I’ll be swapping to one of my spare plenums, to get rid of that yellow monstrosity.

The Rover SD1s have a drain hole in the front foot wells (used when painting the car in the factory) and its plugged with a welded in "paint tin lid" of steel. These are notorious for rusting out and sure enough one of mine in the Vitesse is rusted and hanging on by a thread. Is this grounds for a WOF failure? Its a non-structural part. This isnt my car but the plugged hole can be seen in this photo, on the right above the hoist arm. Picture that with rust holes in it. I have a replacement and will get it welded in, but not before the WOF check this week.

Shit, if im lucky the Vitesse might have passed a WOF the day before. Will try and remember this month.

In the quest to get the Vitesse ready for its Warrant inspection next week, I had to remedy something else I noticed wasn't working well. When I first got the car, the first thing (other than not starting) that I noticed didn't work was the headlight switch. Park light setting worked, but no lights on the headlight setting, so I was moving a car full of stuff, that I couldn't risk stalling, down the road with no lights. I found if you wiggle and jiggle the switch you could get the headlights to work, but that's not really good enough to pass a WOF inspection, so I had to fix it. Not to mention it's also a pain not being able to rely on the headlights to work. I have spare switches (and they are even still available new thanks to being used on the MGB), but what fun is swapping parts when you can recondition them and keep them going for the future? To remove the switch, first remove the lower shroud on the steering column. There is one Phillips screw in the underside then it carefully wiggles free. The top doesn't need to be unscrewed or removed. Turns out mine must have had a run-in with a rather angry steering wheel boss kit (not the current one, but I noticed the car came with a spare, now I know why) in the past as it's missing a nice arc of plastic The switch is now accessible, and should just pop out if you're careful. There are two metal spring clips. If they don't just pop out you may need to use a small flat blade to push them inwards. It turns out there must be two different types of switch. The one on the car has the little bulb picture the opposite way around to the spare I have, as well as the little picture being recessed into the plastic, not just screen printed on it. Another reason to rebuild the original one. Disassembly is fairly simple. I used a flat blade to pop the sides apart. There are clips along the whole length but a gap in the middle for the screwdriver. It's a VERY simple switch, with not much to go wrong. My switch was packed with old, hard grease that was covering all the contacts including the sliding contact There was a lot of wear on the sliding contact also, so I cleaned it up and gave it a quick sand down. I also cleaned and sanded the contacts in the switch base. Reassembly is the reverse, just make sure everything lines up nicely and make sure you have the base the correct way up in regards to the top half. I smothered the contacts and any moving parts in dielectric grease just to keep it fresh, and flipped the sliding contact around so it would wear the other side instead. Some water on a rag got any human filth off the switch without wearing out the white paint further. Before refitting I connected the switch up and made sure everything worked as it should. Sure enough the headlights came on every single time. And that is how you rebuild a Lucas headlight switch.

According to my records i have 7 Vanden Plas EFI, 16 Single Plenum Vitesse and 3 Twin Plenum Vitesse in NZ. There are no doubt more hidden away in garages that i havent spotted, and some of these cars have since been scrapped or taken off the road. Not many of them are on the road and being used regularly.

Damn. Sorry, did some changes on my site that must’ve borked it. Should be ok now.

I guess i should replace the tires shortly too. Despite all having good tread, they're flat spotted from sitting, and the youngest ones are date stamped 03, so i suspect the oldest probably had fears that the Y2K bug would destroy us all.

+1 on wire brush in grinder, or if you wanted a liquid to do it, Supercheap sells Evaporust which i have used a few times with great success.

V1 is awesome in a steampunk kind of way, but damn, V2 looks so refined it legit could be some fancy high cost coffee maker. Very nice.

I'm ticking off things on the to-do list, getting ready for its WOF check. Someone had made a mess of the rear seat hinges, so that's where I started. It might not be a Warrant issue, but having a rear seat back that doesn't lock into place properly, or even fold up and down properly is a bit of a pain. The previous owner supplied the car with replacement hinges for the seat, so that made life a bit easier. First step is to remove the side bolsters. Once again, push down the on seat base below the bolster, and you can feel around for the small Philips head screw. Remove that, push the bolster upwards and out it comes. The seat back is then held in with a couple of bolts per hinge. They are a T40 torx I removed the whole back section from the car. I don't know what happened to the hinges but someone had Hulk Smashed both of them. I presume the hinges may have seized. It even went so far as to bend the mounting plates The hinges are held to the seat back by four large Philips screws. Use a BIG bit on these so you don't strip them. Mine were all loose, but they shouldnt be. To access the screws you need to pop some clips for the seat back trim. Replacement hinges fitted. I thoroughly lubricated these before fitting to make sure they were nice and free, and shouldn't rust or seize. This is how they should function. They are a bit over complicated because they lift the seatback upwards when you fold it down. With the hinges in place I set about cleaning the rest of the rear seat area. The seat base just lifts up from the back as it has two hooks in the front edge There was a fair bit of dirt, grime and rubbish under the seats. There is also zero doubt now that this car was at one point in its life a Moonraker Blue car, not original black. Not a big deal, but interesting. With all the gross vacuumed up, I refit the seat, including the original head rests. I hate refitting the bolsters, but found that they were easier to refit with the seat back folded down. Since the car was in the garage out of the sun and I was on a roll, I decided to move on and tackle the tailgate release, which was missing Once again the car came with a couple of spare parts to fix this. It wasnt a simple as just popping a new tailgate lock assembly in place and calling it a day. First I removed the number plate lights and tailgate garnish. Just a few screws One of the plate lights was really on its last legs. The connector was literally held together with one strand of wire The previous owner taped over the tailgate vents because the exhaust design lets fumes in. Half the vent flaps were just floating around in the tailgate The old tailgate catch was looking worse for wear. Someone had also tried to remove it and butchered the screws. Both were jammed and stripped During test fitting I couldn't get the release lever to engage with the old catch. I'm presuming the old one is worn out, and maybe why it was all in bits in the first place Its bit of an average design. The white plastic bit just pushes again a tab on the catch to release it When the key is inserted and turned, it slides the rusty bit on the left across and engages and disengages the handle from moving the plastic bit. I removed and replaced the catch with the replacement (whilst reusing the original screws which with some copper grease still work fine), and refit the lease lever assembly. It is secured to the tailgate with a pair of M4 nuts and washers. I didn't have the originals so found some substitutes. Now the catch and lever works properly, but unfortunately the key is a different key. I don't have the original lock (or not that I could find) or I would swap the lock barrels. If I happen to come across it I'll swap them over. In the mean time it just means I have two of the same key on my keyring. It's also missing the central locking solenoid, which I may sort later. Whilst refitting I cleaned the number plate lenses and fit some LED bulbs like I fit to the EFI. The wire got a new terminal crimped on it. The car is getting more complete by the day. I did notice one slight potential issue for the future It JUST makes it to the entrance of the garage, but I havent tried to see if it clears the bump at the garage entrance yet. I might need to use some planks to get it in without slamming the spoiler. I'm not overly enjoying this low life, too much caution.

This is the VR conditioner i use on my board and works mint https://speeduino.com/shop/index.php?id_product=17&controller=product I use a mondeo sensor, PN 928F6C315A1F

Its been so darn hot recently that progress on the Vitesse has been slow. Because it is so hot though, I had to find out why the fan didn't come on the other day. I emailed the previous owner asking what he knew about the fan, and was advised that the power feed was wired to the coil and that I should check that. When I was diagnosing the starting issues and swapped the coil over I did notice a red wire that was just hanging around disconnected I connected it back up to the positive terminal on the coil. The terminal was very loose, no wonder it came off at some point. I squeezed the terminal to make it a really tight fit. With something as critical as a cooling fan, there is no room for failure like this. Once that was connected, I had to test the fan. I didn't want to sit around waiting for the engine to heat up, so the quickest way was to turn the ignition on, and set the Link to trigger the fan below ambient temp. Sure enough, as soon as it hit that temp, the fan whirred into life. Well, who would have guessed that the fan would be wired to the coil positive? Not me. I'm sure there are far better places to get switched 12v under the bonnet. Anyway, the fan works now. I reset the trigger temp to 92c as it was before, and during testing after a decent drive today I confirmed the fan does come on when it should. It moves a lot of air. Not as much as the viscous fan, but hopefully enough. Theres still a few random disconnected wires in the engine bay, which I have no idea what they go to, but everything else seems to be working. Its one of the downsides to dealing with someone else's bodges. On the EFI at least I know what all the wiring is for, because before I got it, everything was standard. Anything that was modified was done, and recorded, by me. The Vitesse has had some changes and additions done that I just don't know about. Time will tell what happens, I may end up ripping these mods (like the air horns) out and redoing it myself, or at least just tracing it back and making a record for the future. A couple of other small things I got around to doing was to lube the steering shaft bush and refit the driver's side glovebox. The steering bush is a common failure point on SD1s, and the one in the Vitesse has been replaced with a nice uprated Nolathane bush. This will last a lot longer than a standard rubber one, and it's stiffer leading to better feel. Unfortunately one downside to this is that the bush grips the shaft unless it has adequate lubrication, leading to a kinda sticky binding feeling when turning the wheel. The bush in question is the bright red one. I used a couple of sprays of my favourite lube. It's a synthetic spray that I have used many times for various jobs and it always works a treat. Its funny, the only reason I have and know about this stuff is that I found this can rolling around under the seat of one of my previous cars. Since I didn't need any further access down there, I refit the glovebox. It makes the car look and feel a lot more complete, and adds some nice refinement. Looking at it, i guess I'll need to remove and clean the damn thing now. It hangs down a bit too, need to see if there is an adjustment in the catch. I did find a cool business card when cleaning out the car. A google indicates they may not exist anymore. I like finding little trinkets from the cars past, especially from when it was in the UK. Another random trinket I found was this steering column cover with the original sticker still in place. Obviously the chances of ever seeing one of these stickers is almost zero, because the owner MUST remove the sticker. Clearly this owner was a rebel. So that's all the work I have done recently. These 30c days really slow down productivity, especially with the car outside and the risk of being turned into human jerky being so high. I still have some work to do very soon, like fixing the rear seat hinges and the tailgate latch. I have ordered valve cover gaskets and shifter bushes from the UK, so they should hopefully be here soon, and then I can take the car for a Warrant inspection and see if it passes, after being off the road since 2013. I have also done a couple of longer trips in the car to see if I can replicate the original fault, and so far despite covering around 60km (on private roads... ahem), 40km or so today, the fault hasn't shown up. Hopefully this means I have fixed it, but it may still pop up yet, only time will tell. I have noticed some other little things with the car since driving it more, like the rear suspension bottoming out over bumps, guess I'll need to keep that mad raked look by keeping the rears pumped up a bit more. Gosh its fun to drive though, staying at the speed limit is hard... the car just wants to push faster and faster. I don't know why, but 100kph feels so slow in the Vitesse, whilst in the EFI it's a nice cruising speed. New shocks and springs, guess I'll add that to the list of "things I wish I could afford".

The MX5 is like that, with no access from below, and the filter directly above the crossmember. Cunts. I put a small plastic bag over the filter and it kinda caught some of the oil as i spun it off. Still made a mess, just a little bit less.

Just a small update today; I got rid of the bonnet support broom. One of the differences between the Vitesse and EFI is that there were two methods of supporting the bonnet. First was the standard locking rod as seen at the top of this image. It's a rod attached to the bonnet that travels along a slot, and at the top of the slot is sort of like an upside down J. As the bonnet opens the rod moves up the slot and falls down into the hook of the J, locking the bonnet up and in place. To close the bonnet you lift the rod back into the main slot, and lower the bonnet. It's a nice simple, reliable system. It does mean you have to go to the passenger's side of the car every time you want to close the bonnet though. On the other hand, for some reason only known to BLMC, the Vitesse didn't get that simple system, it got a pair of gas struts at the front edge of the bonnet, which are designed to hold the bonnet open. They're great when they work, but mine didn't. This required the use of a trusty broom to stop the heavy steel bonnet caving my head in. Thankfully the previous owner had realised this was an issue and the car came with a pair of what he was told were good struts. Today I set about swapping them. It's actually not a hard job. Use trusty broom to hold the bonnet up, and then a pair of 13mm spanners to remove the nuts holding the struts in place. The struts came out easily once I managed to crack the nuts. I ended up sitting on the front guard and leaning in so I wouldn't kill my back. Low car life. The replacement struts went on with some copper grease on the threads so they can come off again in future. The old struts were so wasted that the oil had parted company with them, and you could compress them by hand. No wonder they didn't hold the big steel bonnet up. The replacement struts? They were good, which is great. They hold the bonnet up well, and although they groan a bit when lowering its a smooth action. And to celebrate? A hoon of course. One thing I noticed though, despite getting the engine nice and warm (a touch over 100c) the electric radiator fan didn't come on. I thought it was triggered by the Link ECU at about 92c, but maybe I'm reading it wrong. Need to look into that, don't want to cook it.

I dont do maths, i do real world experience.