kws

I never had issues with clutch action in my e36 but the rattle was there. Be careful changing diff ratio to auto as well, I left the auto diff in the e36 when converted to manual and it revved it’s nuts off at 100kph in 5th, although off the line it was like a cut cat.

Cheap chinese clone distributors in general seem to be causing widespread issues in the SD1 community. Thankfully the Vitesse has an original Lucas (haha, "thankfully") one and the EFI has the chinese one (being used only to drive the oil pump due to wasted spark coils but worked mint before that).

Also, i have a pair of what appears to be new old stock Monroe standard shocks. They are in mint condition, but i can compress and extend them by hand, albeit reasonably slowly. That doesnt seem normal to me? Theyre blue, but have no stickers or anything on them. They were in monroe boxes that were moisture damaged and i cant see any identifying model numbers.

Tried this with a pin but didnt work, will try with the tyre inflator tomorrow. No idea what brand the shocks are yet, so dont know what the specs for them are. They were dead empty when i got it. The tires are quite old. Not sure how long it was sitting in one place for, but you could very well be right since its rego has been on hold since 2013 and the fuel was varnish. Good tip on swapping the wheels over, will give it a try at some point. Its not too bad, but quite noticeable at lower speeds. The previous owner tried swapping the whole dizzy, but as i have that spare dizzy in the parts box without a cap and rotor i do suspect he swapped those parts over, thus carrying the fault with it. The rotor physically looks normal, so no idea how its failed. He has said that the actual fault is intermittent, and the starting issue wasnt the actual fault he had (apparently the starting issue happened only recently). I knew it had a different fault, where the car will begin to misfire after a period of time until you cannot give it any throttle, but im 90% sure i replicated it yesterday and it hasnt happened again today since replacing the rotor. I need to keep testing it and then head down for a WOF check to see what i need to do.

Nope, I couldn't help myself. I had to take the Vitesse for a somewhat decent drive. It roars, it pop, it bangs and it crackles. Its everything I ever wanted in an SD1, and it's so much fun to hoon around in. I'm getting used to shifting with hopes and dreams, and boy does the engine pack a solid midrange punch. The EFI is nice to waft along in, but this is like riding a feral animal. Still no sign of the misfire, so hopefully something I have done may have fixed it. Need to keep testing, but need to be careful with no reg/wof. I took some quick photos whilst I was out. Excuse the dirt, still haven't had a chance to clean her; it's been all go go go. I also need to work out how to lower the rear shocks that I pumped up the other day

I like that car, but nah, gotta have that unique RV8 sound.

The past couple of days have been busy, trying to get the Vitesse to start. The starting issue was starting to bug me. The answer should have been obvious but nothing I did was making any difference, so I changed tact. The first job was to change the fuel filter. The old one was date stamped 2007, and although it's been off the road a lot since then it's been full of stale fuel for most of that time. Speaking of stale fuel, since the fuel lines were disconnected I tried to drain as much as I could out of the system. Initially it was coming through as dark amber and stank like varnish. Today I added another 20L of 98 octane to the tank, so kept flushing the line until it actually smelt like petrol, and the colour was much clearer. I noticed after cranking that my ground lead from the battery was getting warm, indicating high resistance. I happened to have another spare, so swapped that over, now it doesn't get warm. The old one was looking very rough. When cranking I had noticed the Link hand controller was showing huge spikes in the cranking RPM. Now obviously this isn't possible, the engine cranks at 100rpm or so. This indicated that there was an issue with the pick up in the distributor, it wasnt giving a clean signal. I ended up actually removing the whole pickup (remove dist cap, rotor and clear plastic cover, remove the two cylinder shaped nuts with slots in them) and cleaning it. There is a spec to refitting and setting the air gap, but I couldn't be bothered finding it so I just set the pick up as close to the rotor as I could, which still leaves a decent air gap. The work resulted in a nice solid 100RPM when cranking. It wasnt the issue, but at least I eliminated a potential cause of issues for the future. Another issue presented its self though, the battery was struggling with all the cranking. My spare battery was still on charge, so what do I do? Well, Rover to the rescue! Other work I did was to test for spark, which I seemed to be getting from both the coil and spark plugs. I tried another coil just in case, but it also didn't help. In order to eliminate the fuel system as the issue I grabbed some Start Ya Bastard and sprayed it into the intake, to which it made no difference. No spluttering, no popping, nothing. Well, it's spark then. I whipped all the plugs out again just to make sure they weren't flooded, and let them air out. I refitted them, swapped the distributor cap back to the original one, and tried again. No change. In one last mad attempt before I rage quit, since I had the EFI bonnet open, I decided to try swapping the distributor rotor between the cars. I'll be damned, the Vitesse fired straight up on the first turn. Was it a fluke?! Nope, it now starts every time, on the button So the starting issue appears to have been a combo of a bad distributor rotor, and stale fuel. Of course now that it starts and runs well I couldn't NOT take it for a hoon up the road and back.... and what a noise! Theres some shaking through the steering wheel, and the engine is a bit smoky, but otherwise it seems to be running and driving well. No signs yet of the misfire that I replicated the other day either. One issue that did show up badly when driving was just how bad the shifter is. It's all over the show, almost like it's not even attached to the gearbox. I removed the console trim and boots to have a look at the shifter remote, and sure enough the whole remote is flopping about. You can see it in the video. There should be a series of bushes holding the remote in place, but as far as I could see mine are all missing. This is the remote, it's a bit that sticks out the back of the gearbox with the shift lever and linkages on it The bushes that I can see missing are on the bolts at the bottom of the picture, on the bit of metal sticking down. The way the remote moves also indicates that the bushes on the bolts where the remote meets the gearbox (on left in photo) are worn or missing too. Rimmers sells replacements made of a more durable material for about $68..... plus postage. There are cheaper options on eBay, so will go that way. Hopefully once I replace them I should have a nice solid shifter. Its funny, both of the manual Vitesse that I have driven had this same issue. So that's another day, and another (major) issue resolved. Now I can work on tidying the car up, and replacing things like the badly leaking valve cover gaskets. I should probably also find out if it's too low to get into my garage....

Thanks guys. I have somewhat become addicted to these silly lumps of British metal. My EFI is still a gorgeous car, but the sound the Vitesse makes is just an eargasm. And no, wasnt too bothered by mechanical issues. Its easier to get a whole Rover V8 than to find Vitesse interior bits, so thats a huge relief.

As usual, I don't mess around when I get a new car. It was time to see what I had. Update - The Car Page for the Vitesse is now up. Check it out for more details. Having the car delivered so late at night I didn't really get a chance to give it a good look, or unload any of the parts that were in it. In the light of day, she still looked great The first task of the day was to unload everything from the back. It was packed to the roof with spare parts. Out came the doors, which were on top. Well packed, and well protected. There are a complete set of four doors here, and either they are new old stock, or have been well looked after and stored because they are in very good condition with only surface rust on them. No signs of paint though. With the doors out it was time to start pulling all the boxes of everything else out Theres a lot of parts, including two mostly complete EFI inlet manifolds and plenums, some shocks, some lights and window regulators. Also most of the original parts that were on the car at various times, like the intake and original fan. Oh and who could forget, a complete spare D suffix LT77 gearbox With the car empty now, the true condition of the boot carpeting was revealed. It's not had a good life this boot. The bottom carpet is missing, but there is a tide mark up the side carpets and it appears it's had a lot of oil or something spilled all through it. The top carpet is badly stained also. I'll give it all a good wet vac and hopefully it'll come up better but I may need to source replacements for some of it. The good news is the boot floor itself looks nice and solid (albeit blue, not black...). In the meantime I gave the interior a good vacuum to get the rubbish, and unfortunately, the mouse turds out. The car doesn't smell like mice like GRU did but there is mouse poo everywhere. Also found in the boot was this little Schrader valve. It links to the two rear shocks, and sure enough, when I put air into it the rear of the car raised up, so they still work. The car has had a towbar before (and will again) so must have had the load levelling shocks added to tow heavy stuff Now that I could put the rear seat back up I was pleasantly surprised at the condition of the fabric. It has no tears and little to no wear. The Vitesse has bespoke fabric, so getting replacements wouldn't be fun. The front seats have had seat covers on for as long as the previous owner could remember, and he never checked under them to see what the seat under it was like. I didn't like the covers, as the fluffy wool is just too "old man" for the racy Vitesse, so off they came. So, what were the seats like under them? Perfect. There is one little mark on the driver's seat but otherwise no wear. I'm very happy. You can also see the more aggressive seat bolsters. Compared to the VDP, it makes the VDP seats feel like flat benches. Since I was in the interior already I had to have a nosy at the Link ECU The wiring isn't the cleanest I have seen, but apparently it worked I removed the Link and opened it up to see if I could identify the model, as some of the later ones could be tuned by computer. This isn't one of them I removed the board and noticed it has had a serious failure in the past. One of the injector tracks on the board was completely burnt out. Its been fixed, along with the couple of other little sections, but still doesn't give confidence. The Link will stay for now, as if I can get it running it's a good option, but if I cant get it running properly then i'll need to see what my other options are. Moving along, I wanted to see if any of the basics could help with the starting issue. Check out that engine, now with added structural supporting broom. First I added 10L of 98 octane fuel, and a bottle of injector cleaner to the tank. Its been sitting for ages, so it's likely the old fuel has gone off. Then I replaced all the spark plugs. The old plugs were jet black and smelled of varnish, not a good sign. They were the correct BPR6ES though. I also replaced the distributor cap, coil and injector resistor pack. I checked and the fuel pump is operating, despite sounding a bit odd. None of these helped, it's still really hard to start. When it does start though, it makes some awesome noises. https://youtu.be/z2RaIiziFsA I'm thinking the issue could be the pickup in the distributor, or an issue with the locked out timing. In order for the Link to control the ignition advance the mechanical and vacuum advance in the distributor have been locked in place, I'm wondering if this is moving and throwing the timing out. I'll need to remove the distributor and have a look. Theres still more work to be done.

Well i'm a bit special. Not only do I still have the VDP EFI, now i seem to have picked up another disease/SD1. So, Number 50 has finally landed. It was a hard decision, what is special enough to be my 50th car? Well, the answer kinda fell into my lap, and then the ball got rolling very quickly. The other day I was just browsing the usual Rover SD1 Facebook group, seeing what's what in the world of old British Metal, and one of the fellow Kiwis (who also follows this blog) commented on the photo with I half jokingly said And from there, he sent me a direct message and well, a week later this arrived Number 50, is a 1984 Rover SD1 Vitesse. It's a good solid base, the body is straight and the paint is pretty good. The interior, except the boot, is tidy, and the engine has receipts for some serious work done in the past. It's still running the 3.5L V8 like the VDP EFI, but it's backed up with a manual cog swapper. Receipts indicate that it's had an engine rebuild in the past, and is fitted with a Hurricane cam (good for an extra 20hp apparently, and doesn't run out of puff in the top end). The previous owner fitted a Link LEM G1 and had it tuned, along with Jag injectors (higher output), a cold air intake, and a full exhaust with headers. Needless to say it sounds utterly amazing. Of course it's not all roses, and I knew this going into it. The reason I was offered the car was that the car has been off the road since 2013 because it developed a running issue, where it would run fine for a bit and then start to badly misfire, to the point you cannot touch the accelerator or it dies. The previous owner tried a lot of things to identify and fix the issue but couldn't get to the bottom of it. Thus the car has just been sitting around gathering dust. Being an avid fan of fixing SD1s, I jumped at the chance to save this beast and bring it back up to scratch. Unfortunately recently it's also developed another issue.... it doesn't like to start. This posed a rather annoying issue trying to unload the car from the trailer. We were almost at the point of pushing it off the trailer, up the hill and into the drive, but thankfully it stumbled into life and I managed to drive it off. Visibility out the rear was a little limited The car was packed to the roof with more spares to add to my collection So that's the story of how I acquired Number 50. Its going to be a long project to get the car back up to scratch, but I'm looking forward to it. The goal is to have both of my SD1s at British Car Day, and then if the Vitesse is pleasing me enough I might move the VDP EFI onto a new owner. Big thanks to Brent at Classic Towing for transporting the car down the island for me, and making it happen a week earlier than planned (thanks other guy that bailed from having his car transported, opening up space for my car). Tell me how stupid I am here,

Yeah, i'm a sucker for punishment.

+6 on Fusion. Its free, its powerful and easy to use. I use it for the odd project on my cars (im printing a custom cup holder for my Sd1 right behind me as i speak, that i made in fusion)

I’ve just picked up a new car with an old Link LEM G1 and hand controller. Who thought it was a good idea to tune cars with a calculator? looks like another speeduino or mega squirt will be on the cards.

Lol I wasn’t aware they didn’t need to work so I spent considerable effort making them work on the sd1 only for it not to be checked at wof time. Ah well.

Aww bye JFN666

I ended up grabbing a set of Evacut HSS bits from Bunnings and they worked a treat. Clearly the Repco ones are chinesium, and softer than cheese. I even managed to actually pretzel one. Never done that before, usually they snap, not bend 90 degrees

Much to the relief of my wife, I finally got around to fixing the hand brake. Way back when I got my last warrant for the Rover the car rewarded me by breaking the hand brake cable when I got home. Ever since, I have been parking using just the auto transmission parking pawl to hold the car in place. A parking pawl is a physical lock on the output shaft in the transmission. When you place the car into "Park" it triggers a mechanism that locks into a ring, stopping it from spinning. They are pretty strong and will happily hold the weight of the car as long as they aren't abused. Usually the output shaft will need to rotate slightly for the pawl to line up, which means the car will roll or rock until the pawl locks up. Obviously if you are parked on a hill, and just let it slam into place over and over there is a chance that it will break, so I would carefully ease off the brake to slowly let the car roll until it locked. They also make a horrible noise if you engage the pawl in a car being towed along the road. Oh to be young and dumb again. My wife wasn't a big fan of the car moving when I parked, as it was a bit unnerving. I ordered a replacement cable and fittings from Rimmers on the day it broke, so I have had it here for a few weeks now just waiting to fit. My Wife went overseas for work shortly after the parts arrived, and I didn't want to be under the car with no one home, so I chose to wait for her to return. Now that she is back, I tackled the broken cable. The SD1 hand brake, like most things on the car, was a bit less than conventional compared to other cars. A lot of cars have the hand brake lever pull on a pair of cables, one to each rear wheel. Not the Rover, the Rover has one cable running from the lever to the RH rear wheel, and then a "Compensator" on the rear axle housing which pulls on another cable that goes to the LH rear wheel. This cable from the compensator to the LH rear wheel is what had broken, but it knocks the whole system out when it breaks. I had used some zip ties to hold the broken cable up against the axle housing as it hung down otherwise You can clearly see the broken strands of wire in the above photo. It appears the plastic sleeve that is meant to be present on the wire is long gone, and the wire has just rusted through. It probably didn't help that everything under the car is coated in an underseal, including the cable. I'm used to working on small cars recently, so had to shuffle my garage mess around to fit the Rover in, and then I had to get it high. Real high. I actually ended up moving the axle stands from the rear axle to the rear lifting points in front of the wheels as this gave me more height and it was easier to run the handbrake cable with the axle hanging down. This is the compensator. It should be pointing to the left, not right The cable shoots off up under the car to the front, where it meets the hand brake lever The cables are held to the rear drum levers with a pin and washer. A split pin holds it in place. I forgot to arrange new split pins so had to reuse mine, but I'll replace them next time the car is in the air. Typically the left side was missing its washer, and the split pin is undersized for the job. The right hand has a split boot, which I replaced. Remove the split pins and the metal pin will push out, allowing you to remove the cables from the levers The compensator needs to be removed from the axle housing. It's a nut and bolt setup, with the nut hidden behind the bracket. A spanner is needed to hold the nut in place. To completely remove the cable for replacement you also need to disconnect it from the hand brake lever up the front. I don't have photos of this because it was a super messy and tight job to do, but there is a large rubber boot that needs to be removed. I found it's easiest to work your fingers in under the boot near where the cable enters it, and then work your way around. The boot has a lip that goes over a metal frame on the body. Once the boot is off it's just another metal pin with a split pin holding it in place. Remove those and the cable will be free. There should be two clips holding the cable to the axle housing, and then you can remove it. With the cable off the car the boot and compensator need to be swapped over to the new cable. The boot just pulls free, it has a grommet in the end that stays on the cable. The compensator has a 10mm nut/bolt setup that you need to remove to split the two halves. Mine was rusted together, so needed some persuasion with a chisel to split. My fulcrum pin and bushes are looking a tad flogged too, but I had already ordered replacements of both when I ordered the cable I slathered the compensator in copper grease, and the bushes in rubber grease and refit to the new cable I backed the adjusters right off, and refit the cable. The trick to setting this up correctly is to follow the workshop manual exactly. Start by reconnecting the front of the cable to the hand brake lever, with all the adjusters backed right off. Run the cable, and then mount the compensator to the axle. Do not attach the RH side of the cable to the drum, start with the LH side cable. Run it over the axle housing Connect the left hand fork end to the lever, and adjust the cable (which can be done with the fork attached) so that the lever is in the off position and the compensator is 30 degrees from vertical when viewed from the rear of the car. This is a critical setting to having the cable in adjustment. Now connect the right hand fork to the lever, and "take up the slack in the inner cable by pulling the outer cable rearward until the lever just moves". Screw the rearmost adjustment nut (up by the front hand brake lever) up to the bracket (and remember there should be a metal plate between the nut and bracket) and then one complete turn. Wind up the lock nuts and tighten. According to the manual the wheels should be just free from binding on the first notch, and locked solid with the lever on the third notch when pulled. Mine might be a little tight, I can feel some drag on the first notch, but it locks hard on the third. I presume the cable will stretch a little and will need some more adjustment soon anyway. The old cable must have been an issue for a while as the adjustment on that had been set to take up heaps of slack, whilst the new cable is only at the start of the thread. So, that is how you replace and adjust an SD1 hand brake cable. It's a shitty job to do without a hoist, but it can be done and it's pretty straightforward really. Now the car holds on hills, both wheels hold, and the hand brake can over power the idle creep of the transmission. Great success, it's good to have a working hand brake again.

Owning a Rover SD1 means accepting that you will always have something to fix. I'm a couple of days behind posting, thanks to near constant work on the Rover and MX5, but here we are. On the weekend I decided to uncover the Rover so that I could use it, as the MX5 warrant was due to expire. I have booked the MX5 in for its warrant check, but its a couple of weeks until I can get it done. In the meantime the Rover will get all the use. Of course being an SD1 I couldn't just pull it out and drive it, no, I had to fix it first. Last time I drove it I noticed it rewarded me by leaking coolant from the expansion tank hose at the radiator, and the fuel hose on the fuel filter was once again causing me grief and cracking. The expansion tank hose is an easy fix. I knew this was going to need replacing as I noticed ages ago that it was cracking on the ends and swelling. More of my lovely coolant spilled. Damn this car has a thing for coolant. So I didn't have to drain the expansion tank I just undid the two screws and raised it up so the coolant was below the outlet Undo two hose clamps and off comes the hose. Remember to remove the coolant cap first if you havent done so recently, or the system may still have pressure, as I found out; it makes a mess. Take a lot of care removing and refitting hose to the plastic bottle, as the hose barb can be very brittle and breaks off if you're too rough. Then you're in a world of pain. I did originally buy some 8mm ID "coolant overflow" hose, but when fitting it occurred to me that the damn system is under pressure, as it's not an overflow tank but an expansion tank, so overflow hose is useless. The hose needs to hold pressure. It looked weird anyway, too narrow. I didn't have any spare coolant hose on hand so used some of my favourite excess "R9" rated fuel hose It fits perfect and looks the part. I figure that unlike the fuel system if the hose does fail on here, I have a coolant level warning light that should give me some chance of killing the engine before going too far, and it's not going to spray fuel everywhere and burn me to the ground. The old hose was well passed it. Very soft, swollen and cracked Speaking of cracked. FML, I'm sick of replacing fuel hose now. This hose has been on the car less than 4 months. I gave up on this hose as its rubbish, and went and purchased some proper branded hose from a local retailer. Unfortunately I can't source 7.6mm hose locally, so had to settle for 7.9mm. This is R9 EFI rated (as the crap hose should be) and made by Codan in Denmark. This was available, on the shelf per meter from Supercheap Auto. So with more fuel poured all over the place, on went the new hose. It fits quite well, but does need harder clamping pressure to seal tightly. No leaks, and by golly I hope it's the last time I have to do those hoses. In order to satisfy my own curiosity I carefully sliced the old hose so I could see how far the cracking went I couldn't see any of the cracking extending into the inner layer of rubber (the marks you see in the photo are from the knife), but the whole outer layer was trashed. I'm not sure if it would be a matter of time for the cracks to work their way into the inner layer, or if they stop there. I would rather just not find that out tbh. Whilst in the engine bay I also fixed another source of my coolant loss. When I fitted my Speeduino I chose the wrong bolt to mount the CPS wiring bracket to. The bolt I chose goes right into a coolant gallery and never sealed properly with the bracket on the bolt. Whenever I shut the car down it would drop a single drip onto the belts. I knew about this for a while but since the leak was so minor I chose to leave it until I needed to actually add more coolant, and since I lost some from the expansion hose, the time was now. I whipped the bolt out, removed the bracket and screwed the bolt back in. I moved the bracket to the bolt above, and problem solved. That bracket is looking a bit shabby now, so I might look into designing and 3d printing a new one. I scored a couple of other good parts from the Whanganui haul, including a pair of decent shape chrome grille strips. My one was painted black by the previous owner, and before British Car Day I used chrome tape to make it shine again. Its nice from far, but far from nice. It did the job. They are held to the grille with three screws, and if they aren't broken off, a clip on each end It needs a good polish, but already it looks noticeably better Another thing I got from the haul was a pair of the series 1 indicator lenses. I wanted to see what they were like. Three screws and off came my orange lens I knew the series 1 indicators fitment in the series 2 housing was a bit meh, but it was pretty bad. I think it looked good though. The clear suits my light Zircon Blue. I'm not a fan of the fitment, so I went back to the standard orange lenses. I'll have a think and see if there is any way to make it fit better. The last part I wanted to fit for the day was the replacement door seal I picked up. Mine was quite badly torn at the bottom rear, and no longer fit correctly, leaving a large gap at the top. To remove the seal you need to remove the lower sill kick plate. Theres a series of screws the remove. Only the inner section needs to be removed. I had to loosen off a screw on the B pillar And remove a screw at the bottom of the B pillar The seal pulls out. I refit the replacement seal, and reassembled the car. The replacement seal isn't perfect either, but its a mile better than my old one. Theres obviously a difference in how worn out my seal was too, as now the driver's door is a little harder to close but seals a lot tighter. There is a noticeable reduction in wind noise too. Oh yeah, my yellow bulbs for the fog lamps arrived, so i fitted those too. They aren't too yellow, more subtle than your usual yellow lens yellow light. I finished the day with a quick drive and some photos And then a lovely drive out to the south coast to watch the sunset with the Wife. Discuss.

I was going to try that but found one random silver drill bit in my cabinet, which managed to cut 3/4 of the way through before snapping. Off to bunnings to buy some more Guess the repco ones arent worth the rubbish bin.

i have good access to it under the car, so i guess i could. What benefit is annealing it to removal?

I need to drill out a stud in my exhaust so I can fix a leaky flange (big fuck you mazda for using a pressed in stud instead of a nut and bolt). My cheap drill bits don’t even scratch it. Where can I get good drill bits (without paying a fortune) and what should I look for? Mine were just a cheap set of HSS (allegedly) ones from repco. Needs to be done on car with a cordless drill so no fancy drill press.

Its taken a while but im finally repping.

I have sikaflex 227, is that a seam sealer? Sort of looks like it is but I’m guessing there are a lot of different types. im not certain if I’ll use the original wing or make a replica to use on the car. Guess it depends on how good I am at fibreglassing.

A sticking trip counter that won't reset is a common "feature" of the SD1, and one that I'm keen to fix on my car. Handily a spare speedo cluster was one of the parts I picked up on the weekend. This also had the sticky trip counter, so I decided to practice on this and if it works well then when I remove my cluster to swap the better lens over, I'll fix my cluster too. Heres the willing victim, legit Smiths gauges You can see the lens although dirty is generally in good shape with only small marks on it. My current one was "marked" at the 60MPH/100KPH mark; obviously the previous owner had issues seeing the open road speed Removing the lens is easy enough once the gauge is out, so working on the spare cluster, I removed the four screws and off came the lens Another four screws and off comes the front surround These four little nuts are the only things holding the speedo into the housing. Remove these (and take care of the little washers behind them) and the dial will pop out the front This is the reset mech. The white lever gets pushed down by the button when you press it, which moves the little gears away from the numbers I pulled the needle and dial face off so I could investigate the internals more and understand why it isn't resetting Button not pressed Button pressed At this point all the numbers should spring to zero. Clearly it isn't working. On a whim I tried spraying some silicone spray onto the mechanism, and bam, everything freed up and suddenly it all worked like it should. The numbers all popped to zero Now, obviously it's a lack of lubrication in the mechanism that is binding it all together and making it stop working. I suspect that if you're careful and drop a couple of drops of oil into the mech you may not even need to remove the needle and face. This is promising, next I'll try on my real cluster and see if I can fix it. Moving along, whilst here I removed the tacho to see why my one seems to show signs of dry solder joints. It worked occasionally, and when it didn't a swift whack on the top of the dash would bring it back to life. It'd be nice to reconnect, fix it and have it working again. Three screws on the rear and out the dial comes. Woo, 8 cylinder I suspect this little board, being the only place with solder on it, is the source of my issues Its stuck down with some double-sided tape, which I cut through with a razor. The solder is only on the top of the board, not through hole. There isn't much room to work, but I suspect if im careful I should be able to clean up and resolder the joints on the board. That's where I'm at for now. I'll need to remove my cluster and do some work to it, now that I have an idea of what im doing. Good start.

Thats not what they are making it sound like, theyre trying to make it all personal like the big bad companies are trying to screw the employees. http://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=104871