kws

I couldn’t help myself, I had to do some more digging on the bike and see what’s what. First port of call tonight was to remove the battery and see if it could be charged. Seat off, and out came the battery. Before taking it out though, I had to connect a jump pack and see what happened. The good news is that it didn’t burst into flames, and when the key is turned the dash lights come on. The bad news is the fuel pump is making some ugly noises. The battery is dead dead though, the charger didn’t even recognise that a battery was connected. Will need to look for a cheap replacement. Since the seat was off…. it was only another couple of screws to remove the side trims for further digging (battery on the floor is the new one for the Fit, since that packed a sad the other day) Taking these trims off allowed me access to some critical things. One of which is the radiator. It wouldn’t be an automobile of mine if it didn’t spill coolant on the ground…. This was great news though, it’s filled with sweet sweet green coolant, not rusty water. Mean. One of the other things it revealed, was the rust on the frame. Its ugly. Very ugly, but thankfully even with some hard-core digging and scraping with a screwdriver, it’s all solid metal. No holes. It will need to be stripped back, rust killed, prepped and painted though. This bike sat for 4 years, outside, in a suburb near the ocean. Surface rust is to be expected I guess. I got a good view of the carbs and surrounding area. Its filthy and has some surface rust in various places, but should tidy up. The carb manifold joins are cracking though. First real view of the sweet four banger Hard to believe this is an oil filter….. Some more good news, is that the gear selector has freed up a bit, and I can now drop it down into first gear and pop back into neutral, and the lever now springs back how it should. The stand also springs a bit freer too. Good old WD40, working magic. I’ll try to remove and drain the fuel tank tomorrow. I want to try get the engine running before I go too much further, but I don’t know what to do with the carbs. They will be full of old stale fuel and varnish. I will need to rebuild them, but I don’t want to go to that effort and cost until I know the engine runs. I’ll grab some oil and a filter tomorrow and get that gross old scum out of the engine. At least then I know that’s good.

So this is what happens when I’m on Trademe at midnight…. I accidentally the whole motorcycle. Yup, once again trademe is to blame for this. This had been on my watchlist since it was listed, with a low start reserve. When it came to the day it was closing, and the bidding was still really low, I couldn’t help but watch and see what happened. Sure enough, being midnight, no one was around to bid. One person had set an autobid, so once I exceeded that, it was mine. The photos showed a complete bike, and one that didn’t actually look bad. The seller had this to say I had a skid on this and got spooked, so it ended up sitting in the yard until the registration lapsed. It’s was running when I parked it up, but has been sitting so long now it’s probably only good for parts. So, so sad So yes, the rego is lapsed, and it hasn’t been on the road for 4 years. Apparently it last ran 2 years ago, but not since. It’s also been sitting outside this whole time, and it’s taken its toll. This is the photo that caught my eye It’s a pretty cool looking bike. So, what is it? It’s a 1993 Yamaha FZX250 Zeal. It’s a JDM only (except for a few late-model ones released new into the Aus market) high revving four-cylinder, four-stroke bike. It has about 40hp, 6 gears, and a slightly more upright, relaxed riding position. Despite what my better half says, it’s a fairly small bike but should suit me well. I finally had the bike transported from another suburb, to my house today. I couldn’t do it myself as my only car with a towbar was the S401 and that’s now gone. The transporter was very good, and kept me updated on when it was picked up And when it was delivered (since I was at work) I came home after work and after getting it into the garage, had a good poke around it. The first issue was immediately obvious; either the front, rear, or even both, brakes are seized and binding. This makes it a real dog to push around. I got there though Cosmetically, it’s not bad. Some paint fade, some scuffs and scratches, and a badly torn rear seat are the bulk of it. Theres also some surface corrosion, and general grot (and lots of spider webs and spiders) A quick check of the basics was in order. Oil? Check. Black and thick, but it has some. Front brake fluid? Check, it has some, but it’s gross. Rear brake fluid? Check. Also has some, but a spider tried to come at me bro when I went to take the cap off. I presume it’s also gross. Coolant? I saw something sloshing around in the bottle, so I guess so. Fuel? Once I freed up the lock on the cap, and pried that open, yes, its half full of the most rancid smelling petrol ever. Will turn it into a 50:50 new:old mix for the mower. Free fuel, and better than disposing of it. The Mustang will love it. The tank opening had some rust (and grot), as did the cap. It’ll clean up OK though. I can’t see much inside the tank, but the fuel wasnt obviously full of flakes of rust, and what I could see in there appeared to be nice clean metal. Hopefully it’s not all rusty. Unfortunately the front forks will need rebuilding too. One seal is completely buggered, the other is leaking, and the forks are really soft. Once I worked out how to get the seat off (key on the side. Turn it one way and the helmet holder slides open and closed, turn it the other and the rear seat pops up. One 8mm bolt to release the front seat) I opened it up and checked the wiring and battery. Battery is flatter than a flat thing. Will try reviving it with my charger, but it’s likely toast now. The clutch lever has a lot of play, and doesn’t seem to be disengaging the clutch. The lever looks like its been rotated forward too. The plan? Drain and replace ALL fluids. Recondition/replace front and rear braking system (hoses appear OK, no swelling or cracking) Free up clutch and gearing Rebuild forks Remove, strip and rebuild carbs Drain and inspect fuel tank Replace fuel filter Replace spark plugs I want to try to fire it up sooner rather than later, so I can check that the engine isn’t complete junk, so I wont be doing it in any real order. Brakes, fluids and fuel will be the priority. It should be a nice rewarding project. Eventually I’ll get it back on the road, legally, and enjoy winding that engine up to the 15,000rpm redline. First things first though, I need to tidy up Scooty and get that sold.

Yeah the 14point7 stuff is pretty good. My Spartan2 has been doing a solid job to tuning the Rover.

Damn this is a great idea.

Finally, another thing that’s been bothering me, fixed. I started prepping the washer bottle the other day, and today I finished it. My painting skills leave a lot to be desired, but its a whole lot better than it was. The rust converter left a fairly rough surface, even after some prep work, maybe the metal was pitted? The new strap from the club fits and looks great. Bit of a difference? I forgot to take a photo of the new brass radiator fill plug I fitted, so here it is From this old plastic one that always felt like it was going to cross thread and strip when fitting To a nice brass one which screws in smooth as butter These stickers came in the other day, so one went on the car. Jolly good.

Noted. Will try copy pasta into posts. Hopefully the image links dont die.

Sigh. This car must have the cleanest coolant of any car – ever. I replaced the water pump today. The old one started leaking from the weep hole, indicating that an internal seal had failed. I’m not overly sad about having to replace it. Someone badly painted it black at some point and it was bloody ugly. It wasnt in good shape anyway. Since the car was already in the garage overnight, the first step was to drop the coolant. Again. It seems like this car gets new coolant every month or so. I caught most of it this time, with minimal spillage. Wish they had added a drain plug to the radiator when they reconditioned it. Yes that’s coolant on the grille and valance…. The coils had to be moved out of the way so I could take the tension off the alt belt to remove it. Thankfully someone smart built the coil bracket and it moves out of the way easily with only two bolts. The fan was also removed. Then it was a matter of undoing all the bolts, and removing the pump. Thankfully someone in the past had used grease and copper grease on all the bolts, and all of them came out ok, not a single one broke. Guess I don’t need the Ez-Out set that I purchased last night. It wasnt a pretty sight. Badly painted The reason im replacing it. The weep hole. Looks like it was an original Leyland part. Maybe it was rebuilt years ago? This hose outlet has been weeping since I got the car. Even with the brand new hoses. This is why, it’s got a horrific buildup on it. I tried to wire brush some of this off last time I had the hose off, and got no where. The insides don’t look much better. Some weird crusty stuff inside it And compared to the new pump The new pump is much nicer to look at, and it spins smoother too, so maybe the bearings on the old one were starting to go. The replacement pump has a shorter snout than the old one, so the fan will sit slightly further away from the radiator The front cover of the engine looked pretty good. No buildup and only slight discolouration. I swapped over the pulley, with all new bolts and washers And then a fail. I forgot to fit this bolt, and it wont go through the hole with the pulley on. Oops These are the PN for the pulley bolts and washers. 3x each So I didn’t lose track of where the bolts go (even though in the end it didn’t matter as its pretty obvious), I traced the pump onto some paper and laid the bolts out as I removed them Water pump came with a new gasket, which I fitted with a thin smear of sealant on each side Now this is where it gets annoying. I ordered all the bolts as per the parts guide, and even though I ordered more than the quantity needed, I still didn’t have everything I needed. Maybe I mucked up, who knows. I needed 5x BH505441, which are the really long bolts Somehow I ended up with 2x slightly shorter bolts too, which were useless. I needed 5x SH504091, the shorter bolts I also needed standard flat washers for each short bolt, which somehow I completely missed. This wasn’t an issue as I ended up just reusing all the washers as they were in good shape. A couple of the long bolts have weird, really thick washers too, which don’t show in the parts guide. There was one bolt at the top of the water pump which is a different size to all the others. Its short, but 5/16″. I think it might be 254020 in the guide, but Rimmers doesn’t list it. I reused mine, but you would be buggered if you broke it off. The newly fitted pump looks awesome. So much nicer. With the shorter snout I chose to try the “correct” fan, that wouldn’t fit with the other pump. Looks good, but dammit, the bloody thing has a stuffed clutch. Locks when cold. So I had to swap back to the other one, which I will now stay with. I can trust and rely on it. Its a bit colder than I would like to run, but i have set the Speeduino up to compensate. I’ll change to an electric fan at some point anyway. Since the coolant was out again, I chose now to loop the coolant lines for the throttle body. I don’t need the coolant “hot spot” anymore. Apparently its there to stop the throttle plate freezing over, but there are other theories about it helping fuel atomization when cold too. Either way, I’ll let Speeduino do what it needs to do, without warm air being added in after the IAT. It was easy to do, remove one hose, and loop the other into the inlet manifold. Also, since I found the source of the intake drone, I refitted the air inlet trumpet All buttoned back up and ready to go I finally got to drive the car again, to bleed the system and get it up to temp. God its good to drive this car, I love it. The last tune we did was really good, it pulls like a freight train and drives very smooth. System bled OK, heater is hot, and coolant temp is stable. Its holding all its coolant for the most part. I noticed that the long bolt that goes into a coolant gallery is weeping, so I’ll need to get some sealant on that one. I did find come up against the infamous Rover SD1 engine ground issue though. When trying to start the car, it would act like it had a flat battery, despite it being a new battery and even adding a jump pack to it. I remembered hearing about another SD1 owner that had a grounding issue and mentioned that their throttle cable ended up being the main engine ground and melted. Sure enough, the cable was warm to the touch. Dammit, the main cable was attached, on both ends, and obviously still wasn’t good. Back when I fitted the coil bracket, I moved the ground strap to one of the bolts on the alternator bracket, and it was working fine. I loosened it off, gave it a wiggle, did it up again, and bam, the car started. Guess I’ll need to look at that at some point, maybe even add another ground just in case. Oh well, its working again now. Typical Rover. Oh, and just as a little teaser…

Replaced the water pump. Car is running great again. I love this car, its so damn good. http://www.tasteslikepetrol.net/2017/04/rover-sd1-water-pump-replacement/

And we're back into it http://www.tasteslikepetrol.net/2017/04/rover-sd1-back-into-it/

Lol at just parking the little digger precariously on the mount of dirt.

Thats a sweet sounding bike. Tachos a bit wobbly though

More good times. Theres always something. http://www.tasteslikepetrol.net/2017/04/rover-sd1-unconventional-solutions/

Did some work on ye olde scootee http://www.tasteslikepetrol.net/2017/03/scooty-puff-jr-small-fixes/

Took the Rover out for a Rove today, its driving really well, with only minor hiccups every now and then. Still some ironing out to do in the tune. On the other hand, i filled up today. Spotted this in the owners manual and had a lol Clearly BLMC had some sense of humor back then.

Did some more work on my tune, and fixed a couple of issues. http://www.tasteslikepetrol.net/2017/03/speeduino-rover-sd1-quirky-tuning/

hahaha, those battery "terminals" are amazing. Sounds like progress is happening quickly.

My Rover is old school as fuck, it just runs a big resistor on the power feed to the pump, to drop the voltage. Its factory like that, and apparently to reduce noise, lol.

I would have thought this would be he best way to run it. Return to tank, and a separate overflow back the tank. *not my image, but makes sense. Hot fuel goes back to tank and doesnt go anywhere near surge.

In other news, i made a quick enquiry on the Uk Rover SD1 forum about how i could find more info of my car from its couple of years in the UK before it was imported. This is what one of the members came back with. Now im going to contact the UK DVLA as apparently they can provide details on previous owners. Would be awesome to know where it was originally sold, and to whom. Ill be looking at making some display plates up of the original rego too, just for the hell of it.

Did some cruising today, what a bloody stunning day it was too. Went and helped a fellow Rover club member with his SD1. Unfortunately it looks like his ECU may have issues, will have to do some more digging and make a plan of action. Mine is running bloody spot on, still some work to be done on the acceleration enrichment though, it just seems to be a constant sore point where i cant seem to get it right. At the moment it would cruise great but when you gave it a whack of throttle it would bog slightly and blow a puff of black smoke. It goes very rich for a split second in the logs. Im going to try disabling AE and see what it drives like then, and maybe slowly add it in bit by bit if it needs it. I have done about 150km since i started tuning, and about 1/4 a tank of gas used.

Speeduino can do upto 4 cylinder sequential, but im running it in batch mode

A quick update for today http://www.tasteslikepetrol.net/2017/03/speeduino-rover-sd1-a-gas-stations-best-friend/ She's thirsty!

Took Rover for a decent drive, and did some tuning. http://www.tasteslikepetrol.net/2017/03/speeduino-rover-sd1-basic-tuning/

Not for a long time. Theres some really good stuff on that site, Will have a read of the tuning stuff. Also currently having a good read of the megasquirt manual tuning guides. Its amazing just how much fuel this engine needs, its bit of a thirsty dinosaur. Plan is to get the map as solid as possible, on the rich side, and then use VEAL to auto tune it down to cleaner running.