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Kelvin's 1985 Rover SD1 Vanden Plas EFI with Speedweeeeeeno


kws

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Fine. Ill continue. Edit. Woo new page!

Started stripping the horrible white paint off the spoiler today. Its very thick, very hard and very brittle paint. I used a 40 grit flap wheel on my grinder and 80 grit by hand to cut through the paint. There are a couple of large cracks in the top of the wing, hopefully i can fill them with something, maybe sikaflex? and then ill be painting the wing in either bumper paint, or plasti-dip. Its a flexible rubber, so normal paint is a no go.

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I couldn't help myself, I HAD to work on the wing and see what condition it was in.

So the other day one of the amazing parts I scored from Whanganui was this original Vitesse rear wing.
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These are crazy hard to get hold of these days in NZ, unless you buy a fibreglass replica from Rimmer Bros in the UK, for around $270 + shipping.

The Vitesse was the only model to get these spoilers. Rumour has it they increase stability at speed, and may even reduce fuel consumption by altering the coefficient of drag. According to Karen Pender's book the standard 1982 3500SE (no spoiler) had a coefficient of 0.405 whilst the early Vitesse was 0.360. The only body changes between the two cars was the spoiler.

Plus, they look awesome; they just finish off the back end so well.
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So yes, I now have one in my possession. Unfortunately the previous owner had painted it white, and it was in bad condition. The paint was cracking badly, and the rubber wing itself was cracked in a couple of places.
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I started with stripping the paint off to see what state the rubber was in. Initially I tried 80 grit sandpaper by hand but wasn't getting anywhere as the paint was so hard and thick, so I moved to an 80 grit flap wheel on my grinder. I very carefully used this to strip off as much paint as possible, without cutting into the rubber.
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I decided to grab a DA orbital sander today and have another go. This was far more effective, and I managed to remove most of the paint
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This shows clearer how badly cracked the rubber is
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You can also see there that I still have some paint stuck in the rough texture where the wing has weathered. I'll leave this as is, as I don't want to dig into the rubber to remove it.

The standard Vitesse wing attaches by about 6 studs to the boot lid. Obviously my car doesn't have the holes for the spoiler, and I'm not keen to drill into it, so will be looking to attach it with Sikaflex or the likes. This meant removing the studs from the spoiler, which isn't a hard job, when only two remain.
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Using my Dremel and some sweet aliexpress cutting disks I cut them off as flush as possible. I also used my flap wheel to grind them down some more (after the photos were taken).
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Once it had dried off a bit I decided to have a quick test fit.

Does it belong here?
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Mmm, probably not. What about here?
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A bit better, but still not quite right. What about here then?
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Yeah, that's the stuff! It wouldn't hold itself on the boot lid, so no full photos as it's not mounted.

I did some thinking regarding the condition of the wing. Obviously I cant just stick it on as it is as it looks pretty rough, so I need a plan. I think what I'm going to do is take a fibreglass mould of the wing, and make a fibreglass replica and then mount that on the car. I'll store the original wing away safely.

This is a good thing for a couple of reasons. Firstly I won't need to uprate my tailgate gas struts as fibreglass is a lot lighter than the original wing; It'll also give me the ability to remake the wing if I need to, IE: if I get another SD1 that doesn't have one.

Now to add another skill to my set, how to fibreglass. Eek.

The MX5 is about to fall off its WOF, and its a couple of weeks until I can get it in for a WOF check, so until then I guess I'll just have to use and work on the Rover more. What a shame.

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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
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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
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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
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Another four screws and off comes the front surround
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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
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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
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I pulled the needle and dial face off so I could investigate the internals more and understand why it isn't resetting
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Button not pressed
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Button pressed
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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
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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.
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Woo, 8 cylinder
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I suspect this little board, being the only place with solder on it, is the source of my issues
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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.
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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.

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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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Speaking of cracked. FML, I'm sick of replacing fuel hose now. This hose has been on the car less than 4 months.
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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.
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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.
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In order to satisfy my own curiosity I carefully sliced the old hose so I could see how far the cracking went
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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.
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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.
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They are held to the grille with three screws, and if they aren't broken off, a clip on each end
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It needs a good polish, but already it looks noticeably better
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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
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I knew the series 1 indicators fitment in the series 2 housing was a bit meh, but it was pretty bad.
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I think it looked good though. The clear suits my light Zircon Blue.
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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.
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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.
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I had to loosen off a screw on the B pillar
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And remove a screw at the bottom of the B pillar
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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.
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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.
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I finished the day with a quick drive and some photos
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And then a lovely drive out to the south coast to watch the sunset with the Wife.

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Discuss. 

 

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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.
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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
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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.
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This is the compensator. It should be pointing to the left, not right
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The cable shoots off up under the car to the front, where it meets the hand brake lever
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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I slathered the compensator in copper grease, and the bushes in rubber grease and refit to the new cable
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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.
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Do not attach the RH side of the cable to the drum, start with the LH side cable. Run it over the axle housing
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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.
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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.
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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.

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  • 1 month later...

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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And the gasket that came off (and what Makco supplied)
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I refit the square type, just to stick with what was already working before.
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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
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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"
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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.

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Mine was sealed, and the clips broken. I used a sharp blade to open the two halves
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The contacts weren't looking good
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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
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Both the contacts and the pins had heavy wear, and were badly oxidized. I cleaned up the terminals with some fine sandpaper
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Half and half
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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
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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.
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The new fluid was a lovely rich cherry red
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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.

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  • 5 weeks later...

Sigh,This game again. Effie is leaking coolant.

I have had a guts full of doing coolant on this thing. I thought I finally had it sorted but last time I drove her I noticed that the coolant light had come on and the expansion tank was low. I topped it up, but it didn't stay full after a drive. We had a leak.

I did some investigating; I had a hunch that since I fixed the leak from the waterpump bolt (by moving the crank sensor mount to a different bolt), that it would be coming from the damn under intake coolant pipe. I checked the rear of the engine and sure enough there was some bright green coolant in the back of the Vee. I tried slipping the coolant hose further up the pipe and tightening the clamp down, but it was still leaking. There aren't many places it can leak that will end up with coolant in the back of the vee.

Under the intake manifold, in the Vee, there is a steel pipe that feeds the heater core. These pipes are notorious for rusting out and causing issues. The biggest issue is that you cannot see the pipe, let alone fix it, without removing the whole intake manifold. Lame.

Heres a spare manifold I have, showing the long, rusty, metal pipe (the lower one. The top, black one, is for early EFI cars and mine doesn't have it)
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Here's the problem. This pipe would make a good garden soaker hose. Its full of rust holes, and no matter how far you slip the hose along the pipe, it wont go far enough because of the mounting bracket.
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My plan was to remove this pipe from the manifold, and use the hex fitting that screws into the intake with a new pipe, and then fit that to Effie. The first issue, is how the heck do you remove a steel threaded fitting that has been in an aluminium thread for 30+ years? I tried with a spanner and lots of penetrating fluid, with no luck. I tried using my weight as leverage, and it didn't budge. I asked on Facebook what the best option to remove it is, and it sounds like anyone that has done this job before, has had the same issue without luck.
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I don't give up though, and the best option came to me the next day. An angle grinder and rattle gun. Time to get serious.

I used my angle grinder with a thin cutting disk, to cut through the pipe as close to the fitting as possible. It took two seconds. A hacksaw would do the same job, but slower.
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I removed the pipe, and then using a 13/16" spark plug socket, which fit perfect, a long extension and a rattle gun, I beat on it for a minute or two. I did a couple of ugga duggas forward and reverse to try to break the seal, and then bam, it spun off freely. I really need more impact sockets...
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It was clear the threads were full of oxidation.
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It screws back in again fine, so once its out if the threads are cleaned up, it can be reused.
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Funnily enough, the pipe had even more holes on the top side, that you couldn't see when it was fitted.
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The pipe measures an OD of almost 16mm (this is important as the hose that goes onto the pipe needs close to this OD to seal)
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and the ID of the fitting is 13.78mm. If it can be reamed out to a smidgen over 14mm, and a 14mm pipe sourced, it could be slipped inside the fitting and soldered in. I need to look at my options for opening up the end of the fitting as I don't have a lathe. As long as a bead is on the end of the pipe, the hose will be able to clamp down on a 14mm pipe OK. 16mm pipe would be better, but then it would need to be welded to the end of the fitting.
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I'm going to put my thinking cap on tomorrow, and see what Bunnings has in the plumbing department for pipe. Copper pipe would be good as it won't rust, and is easy to work with. It would also be good if I could work out what the thread on the fitting is, as if I can work that out, I could reproduce the whole pipe from end to end. These pipes have been NLA new for a long time, and despite multiple requests to Rimmers, they havent started to reproduce them. The EFI SD1 was the only RV8 engine to have this pipe, as the carb engines have a different design (which is available new), and the Range Rover eliminated it completely.

Either way, I need to sort a pipe for Effie from what I have here, or she isn't going to the show.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Another day, more coolant. I'm quickly running out of time to get Effie ready for the show this weekend, but I needed to fix the leaking coolant first.

The British Car Day show is in 5 days, Effie is leaking coolant and doesn't have a Warrant. Time is running out, and I still have some work to do on Tess too. I'll at least have Tess there, but I would love to have both Rovers in the show.

So in my last post I detailed the issues I was having with a leaking under intake pipe. I couldn't drive the car far as I didn't want to risk an overheat, so I haven't been able to get a WOF for it yet.

The other day I put the urgent call out on the OldSchool forum for someone to weld my steel pipe to the threaded boss. This was a crucial step towards fixing Effie, but not having the tools to weld it myself, I was stuck. Thankfully a member on the forum ( @Get it done ) came to the rescue, and yesterday he did an awesome job of machining down the boss, and welding the pipe into it.
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It was good timing, because today was a public holiday (hey Kiwi's, happy Waitangi Day!) and this gave me a whole day to work on Effie, so there might be a chance of getting a WOF this week.

This is the engine, in all its wasted spark coil glory
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The first step is to dump all the coolant, and like usual, still no drain plug so it goes everywhere.
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With the coolant everywhere but your drain pan, its time to start ripping everything to bits. This isn't a small job by any stretch of the imagination, in fact, it's a bigger job than the "big injection hose" job I did this time last year.

Off comes the intake piping, and the plenum. I'm getting pretty good at this particular part of the job
DSC02073.jpg DSC02079.jpg

The smart person I am, made this job easier for myself by putting plugs in the main engine loom, so that it can be disconnected from the section that runs into the car. The engine harness has to be completely removed to make life easier, otherwise it will get in the way.
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My plenum base had some oil residue in it. This appears to be normal for injected SD1s, and despite having drain holes in the bottom of the plenum base (at the bottom of the trumpets) this little pool of oil just chills out at the back.
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This is the whole reason for this job. Coolant on the valley gasket. It builds up until it overflows the black clamp, and then spills over the bellhousing.
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Six bolts, and off comes the trumpet base, leaving just the inlet manifold and injector setup. The loom is still fitted here, but it was removed, along with the injectors. The injectors and rails have to be removed to gain access to the manifold bolts under them. I was hoping to leave the injectors attached, but it wouldn't be worth the hassle. I also chose to remove the whole throttle cable bracket from the head, which was easier than removing the two cables from it.
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Before I could remove the inlet manifold I had to remove the leaking coolant hose. Yeah, the end of the pipe is FUBAR. I had been slipping the hose further and further forward to get it to clamp on good metal, but eventually the rust just poked its way through another part of the pipe anyway.
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The inlet manifold is held on with 12 bolts. The two at the front are longer than the others, but the manual recommends keeping the bolts in order (which is why they are lined up on the valve covers). The manifold isn't actually heavy with all the rest of the bits removed.
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This is the pipe in question. Nowhere near as bad as the donor in my last post, but the end was stuffed and coolant was weeping out through one spot where it had rusted through
DSC02090.jpg DSC02091.jpg DSC02092.jpg

The same process as the donor worked on this too. Cut the pipe as close to the threaded boss as possible, and then using some Ugga Duggas, spin that thing out. Easy. I'll be using the parts from this pipe to try to work out how to completely replicate the pipes.

Another thing I noticed, and another reason i'm glad I did this work, was that the connection from the waterpump to the manifold (which I think feeds this pipe) was 95% blocked with rust and crud. I shone a light in from the back of it, and this was how much shone through. One small spot.
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Compared to after I had cleared it
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I took the manifold outside and gave all the coolant passages a real good blast out with the hose. A few big chunks came out, but over all the cooling system is actually very clean in this car. Its possible the breaking down pipe was just circulating rust. I also took this time to give the manifold a quick degrease. It came up a lot better.
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Quality parts
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Next I removed the valley gasket. The old tin one had lasted well really, with no damage or rust. I guess the coating of oil from the old leaks helped that. With the gasket removed I got to have a good look at the cam and lifters.
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The cam looked really good with minimal visible wear. I didn't rotate the engine to check the cam lobes, but I have no reason to suspect cam issues anyway (and it was replaced not long ago).
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I noticed one of the coolant ports was completely blocked. This is a blind hole anyway, as its blocked by the intake manifold, but it was ugly, so I cleaned it out.
DSC02101.jpg DSC02102.jpg

I had often heard talk of the injected engines having a cutout in the port for the injector to spray the back of the valve, but until now had not really seen it. This little notch, circled, indicates original EFI heads. Carb engines don't have this.
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This is the replacement pipe. Fits like a glove, with some thread sealer on it to make sure it doesn't even think about leaking again.
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A new valley gasket, of the black coated type, went on with some new seals and clamps. The clamps were bit of a prick to fit as the seals sat slightly proud in the corners. Got there in the end though, and on went the inlet manifold. All bolts were torqued up in stages to 30NM, working outwards from the center.
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I was about to refit the injectors and rail, when I chose to check the hoses, and this is what I found. FML.
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More severely cracked fake R9 injector hose. Its been a constant battle against this stuff, but damn i'm glad I caught it now as those cracks are the worst I have had. Two hoses on the fuel regulator, and the main fuel feed hose all got replaced with the good Codan stuff I picked up a while ago. I gave ALL the other hoses a real good, close up inspection and they are all in good condition still. The issue seems to be when the hose is bent.
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With the hoses replaced I refit all the injectors, and reassembled the rest of the engine. With it all back together, i gave the fuel system a decent prime to check it was sealed, and then filled the cooling system
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A trusty 50:50 mix of Nulon Long Life green coolant, as used in almost everything, because it's good stuff. Effie would know, she's gone through bucket loads of it. So has my garage floor. See? At least I tried to catch it.
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After bleeding the cooling system, so far she has been keeping her coolant where it should be. The heater is hotter than before too, so obviously it's getting better coolant flow now. I took her for a quick drive, and gosh she is lovely to cruise around in. So smooth, refined, comfortable, and grunty.

I'll need to monitor the coolant for a bit to be sure we are all good now, but tomorrow i'll be calling up and asking for a huge favour... a warrant inspection this week. And then we can go to the show. Hopefully.

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Finally, something that isn't coolant related!

A while ago I picked up a pair of good condition re-covered D-Pillar trim from the Whanganui haul. The ones on Effie were beyond stuffed. All the material was long gone, except for the torn bits around the edges. It looked haggard as.
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After doing the work on the engine today, I quickly swapped them over for the good ones.

To remove the trims there is one screw up near the top of the trim. Remove this completely, and then there is a hook near the bottom, so the trim needs to be lifted up towards the roof/front of the car to unhook it. It takes some practice to do, especially refitting. Getting that hook back in can be a pain.

These are the old trims
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And the replacements (albeit a tad dusty)
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And fitted
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110% improvement with little effort. I'll keep the old ones and maybe recover them for Tess one day (when her ones wear out).

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  • 2 months later...

The time has come, Effie has been sold.

With all that's been happening recently, and trying to get my fleet of cars from 4 down to 2, after selling the Mini it was inevitable that eventually Effie would also find a new owner.

I was contacted by the buyer, Nick, a couple of weeks ago regarding potentially buying Effie. He was a long time fan of SD1s and had been pining to buy a Vitesse for years. Back many years ago he planned to buy one in the UK and bring it back to NZ, but unfortunately life got in the way and it never came to fruition.

He has tried to buy a Vitesse in the past and it just didn't manage to happen, so when he saw Effie for sale, at a reasonable price (especially compared to the Vitesse that have been for sale recently) he gave me a call and we went from there.

Of course when selling a classic British car, not everything goes smoothly.

The agreement was that since I was selling for less than the asking price the car would come without the headunit (my flash $200+ JVC unit) and would have the standard steering wheel fitted instead of the wooden Momo wheel. Swapping these over was a piece of cake...
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The issue came the next day, the evening before Nick was flying in from Nelson for pick the car up, after I had washed the car, when I noticed that the interior lights aren't working. Hmm, that's odd I thought.... must be a fuse.

Sure enough, I found a popped fuse. Figuring I had popped it removing the radio, I removed it and went to replace it. The original spec for the car calls for a 25A fuse, but I noted there was a 20A fuse fitted. Knowing I had a spare 25A, I popped that into place and immediately noted that it was warm to the touch. Odd. The interior lights were now on again though which was a start, but the left hand one was dim. Weird.

And then I smelt it. Melting plastic. Shit.

And then I saw it, the massive plume of white smoke pouring out of the engine bay. Double shit.

I quickly sprinted to the driver's side, flung open the glovebox and ripped on the bonnet release. Throwing open the bonnet I quickly spun off the nut for the negative battery terminal to kill the power (damn glad I have a wing nut for quick release) and went to see what damage had been done.

Thankfully an inspection of the area the smoke came from showed only one wire was melted; the power feed for the bonnet lights.
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I have taped the end up, but all of the insulation has been melted off the bonnet side of the wire, and the car side of the wire started to melt towards the loom bundle (thankfully stopping short of melting through the bundle).
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It turns out that some time in the cars past someone had pinched the power feed for the lights in the bonnet hinge, so obviously years of movement in the metal had worn through the insulation, and yesterday it chose to create a dead short.
IMG_1188.jpg

Annoyingly the 25A fuse I fitted didn't blow. So once I had tested and checked it wasn't all going to try to melt down again, I removed the 25A fuse and refitted a new 20A. Everything still works, except the bonnet lights obviously, which is a relief. I'm lucky it happened in the driveway, and in my driveway at that (not the new owners), so damage could be caught quickly and minimised.
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WIth that crisis averted, Effie was looking nice and clean and ready to go.

Today was the day, and after a quick check over that all the fluids were good, and that she hadn't tried to burn herself to the ground again we were good to go.
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Since it was the first time since picking the car up in 2016 that I had driven with the standard steering wheel, I was pleasantly surprised by it. Sure, it was huge, and weird shaped, and rubbed on my thighs when I turned, but it was comfortable and easy to drive with. It also lightened the steering due to the increased diameter over the Momo. Not a bad wheel over all, but not as nice in the hand as the Momo.

We were picking Nick up from the Airport, so after a nice half hour cruise into town I met up with Nick and we had a good chat and look over the car. He seemed very happy with her, and I could tell straight away he was the right buyer for her. I couldn't be too picky as there aren't a huge amount of SD1 weirdos out there like us, but I could never risk selling her to someone who would disrespect her, or worse still, wreck/strip her for parts. Nicks plans are to tidy her up, and make somewhat of a Vitesse replica by fitting the Vitesse spoilers and suspension. It's a good plan and he should be rewarded with years of happy motoring as long as he keeps up with the maintenance. Being a panel beater by trade, I feel he is in the right industry to take Effie to that next step and make her really shine. It also helps he looks right at home in the driver's seat.

It's a bittersweet day. I'm glad she is sold as I just wasn't doing her justice anymore. I couldn't drive her as much as I wanted, and being homeless soon I wouldn't even have anywhere to store her. It is sad though, I put so much blood, sweat and swears into this car to save her and make her what she is today. From a dilapidated old bucket that ran badly and was (once again) trying to burn herself to the ground, to a car that im genuinely proud of, and could just jump into, drive and enjoy.

She will be missed greatly, but times change, and now she can be enjoyed more and get out and do what she does best; cruising.

Bye my lovely.
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