hoarder Kelvin's 1984 Rover SD1 Vitesse

[kws]

Well, all good things come to an end I guess.

I'll get back to that in a moment, but first, a couple of updates.

First, the Mini has been sold tonight. Although I will miss it, it was a great little car to drive, it needed to be sold. Owning it made me realise that the even without the supercharger the Cooper is actually a really great little car. Built like a BMW, but small, nimble and like a modern version of an old Mini (unsurprisingly). A+ would own again (with boost though).

Next up, Tess had a wheel alignment the other day. Thanks to Hutt Valley Tyres for aligning it. They treated Tess with enthusiasm and respect, which I really appreciate. The guy was stoked to work on her, and was full of compliments. A stark contrast to a call I made to another workshop the day before who, when I asked for an alignment, proceeded to rubbish my car over the phone when I said it was an SD1 I needed an alignment on. Pro-Tip, if you want customers, do NOT rubbish their car. You never know when that "piece of junk" is actually their baby, no matter what you think of it.

Here she is up on the alignment hoist.

I was impressed though, although the steering needed straightening (the wheel was on the wonky by 1/4 turn), I actually managed to get the toe pretty damn close just by eye when I reassembled it. Only needed tweaking by about a mm. Now the car tracks straight, and the wheel isn't on the piss. Lovely.

Unfortunately, now that the front brake calipers work properly, the damn master cylinder and servo/brake booster have packed a sad. The servo has started hissing when shutting off the engine (indicating a vacuum leak), and the brake pedal now sinks slowly to the floor if you keep pressure on it. I tried bleeding the brakes again, but although the pedal feels nice with the engine off straight after bleeding, with the booster helping the pedal sinks. I suspect fluid is bypassing the piston seal, and leaking internally (as im not losing fluid). There are signs that the master has been leaking down the servo in the past, its stripped the paint off the front under the master.

I'm working on options now, it's either get the master rebuilt locally and i'll re-kit the servo, or buy a new master and servo from Rimmers. But for now, that will have to wait as there are more pressing matters...

After five years, I have to move house. Unfortunately the landlord has come into some serious financial issues and the only way out is to sell the rental we are in.

We came to an agreement that instead of running open homes and selling it whilst we are still here, we have three weeks to move out. There is good and bad news to go with that.

The good news is that we are going to buy a house of our own; the new Tastes Like Petrol HQ. The bad thing is that we are still about a month away from having anywhere to move to. This leaves us with a sticky situation of a crossover period without a home.

Tess will hopefully be going to the same storage lockup that Nicks Vitesse is at, so that will keep her out of trouble, and off the street. All our other belongings are going into storage. I have a buyer for Effie, so hopefully (and sadly) she will be sold next weekend. I'll likely shed a tear when she drives off, it's like selling your first child. The buyer sounds like a great owner for her, and he is super excited. Moving is also why it was important to sell the Mini, I'm losing my parking spaces, and don't want to have to try to find parking for that car too.

So that's where we are; it's all chaos and mess. Due to this, I'll have to take a hiatus from posting as there just won't be anything happening, and I won't have a home and possibly no internet access. Of course I'll still be on Twitter and Instagram.

I will be back, and hopefully, bigger and better. As always, if you have it, drive it... or fix it.

[kws]

A month later;

Its been a long month; without Tess, internet or for the most part, a home. But now all of that is over.

We purchased, and finally moved into our house just over a week ago. We are still surrounded by an ever shrinking pile of boxes (where does all this crap come from, and where does it go now?!) but at least everything is with us again.

Our two goldfish were being babysat whilst we had no home, as we didn't want to try to move them each week to a different AirBNB. Sadly, after over 6 years of him being around, our little guy Stan "High Fin" Lee passed away the day before we were to pick them up. He was an old chap, so it wasn't totally unexpected, but its a shame he's gone, and he couldn't wait a day and not make the babysitter feel bad. His little bro, Dwight, has taken up residence in our lounge now, and is doing well. RIP in the big tank in the sky Stan.

Dwight doing Dwight things.

Anyway, Tess also came home the other day. She had also been babysat which was a great help, as she was able to be stored away in a dry garage and I didn't have to try to move her around. A huge thanks to our babysitters for their help.

Tess seems happy in her new home, although she takes up an awful lot of it

In order to help reduce what we put into storage, I filled the boot and back seat with spare parts. There was a lot of weight in there but the new suspension handled it OK.

One thing I did change as soon as I got her into the garage, was to replace the tailgate struts, so that I didn't end up being decapitated by the stupidly heavy tailgate. I went to Supercheap with a spare strut and matched it up against the ones they had on the shelf, and tried to get the highest force they had, which was 450N. These are a little longer than the original struts, so you do have to take care when fitting them as the top edge of the tailgate might contact the body, but in normal use they work perfect, even with the Vitesse spoiler.

The other small thing I did was to add my trickle charge hard wire connector to the battery. As Tess sits around a bit, it'll be good to keep her battery topped up, without having to have clips on the battery and the bonnet open.

So that's where we are today. A good second-hand brake booster and master cylinder arrived this morning, so that will be fitted shortly, and then we should be back on the road. I have big plans to get this car in better shape, including stripping out the interior for cleaning (and fixing the heater box issues).

More on that later.

[kws]

After rebuilding the calipers an issue that was slightly noticeable before, was very pronounced now. The brake pedal was sinking. This was not ideal.

The pedal had been soft and a little sink-y before I rebuilt the calipers, and I was hoping that the calipers may have been the cause of it, but clearly not. If anything, having all the pistons working properly had made the issue more evident, and holding pressure on the pedal would now cause it to gradually sink to the floor.

Unfortunately having just reassembled the calipers days before the car had to be moved into storage due to losing our house, there was nothing I could do at the time, and I had to drive her to storage. Needless to say driving down the hill from home was interesting; having to keep pumping the pedal to build pressure back up. I got there OK, and I got her to her new home again later.

A sinking pedal, with no fluid loss, means the master cylinder for the braking system was leaking fluid internally, passed the seals. Whether this was from the car sitting for so many years, or if it had just worn out, I'm not sure.

The other issue I had noticed, was that when shutting off the car there was a hissing noise coming from under the bonnet. I tracked this down to coming from the brake servo (or brake booster as its otherwise known as). This would indicate it was leaking vacuum, so that wouldn't be helping at all.

I was initially going to just rebuild the master cylinder, but once I narrowed down the noise to the servo I knew it was going to be a bigger job than just the master and started looking for other options. I would need to at the least, replace the servo (as rebuild kits are NLA) and rebuild the master.

Rimmers has both, and even do them as a pair for a discount, but the freight made the parts rather unattractive. I was wary about getting an old used one that had been sitting on a shelf somewhere for years, so wasn't too keen on getting something locally from a wrecker (if there was even anything still around).

I did end up going for a secondhand pair of servo and master, from a car that had been driven at speed into a tree, and came worse off. The seller claimed the servo was only two years old, and the master worked well (maybe too well...) and wasn't leaking. It was cheap enough to take a punt and hope it worked.

The replacement parts arrived the other day but I haven't had a chance to unbox and inspect them until today.

It's a bit dirty and covered in polystyrene from the packing, but there are no signs of fluid leaks or peeling paint on the servo under the master (like my current one does).

There aren't may ways to test if the servo is OK or not, but one of them is to see if it will hold a vacuum. I happen to have a small vacuum hand pump, so I plugged it into the vacuum line and drew a vacuum. Being such a big unit it took a while, but eventually I drew a decent vacuum, and sure enough to held it for a few minutes without dropping. Great success.

Of course I did the same test to the one on the car.... the results were uh... different.

I checked and double checked all the connections, but no matter how much I squeezed, I could not draw any vacuum at all. I guess that confirms that then, the servo is poked.

I can't really test much of the master, but I did split it from the servo to see if there were any signs of leaks.

Plenty of grease, but no brake fluid. Excellent. It will be interesting to strip down the failed servo and master and see how it compares to this one. I'll tidy up the mating faces, and then use some copper grease before reassembly as they were a little seized together this time.

I still need to drain the brake fluid res, and removed the failed parts and fit these replacements, and then bleed the whole system. First though, I need a new, very expensive addition to my workshop tools, just to make my life easier.

[kws]

These brakes have been the bane of my existence, but finally, I may have them sorted.

So I left off last time with testing the replacement servo, and finding out for sure that my old one was as leaky as a leaky thing.

Obviously that was no good, so it was time to swap them over.

To remove the old servo and master, first you suck all the fluid out with your handy dandy vacuum pump. Of course being a spit res, half of it is still full of fluid with no way to drain. Its OK, you can tip this out later.

Then a small container and some rags were placed under the master, and the two brake pipes were cracked off. The larger nut was a little tight so needed some persuasion.

With the pipes removed from the master, it was only a matter of removing the two nuts that hold the master to the servo. Then with some percussive persuasion, off came the master, revealing how much it had been leaking and stripping the paint off the servo.

To remove the servo, first you must remove the four nuts that hold it to the firewall. These are accessed via the drivers footwell area, and access is a heck of a lot better if you remove the glovebox first, but it's still a nasty task to do. You also need to remove the split pin, washer and pin holding the clevis to the pedal.

But that's not the really nasty part of this job. That goes to removal and refitting of the actual servo. The only tip I can give, is to protect your paint on the guard, and use some brute force. Eventually it will come free. Thankfully no signs of rust on the firewall, but there was some missing paint and scuffs, so I gave it a quick shot of Zinc paint to protect it.

Since I had the Zinc paint out, I also touched up a couple other spots that have caused me some bother. The strut tower and inner guard near the battery were covered in these little rust spots under the paint. No idea whats happened there, maybe a battery exploded in the past? Anyway, it needed to be treated and tidied up. A wire brushed it all back, treated the rust spots and sprayed Zinc paint on it. It's not an ideal match, and it's not gloss, but it will protect it and make it look black again until I can one day paint the whole bay properly.

The replacement servo had some missing paint, so that also got a shot of Zinc paint to tidy it up

It didn't have as much missing paint as the old servo did!

And the old master had a layer of black goop in the bottom of the reservoir.

The replacement master came up well with a degrease and clean

The next day, when the paint was dry, I transferred the firewall-servo gasket to the replacement servo, and refitted. This was a pig of a job, but once again, protect the paint on the guard, and persuade it into place.

Refit the washers, nuts and clevis pin/washer/split pin

I smothered the mating face of the master cylinder, and the studs with copper grease, and fit the master.

I filled it up to the MAX line with new fluid. It's a rather different colour to what was in the old reservoir, despite having changed that not too long ago.

Interestingly, there are two different caps. The original res had a cap with removable center with the fluid level sensor, and a little red cup that sat in the neck of the res to presumably, smooth out ant fluctuations in fluid level.

The replacement master came with a cap with a black electrical connector, and the sensor is encased in what would be the red part of the above cap, but it's now part of the cap.

Because I could easily clean out the original cap, I chose to run with that one instead of the replacement.

So with everything buttoned up and no obvious signs of leaks, I started the engine up to check the booster operation. Obvious without bleeding the system I didn't have any pressure in the pedal, but I wanted to check for any hissing. After a couple of minutes running, no obvious issues, and no hissing.

I did notice one thing though.... Since our garage is under the house I decided to get a Carbon Monoxide monitor and alarm for the garage, to make sure we don't end up with CO silently killing us (we also have a smoke alarm in the hallway above that also monitors CO levels).

After running Tess for a couple of minutes with the door behind her half open, we went from 0ppm (parts per million in the air), to about 85ppm. This isn't enough to trigger the alarm instantly, but will after an hour or so of that level. Higher levels have shorter trigger times, but the effects can be felt from about 50ppm, and 100ppm is enough to give you a decent headache. 200ppm is a loss of judgement, and 800ppm will kill you in 2 hours. Its serious stuff. I opened the doors fully and the levels started to drop

Until we hit zero again (I also wall mounted the alarm above my work bench for visibility)

These alarms with the monitor on them are cheap insurance, just to make sure you aren't working in a hazardous environment.

Moving along, since everything was together and not leaking, I needed to bleed the system. This is where my new toy, the QuickJack, came into it.

I got the car in the air, with the lovely wife in the drivers seat, and set about bleeding the brakes. I started at the rear, and got nothing. No fluid at all. I hadn't drained the lines, so I knew there was fluid in there, but the master wasn't pushing it through. We had an air lock.

I had read horror stories about people having to bench bleed master cylinders, so I was hoping to not have that issue. I cracked off both of the lines at the master cylinder, and had my helper slowly pump the pedal. Eventually out came some air, followed by fluid, but only from the smaller line. I bled this until fluid came out freely, and then tightened the smaller line up. This then allowed the bigger line to bleed, so out came air followed by fluid.

Thankfully this restored normal service, and fluid (albeit full of air) flowed from the bleed valves on the brakes. I started at the rear and worked my way forward, getting all the old fluid, and air out. I had to bleed the rear a few times to get all the air out, and get good pedal feel. The old fluid in the rear was also cloudy for some reason.

Once the air was out, and the pedal was solid I dropped the car down, and cleaned up. The next step was a test drive.

So how do the new, completely overhauled brakes work? Amazing. Better than they ever have since I got Tess. The pedal is firm, but progressive with good feel. The brakes bite hard when told to, and no sinking or softness in the pedal. The pedal feel is much more like Effie, who had a very nice pedal. Hopefully I finally have the brakes sorted.

I took Tess out for a nice hard run to meet up with some friends tonight, and Tess is running better than ever. Obviously the servo was leaking vacuum and causing a lack of response and smoothness. Sadly the fancy (but old) Optima Redtop battery chose to give up tonight though (before I went out), so I swapped that for a spare I had around, but will need to buy a new battery soon as I removed that spare from Effie as it wasn't starting easily. In the mean time it's finally time to get some road time with her.

[kws]

Sometimes when working on cars, things just don't do what you want them to do. Today was one of those days.

I have had a tow bar sitting around since pillaging the Whanganui cars, and originally had the intention of it going on Effie, but when I tried to fit it to her I quickly found the tow bar will not fit without cutting the underside of the bumper for the tongue, and I didn't want to do that to her pristine bumper.

Tess on the other hand, has had a tow bar in the past, and already has a cutout on the underside of her bumper, so hey, lets whack the tow bar on her eh?

This job is made a lot easier now that the tailgate doesn't try to mash my head in, since the four bumper retaining nuts are in the rear panel, inside the boot. Undo those and the bumper simply just slides off the car. There are two side retainers that slide into rubber bushings, but they should slide out easy enough.

So the bumper came off easy enough, but that was about it. Unfortunately the bumper cutout didn't match the tow bar. Not such an issue, I can cut it larger, but that wasn't the worst part of it

The worst part was that the towbar isn't going to fit at all, because the bumper is all kinds of messed up. I noticed it didn't sit right when I got the car, and the RH sliding retainer is no longer attached to the bumper, what I didn't realise was that the RH bumper bracket is messed up and the bumper cracked.

The red arrow is pointing at a large crack in the bumper. The orange arrow points at someones attempt to stick the bumper mount back on with some snotty looking glue, and the purple arrow points at a very bent mounting plate.

It's hard to tell, but the mounting plate should only have a slight curve in it, like the one on the other side

Well that will explain why the bumper doesn't sit right. The impact obviously tore off the side retainer too, because someone tried to gloop that back into place too (which didn't work)

The tow bar doesn't fit onto the mounts (it has to slide over the studs on both mounts), so there's no hope of it fitting this bumper. I'll need to reassess once I track down another bumper and mounts.

So that was a fail. Since I was already out in the garage I decided to have a look at the hand brake system too, as it wasn't holding the car (and will fail the next WOF).

Up on the Quickjacks again. Super quick and easy to do, especially now that the frames live under Tess all the time, so just need to slide them out, plug them into the hoses, plug the hoses into the power unit, connect the jump pack and away I go.

No photos of this, because I detailed it when I replaced Effies hand brake cable, and its a fairly basic system.

My compensator wasn't at 30 degrees like it should be, so obviously it needed adjusting. I disconnected the cable from both drums, and backed off the adjuster at the lever. I proceeded to adjust it correctly, and went to test. The handle still moves about 6 clicks, which is WAY too many. I readjusted it three or four more times, and the issue remained. I checked the workshop manual to make sure I was doing it right, and yup, I was. Obviously the cable is stretched and I can't dial out the slack. Damn. I just cant get enough tension on the cable to lock the wheels, so I guess my next Rimmers order will have a new cable in it too. Thankfully replacing it on the Quickjacks will be better than when I did Effies one on the ground under just a pair of stands. Another fail.

Speaking of Quickjacks, I can now confirm that even despite my oversized belly, I can roll front to back under the car comfortably on my creeper. It's a much nicer height to work at than I'm used to. The only issue I have is that my axle hangs down a lot, so I have to slide to either side of the diff head, instead of under it or I'll get stuck.

While under the car I noticed that I had a fairly bad exhaust leak from the rear section join. Obviously this wouldn't be helping the fume ingress situation Tess has. I quickly undid the join, found it missing its olive (a round, metal seal), so just proceeded to smother it in exhaust paste and bolt it back together. I'll be replacing the rear section eventually anyway, so not a big deal. The other cause of fumes would have been from the four large holes I found drilled in the rear panel, behind the bumper. I don't know what they were for, but they were sleeved (so you can tighten a bolt down without crushing the two sections of metal the hole was through) and just went into the boot, behind the trim. I have taped them up for now, just to block them off.

A decent drive this afternoon shows that the exhaust sounds the same, but the fumes in the cabin are significantly reduced. I didn't realise how bad it was before, but now there is almost no exhaust smell with the windows shut. With the drivers window open a crack there can be wafts, but it's about 5% of what it was before. My wife wanted to put the CO meter in the car beforehand, to see how bad it was, but I was scared to know.

So you win some, and lose some. I still have a lot of things to do to Tess, but I'm just going to order parts and wait for the WOF to run out in July. Once that's run out, I'll use that as a chance to take her off the road for a bit to do some work, like stripping the interior and fixing the sump gasket leak.

[kws]

Having tinted windows has its advantages, and its disadvantages. I finally got sick of one of the biggest disadvantages, you can't see through the windows when they are dirty... and the rear wiper doesn't work.

I originally wasn't too bothered by the wiper not working, I even planned on removing it completely and just plugging the hole in the glass, but having spent some time driving the car, I soon realised that in the dark if the tailgate glass is dirty or wet, its damn near impossible to see through. Without a wiper, you just cant clear that muck. The rear washer also doesn't work (the piping to the front is AWOL, and the pump outlet is plugged).

I know the switches get dirty and fail to work, but when the button is pressed I can hear a relay clicking from the rear. No response from the actual wiper though.

So yesterday I started by removing the wiper motor from the window and having a look over it. I knew from ages ago that the motor had previously been submerged in water, and didn't look good. The wiper spindle bushing through the glass had been leaking badly.

Looks like its been under the damn ocean. A sandy ocean.

Removal is easy. Well, if yours is as bodged in as mine was, it is. Remove the wiper arm by removing the plastic cap, and the 13mm nut. Remove the two screws on the underside of the motor housing and remove the cover. The wiring needs to be disconnected, the connector should be inside the lower edge of the tailgate, behind the lower plastic trim. My connector was missing, and someone had used spade terminals instead. Yay.

Then there are two bolts on the inside of the boot lid, a 12mm and 13mm, and the lot should drop off and come out.

Argh, not good looking.

There should be a large nut on the top of the spindle too, but mine was missing. Mine was missing more than I thought, but thankfully I had a couple of spare motor assemblies in my spares, and between the three I had enough parts to make a complete assembly.

This is how the spindle should be setup. First there is a lower plastic sleeve (missing from my original assembly)

Then the rubber bushing that goes through the glass. I removed mine to clean and seal under it. This has another plastic sleeve that goes inside/on top of it.

And then a washer and big nut on top of that (both missing previously). When this nut is tightened, it actually compresses the bushing against the glass, creating a seal. No wonder mine leaked, it wasn't compressed.

This wouldn't help either, my bushing is super tired, and they are NLA now.

Before fitting a replacement motor I chose to test one to make sure it actually worked. I whacked some 12V into the motor, and sure enough the replacement came to life nicely. The original, nothing but a big blue spark. Completely seized.

Refitting isn't rocket surgery, but I did a couple of quick things to make my life better.

First, removing the motor allowed me to clean up and treat some rust in the tailgate

and then I smeared some Sikaflex on the glass, and refit the bushing.

Then it was time to refit the motor.

You can see how much squish there is in the bushing once tightened

And then on went the elusive rubber cap. WD40 helped to get this into place.

Then it was wiring time. I thought this would be straight forward, but no, someone had been here before and made some bodges.

This is the wiring diagram

Looks easy enough, just connect the colours up and away I go.

NOPE.

Someone has messed with the car side of the wiring, so instead of the required Red, Brown/Green, Black and Green, I had Green, Blue, Black and Red. I connected them as I would expect, Red to Red, Black to Black, and winged it with the other two (which are for the parking feature, where the wiper will stop at the bottom when the switch is turned off). Nothing.

I suspected the fuse may have blown because of the seized motor in the past, so had a look and sure enough, a blown fuse.

Replaced it, and bam, the fuse blows again. Damnit.

Long story short, red isn't the power feed. With some multimeter work I worked out that Blue is actually the main feed for the motor, black is of course ground, and the other two are for the park feature. With that revelation I managed to get the motor working when the switch is pressed.

No amount of work could get the parking to work. I even disassembled the gearbox for the wiper to check the contacts.

But it didn't matter. I did further digging and found why the wiring colours didn't match

That's where the random coloured wiring terminates. Presumably this replaces the original wiring. No idea why.

That's not the worst part though, I can work with that wiring, the worst part is that someone has replaced the rear wiper delay timer unit with a standard relay...

The delay timer should look like this

But instead someone took the time to make this (grey box at the top)

I don't know why, and from what I can establish, a normal relay wont do the same function as the delay unit. I'm also not sure why, no matter how it's connected, the parking function blows the fuse. It's obviously shorting, but without looking further into the relay and wiring, I don't know why.

They were too lazy to even run the wiring inside the guard, instead its on the outside of the inner guard, and gets trapped behind the plate the fuse box is on

I have decided at this point to just abandon the parking function, as I have the motor and wiper actually working properly as it is, I just have to time when I turn the switch off to where I want the wiper to stop.

I did chew through a few fuses during testing though (ignore the horrible stained carpet, its scheduled for cleaning next month)

So I insulated the spare terminals, wrapped all the wiring, zip tied the loose relay to the wiring harness (so it isn't rattling around) and reassembled the wiper housing

Back on went the wiper arm, after cycling the motor and checking it was at dead bottom when I fitted the arm

Wipe wipe

The one good thing about having no parking function, is that I can park it where ever I damn well please. The wiper normally parks at the bottom, as per above photo, but it always bothered me that it collects dirt and gunk down there, so I parked it vertical (I really need to clean up that excess sealant).

Now I should be able to see out the back in the dark, since it seems to rain every day here at the moment.

Speaking of rain, I also replaced the front wiper refills the other day. I wanted to replace the whole blade, but since they are pin fitting blades, I'm not sure about finding a replacement. Refills work for now.

The old ones were a tad had it. This was the Drivers one.

I did find out the hard way that if your replacement refills have two widths (wide and narrow) and you accidentally fit it into the narrow instead of wide, when you wipe the screen on the motorway the refill will be torn out of the clips on the holder, and then you have no wipers. Thankfully they stayed on the car, so a quick pull over and refit them correctly and I was on my way again.

Rookie move.

Rookie. Move.

[kws]

I know I have covered replacing the hand brake cable on Effie before, but having done it again on Tess this time, I have some new insights to share.

One thing that had been getting worse and worse on Tess was the hand brake. Since the WOF is due for renewing, I needed to fix it, or it wouldn't pass.

I tried adjusting the cable in a previous post, but no mater what I did I just couldn't get the brakes to hold. I suspect the cable was stretched, so I ordered a replacement cable from Rimmers.

It was time to get Tess up on the QuickJacks, and do some work.

Speaking of QuickJacks, one of the party tricks is that once its up and on its locks, you can completely disconnect and remove the hydraulic hoses. Means you can have free access front and rear.

First step, disconnect the cable from both rear brakes. Remove the split pin, and pull the steel pin out.

 

Snip the zip ties holding the cable to the diff and torque tube

Use a spanner and ratchet to remove the nut and bolt that holds the compensator to the diff. The nut is hidden behind the bracket
 

Now move to the middle of the car/front of the cable and completely back off the locking nuts to adjust the cable. That square plate at the front of the mount will drop out, so keep it somewhere safe when it comes out. To remove the cable from this mount, you need to pull it towards the rear of the car so that the inner cable can pass through the slot in the mount. You may need to push a little rubber boot (at top of photo) on the cable out of the way to allow this.

The next part is a pain; removing the rubber boot over the lever clevis. Some careful brute force will free this up and then there is another split pin and steel pin to remove. The cable should be free to remove from the car now.

With the cable out of the car, this is what you have. The rubber boot and clevis

The adjuster section, showing the exposed inner cable section to pass through the mount

Rear section. The narrow cable looping around is for the left side wheel

Compensator

The new cable is complete other than two items. The compensator, and large rubber lever boot, both of which need to be transferred over.

The rubber boot pulls off the cable, and the clevis pulls through the bellows section. This was after a very thorough clean and degrease

The compensator needs to be disassembled to transfer over. There is a 10mm nut/bolt that goes through it, which will allow you to split the two halves
 

The old bushes were looking a tad flogged out and it didn't help someone had pinched the bushing and crushed it
 

The 10mm on mine was VERY seized and needed some hefty ugga duggas to free it up, along with some WD40
 

Once off the two halves can be split. You may need to employ some brute force or percussive persuasion here, as they can be rusted together.

The fulcrum pin was looking worse for wear too. Luckily I always order a spare

Of course I couldn't refit those ugly, rusty parts to the car. So out came the twisted wire cup

ALWAYS gear up. You don't want a piece of wire in your eye

The parts are stuck in the vice and hit with the brush. It quickly stripped off any chunky bits, and brought it back to mostly bare metal.
 

There was a lot of pitting and ingrained rust, so I used some rust converter to treat it
 

I let this cure/dry, and then painted with some black Zinc paint. I only painted what would be the outside of the parts.

Once it was dry, I used a small file to clean up the inside of the holes, and smothered the whole inside of one half with copper grease, and where the cable would pivot on both
 

These are the parts you want to buy, as a minimum, when replacing the cable (as well as a cable, obviously)
 

 

I would also recommend a new large lever boot, as they seem to perish. Effie's was OK, but the one on Tess is perished and cracked. I have used superglue to hold it together and seal the cracks, but it'll need redoing in a couple of years
 

Now to reassemble the compensator on the new cable. Place both halves on the cable, and refit the 10mm nut/bolt with some copper grease on it. Make sure the compensator pivots freely on the cable. If it doesn't, you may need to tweak the bracket slightly to ensure both halves are parallel where it pivots on the cable as they can bend easily.

The new bushes get fitted with some rubber grease

Smother the fulcrum pin and washer in copper grease, and slide it through the bushes, making sure the back one doesn't pop out

Now the boot needs to go back on. With an old boot like mine, this sucks. You need to feed the cable through the bellow section clevis first, until the bellows can be slid onto this little rubber bush. Use some grease to help side the clevis in.


 

Now its a case of refitting. Lay the cable under the car, and start by attaching the compensator. It's the reverse of disassembly.

Hook up the LEFT side cable to the brake lever. It's crucial that this cable end is adjusted so that the compensator is at a 30 degree from vertical, to the left.

Now connect the RIGHT cable to the brake lever. Slides the pins through, but don't fit the split pins yet as both may need some more tweaking.

Move up the front, and attach the cable into the mount, and to the hand brake lever. Refit the bastard boot, with lots of wiggling, jiggling and stretching to get it over the lip and into place. Fit two zip ties, one on the RH side of the diff, and one on the torque tube, to secure the cable into place. There are rubber sleeves that need to be under the zip ties on the cable to protect the outer sleeve.

Now it's time to adjust the cable

This sums up what to do. You need to back off the two locking nuts as far as possible, so that you have the freedom to pull the outer cable towards the rear of the car. Pull the cable back until you see the RIGHT brake lever moving and then snug the bottom nut in the photo up the mount (remembering to fit the square plate). Finger tighten the first lock nut up to the mount too.

Now get out from under the car, and test the brakes. Pull the hand brake lever up one click. The rear wheels should still turn, but some dragging should be noticeable. Now pull the lever to a total of three clicks. The rear wheels should be locked solid now.

If the wheels are locked before three clicks, you need to back off the lower nut in the above photo, to move the cable forward, towards the front of the car. If the wheels are still able to turn on three clicks, or the handle pulls further than three clicks, back off the top lock nut, and tighten the lower nut a few turns. Nip the lock nut up again and try again.

In my case it took a couple of tweaks of the adjustment to get the setting right, but now I have it so that it takes a firm pull to get onto three clicks, and the rear wheels lock solid. One click has noticeable binding but the wheels still turn.

Now slip the washer and split pin through each side brake lever, and you're done.

The cable will eventually stretch over time and need more adjustment, just follow the directions above to tighten the cable when the times comes, and you should be good for another few years.

I'm now two for two for my recent SD1s needing hand brake cables. My first SD1 also needed hand brake work (failed a WOF), but being young and having no garage, I outsourced that at considerable expense.

[PhilipC]

Do you still need the parking control unit for the rear wiper? I have some spares and am sure I could find one that works for you.

[kws]

On 7/17/2018 at 22:19, PhilipC said:

Do you still need the parking control unit for the rear wiper? I have some spares and am sure I could find one that works for you.

Thanks, but i think im happy with leaving it as is for now. I like parking my wiper vertically 

[kws]

I couldn't handle it anymore, the amount of oil that was leaking from the sump was getting out of hand. I needed to replace the gasket.

In the constant battle against bodges that have been done in the past, the sump gasket was one of the few left.

I had been ignoring it since I got the car. A nice coating of oil on the whole underside of the car, and the need for a drip tray under where ever it parks. I did check where it was leaking from a while ago, and narrowed it down to the sump gasket, which someone had made a complete and utter mess of by over tightening the sump during refitting.

When a cork gasket is over tightened it doesn't just compress like a rubber gasket, but it actually flattens and squashes out. Obviously this is no good for sealing

So when I had the car up on the QuickJacks the other day doing the hand brake, I also decided to remove the sump and deal to it. I got a replacement gasket from Rimmers ages ago, but just needed time to do it.

I started by draining the sump, and then cracking off and loosening all the sump bolts (some of which weren't more than finger tight anyway). Most of them are straight forward, other than the two right in the back near the bell housing, which are hidden by the sump reinforcement plate, and the one on each side of the sump above the steering rack.
With this done, it was time to lift the engine. The manual calls for lifting it with a jack on the crank pulley, and undoing one engine mount. This is what I did, but in hindsight I would use an engine support bar from above the engine, and undo both engine mounts.

The reason for this, is that in my case, with my jack I needed a good stack of blocks on the jack to even touch the crank pulley, which made for some hairy moments. I used some blocks of wood and two of my spare low QuickJack rubber blocks. This was with my QuickJacks lowered to their first stop. At full height I had no hope.

And I disconnected the RH engine mount (the manual calls for the LH side but I'm not sure what difference it makes. I had more space to undo the mount on the RH side due to where the car is in the garage)

The other issues this caused for me, was that the engine could only be lifted so high, because the other engine mount was still connected, and the engine tilts over to that side. You couldn't undo both with just the jack under the engine, it would likely slip off the jack and it would be game over. I also had issues with the jack getting in the way of me rolling around under the car. It's not the end of the world, but I wouldn't do it this way again.

So with the engine lifted, slide under the car and remove all the bolts. Don't forget the two big bolts on the bell housing for the reinforcement plate. With all of them out, the sump should be able to be freed from the engine. Mine wasn't really stuck with anything so almost freed its self. Now with some wiggling and jiggling, the sump can be slid out from the back of the crossmember and down.

The remains of the sealant and gasket. Thankfully the inside of the engine looks really nice, just a fine golden coating on everything.

I did notice this crud stuck to the pickup through. Not sure what it was; not bearing/metal, maybe old sealant. I cleaned the pickup anyway.

With the pan on the bench you start to see what a state its in. Covered in oil, sludge and gross.

It was hard to get a photo, but there was some sludge in the bottom of the sump too. This is what sits in the pan even after the oil is drained.

Remains of gasket/goo, and some pine needles that caught a ride from my old house

The sump its self is actually in decent shape over all, considering how low the car was and the damage its done to the rest of the underside, but there are only minimal dents and scrapes on the sump.

 

Looks nice and black doesn't it? Well, guess what, that wasn't paint. After a thorough de-grease and clean

It had almost no paint left on it! It did have a lot of surface rust though, so I gave it a quick scuff and coated it in rust converter

Whilst that cured I cleaned and degreased the bolts, and then threw them into the ultrasonic with some Simple Green

Of course I wasn't just going to leave the sump purple with rust converter, but first I needed to address a serious issue I had

Because some muppet had went full ugga dugga on the sump bolts, it had massacred the poor little flange. There were serious gaps between the bolt holes, where it should be flat


 
Not only that, but the flange was twisted downwards, away from the sump. It's hard to get a photo of, with my technical straight edge, but you can see it slopes away from the RH side of the wood. It should be flat against it.

It was like this the whole way around. No wonder it pissed oil out

I first used a hammer and block to flatten down the bolt holes, so they were no longer raised above the rest of the flange. Normally you would use a large socket or the likes to fit around the hole, and bash it flat onto the socket so you don't flatten out the indents in the middle of the flange, but mine were almost flat anyway, so I proceeded with plank. You can see bashed bolt hole on the left of plank, and raised on the right.

With the holes flattened, I now had to bring the flange back up again. This was done with a rag and vice grips. Using many small little upwards tweaks along the flange, working in sections, I eventually managed to pull it back up and almost flat again

It's a lot better than it was

With the flange kind of usable again, the whole pan got a couple of coats of black Zinc paint

Now I must say, this work had happened over the course of a few days. I removed the sump on Monday with plans to refit it Tuesday morning. Unfortunately health issues have left me barely able to leave the couch the past few days, so it wasn't until Wednesday that I could even get around to painting the pan, and that took all available energy to do.

Anyone familiar with Rover V8 engines will now be experiencing the same concern I did, how long can the engine sit without a sump on until the oil pump drains and oil pressure is lost? I left the oil filter on, and didn't touch it, because it's not very old and removing it would be a 100% sure-fire way to drain the oil pump, but there are many stories of people draining the sump, leaving it an undefined period of time, and upon refilling finding they have no oil pressure and either damaging the engine, or having to prime the pump (which is a job in its self).

I couldn't leave it much longer, so today, Friday, I HAD to get the sump back on and filled with oil. Even after 3-4 days I was concerned about the oil pump.

So I downed a big bowl of Weet-bix, smashed half a bottle of water, took some pain killers and down into the garage I went.

There aren't many photos because it was hard enough to do the job its self, but I'll give you what I can. First was to clean all the mating surfaces and get them nice and clean. I used a wire brush on the pan, and a scraper and rags on the engine block.

Then I laid a bead of sealant on the pan, smoothed it out with my finger and laid the gasket onto the pan, using bolts to keep the gasket in place. Sealant was smeared on the top of the gasket also

I then made sure the engine was as high as possible (remember, it had been sitting on my jack, raised, since Monday), and I slid under the car with the sump.

Refitting was a prick. Part of it was not being able to get enough clearance to the power steering hoses/crossmember, so lifting the engine from the top with no engine mounts connected would help this. It was a very mess job trying to get the gasket and pan into place without the gasket getting stuck and tearing, or falling into the pan.

Eventually I got it into place, and popped a couple of bolts in to hold it in place. The easiest I found to do were the two big ones for the reinforcement plate at the rear, and a couple of small ones at the front.

This is where I lowered the engine down and reinstalled the engine mount bolts, so I could get the jack out of the way and give me better access with the engine secure.

With some fiddling (and having to fish the back of the gasket out of the pan and back onto the flange), I got all the bolts back in. Make sure you can see the gasket all the way around the pan, so you don't end up pinching it or missing a section.

The torque spec for this is 14NM, so I tightened the bolts up finger tight first, in a diagonal pattern, and then using a torque wrench I nipped them up to 14NM, still in a diagonal pattern. This feels like a lot of torque, and I'd hate to think how tight they had been to do the damage to the pan and gasket they had previously!

Finally the pan was on, sealed and tightened. The gasket had pushed out around the bolts a little, but nowhere near as bad as it had been.

I did need to remove the clutch slave cylinder to gain access to the bolts on the RH side rear of the sump. Unfortunately this indicated to me that mine is leaking brake fluid, and missing a bolt, so it's stuffed. Will need to order a new one.

With the pan on, I dropped just over 4L of oil into the pan, checked the level, and we were good to test the oil pump. With everything crossed, I disconnected the coil, and injector resistor pack (so the engine wouldn't start), reconnected the battery and turned the key. I cranked for about 20 seconds, and although the pressure light didn't go out (I wouldn't expect it to with my slow starter), I could see the pressure gauge raise slightly. Now for the moment of truth. I opened the garage door, reconnected the coil and injectors, and turned the key....

And the sweet sounds of my people filled my garage, oh and the oil pressure gauge shot up and the light went out. Thank fark, the oil pump is still primed!

So that's where I am now. I still need to replace the transmission mounts which have turned to jello from oil contamination, and back the car out for a thorough water blasting and degreasing, but unfortunately that will have to wait. The good thing is though, worry, stress and concern is no good for recovery, but now that I know Tess is OK, i don't have to worry about that and she can just chill down there with her bad self.

Oh, and it gives me time to source a new clutch slave cylinder, at considerable cost. Buying parts for the Mini has spoilt me, with ease of availability and low prices. Rover parts have neither of those.

[kws]

Taking it easy doesn't mean not playing with cars, so since Tess was up on jacks I wanted to remove the front bumper and headlight to fix it.

There were a couple of reasons for this. First, the RH side headlight lens has only been held on by hopes and dreams for a while (completely loose at the bottom, flapping about, and barely stuck at the top), and since it's in good shape and not stone chipped, I'd hate for it to drop off and smash one day.

Another reason was that the RH headlight, for some reason, was sitting very low and was recessed. It should sit more of less flush with the corner light and bonnet, but this was way out, with gaps around it. It's always bothered me when looking at the front of the car, like a lazy eye, and I shuddered to know what horrors were causing it. Rust? Crash Damage? Bodges?!

 

Removal of the front bumper is easy, as long as the front spoiler is already off. If it isn't, the spoiler needs to come off first. You don't need to remove the under tray.

The bumper is secured with four bolts, two on either side which can be accessed from the underside. They are a 17mm nut/bolt through the front panel. The two longer ones go through the jacking point on each side, as per the right hole below.

 

If you had headlight washers that were connected too, you would have to unhook the hose for that, but since I do not, it wasn't an issue. With the bolts all removed, the bumper is still held in with sliders on the sides. These, like the rear bumper, just slide out when gently pulled. Be aware the bumper isn't that light, and will try to spin upside down when removed.

You also need to remove the "grille" trim that runs the width of the front. There are four screws along its length, and then it just comes free.

With the bumper off, you can see the other reason I wanted to remove it. I haven't removed it since I got the car, and I knew that since it spent some extra time in its life over in the land of rust, and I had previously had to grind back surface rust and treat/paint it lower on the front panel, there would be rust here too.


 
I was right. Thankfully its all just ugly flakey surface rust, nothing serious, but still needs to be dealt with. You can also see the notorious headlight brackets below the lights. These were barely coated by BL when fitted new, and rusted straight off the assembly line.

Removal of a headlight is a bit of a faff, but not too hard. Mainly a pain because you have to keep moving/opening/closing the bonnet to workaround the front hinging design. The two nuts under the headlight need to come off (be VERY careful as these are known to seize and break off if looked at wrong), and there are two long studs that go through the panel behind the light; the nut also needs to come off them


 
Unplug the headlight cables, and the light can be withdrawn. This leaves me with just the bracket to remove, which is held in with four screws

This bracket is actually in very good shape, with only surface rust. I wire brushed it down and coated it in rust converter.




   
Once dry, I covered in Zinc paint. Looks much better. I should have masked up the studs, but oh well.

With that sorted it was time to look at the headlight. I completely removed the lens, and cleaned the dirt out that had built up in the housing. There are two types of housing, one where the lens is just stuck on, and the other that uses clips to hold the lens on and keep it sealed. My original lights don't have the clips, so I pinched a couple of clips from a spare light. Even the early lights like these have the areas for the clips to be fitted (three along the top, one on each side and three along the bottom), guess it was just cost cutting that meant they weren't fitted

Now, this is where it gets weird. This is the bracket under the light that bolts to the bracket that I painted above.

First, the black bracket has had the holes either badly slotted or rusted out. This allows for rearwards "adjustment" of the light.

And between the bracket riveted to the bottom of the light, and that above black bracket... was a stack of washers

So that pushes the light back even further. But WHY?!

I replaced the black bracket and fit to the light sans washers. I fit the light back to the car and already the fitment was better. You can also see I brushed back, treated and painted the surface rust on the front panel.

It does need adjustment though. I aimed to have it similar to the other light, which had the bottom front edge of the lens in line with the lower chrome of the side light, and the front of the lens level with the front of the side light.

To adjust the light there are four adjustment points. To adjust the vertical alignment, there are two nuts under the light. The bracket is slotted

Once you have that aligned, the two nuts on the back of the light that were removed to take the light out, are actually on the rear adjusters. These two studs also have a nut on the light side of the front panel, so the inside and outside nuts sandwich the panel between them. The outer nut is just a lock nut, the nut closest to the light is the adjustment. Wind it back or forward to set the forward distance of the top of the light. The bottom distance is already fixed in place by the lower bracket. Be aware these are NOT the light output adjusters to adjust the beam, they are the black knobs on the back of the light.




   
It took a bit of fiddling about to get those adjustments right, but so far I'm happy with how it's sitting. It's MUCH better than it was. It now sits flush with the corner light, and has minimal gaps. The bonnet isn't fully shut in the photos


 
Refit the grille strip, and then that bumper and away you go.

The only reason I can think of why the light was bodged like that was maybe the internal adjuster didn't work so they were just bodged into place to get it to line up. I inspected the adjusters when the light was off and they looked OK. One of the pivots was a bit loose so I tightened it up with a zip tie, but no obvious failures there (I have a spare where all the adjusters have been broken off and stuck together with blu-tack). I'll need to try aligning the beam soon, as with the light so drastically re-aligned, the beam is likely to be way out now.

[kws]

With the major source of oil leaks under the car sorted, I needed to repair some collateral damage from the previous leaks. The transmission mounts had turned to jello and weren't doing a lot.

Now, first point I will say is don't try to be cheap and buy transmission mounts from random suppliers on eBay. Even though they were listed specifically for an SD1, and have "Rover SD1" on the packaging, they didn't fit without modification. The design of them means they might start to come apart quicker too, but hopefully the center poly bush will slow that down. They were about half the cost of Rimmers, but it wasn't worth it. Just buy them from a reputable supplier like Rimmers and just deal with the cost.

This is what I have though. Two main spool mounts, and this little poly bush for the center bolt

Whats a sure-fire sign your transmission mounts are poked? When you go over a bump and the transmission tries to launch its self into space through the shifter hole! Every time I would take a large bump in Tess the whole shifter (and thus the transmission) would jump up a good couple of inches. Not really a good thing.

Since I had a serious leak under the car it has been coating everything in oil for a long time. Rubber doesn't like oil; or well, it might like it too much. It soaks the oil up and softens the rubber to the point that is has the consistency of jello. Its soft, squishy and doesn't support a large lump of metal too well.
 

The other issue was that the bolt on the far right in the above photo has a bush on it, which I suspect limits any vertical movement of the transmission. This bush had also suffered from the oil contamination. There wasn't much bush left

To replace the bushes you must remove the crossmember the bushes are on. First crack off the 1/2" nuts on the bushes (it's easier when the crossmember isn't flopping around) and remove the center large bolt. Be aware there should be a washer that sits between the trans and the nut and will drop off freely. Don't lose it.

Then support the transmission on a jack. I purchased a bottle jack for this job, as its compact, can take a lot of weight and has a good height. This was much easier than trying to get my trolley jack in there.
 

I took the weight off the mounts, and then undid the two bolts on either side of the mount. One bolt on each side was already loose too. They are 1/2" but a 13mm ratchet spanner is a life saver here.
 

Completely remove the nuts from the two mounts. One mount of mine actually unscrewed from the transmission instead of the nut coming off. This is fine, just remove it with the crossmember.

 

The other mount was well stuck on the transmission. Don't bother trying to grip it to twist it out, that aint going to work. Get a hammer and chisel, scrape some rubber away until you get a clean shot at the steel disc that is screwed into the transmission, and use the chisel to tap it around until it comes free. Then you can spin the mount out by hand.

Old mount vs new. The old ones are seriously swollen
 

This is the one that came out with the crossmember. The crossmember is absolutely thick in grease, dirt and pine needles.

The layers of the mount rubber werent attached anymore. It was just a lump of soft jello

This is the remains of the center bushing

Its meant to look like this

I gave the crossmember and bolts a thorough degrease and clean
 

And then you screw the new rubber spool mounts into the transmission. I smothered the stud in copper grease, as well as the mating face, so that it wouldn't corrode to the transmission. Now this is where it went a bit wrong. I needed to chop the stud on these down, or they just wouldn't screw in fully. I think they were bottoming out. I don't think this should be needed on proper mounts.

I gave the area of the trans around the mounts a quick clean, and then refit the mounts. The two spool mounts screw into the transmission first, as tight as by hand can be, and then the crossmember goes on. Due to the added height of the new mounts vs the old ones, you may need to raise the transmission a little higher to get the crossmember bolts into place. Remember the plate on each side the bolts go through, and refit them. Once again, the 13mm ratchet spanner was the tool of choice here. The exhaust blocked a ratchet from getting in there.

Now, that center bolt. I couldn't quite work how what the deal was until now. Remove the jack from the transmission first. Fit it like this from the underside of crossmember;

Bolt - large washer - bushing (large section under crossmember) - nut ~ insert through crossmember but don't screw in. Now slip the other washer on top of the nut, wind the nut down to the bush and screw the bolt into the transmission. I wasn't sure how tight to do this bolt, so I tightened it until there was compression on the bush, pulling the trans down towards the crossmember, and then wound the nut up and tightening it against the transmission.

The results are impressive to say the least. On a quick test drive I took it over a large bump in the road that I knew would usually cause a huge jump in the transmission, and this time it stayed solid as a rock. The shifter is even more direct; obviously moving the shifter was moving the whole rear of the transmission too. Huge improvement.

I do wish there was an off the shelf poly version of the two spool mounts, but in my travels I never found one. Not even for a TVR, which uses the same transmission.

I ended that batch of work by degreasing and water blasting the underside of the car. It's not perfect under there, but its a lot better. I also "accidentally" blasted a lot of the yellow paint off the swaybar and crossmember... leaving a white instead. not sure which is worse tbh.

Parts Used
CRC454A – Gearbox Mounting Rubber x2
CRC581A - Rubber Buffer, Center of Rear Bracket (this is standard rubber, uprated poly version available via eBay)

Please note these parts are specific to my car and may vary. Please check before ordering.

[kws]

It was finally time to reassemble the front end of the car, since I didn't need the under tray off anymore.

To replace the sump gasket I needed to remove the under tray, which requires removal of a few different parts to get there. She doesn't look quite the same without it!

Before refitting everything I chose to remove and relocate the air filter. Previously it was located up behind the front panel, in front of the radiator and required the front spoiler and under tray to be removed to change it. Since every time I take the fibreglass front spoiler off it risks more and more damage (its pretty fragile from all the hits it took when lowered), I want to limit how often it comes off. You can just spot the air filter on the right in this photo, with the zip ties supporting it

Sadly it won't be getting as much fresh, cold air as it was, but I think I'll live with that just to help keep my spoiler in one piece. Previous testing with Effie shows that Intake Air Temps dont increase too much over ambient anyway.

The front of the Vitesse needs some care taken during reassembly, as everything needs to go together in a very specific order. The bumper MUST go on before the under tray, as you cannot get to the rear, outer nuts of the bumper mounts with the under tray in place. Ask me how I know... >_< I had to loosen off each side so I could tighten the bumper bolts

Using my [patent pending] "single-hand-bucket-support-o-matic" to hold the tray in place. It's a very awkward thing to lift by yourself

BUT, before the bumper could go on I wanted to do a small mod to the front panel. The front deep chin spoiler is usually held on with self tapping screws. Unfortunately mine were all stuffed at some point, one side had no screw at the front, and the other side was this random coarse thread screw into a random hole.


 
Due to it being such a coarse thread it never tightened properly. I had a bright idea the other day to get a Rivnut gun from Supercheap, and use a Rivnut on each side instead. A Rivnut (or Rivet Nut) is a metal insert that you use a tool to crush into place, that has an internal thread. This allows you to screw a bolt into thin metal without tapping it with a thread.

This awesome GIF from Aliexpress, of all places, shows how they work

First I drilled the hole out to the correct size (7mm in this case), wound the nut onto the tool, popped it into the hole and crushed it. The crushing, or squeezing action both holds it to the metal, and also because the insert is serrated, stops it rotating when the bolt is tightened.

This one has an M5 thread, so I used an M5 bolt in it

You can see a green o-ring behind the head of the bolt. This was a misguided attempt to create some padding against the fibreglass, but the o-ring just broke and fell out when tightened. I might try a fibre washer next time. Rinse and repeat for the other one

There isn't a lot of space to tighten the bolt with the bumper and spoiler on, but a 1/4" extension and socket worked perfect. Bumper went on first, then the under tray and then front spoiler.

She looks so much better all back together again. So pretty.

As a quick follow-up on fixing the headlight; I checked the alignment and its the weirdest thing, despite being completely relocated, the alignment was perfect. It'll get tested shortly on a beam setter when I take her for a WOF.

The WOF just expired, which highlights the fact that the car has now been back on the road for 6 months, in which time I covered 1000 Miles. Not many, but more than it had for the past few years combined. There have been some issues, but I'm quickly getting on top of them all.

I think she has earned a clean and polish this week. I haven't washed any of the cars since moving here..... oops.

[kws]

I've been kinda bad, and lazy. I haven't washed Tess since before I put her in storage when I moved, in April, and she is FILTHY.

I'm a bit weird too, because I like seeing cars that are clearly used and dirty (not dirty from sitting neglected under a tree, but obvious signs of spirited use) so having mud all up the sides of Tess hasn't really been too much of an issue, but since working on her recently I ended up with clean patches and hand prints in places from brushing against the car. Not a great look

Because she is finally holding her oil, and running well.... oh and because she is booked in for a Warrant inspection this week, I felt I needed to clean her and get her looking presentable again.

I was going to polish and wax her but couldn't be bothered today, so I only gave her a good wash, and clay barred the bonnet. The reason for the clay bar there, was due to my stupidity when painting my calipers in my old garage, and not having enough room, so I ended up with a fine mist of red overspray on the bonnet. Most of it came off with a previous wash, but there has always been a slight pink haze to the bonnet when its clean, so I used a clay bar to remove it, which it did successfully. Unfortunately this has highlighted the fact that the rest of the car now needs another clay, as the paint isn't as smooth as it should be.
 

On the flip side though, I forgot how much gloss her paint has when clean!

After the photo I went over all the black trim with 303 Aerospace, which is a trim protectant (also happens to black and shine the trim too) and shined the tires. It's a shame there isn't a show, she looks amazing! At least with her own garage space I should be able to keep her cleaner easier, than living outside like she was.

So with that clean done, I needed to quickly address an issue that presented itself recently. The windscreen wash button isn't working, so I have no washer jets.

This is a Warrant of Fitness issue and would cause a failure. I know the motor is good, as is the jet, and since I was getting nothing from the system I knew it had to be the switch.

The Rover way of firing the washer jets is to turn the whole end of the wiper stalk into a button, so when it's pressed toward the column it activates the washers.

Lots of other British cars of the time use the same/similar stalks and have the same operation, including the Mini.

To delve into why mine didn't work, I removed the column shrouds. Just a screw top and bottom, and the bottom drops off. The top needs the dimmer removed, which is done via pulling the knob off and removing the large hex nut on the outside of the shroud.

A quick fiddle around and I found my culprit. I think this should be connected to something

But where? With limited space on the column to get my noggin in for a look, I dug into my spares and found an old Series 1 switch. It works the same but is upside down due to S1 cars having the indicator and wiper stalks swapped to S2 (S2 has indicators on left). Someone has previously chopped the loom for this switch, so no idea if it was any good. Either way, it wasnt good for my car, so destructive investigation it was

You can see the black wire on the left in the above photo. It disappears into the depths of the switch. With some uh, percussive persuasion (and a drill, since the housing is riveted together), I found where it goes. The wire is literally flattened out, and jammed between the stalk shaft and housing, to ground the switch when the button is pressed. Typical Lucas design.

Now I had three options. Replace the stalk with another; extend the "wash" wires and use a random dodgy button to trigger them; or fix the switch.

I checked my stocks, and the only switches I had were either wrong, or the one correct one I had actually had the same broken wire. So option 1 was out.

I could easily extend the wires and put a random button somewhere, but that just isn't my style. Option 2 was out before it was even really considered.

Option 3 was to fix what I had. Let's get 'er done.

So now I knew what I was looking for, I removed the switch from the car. two 1/4" hex head screws, and a round clip thing with metal prongs. I used a small pick to lever up the prongs and slip the clip off

The connector for the switch is buried way up under the dash on the RH side. You need the drivers glovebox out to get to it. Remove the switch from the column, and just jiggle the wires from it until you can feel where they go under the dash, and then unplug it.

With the switch out, I knew I needed to remove the stalk from the body. First I marked the stalk position to the body, so I could align it easily. I carefully placed the stalk into soft jaws in my vice, and using some small taps from a dead blow hammer, out it popped

This exposed the badly corroded remains of the wire. The wire on this is weird, it's a mesh instead of straight strands. Maybe Lucas knew it was going to move every time you moved the stalk, so thought it might last longer. I stripped the broken wire back

There was corrosion inside the insulation on it, so I cleaned it as well as I could, and then fed it through the housing, smeared some copper grease on the wire and stalk splines, and pulled the stalk into the housing, making sure it jammed the wire into the splines and was lined up correctly. Obviously I couldn't just assemble it by hand, so it went back into the soft jaws, upside down now, and a couple of light taps on the back of the housing slid the stalk back into place.


 
Next I plugged it back in under the dash, before reassembly, to make sure it worked. Sure enough, my freshly cleaned paint and windscreen got a blast of washer fluid

It was just a matter of routing the wires again, reinstalling the stalk onto the column, reinstalling the column shrouds and away we go. Now we should be 100% ready for Wednesday. Hopefully she passes the WOF; she should, since she is significantly better than the last inspection.

[kws]

Tess has been a bit grumpy recently, and it was probably my own silly fault, but now I have to fix it.

I took Tess for a WOF inspection the other day, which she passed, of course. I did need to clean the reflector on one of the tail lights as it was completely obscured by dust, but that was as easy as blasting the inside of the light out with compressed air through the bulb holes.
It was pretty bad, I don't blame them for failing it

For comparison, the RH side with the nice clear reflector (I'd say the light was replaced at some point. it's too, clean.)

The result isn't perfect, but the reflector is actually visible now. Not sure how critical a LH side rear reflector is, but hey.

Moving along; I was a bit silly with the WOF. I didn't have the money for a tank of gas (not 60L of 98oct at these prices), so I chose to take it for the WOF with somewhere in the vicinity of 1/8 of a tank. Maybe 1/4 at the most. The fuel gauge is a bit of a joke, it consistently reads about 1/4 low so on the lower end of the dial it's anyone's guess what's in the tank.

The WOF was fine, but driving the car shortly after that (a celebratory WOF passed hoon) it developed an annoying stutter/hesitation when quickly pressing the throttle. If you rolled the throttle on it would rev out and drive fine, but if you jabbed the throttle too quick, like when rev matching or changing gear spiritedly, it would fall flat on its face for a bit, possibly pop out the exhaust and then come back to life and rev fine.

I tried adding some more gas to the tank, but obviously I had made her mad. This gave me a huge sinking feeling.... the car had been sitting for years before I got her, was the tank full of rust? Had rust blocked the filter?

The first step for me was to see if the fuel pump might have been mad. Its been making weird noises since I got the car. When you first turn the key and the pump primes, 1/4 of the time it would make a normal buzzing sound, but often it would just make a series of clicking noises. It still seemed to work, but you had to prime the system twice when cold or the car was hard to start. One prime, lots of cranking. Two primes, instant start.

The Rover SD1 EFI system runs a big resistor on the power feed for the fuel pump, which drops the voltage so the pump runs quieter with less output. These pumps are basically the same as the infamous Bosch "070" pump as used on fabulous machines such as the V12 Jaaag XJS, and the VL Commodore "tsutsutsu" turbo. Good for something like 300-400hp apparently, so obviously not stressed on the old 190hp RV8.

Because my car is running an aftermarket LinkECU, but has the standard loom adapted, I had no idea if it was still running the resistor or not. In Effie I bypassed it when the Speeduino was fitted.

The resistor lives up at the base of the LH A pillar, next to the glove box. Remove the glove box and it should be bolted into an oval cut out. I had already removed the bolt in this photo.


 
Some wiggling with the bolt out and it will come out

I made a quick bypass out of some genuine Lucas wire, and two spade terminals

Unplug the resistor, plug the bypass in

The good news was that the fuel pump made lovely buzzing noises all every time now, and you only needed the prime the system once and the car would fire into life without issue. The bad news, was that the hesitation was still there.

The next step here was to check the fuel filter. The SD1 has a particulate filter in the fuel tank, on the outlet pipe (more on that later), and a fine EFI filter in the engine bay. I replaced the EFI filter when I got Tess, so anything in it would have been since then. I removed the filter and drained it backwards, from the inlet, into a clean jar.

It looks like someone poured fine glitter in my fuel. It wasn't rusty, it was silver, and ferrous. I swirled a magnet around in the jar and this is what came out (looks kinda brown here, but in person it was shiny silver)

Well that's good and bad I guess. No rust means the it may not have sucked up rust, but metal filings mean the fuel pump is probably poked.

I cut the end off the filter and opened it up to check. Nothing else in it, just more fine glitter on the paper. Nice to see the Ryco filter has a plastic cage to stop the paper being crushed.

The clicking noise made me wonder, and the glitter confirmed it, the fuel pump wasn't a happy chappy.

Thankfully I have a spare, original fuel pump. I wasn't sure how good it was, but it did come alive when 12v was shoved into it.

Before replacing the pump there was one other quick check to do, remove the fuel level sender and check the inside of the tank.

There is an access hole in the bump behind the rear seats, on the LH side. It has a large rubber plug in it covering the sender and wiring

Mine was covered in crud, but that soon loosened when I got the hammer out to remove the retaining ring. The retaining ring has three tabs sticking up from it. I used a screwdriver and hammer to tap it around anti-clockwise with the tabs. There are three cutouts in the retainer, that will line up with three bumps on the tank housing, and when lined up you can remove the retainer

 

I gave the area a quick vacuum so that crud didn't end up in the tank.

With the retainer out, and the connections off, the sender can be lifted out, being careful of the float

So, with bated breath I shone a light into the tank and had a look. Well I'll be. Nothing but clean metal, even on the sides of the tank that I could see. There was some sediment at the bottom of the tank, but nothing major. Unfortunately the particulate filter was in the tank.... but no longer attached to the outlet, so useless. This is a common occurrence with SD1s.

Due to the design of the tank, the only access hole is the sender hole which is too small for an adult hand, and the tank is very deep in this area, so there is no way to reach the filter and reattach it.

Stoked, the tank is all good. I wasnt looking forward to paying the $600+freight+GST for one from Rimmers, which would still need to be cleaned and internally coated.

The terminals on the sender were all badly corroded, so they got a quick clean up, but I also found the reason for the sender reading 1/4 low.... the float had fuel in it! Not much, but enough it wouldn't be floating on the top anymore. Strangely, there are no signs of any holes or gaps in the seams, so no idea how it got in there.

I drilled a tiny hole with the smallest bit that would fit in my drill, and drained the fuel

The next day when I was sure it was empty and dry, I used my little soldering iron to melt plastic back over the hole and seal it


 
I did test the sender when it was out, and it seemed to read accurately based on where I positioned the arm, except no matter what, it wouldn't go over 3/4. I suspect an issue with the fuel gauge or maybe the sender itself, but as long as the rest of the scale is accurate now, I'm not bothered.

 

With the terminals cleaned, and the float emptied and sealed, I refit the sender with a new gasket ring. I used copious amounts of red rubber grease to lubricate the seal, so the retaining ring wouldn't catch it. Screwdriver and hammer once again employed to knock the retaining ring clockwise to lock it in place.
Back to the fuel pump, which is the main course in this buffet of goodness.

Replacing the fuel pump is a pretty straightforward process, I just wish I didn't add another 20L or so to the tank, as the fuel pump is inline under the car and gravity fed from the tank. It lives tucked up in front of the tank, covered by steel plates and in a little rubber/foam housing. It should be bolted to a crossmember that goes across the trans tunnel, but my crossmember was cut off so the stupid exhaust would fit.

I had previously noted that the high pressure hose on the outlet of the pump was looking a bit worse for wear, so wanted to do this job anyway, this just sped it up. I purchased some spare 8mm hose for the pressure side, and some new hose for the inlet side, which is low pressure, so doesn't need to be special EFI hose.


 
Since the in tank filter was no good, I wanted to fit an inline filter before the pump. This is also a common mod with SD1s, to try to trap rust before it kills the pump. It may not have been rust that went into my pump, but something chewed it up. This filter may have saved the pump, but oh well.

The standard hose from the tank to pump is 12mm ID. Finding a filter on the shelf with an inlet/outlet of 12mm or 1/2" is damn near impossible here (You can order them online, such as the WIX 33299, but I needed it quicker than that), so I had to look for an alternative. I ended up buying 7/16"/11.1mm fuel hose from Repco and picking up a Ryco Z153K filter. It has a 10mm inlet/outlet.
To remove the pump I found it easiest to remove the whole crossmember and bracket assembly first, and leave the pump hanging by the hoses. I don't have any photos of this because it's a pain taking photos under the car, and the next step got pretty messy.

Something had been living on the bracket I suspect

Being gravity fed, as soon as you remove the feed to the pump the fuel tank is going to drain, quickly. I removed the hose from the pump and directed the end into an empty fuel can. I drained the tank until the fuel started to sputter from the hose, as the little baffle sump in the tank filled and drained. This allowed me to remove the hose from tank and fit a piece of new hose that I had plugged with a wheel stud

I then removed the outlet hose of the pump from the hard line

Moving to the bench it was time to replace the pump and hoses. The outlet hose was worse than expected. It's a miracle it wasn't obviously leaking (although there has always been a strong fuel smell in the vicinity of the fuel pump, but no obvious wetness). Sorry for the average photos.


 
Here is the replacement standard pump, in the housing

The only place to fit the pre filter is just before the pump, as the rest of the hose is covered by the brackets with minimal free space

Pinched the connections from the old pump and swapped to replacement, with some modification as old pump wasnt original (it's actually a proper Bosch 070, or maybe a "copy") and uses screw terminals not spade terminals the standard one does. Nice new hose (and not the shitty fake R9 hose)

I pre-assembled it on the brackets to see how it all fit, but you can't actually fit it to the car like this, you need to do the reverse of removal; hang the pump from its hoses and then fit the brackets

Then it was just a case of refitting it all. Once the pump was back in place, I directed the hose in the engine bay (inlet for EFI filter) into a bottle, reconnected the fuel pump connector and turned the key. It took a couple of primes to get all the air out, and fill the pre-filter, but then it shot a nice stream of fuel into the bottle. I did this twice to make sure there was no more glitter or dirt in the lines, and fit the new fuel filter.

A quick test to fill and prime the filter, and then proceed to spray pressurised fuel all over the engine..... oops. I replaced all the hose clamps on the fuel filter with proper EFI clamps, as the hoses were still good, but I hadn't got a good seal on one of the clamps. Repositioned and tightened, and she was all sealed up.

The replacement pump is nice and quiet, and makes a smoother whirring sound than the old 070, even with the resistor bypass in place.

I took Tess for a quick drive to see how she was. I was a little peeved off, the hesitation was still there.

I returned home, swapped back to the fuel pump relay, which quieted the pump down further, but it still makes a nice soft whirring sound, but the issue remained, even to the point where stabbing the throttle at idle caused the engine to stall. I tried to restart but it wouldn't immediately start, so I decided to have a quick look at the spark plugs.

I removed a plug and sure enough it was as black as night. Very rich and fouled.

I whipped out all 8 of the plugs, and they were all the same. I cleaned then all with a wire brush and brake clean, and regapped them from the 0.9 they were (I lowered the gap when fitted at recommendation of others), to 1.1. I figure a bigger gap might help have a bigger spark to blast through the carbon on the plugs.

Unfortunately I had a whoopsy removing one, and broke it >_< Thankfully I have spares, so I popped a replacement in

I had to shoot out and pick the wife up from the train, so took Tess to see if tweaking the plugs had changed anything. The car started fine with the clean plugs, but still hesitated. I picked her up and just as we got home she asked if I had given it a good blow out. No, not really, so we went the really long way home... with a decent italian tuneup. The car now revs happily and freely, no matter how quick you jab the throttle. Despite taking care in the wet conditions, because traction, I still put the hammer down and blew them cobwebs out.

I can't be sure what fixed it exactly, but the fuel pump was not in a happy place, and the spark gap may have been too small. I also suspect one or more injector is weeping/leaking, so that wont be helping. The fuel gauge does read much more accurately now too, which is awesome.

The lesson here? If you don't have a pre-pump filter, and your fuel pump is already sad, don't run your 30+ year old car low on fuel. It might just be the straw that breaks everything.

As a side note, don't worry, Le Mini Snicket is still here. I moved it outside the other day and then it proceeded to rain. This was a good test of the new window seals i fitted, as the interior was dry, with no signs of leaks. Success. I'm just getting the money together to take it for the registration inspection, and then we will see where we are.

[kws]

Well damn. Got a harsh lesson in the KISS principle today.

As above, I replaced the fuel pump and filters recently as i ran the car low on gas and it started to show hesitation when coming on throttle. There was fine metal in the fuel filter, likely from the pump, so i swapped it with another pump i had. I also fitted a pre-pump filter, to make sure no crap from the tank gets into the filter. The good news is that the inside of the tank is not rusty, and the fuel sender now works properly.

Anyway, so i thought the issue was fixed, but then its been popping up randomly until a couple of days ago when i went to go help a friend with their car, and Tess got very grumpy on the way home, almost stalling when trying to take off at intersections, and if you didnt roll on the throttle slowly it would fall flat on its face, backfire and carry on until it cleared and would rev happily to limiter.

I checked all the plugs, all very black (i only cleaned them the other day) and a couple of them wet with fuel. I replaced them with new ones, issue remained. I checked all injectors were working, they were all firing OK. I reinstalled the air intake back in front of the radiator, no change. I removed and cleaned the cap and rotor, no change. Checked for vacuum leaks around inlet manifold, none. Cleaned idle control valve, no change. Removed idle control valve and bypassed, no change. Re-wired idle control valve as plug was damaged, no change. Resistance tested all leads, all OK. Resistance tested coil, OK. Stripped down coil and amplifier unit, and swapped parts from another unit I had, after thoroughly cleaning all parts. No change. WTF.

I then stood back and thought, "damn, its almost like when Effie didnt have enough acceleration enrichment in the tune, I wonder what the ECU is seeing on the MAP sensor". A quick check on the hand controller, and BAM, the MAP reading was all over the show when the throttle was blipped and wasnt responding as quick as it shouldve been. 

I removed the vacuum line to the MAP sensor, which also Tees off the FPR, and inspected it. No cracks, no holes, nothing. I tested it for holding a vacuum with a hand pump, held well. I was about to reinstall it again and admit defeat for the day when suddenly a small dribble of oil came out of the end of the vacuum hose. Well damn, WTF?

I squirted some brake clean down the hose and it took a fair bit to come out the end of the hose. Eventually it came through as solid black, slimey and with some lumps. It took a lot of brake clean to clear the hose and run clear again; lots of oil in the hose.

The hose was refitted, and I fired the car up again. It fired straight up, and the MAP reading on the hand controller was much more stable and quick to respond. A couple of blips of the throttle and there was a little stutter, but once the plugs cleared it showed no signs at all of hesitating when giving it throttle. I took it for a drive, and no matter how hard i came on the throttle, even taking it up a steep hill, she just pulled hard.

So, in conclusion, I probably didnt need to replace the fuel pump, it obviously wasn't too bad and was just a coincidence that the car started to run badly when i was low on fuel. The vacuum line, which is the main "load" feed for the ECU was full of blow-by oil. So a tip to anyone that is running a remote map sensor, make sure you keep your vacuum hose clean.

KISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid.

[kws]

THis page is huge. New plz.

[kws]

Bump

[kws]

Derp

[kws]

Whoop