KwS is back in an SD1 again, because of course.

[kws]

Here we go again. The SD1 sickness just gets into your blood and never leaves.

I really regret selling Effie, but at the time I had no other choice as I still had Tess and she wasn't ready to sell, and we had just been kicked out of our rental so they could sell it, so had no parking for one SD1, let alone two. I managed to source a spot for Tess to stay until we settled on our house, but Effie had to be moved on.

Tess wasn't quite the same, I never quite bonded with her the same and found that between the aftermarket cam and the manual box it didn't quite drive how I wanted an SD1 to drive. I feel the autobox and lazy low down torquey engine suit the style better.

So here we are again. That desire for an SD1 didn't leave me, so once the Tomcat was sold, I started my search. I looked at what was available online, of which nothing was suitable (HAD to be a Series 2, and there were none at a reasonable price), and then began reaching out.

I started with Nigel, or NP70 as it used to be called. It's been sitting outside, uncovered, untouched and unused since approx 2018. Allegedly it has a starting issue, which is why it was parked up. I contacted the owner and proposed buying the car and saving it, but unfortunately the owner wasn't having a bar of it and more or less said he'd get around to fixing it at some point and that was that.

Of course, I checked with Effie's owner if he might sell, but he is dedicated to getting her back on the road and knows full well that selling her would be a regrettable mistake.

Next was to try my luck with a comment I had seen on Facebook on an SD1 group. An NZ SD1 owner posted asking if it was worth exporting his Vanden Plas EFI back to the UK as he had tried to sell it in NZ with no luck, and the UK market for these cars is far hotter. This was back in December.

I sent the guy a message and just asked if he was still looking to sell the EFI. Sure enough, he was. A few more messages were passed back and forth, a price was discussed, and some photos and a video were sent to indicate the condition.

It looked nice enough in the photos and video, and did sound like it ran well.

Being the bore that I am, I keep a database of all the injected SD1s I come across in NZ. This is one of the ones on that list (one of 10 VDP EFIs), and I had known about it for a number of years, since it was originally from around my region. I have a few photos of the car from when it was for sale the past couple of times, and had even seen the car in person about 5 years ago, and recall it looked quite tidy.

Once we agreed on the deal, I once again booked in my preferred transporter (Brent at Classic Towing) and by some miracle, he managed to fit my collection in this weekend.

The next day, today, after a solid effort by Brent, the car was delivered

The engine took a few turns to get fired up from cold, but came to life easily enough and without any unusual noises or clouds of smoke. I warmed it up a bit while Brent undid the rest of the tie-downs, and then backed the car off the truck and into the drive.

First impressions are a bit of a mixed bag. The paint looks good, but only because it had a blow over at some point, which is really obvious as there are masking lines and overspray everywhere you look. There are a couple of spots of rust that I have found, including some big bubbles in the sunroof panel, and some small blisters at the top corner of the windscreen. Otherwise, without having been under it, it appears to be quite solid.

The interior looks in good condition, with no tears in the seats and it all seems to be complete. The obvious elephant in the room is the steering column being in bits, but that is due to a disclosed issue where the indicator stalk has failed, so the previous owner removed it for replacement (and had failed to source the replacement). Everything is really dirty though, so I will need to get the wetvac out and give it a going over.

All the doors are really sticky and the catches need a real good slam to catch. The car has only been off the road for about a year, but obviously sitting hasn't been kind to it.

The engine looks like a standard, albeit slightly neglected, EFI engine. It starts and runs well enough, and although the temp was low on the gauge, it didn't overheat sitting idle. There is a slight tapping from the engine, which I'm hoping is just an indication it needs an oil change.

The obvious modifications/issues I have noticed are that there is an aftermarket electric fan on the radiator, which appears to be running at full speed whenever the key is turned ON. There is also an aftermarket cooler mounted in front of the radiator, for either the transmission or power steering, I haven't looked to see which yet. Someone has also messed with the ignition coil setup, as it has a Bosch GT40 coil and the electronic module for it is mounted to the AFM bracket on the strut top.

Speaking of bodges, the breather system can't be working as intended. There should be an inlet filter on the LH valve cover, but instead, someone has blocked it off with a bit of hose and a bolt. I will need to look into refitting a filter to it. It might explain all the weeping oil around the engine.

I haven't driven the car yet (as the steering wheel was barely held on and the adjustment clamp for the column was loose - oh, and no indicators), so I'm not sure what the suspension and brakes are up to, so that's some excitement yet to be had.

It's a good basis for a car, with some foibles. I'm glad I bought it when I did, as it really needs the Tastes Like Petrol treatment to recover it back to its glorious self.

There will be a ton more work to be done, so stay tuned.

 

 

Also, why Lucas I hear you ask? Well, the obvious link is the Lucas electrics, but the more obscure reason was the little jumping spider the car came with. They're about the only spider I can happily live with.

 

Discussion

[kws]

The first step in getting Lucas back on the road was to address the one issue I knew of when buying the car; the lack of a working indicator stalk.

The previous owner told me it was broken but didn't say how or why, so until the car arrived it was a bit of a mystery. I could see in the pre-purchase photos that the column shrouds and stalks were missing, but knew no more than that.

Upon arrival, the car came with the stalks missing and the shrouds on the passengers seat. There was an icecream container in the back seat with the remnants of one switch, and what appeared to be quite a new, albeit incorrect side, indicator stalk assembly

Assessing the stalks, the disassembled one was very likely the original broken one, so that's where I started. If you have been following my posts for a while you will know that I'm a big fan of fixing what I have, instead of just throwing new parts at a problem. This was no different.

I could tell immediately that the high beam detent on the switch was broken, which would cause the high beam to fail to latch and stay on. The plastic piece that causes it to latch should be sticking up in the gap the arrow is pointing to.

Now, I can't find it, so I may not have written about it, but I have done this job before. Not for the detent, but to fix a broken horn wire. 99.1% of the job is exactly the same, so I had an idea of what I was doing.

The donor was the mint condition mirrored stalk. This is either from a different car that uses a similar switch but has the indicator on the RH side of the column, or is from a LHD. You can see that the stalk is upside when on the correct LH side and bent upwards.

There were a couple of other differences too; the connector was the later "church window" style, which the car didn't use, and there was that random blue wire coming off it, which had no place to connect to.

The first step is to VERY carefully remove the metal plate from the front of the switch. There are two small machine screws, and then it hooks in under two plastic tabs near the stalk. Once the plate is off you can see the gubbins that makes it all works. Be careful though, at the top and bottom are detent springs and plungers that can and will make a break for freedom. The top one should have a ball bearing under the spring, and the bottom one a plastic wedge.

The white collar for cancelling the indicators just lifts out, and then so does the central mechanism that the stalk moves (the big black piece with the white arms on it). Be careful here as there is a copper roller, spring and plastic plunger in this section that will drop out.

With all that removed, you are left with the rear housing and the stalk.

It's interesting to note that the three long contacts for the indicators are mirrored on the opposite-handed stalk. The top holes are populated on one, and the bottom on the other.

The detent needs to be released from the back casing, by carefully pulling back the piece of black plastic on the back that is holding it in place. It can take quite a bit of force to pull it out. Here it is removed and flipped upside down to show the notches it locks into fr high beam. That's the part missing from the broken one.

Now its time to get serious and cut the two wires that run through the switch and into the stalk (one had purple and black, the other was purple and purple with a black trace, but it's obvious which two run to the middle of the stalk) and then the stalk can be removed.

Now, I couldn't just swap the stalk over, since it was upside down and bent in the wrong direction, so I had to remove the detent piece and swap it to the existing stalk. To do this I needed to remove the little plastic block on the end. Be VERY careful with this as it is super easy to break those little round ears off and render it useless; DO NOT use those ears to support it when you drift out the shaft.

I lightly held the stalk in some pliers on top of the vice, and used a punch to drift the stalk out through the block. Oh, and it helps to mark the position of the block beforehand, so you can have the stalk rotated the same (or it may not face quite forward).

With the block removed, the detent piece just slides off and over the wires.

Do the same to the good stalk, and swap the detent piece to the original stalk. Now line up the block with the marks you made, making sure the horn ground wire is tucked under the block and wraps over the top, and then gently tap it into place again. I gently held the stalk in the pliers, clamped in the vice and used a small hammer to tap it back into place.

Congrats, you now have a good stalk, that isn't attached to anything. Give it a good clean, and let's reassemble.

Reassembly is quite simply the reverse of disassembly. The only thing I had to change was to move the wiper contact over from the top hole down to the bottom hole in the central mechanism. I did give the contacts a quick clean, and lubricated everything with dielectric grease.

The front plate can now be gently reinstalled, making sure it sits flush and the plungers haven't fallen out. Now flip it over, and solder the two wires back onto the harness.

With the switch reassembled I could plug it in and test it. I got a bit cocky and reinstalled it first.

And we have dash lights! Gosh, I love the green illumination in these cars. I was well chuffed.

Until I wasn't. We had dash lights, park lights front and rear, and flash to pass, but no dip or high beams. Damn.

I connected a known good bulb. No change.

Tried a different headlight switch. No change.

Located the dip beam relay and swapped it over with another. No change.

So it was time to grab the test light and start probing around. I had traced the wiring diagram back and had an idea of where to start looking; starting with the headlight switch

Lots of probing later

I was led to this mess under the passengers side of the dash. Ugh.

That bracket with all the relays on it should be bolted firmly to the firewall, not ziptied to a bracket. Not a good start.

I traced a few wires back and ended up at that weird white relay in the foreground. Turns out it isn't a relay, it's a "diode pack" that all the power for the dip and high beams go through. And nothing was going through it.

I could see some traces of corrosion on the casing, so pulled it out and removed the casing.

Well shoot, that'll do it. It looks like it's been under the sea. You cant even identify the diodes on the board, it's just a mess of corrosion.

I got out the can of contact cleaner, and the trusty old toothbrush and got to work, cleaning away as much of the muck as I could. I then used my multimeter to check I had continuity where needed. A couple of contacts were a bit iffy, so I have them a quick re-solder.

I plugged it in, initially without the housing on it, for testing.

I turned the ignition on and flicked the light switch. No change. Damn. I flicked it off and on again, and suddenly I was blinded, the test bulb was glowing brightly.

I had headlights. A quick check also showed that I had high beams too. Everything was working. Headlights, park lights, tail lights, brake lights, plate lights and fog lights.

I refit the housing and bolted the relays to the firewall as they should be. One of the two bolts on that bracket I swear is the worst bolt on an SD1 to get at. Cant fit a socket on it, and it's one flat at a time with an open ended spanner.

Some quick jiggling of wires to refit all the column stalks, and refitting the steering wheel came next. It's starting to look more like a car now. Heck, I might finally be able to take it around the block tomorrow after work. Hype!

I still need to refit the column shrouds, but that will come in due course.

One other thing I noticed when I was messing around in the car, was that this sweet old Clarion radio still works perfectly, auto electric aerial and all. Awesome retro design. Shame the plastic surround was broken and someone has bodged it with bits of interlocking foam floor mat...

[kws]

Just a small but significant update today.

With all the work on the column switches completed, this meant that I could finally take the car for a quick spin around the block to see how it actually drives and if it highlights any further issues.

The cold start was really good, only needing a couple of turns to come to life. I wasn't too impressed with the top end rattle though, I will need to get some new oil in there and hope it's not a sign of things to come. The oil in there will be at least a year old, if not two, and I don't know what grade.

Before I could back the car out of the drive I had to raise the steering column, as all the wiring work was done with it at its lowest height.

Overall the car drove really well. The weird notchy feeling in the steering seemed to clear up, so hopefully that's just from lack of use. It tracked and drove straight, without feeling too rolly polly on the suspensions, so maybe it's not completely poked.

The engine pulled well, although I forgot how lazy the autos are; but that's what I like about them. The revs stay low, and it just rides that low end torque and gains speed quickly without fuss.

Say what you will about automatic transmissions, especially ones from the 80s, but this old GM 3 speed shifts beautifully. The previous owner claims it was rebuilt, but I have no proof of that. The shifts are smooth and seamless, and kickdown was snappy.

I didn't check the trip computer, but everything else seemed to work. The gauges all rose, the speedo and tacho worked, and all the lights worked. The low coolant light worked a little too well though, the bottle and radiator are full, but the light is still on. Will need to do some digging.

The Rover SD1 has such a commanding presence on the road. I can't imagine what it's like for the average joe to see one driving around in a sea of boring beige appliances.

[kws]

Well its all turned pear shaped rather quickly. Looks like the engine is toast. Really slow to build any oil pressure when cold, low oil pressure all round, and clatters deep in the valley when under load. The engine also isnt the original one, its a lower compression engine from a carb SD1. Been trying various things over the past few days to see if the engine is saveable, but i think its done.

Sigh.

[kws]

This may not surprise you, but I have been bit by the Rover SD1 bug.

I sold NP70/Nigel when petrol hit $2/litre for the first time ever. I was a young’un at the time and that was my only car, which I had to daily to my minimum-wage job. A 3.5L V8 probably wasn't the smartest choice.

Look at it though, *swoon*

I reluctantly parted with Effie when our landlord faced financial struggles and evicted us at short notice to sell up. We had nowhere to live, let alone somewhere with secure parking for two SD1s. My wife called on a friend to store Tess until we found our feet.

On paper, Tess was the holy grail of SD1s. Black, manual, Vitesse. But after investing $3,000 and countless hours in her, she was back on the road (after several years being parked up with a mystery issue) and driving solidly and reliably. I didn’t bond with Tess as I had with Effie and, with no more work to do on her it was time to find her an owner that would drive and enjoy her.

For my 65th car, I knew it had to be something special. I wanted another one. Ideally, a Series 2 EFI, of which according to my records, there are ten of in the country.

There were none for sale, so I reached out to NP70’s current owner. I know the car has been off the road since 2018 and the owner has a large fleet so hadn’t gotten around to fixing it, but he’s not intending to sell. I tried Effie’s owner too, as we’ve kept in touch, but he’s got plans for her and knows he would regret selling.

Then I recalled someone last year had posted something on Facebook about planning to export their SD1 to the UK. It would be a shame to drop another car from NZ’s limited numbers, so I reached out to see if he still had the car and was soon fizzing with the excitement of adding Lucas to the TastesLikePetrol fleet.

Alas, some of you may have picked up on social media that very quickly I ascertained that there was something seriously wrong with Lucas. I’ve been conned.

At this point - I could skip forward to the moral of the story. But of all 65 cars I have purchased, this is one that’s going down in infamy, so I’m going to lay the facts down.

This is Lucas’ story.

First impressions

After several exchanges with the previous owner, I needed that car. He played hardball - he knew what he ‘had’ and that Series 2 EFI cars were rare. It was now or never. There are so few of these cars and too many of them are rotting into the ground, if I could save a fourth one and get it back on the road after over a year languishing under a ‘best intentions’ owner, I would.

In addition to needing a new indicator stalk for a WOF, the one caveat he stressed was that it “wasn’t show quality”. That’s fine, he had already specified no rust, and the body and engine were otherwise solid, just in need of a good service and some "TLC". I’d seen the car under its previous ownership, circa 2016, and recalled it was a tidy example.

British Car Day 2016

He sent me some potato quality photos taken from a distance, and a video of the engine starting and running when cold, also potato quality and not quite showing some bits. It seemed solid enough though, and although there was minor lifter clatter on initial start, it sounded fairly normal. We made a deal (or more like, I agreed to his price and sent the money).

This is the point where he said he would “hold the money in a separate account” in case I wasn’t satisfied and wanted to return the car. Perhaps that should have been a red flag, but I took it as a positive sign.

A few days later Brent’s truck pulled up (cut to ad break for Classic Towing NZ, for all your personal door-to-door automotive delivery needs *no affiliation, he's just a good guy that does a great job*) and first impressions were mixed. He said it wasn’t show quality, but I didn’t realise that he struggled so much with carparks. Both front and rear bumpers were cracked with chunks out of them.

From this vantage point, something also seemed off with the fuel tank. Perhaps he had a habit of doing sweet jumps over speed bumps.

The paint job is also a bit questionable - overspray everywhere and it’s lifting in places showing little prep may have gone underneath. But I guess that’s covered by not being show quality, and while a niggle, it wouldn’t affect the enjoyability of being behind the wheel again.

Speaking of, the steering wheel was at its lowest height, floppy and with the positioning screw MIA. The stalks and surrounds were sitting in a plastic container on the back seat.

As I was pulling the car into the garage, I was surprised that the car with “no rust” had clear rust at eye level, including a large area of bubbling on the sunroof and rust around the windscreen that will hopefully hold for a bit, but will eventually require the windscreen to come out.

Can of worms

You know me, I tend to dive straight into projects and this was no different. I’d only had the car a few hours and already fixed the “one issue” for a WOF - being the replacement indicator stalk (and reassembly of the steering wheel), which I’ve already posted about.

In testing the indicator, I discovered I had no headlights and spent a couple of days tracing wiring diagrams and finding that part of the loom had been submerged in water at some point (also covered in the above post). I’m yet to work out where the water was getting in - but the owners manual in the glove box has been destroyed by moisture and overtaken by black mould so there’s a leak on that side somewhere.

Snooping around the car and building my shopping list for the inevitable Rimmers order, I found:

• Three fuel leaks (fire hazard)
• A dented/weeping fuel tank (fire hazard & WOF issue)
• Washer jets don’t work (WOF issue)
• Doors sticking and/or not catching properly (WOF issue - at this point, I’ve been too scared to try the windows other than the drivers once, which is stuffed)
• Everything was finger-loose. Why does no one like doing up bolts?

And this is where it gets really good/bad

Following the initial work, I took the car for a gentle lap of the block - just to validate the steering column etc was all good for a Warrant.

I had non-existent oil pressure. Rovers are known for low pressure (high flow, low pressure system) and the floppy gauges aren’t decimal-point accurate, but at best it was getting about 1/2 what I should be and you could tell.

Less than 15PSI at idle, but hey, the lights not on, so that's something.

Then I got the car up to temperature and the knocking started.

 

 

Turns out it’s made the noise before (of course - cars don’t go from fine to full on metal-spoon in a saucepan by themselves) but “didn’t make the noise when loaded on to the truck”. That doesn’t mean it’s magically better, it just meant the car hadn’t come up to temperature??

But wait, that’s not all

I’ve saved the best for last. Last week I noted something not right and I discovered what it was.

The tired, worn-out engine was not original to the car.

It wasn’t even an EFI engine (31A engine code, 9.75:1CR). It was a lower-spec (11A 9.35:1CR) engine rated at significantly less power.

Now, some people legitimately don’t know what’s in their engine bay. These people typically aren’t “enthusiasts” or active club members who explicitly “know what they’ve got” and the value of a Series 2 EFI.

But while I knew he knew, I had no way of proving that he knew it was not the original engine.

Let's recap

Exact quote:	Surely it’s reasonable to assume?	What he sent me
Series 2 EFI	A Series 2 EFI with a high compression "Vitesse" EFI engine in the car	A Series 2 shell with a lower spec engine, with the EFI gear bolted onto it
Just needs an indicator stalk for a WOF	Just needs an indicator stalk for a WOF, and maybe a good service	Needs an indicator stalk, headlights fixed, the fuel tank repaired, fuel leaks fixed, the doors to function, and maybe some rust work depending how picky the inspector is.
“Any rust?” “No rust.”	Light surface rust, but no bubbling	Visible rust at eye-line - bubbling through the paint on the sunroof and around the windscreen. Have also found rust in the floor pan so far
“Got some spares”	A box of miscellaneous spares - usually includes an airbox, maybe a spare taillight, radio surround, that set of spark plugs you hadn’t got around to fitting. That sorta thing.	A pile of scrap, including the original engine - as yet, not provided.

Return to sender

After hours of diagnosing and googling and pricing, it was clear that the car was miles away from what was described and sold to me.

• I don’t have space to do an engine swap at home (noting our steep driveway making manoeuvring limited when a car’s missing running gear, and remembering the Marina has dibs on half the garage). 
• I have no money left to pour into a significant project like this. Effie had an engine rebuild before I got her - receipts for $6,000 NZD.
• I have a long list of jobs still to get through to get the Marina to British Car Day in February 2023.

Earlier in the week, I had signalled to the seller that the car wasn’t happy and I was going to run some further diagnostics just in case it wasn’t serious but it wasn’t looking good and we might need to revisit. Remembering his original offer to hold back the money in case I wasn’t satisfied and needed to return the car.

At minimum, I’d need to be compensated at least half of what I paid for the car to keep him but a) I’d still have issues with space and time, and b) let’s face it, the seller was never going to go for that.

I drove the Swift up the Coast to clear my head the next day and made a call. A hard call. Lucas had to be returned.

I first sent a video of the clattering engine. Then I sent a note outlining the disappointment and that I would have to return the car. I proposed that he covered return costs as the car was so drastically misrepresented - and in the meantime, I’d fixed the indicator stalk he’d spent a year "fixing", and the headlights, given it an oil change, and replaced the AWOL exhaust gaskets for him.

He said if I wanted my money back, it was my problem to send it back to the Bay of Plenty. That would put me out $1,400 in transporter fees and I would have nothing to show for it. But better than being out of pocket for the full cost of the car, I suppose.

I agreed and provided him with my bank details so I could start arranging return transport.

“No no. Send me the car first. I’ll refund after I’ve inspected it.”

Well, how about half now - as a sign of good faith, considering everything?

“No. Return the car first"

Okay, I’ll just get a short agreement written up for us to sign, to cover us both - you get the car, I get a full refund.

“No.”

You won’t sign?

“Send the car first - I'm suspicious you have done something to the car"

"Return the car or get lost"

So apparently I found one of the dodgiest guys in the Rover community, and his behaviour was getting slipperier by the minute.

Even if I returned the car to him at my cost, I had zero confidence I’d see my money back. After the total of the interactions I’ve had with him in the last month, there was no good will there. He declined, on several occasions, to sign a simple agreement to provide a full refund because, I believe, he never had any intention of providing that refund and actively dodged answering the question. I half expected him to come back with things like “Hey, this isn’t the original engine! And it makes noises when up to temperature! Oh well, thanks for the car back. I’ll just have to keep your money as compensation.”

So I told him as much.

He doesn’t deserve Lucas. He had a plan to export it to the UK (likely as-is. He has no time nor intention to fix it) saying he had a buyer for £12-15,000 GBP. So, you’re welcome unsuspecting British Rover-lover. You would have bought a lemon without an EFI spec engine and who knows how many more to-be-discovered issues.

Karma’s a bitch. 

Final chapter

I had no proof that he knew it didn’t have the original engine (except in hindsight I seem to recall it being mentioned in the listing when he bought it in 2018). Or, that is, until two full weeks after money had changed hands. I get this message from the seller:
“By the way I still have the spares that came with the car when I bought it. They are the original 31A engine block, cylinder heads power steering pump etc that was replaced with the different engine.”

Check and mate.

This was the first time he had acknowledged it did not have the original engine - despite commanding such a fixed, high price. Apparently a “nut or screw went through” the original engine, so there is a reason it was taken out, and he knew all about it.

For the record - this is grounds for compensation under the Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017 (which does apply to private sales, unlike the CGA). Yes, I’ve had someone look into this. The compensation entitlement would likely be greater than I had asked for. The question is whether having the car in limbo, in order to go through the motions and see him in Court is worth it is another thing.

Now, I wasn’t in the market for a project - the Marina is deserving of my time and money first.

But had I been told there was an SD1 with a temporary (albeit knocking) engine, so it was rolling, that would come with the original engine needing a full rebuild, maybe I would have reassessed the value and potential of the car. Maybe I wouldn’t have been able to resist. Maybe I still would have taken it on.

But that’s not what he sold me, and not at the hefty price I paid for it.

And they lived happily ever after

When you get sold a lemon, make lemonade. It may Taste Like Petrol, but that’s kinda our signature here.

Lucas is staying and he’s going to be back, better than ever.

I don’t know how we’re going to get there. I still don’t have time, money, or space. I’m enquiring about offsite storage to keep him dry over winter while I sort a plan and order what I need.

[kws]

As mentioned in the previous update, once I noticed the engine wasn't happy, I began looking into how bad it was, hoping it was recoverable.

The first thing to do was to drain the old oil and refill. According to the sticker on the windscreen, it was last changed 2 years ago and was due last year by time, not miles.

I idled the engine to get some heat into the oil, and proceeded to drain it. I remember from my last SD1s that you cannot remove the oil filter with an empty sump or you risk draining the oil pump and having it lose its prime.

The oil that came out was really thin for what should be a 20W50 grade. It had a slight metallic sheen, but no glitter and no chunks. It didn't smell overly like petrol, but it did have a smell to it. It was very black.

I refilled the engine with the cheapest 20W50 I could get that was still a good brand. I found some Nulon on clearance; perfect. It's not what I would normally run (Penrite HPR30) but there was no point filling the engine with $80 of oil just to see if it was toast or not. $30 oil is more like it.

Once the sump had oil in it again, it was just a case of spinning off the old oil filter and fitting the spare Ryco filter I had in my parts stocks.

Starting the engine, and already it has made a noticeable change. The oil pressure is still scary slow to rise when cold (the light goes out, but it's many seconds to rise above 0psi on the gauge), but it's higher on the gauge now.

I did notice that the idle when in gear was lower than it should be (about 400rpm). It still idled nicely, and about where Effie used it, but the lower RPM meant that the oil pressure was bottom of the gauge. I used the idle screw on the throttlebody to bring the idle up a bit. It's now about 900-1000rpm when at idle in neutral, which is higher than the book says (800rpm), but it means that when the RPM drops in gear, the RPM is still high enough (about 600rpm) that I have oil pressure. It's a bandaid masking a bigger issue, but it works.

Between the idle bump and the oil change, at idle in gear, when warm, we now have about 16psi of oil pressure, which is a damn sight better than the 8-10psi before.

Which is a damn sight better than what we had

(no I don't know why the coolant level light is on, I might need to clean the sensors as the system is full)

When revving the engine it goes up to about 30psi at 2000rpm, which is more or less in the ballpark of where it should be (I believe the book says it should be 35psi).

It still clatters though.

The next diagnostic task was to check the exhaust manifold. I had heard that if there is a leak from the manifold that it can sound like a clattering engine knock. Sure enough, a few of the manifold bolts were barely finger tight. I tightened that up, and it still clatters.

I bought a pair of cheap exhaust gaskets and got to work, thinking that maybe the gaskets were blown.

Removing the manifolds was easy enough. All the bolts came out fine since they had recently been loose already. I did note there were no locking tabs fitted to the bolts. Even the downpipe joints came undone easy enough, despite some bodging by a previous owner.

Well, I guess the gaskets aren't blown then...

They just aren't fitted

A couple of the ports had traces of sealant on them, but that was it

It was pretty obvious that it had been leaking quite badly. There were carbon traces everywhere.

Using a series of wire brushes both by hand and on the drill, I cleaned up the mating faces of the heads and manifolds. I also had to do some work with the downpipe flange on the manifolds. I cleaned up the threads with a die. One of the flanges had a replacement stud on it, that had less thread. The thread stopped where the arrow is pointing, meaning the nut couldn't even reach the flange. To compensate, a previous owner had used an oversized nut as a spacer so the actual nut could still tighten down on the thread.

That's not my style, so I ran a thread down the rest of the stud

The RH side manifold got fitted first. A couple of zip ties through the top bolts holes on either end kept the gasket in place. The gasket was fitted with high temp sealant smeared on both sides, just to aid in sealing. The bolts were fitted with flat and spring washers, to help stop them backing out again.

The other manifold needed the gasket cut in the middle. Since it's a one-piece gasket, it would interfere with the dipstick tube. It was easy enough to cut out the center piece with some tin snips, making sure to round the razor-sharp corners off a bit

This was also then fitted, with new washers on the bolts and sealant on the ports.

I chose to remove the downpipes so I could clean up the flanges. This turned out to be a PITA.

With the manifolds fitted, and the exhaust still in place, it was a nightmare trying to get these things to fit again. The flange on the manifold isn't too bad, but the standard joint with the exhaust Y pipe uses a sealing olive and those annoying three bolt clamps to squeeze it together. In hindsight, I would refit the downpipes to the Y pipe before the manifolds, and then fit the manifold with the downpipe loosely bolted to the flange. I wish Rover just used a standard flange and gasket.

As the photo above shows, there are a few oil leaks. It appears that the worst two are the valve cover gaskets, and the sump gasket. Both will be replaced when whatever happens to the engine happens.

So, did that fix it? No. It still clatters, although the engine is noticeably quieter when running now.

The final check I did was the spark plugs. They all look really old, are Champion, and have a weird yellow colour on the ends. Google indicates that the yellow colour is generally due to old and dirty fuel, which would make sense. I put some 98 octane in the car since it came with almost nothing in the tank, and it really woke the engine up and make it run smoother, so I don't know what the seller put in the tank to load it on the truck.

I had some NGK plugs in my spares, so I swapped all the plugs out for those. I've never used Champion plugs, and the internet doesn't rate them very highly.

So all in all, the engine still clatters. It might be a bit better than it was when I first got the car, more from me masking it with other things than actually fixing it, but it's still there, intermittently, mainly under acceleration now.

The engine is running better than it has. It can still be a bit grumpy and I'm not sure the EFI system is quite working 100%, but it's drivable, if you wait until the oil pressure comes up when cold, and can ignore the clattering.

[kws]

Moving on from the last lot of repairs, I have also been tinkering with a few other small issues, in preparation for a potential WOF check.

It may be obvious, but the work on this car is kinda sporadic and not really following much of a plan. That's because there currently isn't really one. I'm feeling a bit lost and well over my head, as I don't want to spend money fixing other issues, only to have to put the car into storage until I can fix the engine if it does go pop.

What I have been doing is just ticking some things off the list that don't cost me anything but time. Some of these are also getting fixed with the aim of potentially taking it for a WOF check. Technically a clattering POS engine won't fail a WOF, so it's possible I might be able to get it on the road before doing the engine work.

The first work I had to do was kinda forced upon me. The outside temp overnight the other night dropped below zero, and having already checked when I got the car, I knew the anti-freeze mixture in the car was pretty rubbish. I pulled the car into the garage for the night to try and keep it above zero, and the next day worked on draining a few litres out of the system and topping it up with anti-freeze, just so there was some sort of a mixture in there. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing (and no point flushing the system now).

Of course, it wouldn't be one of my Rovers if it didn't leave a green puddle at some point

I ran the car up to temp, bleeding the cooling system (it's mostly self bleeding) and then set on the next task.

Another easy check is to make sure the throttle pot is set up correctly. Most probably aren't, and will result in the ECU not fuelling correctly.

When checked with a multimeter, the throttle pot range should be between 0.32v +/- and 4.7V +/-. Mine wasn't quite there (better than Effie though, which read zero at idle).

And this is where I discovered the car cannot reach Wide Open Throttle. It stops opening at about half throttle...

I marked the throttle pot and tweaked it slightly.

This brought the closed throttle reading into line

But I was still stuck at half throttle. If I disconnected the linkage to the throttle I could get the full opening (or near enough, it might need a little more tweaking but it's not an exact science)

It turns out the auto trans kickdown cable was so badly adjusted it was stopping the throttle from opening fully. The adjustment was wound completely out (I've actually backed it off slightly in this photo for testing, it was right on the end of the thread initially)

I backed it off until I could get full throttle and then locked it off.

A test drive shows that the car has significantly more grunt when you give it a boot, no surprise there; nothing like opening the last half of the throttle to wake the engine up, but I had lost kickdown on the transmission. Clearly, I need to wind the adjustment back in a bit further.

The kickdown works by the linkages pulling on that cable when at a certain percentage of throttle, which overcomes the spring pressure in the transmission and pulls on a rod that causes the transmission to kick down a gear. If the cable isn't being pulled enough because the throttle hits the stops before the cable overcomes the spring pressure, it won't kick down. I can still manually shift the transmission, but I will tweak it so kickdown works again.

Next on my list of things to fix, was the washer system not working, and having a bodge in place. This is a common failure point, and the easy fix is to do what both a previous owner of this car and also Effie did and fit a replacement external pump to suck through a failed pump.

The pumps on these have no filter, so if they suck in gunk they are prone to jamming up and no longer working. They are mounted on the bottom of the bottle with grommets.

I removed the bottle and found the bottom of it covered in green algae. No guesses for what's jammed the pumps then. The cap is also missing, so that won't help.

I cleaned the bottle out with some household cleaner and a good blast from the garden hose.

One of the pumps is jammed solid and I cannot free it, but after some gentle persuasion of the percussive kind, the other pump began to spin freely. The good thing is that they are both the same pump, so can be swapped front to rear. I don't need the rear washer to work at this point, so as long as I can get the front working, I'm happy.

The replacement pump has been fitted on the front guard, sucking through the failed pump. This pump did make working noises, but with the bottle dry and full of slime I didn't actually try putting any water through it.

Thankfully no wiring had been cut or altered, they had made a fly lead that plugged into the standard wiring, so all I had to do was unplug it, cut the zip ties and remove the one screw holding the pump to the car.

I then refit the bottle to the car, plugged the pump in, put some water in the bottle and hit the button. Sure enough, a large jet of water fired from the hose. We have a good pump.

To replace the external pump and join the two sections of the hose, I fitted a handy one-way valve I happened to have spare.

This then allowed the pump to send water to the washer jet, but nothing came out. Darn.

The jet is just held in fairly loosely with a couple of clips and pulls free with a bit of wiggling. I found the hose under the jet was kinked completely over, which wouldn't be helping, but the jet was also blocked.

I could've cleared this with compressed air, but being too lazy to fire up the compressor I instead used pressurised brake cleaner forced into the outlets of the jet (reverse flushing it). This worked a treat, blasting some black grot out the back of the jet. I did this in both directions until I was getting a nice stream of fluid out of the jet.

With the jet fitted directly to the outlet on the pump, I could test that the jet was working. The spray pattern wasn't great; they never are, but there was a good volume of fluid coming out of it.

With the jet refitted to the panel, I finally had a front washer jet again. It puts enough fluid on the screen to clear it, so that's a good pass. Probably puts enough fluid onto the car next to me to clear their screen too.

Yes, the wipers are mismatched and sit too low. Yet more things to fix.

I reluctantly took a look at the rust above the windscreen. There were a couple of small blisters in the paint which had me worried, after having dealt with the Corolla rust.

Thankfully it looks like it may have started from a stone chip, as after some careful poking, wire brushing and sanding, it was on the surface, doesn't go too deep and looks worse than it is; a completely different sort of rust to the Corolla. It may go down under the bright trim, but I can't see without removing it. I treated it with some rust converter, and once dry, gave it a coating of epoxy zinc. I'll need to get some colour matched touchup paint at some point, but for now, this should keep it under control.

The sunroof panel is still ruined though, but I'm ignoring that and pretending it doesn't exist. Those bubbles on the left will be a hole if I look too hard at them.

I did manage to take the car further than around the block, just for a quick shakedown. I took it two blocks away to a local park and grabbed some photos. Despite its flaws, it's a hell of a car to look at and drive.

Now, if it would stop clattering, so people were looking at the car for the right reasons, instead of trying to work out if they should move back in case it explodes, that'd be nice.

[kws]

Well, it's most of the bits to make an engine, anyway.

As part of the purchase agreement of the car, the seller said he had "Some spares" that would come with the car. I didn't know what and didn't really bother to ask (any spares are a bonus, and I have lots of spares as it is, so it's just more to add to my collection).

When we were in good standing we were going to meet up a couple of hours north of where I live, as he was coming down to visit family, and I would collect the parts then. That all turned to custard once I realised what a bastard he was, so I decided to just write the spares off.

A week or two ago the seller got in touch and said he had the spares and was willing to crate them up and ship them down, at no charge to me. This time he alluded to what the spares were "it's the original engine and some other bits". As this was the first time he had mentioned anything about the car not having its original engine, I was a little taken back by this revelation, not to mention this would have made collecting the spares a bit of a surprise if I chose to take the Swift that day.

I would be stupid to say no, so after some back and forth on things like "how heavy is it?" "will I need a forklift to move it?",  we arranged for the crate to be sent to my local freight depot and I would collect it with a friend that has a van.

As it turned out, the engine was in more bits than expected, which made it much easier to work with anyway. It arrived in a big crate, but we ended up unloading it into the back of our trusty Honda. The block being the heaviest part, and even that is only 30 odd KG and can be (just) lifted by one weakling.

It's funny how much space an exploded diagram of an engine takes, compared to the assembled unit.

The Honda took it like a champ, riding low in the back but with plenty of suspension travel

After work I unloaded the car and got my first look at what I had obtained. First, I could see in the photos, but it was good to confirm it was the correct stamped 31A engine, with the correct 9.75:1 compression ratio.

I was wondering if it was the original stamping or not, but the layout and font style is consistent with the stamping on the 11A engine in the car currently, it just looks rough as guts.

I purchased an engine stand, but haven't set it up yet, so I'm yet to remove the pistons from the block and check the bores, but from the top of the bores I can see, they look like they would go again with a light hone. The pistons appear to be the correct high compression ones too (shallower recess in the crown).

The engine is completely stripped, other than the pistons being left in their bores, and the lifters all being stuck in place.

The crank isn't looking too hot. It has light surface rust on it, but the journals are all scored to some degree too. It should be reusable with some machine work though, even if oversize bearings are needed.

The cam behind it is looking quite tired too. I plan on replacing that anyway, so no issue.

The first signs of issues began when I found the oil pump gears. I was told by the previous owner that "it looks like something went through the oil pump" and he ain't wrong. One of the gears is properly chewed up, but only one...

The bottom of the oil pump housing looks fine, with only minor scoring, which is about what I'd expect for a high KM, somewhat badly looked after, engine

The bearings were next. These were all nicely dumped into a cardboard tray, and they're all kinds of bad. The majority were through to the copper, and all of them had some scoring. They should be a nice dull grey with an even, smooth coating.

The big ends were worn. Ignore the scuffing, that'll be from knocking around in the box.

And the main bearings are really worn. This one even has an extra oil channel ground into it

I don't know what on earth happened to this bearing, and if it was whilst it was in the engine or not, but its ugly

From the numbers on the bearings, they appear to be standard size, original bearings. Likely the ones the engine was built with.

The good news is that the heads are the original EFI heads

This is most obvious due to the injector cutouts in the intake ports. I bet the heads currently in the car don't have these.

Annoyingly as far as I can see, the rocker assemblies weren't marked, so I have no idea which side of the engine they were originally on. Same with the pushrods, they are all just dumped in the box, so I don't know if I can/should use those again. Probably not to the pushrods, but maybe the rockers will be fine with new pushrods? Pending inspection of them and their shafts, of course.

The plan this weekend is to get the block on the engine stand, get the pistons out, and see what the liners/bores and pistons are like. If they aren't too bad, this engine will be saved. I will need to measure the heads, as going from the used composite gaskets in the box, they have likely been skimmed once already, and they can only be skimmed so far before needing replacement. I will also look into whether I can use the newer 3.9 heads as the valve stem seals are far better than the SD1 style.

It looks like the engine was super tired, and not that well looked after, even before the oil pump shat the bed and dumped bits of metal throughout the engine. I did want to upgrade the car to a 3.9 or 4.6, but if I can put the original, numbers matching, 31A engine back into the car, I think that is best.

[kws]

It's no surprise that Lucas wasn't in the best shape when he arrived, so I have been doing small jobs here and there to try and fix some of the more annoying issues he's had.

This post will be a bit of a mess; I have been pottering away on and off with this car for a while now but have not really had enough to bother making a post. Stick with me though, as we adventure through Rover SD1 ownership after someone has bodged a bunch of stuff.

The first job on the list was to try and seal the windscreen trim. I had a leak when it rained, and it was coming from high enough up that it was getting water into the relays under the dash (halfway up the bulkhead), so the logical choice was to try sealing the windscreen first (after checking the sunroof drains, of course).

Windscreens are common to leak on SD1s, as the original sealant perishes over time. The best option is to remove the windscreen and seal it properly, but since that's not really a DIY option, the other recommended option to try is to seal the gap between the stainless trim and the glass, so water can't get under the trim.

First I had to clean out the gap and dry it out. There was a ton of water and mud trapped in here even though the car had been dry for a day or two. I used an air gun on my compressor, a toothbrush and lots of rags to clean and dry it out.

Once it was clean and dry, I used windscreen sealant to carefully run a bead around the gap

It took a ton of cleaning after that to get any excess sealant off the trim and glass, but the overall result looks good. Thankfully it has worked too, even though I still have water ingress, it's not coming from high up anymore. If I still had ingress up high I could also try sealing the other side of the trim, between the trim and the body.

Next was to investigate an annoying and potentially risky issue; the fuel pump running whenever the ignition was switched to ON.

The fuel pump is triggered by a switch inside the airflow meter (AFM) so that the pump is only running if there is air passing through the airflow meter and opening the "flap", so if the engine stops, the fuel pump stops.

I have a spare AFM, so I connected that and sure enough, the fuel pump only ran when the flap in the airflow meter was opened, indicating the issue lay within the AFM.

I removed the AFM and took it to the bench to inspect. Of course, the black plastic cover on the top that protects all the precious internal gubbins had been sealed on with clear bathroom sealant... not even BL was that shite, so someone had been here before.

The top cover basically fell off

The fuel pump switch is here, on the left

It's quite a simple little switch. When the contacts (cyan arrow) are closed, like they are in the photo, the fuel pump circuit will be connected and the pump will run.  The thin metal strip on the left side of the switch (orange arrow) is flexible, and is meant to be pushed away from the other contact by the big grey lever at the top of the switch (pink arrow) which swings to the right the moment the flap opens even a crack.

As a bonus in the above photo, the green arrow points to the pair of wipers that run on the carbon track, which is what the ECU is reading data from as the AFM opens and closes with airflow.

Basically, someone has straightened the flexible strip (orange arrow) so that the contacts are always touching, instead of being bent to the right at the top, allowing the lever to push the contacts apart.

I could have just bent the strip again but I wasn't sure if someone had messed with the calibration of the AFM (which can be done in the same general area), so I opted to install the spare AFM instead.

It's a bodge; Someone trying to mask another issue by just running the pump constantly.

What would the issue be, I hear you ask? Well, cold start was the obvious one. Without the pump running constantly it was suddenly hard to start and real temperamental when it did. That's an issue for future me though. For now, more poking and prodding.

With the AFM off it was easy to remove the air filter housing and check the air filter. I'm glad I did, as someone had once again fit the wrong filter.

NP70, my first SD1, had the same issue. From my investigation, I suspect this filter is suitable for a carb SD1, but keeps getting sold for the EFI SD1 which had a very different intake setup. The photo above is the intake side of the air box, so the only space the air has to get into the engine is the TINY gap between the outside of the rubber seal on the filter, and the metal filter housing. Such a small gap two leaves and a ciggie butt couldn't even get through.

I don't have a spare filter, and I'm not sure if there are even any suppliers other than Rimmers, so in the meantime I have fitted a manky old pod filter I had on hand.

It's nosy as hell and whistles (so did the ones on both NP70 and Effie), but it has to breathe better. I noticed a huge increase in power and response when I swapped out NP70s restrictive filter.

Whilst in the general area I had a quick look at the ignition coil and noticed it was an aftermarket Bosch GT40R coil. Now, there are two issues with this. First, you aren't mean to use the GT40 coils with electronic ignition (which the EFI SD1 has standard). Second, the R means it's suitable for a 6v ballast resistor ignition system, where the voltage is stepped down so the coil runs at 6v (and may see switched 12v for a boost on start up). The EFI SD1 doesn't use a ballast system and powers the coil with 12v-14v all the time.

Not ideal.

Luckily, I pulled a 12v GT40 from the TVR when I fitted the Lucas coil, so had it sitting around. No, still not ideal as it isn't meant for electronic ignition, but until the car is on the road and driving, it will do and is better than running a 6v coil at twice the rated voltage. I don't know how that coil was still working.

I will swap it with the correct coil later on.

Next was a bit of a luxury item, but for me it is one of the little touches that bothers me when it's not there. The washer bottle strap.

When I got the car the washer bottle was held in place with hopes and dreams, holding on for dear life so it wouldn't drop down straight onto the exhaust manifold. I quickly wrapped some zipties around it so that didn't happen (as the bottles are EFI specific and unobtainium).

For Effie, I contacted the SD1 club in the UK and purchased a reproduction fabric strap which was very well made and clipped in place with the built-in snaps. I contacted them again and purchased one of the last ones available for Lucas.

The nice new strap shows up how stained the bottle is, but oh well. Along with the missing strap, was also a missing cap, so a replacement was purchased for that too (the same as a standard carb SD1 bottle cap).

It's funny, I have photos of this car from back in 2015 when it was for sale then, and sure enough, the correct cap was missing then, and some weird clip-on cap had been bodged into place. The bottle was also held in place with a ziptie.

See glorious cap and strap (along with the new long breather hose, which I also fitted as the old one was hard as a rock and cracked)

In my quest to find out why it runs a bit like a bag of rubbish, especially when cold, I dug into the engine systems a bit more.

The worst issues were cold starting (lots and lots of cranking before it reluctantly stumbles into life) and then having to wait for it to warm up a bit before even thinking of touching the throttle or the revs would die out. Really made backing the car up the drive a pain in the backside.

I started with the ECU, mostly because there had been water ingress in that area and I wanted to check the ECU had not suffered any water damage since they aren't sealed.

The ECU is an odd one. I removed it, and it looks nice and clean. Good start, no corrosion or moisture in the pins. It doesn't have the usual Lucas sticker on the cover though (it did have screws, including undamaged anti-tamper screws, I have removed them). Yes, my work bench is a 31A Rover V8 Block.

It does have this sticker on the side, which seems to indicate it is the correct 83986 model, but had maybe been replaced in 1992?

Regardless, I whipped off the covers and had a look. Nice and clean.

Unfortunately no microscope this time, but I had to make do with a torch, a good squint and the zoom on my phone camera. Nothing sticks out, but I have ordered a USB microscope and will have another look when that arrives. I will probably resolder the voltage regulators anyway, along with the circuit that runs the enrichment.

The main reason I pulled this to bits was to see if there was any obvious reason why I have no acceleration or full throttle enrichment. When the key is turned to ON, if you open the throttle quickly or to wide open throttle, you should hear all eight of the injectors fire in one big CLICK. I have nothing. The throttle pot is set correctly (or so I thought), and even a test throttle pot from Effie made no difference.

I even went so far as to connect my spare ECU, but that made no difference. So either there is a wiring issue (I have checked and all pins at the ECU have the correct readings), both ECUs have the same fault, or Lucas is living up to its name.

Since the ECU was out, it was the perfect opportunity to have a play with a toy I purchased a while ago, before I had an SD1 again. The Austin Rover Fast Check unit for the EFI Rover V8.

This thing is cool. It plugs into the engine harness instead of the ECU and can test various sensors and see if they are operating correctly. You can also use the dial and push button to fire individual injectors.

The little booklet with it gives you a step-by-step test procedure, including a guide on what to check if things don't go right.

I plugged it in, turned the key and the lights lit up

Unfortunately, as you might be able to see in the picture behind the unit, there should be LEDs lit for the AIR FLOW, IGN, COIL, and TWO for the THROTTLE POT. One of my throttle pot lights wasn't lit.

The diagnostic procedure advised to check the calibration of the sensor, so out with a screwdriver, and a little tweaking later we had both lights.

The other tests all did as expected, so by all accounts, the injection system is electrically working as it should. Still no enrichment though...

Moving along, since the enrichment wasn't playing ball, I set off to do something about the horrible state of the pipes around the inlet plenum.

The first issue was the hose clamp on the throttlebody end of the main intake hose from the AFM was loose, to the point the hose was just sitting in place. The clamp wouldn't tighten either, so a quick trip to the vice, and some swift reshaping with a hammer later, and the clamp was now tight.

Next, the hoses from the over-run valve and the the throttle body to extra air pipe were both secured with zip ties and basically fell off when touched (hoses at top of the photo below)

I didn't have the right size clamps for these but made do with some slightly bigger ones in the meantime. These are tight now.

Basically, anything that can allow unmetered air (air that hasn't entered via the AFM and been measured) is the enemy. Unmetered air will cause the engine to have more air in the engine than the ECU knows of, so the air-fuel ratio will be on the piss.

What's the result of this then? Well, this is how it starts now, stone cold, with no throttle or constantly running fuel pump

 

 

 

I blip the throttle a couple of times there too, which is something I would never dream of doing before this work, it would have stumbled and probably cut out. Now it's sharp and crisp to respond.

When warm, the engine is running very sweet indeed. It's idling well and responds to throttle quickly and smoothly.

 

 

 

I'm not saying it's perfect, it's not, but it's running a damn sight better than it has since I got it. It also seems to be running a bit quieter, but I won't know how the lifters are doing until I take it on the road again. Fingers crossed its a bit less clattery than it was.

To celebrate a job well done, I decided to pressure test the cooling system and find out where the green excitement juice on the garage floor came from.

Sure enough, two leaks. One is easy, it's leaking from the top hose where it meets the radiator

The other is a bit harder; it's leaking from the small bypass hose behind the water pump. I will try to tweak the hose clamp, but ultimately I will replace this when I do the thermostat as it should give me better access then.

That's not too bad; I had expected to see coolant pouring out from under the inlet manifold since no doubt the under intake heater pipe will be on its last legs (they all are).

For the last two jobs, I did a couple of small things that should make life better. First, I replaced the tailgate struts with new ones. I used similar to the ones on Tess; Ford Falcon BA/BF (02-10) WAGON tailgate struts. They're a smidge longer than the standard ones so the tailgate opens a bit further, which can chip the paint on the top edge if you aren't careful, but they're cheap, available, strong and work perfectly for opening and closing.

This means I can finally get rid of the garden stake that I have been using

Finally, I sorted some rust on the passengers floor where water had been collecting. I had to remove al the drain plugs and drill a couple of extra drainage holes since it was filling up each time it rained, but after a couple of fixes it's now drier than it was, but it means the surface rust was starting to take hold.

I wire brushed the area, rust treated it, and then gave it a coat of black zinc. Finally, once the zinc was dry, I used a can of Mercedes metallic paint I have had for a decade or so to give it a nice protective coating of actual paint. It's not a terrible match either.

The steel is a little frilly around the square drain plug, but that's not major. Otherwise, it's solid, thankfully.

The drivers' side needs the same work, but I'm struggling with the carpet on that side, so once it's dry I will attack that too. I know on that side it needs at least a new "paint can lid", but they are just stuck down with seam sealer, so I might just chop some plate up into a circle and glue it down after treating everything.

I'm finally making some headway with Lucas. It's not huge, but after having so many setbacks it's nice to be moving forward.

[kws]

It's been an afternoon of working on Lucas today, with the intention of sorting the fuel tank once and for all but ending in a bad discovery.

I noticed when the car was still on the transporter for delivery that the fuel tank wasn't looking too hot, and sure enough a quick peek under the car shows there is a fairly significant dent in the rear of the tank, denting it upwards. Worse than that, was that there seemed to be a lot of moisture/melting paint in a couple of spots on the underside. Yay.

Tanks for the EFI cars are borderline unobtainable, and no one is reproducing them, so my only real option was to work with what I had, or try a source another good used one, which was fruitless.

I've been putting this off for a bit because I haven't had the motivation to roll around under the car on the cold garage floor, but today was the day I couldn't put it off any longer.

I got the car in the air, and sure enough, the back of the tank has a nice dent. It's hard to tell in the photo but the whole back of the tank is pushed up a CM or two with some rippling and creasing along the back edge.

You can see the dark damp spot on the inner edge, along with the one in the middle of the tank

I lowered the rear seat, lifted the carpet and exposed the fuel sender

I wanted to see what the inside of the tank looked like (if it's rusty, it's trash) and see if the dent could be pushed out, so using a hammer and flat blade I removed the locking ring and removed the sender.

The sender had some surface corrosion on it, but nothing major. The inside of the tank was a massive relief though; the tank is shiny and silver, no obvious rust. The exception is some flakes on the bottom of the tank, and the pickup swirl pot has a covering of rust flakes on the bottom (the strainer was still in place on the outlet). The tank will need to come out for a proper cleanout and fix, but that is a future issue.

So the good news is the tank is worth persisting with and I'm not chasing rust holes.

With the sender out the dent was right there, below the hole. I tried to use an old Toyota suspension arm to hammer the dent out a bit, but it kept slipping. I would've liked to use something like a broom handle or other length of wood, but didn't have anything on hand. I'm not sure I made any difference.

I cleaned the areas in question with brake cleaner and a rag before giving it all a sand with a coarse grit paper

You can actually see the two pin holes that are leaking; immediately after cleaning the area, these two spots would have a growing ring of dampness around them.

The tank is super low on fuel, it ran out of fuel on the drive when I got the car, and I have put about 8L into the tank since. I've kept it low waiting for this repair, as this allowed me to raise the rear of the car and slosh all the fuel to the front of the tank, away from the damaged area.

I started with the weird leak in the middle. This looked like someone had driven a screw into the tank and then soldered around it. I cleaned it up, sanded it and then scuffed it with a file before mixing some steel reinforced epoxy putty up and squishing it into place

This stuff is meant to bond to steel and is impervious to fuel, so should seal the leaks, in theory.

Next, I did the same to the pin holes and sealed them with the putty too

I had to redo the one on the right as it wasn't bonding to the tank too well and had a growing ring of dampness around it. I chipped it off, scuffed the area with the file again, and then using force, smeared some of the putty hard into the area. Once this was slightly cured, I then used more of the putty over top of it. This seems to have worked.

The putty is currently curing, and I will lower the car down tomorrow and see if there is any further fuel seeping around the repairs. If not, The area will get some paint and that's the job done.

The other issue with the tank was that the breather hose in the rear wheel well had done its dash

Strangely I don't have any 12-13mm-1/2" fuel hose on hand, so I'll pick some up on my way home from work tomorrow. It's no wonder the tank was dry, it just either leaked out or evaporated away.

Before working on the tank I checked the fuel pressure, just as a matter of course. It's all within spec, 36psi with the engine off, and 30psi at cold idle. No issues there. It was a bit slow to build pressure when cranking, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was due to the low fuel level.

The last job I did in the engine bay was to look at the coolant leaks I found last time. I tweaked the hose clamp on the waterpump hose and found the radiator top hose wasn't fully on the radiator fitting, so loosened that and pushed it further on.

A pressure test now results in no coolant on the ground, which is a major achievement for one of my cars. The hoses still need to be replaced, but that should keep it happy for now.

Now for the bad news. I poked the orange scab on the floor.

I knew the driver's side of the floor wasn't in as good shape as the passengers' side, mainly because I could see the "paint tin lid" trying to make a break for it on the underside of the floor.

By the way, the reason they are called "paint tin lids"? Because they literally are, people have often used the lids from 1L tins and found them to be the same as what Rover supplies. They are bonded into a recessed hole in the floor and are a massive trap for water.

After the success of the passengers side last time, I was hoping for something similar, but with having to replace the tin lid. Sadly that was not to be.

I removed the driver's seat, as I needed to lift the carpet further. To do this you remove the two nuts from the front of the rails, these go onto studs

And then slide the seat all the way forward and look inside the rails for the four torx T40 bolts (two per side) that have square washers

Undo those and the seat will just lift out of place. I tipped it over and into the back seat, but if you wanted to completely remove the seat you would also need to disconnect the seatbelt from the seat.

With the seat out of the way I lifted the carpet further and found despite the car being in the garage with the carpet partially lifted for a week, the underlay was still sopping wet in the footwell. I also started poking around at the cracked underseal and orange scabs, and ended up with this under the car

Some stabbing with a screwdriver and scrubbing with a wire brush and I revealed this

Damn. The hole for the lid has become somewhat overside, with some thin metal towards the inner sill, and another hole formed near the inner sill toward the front of the car.

I'm pissed off it's that rusty and the seller swore the car was rust-free, but I'm not too daunted by it (I'd be crying in a corner if I discovered this a couple of years ago). I have a plan of how to fix it already, which will get rid of the paint tin lid completely and restore good metal to the area, but that'll take some time to do since I will need to strip a bunch of the interior out to make it safe to weld.

So that's where we are for now. I'm still trying to dry it all out, but I'm tempted to just bin that underlay and use some of the jute underlay I have to make a removable mat for under the carpet, so if it gets wet again I can just pull that out and dry it out. Foam is never a good idea where it might get wet.

This whole car has been one step forward and three steps backwards. It'll be a great car once I'm done with it though, I'm sure.

[kws]

As part of my continuous programme to improve Lucas, I wanted to get the tailgate lock working. The latch and release worked, but the key wouldn't turn.

I don't know if the central locking worked on the tailgate yet, I tend to lock the car after the battery is disconnected and it's not a major for me if it isn't working (for now at least), but since I park the car nose down in my driveway, it'd be nice to have the peace of mind that someone can't just open the tailgate up.

The key goes into the lock fine but doesn't turn in either direction and makes no attempt to lock. Looking at the lock, I suspect someone has tried to screwdriver it open at some point. Dicks.

With the car in the garage for other work, it was the perfect time to strip the end off the tailgate and investigate the issue. First the outer trim has to be removed, this is held in place with about 6 screws, two of which are under the number plate lamp lenses.

The parcel shelf makes an excellent workbench.

With the plastic trim off you have access to the lock assembly

Found some surface rust, which I later treated

The handle assembly is secured to the lid with two nyloc nuts and washers recessed into the inside of the lid

With those two removed, the whole lock assembly can be pulled free of the tailgate. If you have central locking, you will need to disconnect the actuator rod, which is a bit of a pain, but release the metal clip and wiggle and jiggle until the lever twists free. A tip for refitting is to slip the locking tab onto the rod at the same time as you slide it through the hole on the handle,

It's no real surprise the locking mechanism doesn't work, the whole thing is gummed up with dirt

The lock doesn't look so great

After a quick clean with just some household cleaner and water

Interestingly, after a clean, the lock started to work, albeit it was really stiff and hard to operate. The act of turning the key in the barrel moves this C shaped tab left or right to lock and unlock

It's quite interesting (to me) how the lock disables the handle. The yellow/white plastic in the photo above is the cam that uses the curved edge to press against a lever on the catch to release it (the cam would rotate downwards in that photo when the handle is pulled).

Turning the key in the lock physically moves part of the mechanism (orange arrow) so that the exterior handle is disengaged from the rest of the mechanism. The C shape tab on the end of the barrel pushes and pulls the plate attached to it, sliding the mechanism across.

The central locking would have been simpler in its operation if it had just acted on the same mechanism as the key, but no, that would've been too easy. Instead, the central locking actuator pulls on the rod on the other end of the handle assembly, in the opposite direction to the key mech

Pulling on that rod disengages the handle from the mechanism, by moving another part of it away from the actuating cam (orange arrow again).

Annoyingly I never tested what happens if you lock or unlock with the other means (ie. lock with key, unlock with central locking); I might have to see if I have a spare to play with.

Anyway, with everything working as it should, I wanted to refurbish the lock barrel. I sourced a better condition barrel from a local SD1 supplier and planned to rekey this to suit my keys.

The barrel is held in place by one small screw on the rear

Do take care when you remove it as there is a ball bearing and spring under the actuating plate

The barrel can then be removed

The donor barrel was in good, used, condition

Whilst my original one was covered in old grease which resembled a grinding paste with all the dirt in it

This isn't my first rodeo with rekeying a barrel; I did the same job with Project Rolla, where the ignition barrel had been damaged.

I carefully removed all the wafers and springs from the donor lock

I cleaned the inside of the lock barrel up, and refit the cleaned springs

The old lock was pretty grim. The wafers were sticky and the first one is completely jammed down.

You can see how bad the face was damaged

I removed, cleaned and transferred all the wafers over from the old lock to the replacement, one by one. I tried all of the wafers from the donor lock in the number one spot to see if I could replace the one that is jammed in the original lock, but none of them were quite right. You can see the number one wafer is sticking out on the underside, all of them stuck out to some degree, which would stop the lock from operating.

It also sits low on the top side too. They should all sit flush

I could have filed one of the wafers down to make it work, but in the end, I removed the number one wafer and just left it. There are still 5 more, and it's probably easier to break a window than to try and pick it (please don't).

A light coating of white lithium grease will keep the barrel lubricated, whilst all the other moving parts got lubricated too. Now everything works very smoothly indeed.

Before reassembly, I also removed and cleaned the catch. It was disgustingly filthy

A quick clean-up and grease and it was ready to be refitted

I'm yet to refit the tailgate trim, but the catch and lock mech have been reinstalled and work perfectly. I wanted to treat the tailgate surface rust before refitting the trim, so I have done that and it's currently curing.

That's one more thing fixed on Lucas, and I'll be glad to finally lock the tailgate.

[kws]

It'll be of no surprise to anyone that I have just dug deep and cracked on with this. With no choice in the matter, I had to fix it. I want my garage back for the daily.

Before going too much further, I started with finishing the fuel tank work.

I bought some 1/2" Gates fuel hose to replace the perished breather (this is surprisingly hard to find; I ended up locating it tucked away down the back of a local Repco storeroom)

And then rolled under the car and used an underbody sealer to coat the areas I had cleaned back and sealed. There were no signs of moisture around the repairs, so hopefully they have sealed properly.

The repairs arent as invisible as I would have liked, but it is what it is. As long as it keeps the fuel in the tank, I'm happy.

Now, with that done and the car back on the ground, it was time to strip the front interior out and see what I was dealing with.

The driver's seat was already out, so I popped that onto the back seat and moved onto the center console. This is held in with a few screws in various places. There are two inside the cassette holder at the rear

Two at the front edges, one on either side

And finally, the most annoying two; the two behind the trip computer control panel. Rover could have made this so the faceplate remained attached during removal, but they didn't.

When you pull on the front it will come away from the main unit, and allow all the buttons and slider to fly freely away, so keep tabs on them. With the faceplate off, the main unit can be levered out and unplugged

I don't know if you need to, but I removed the radio and the two screws on either side of it

The wiring for the radio is both amazing and annoying. It's amazing because someone has gone to the effort of wiring it up with what appears to be a parallel connector

But annoying because they have removed the standard plugs. I will keep this radio because it is awesome and period correct.

Now pull up on the shifter surround and remove it, along with the cigar lighter and fader

Now the center console should lift up and away. There will still be wiring to the rear cigar lighter, so unplug that too

The heater control is in dire need of a clean. I need to work out how to remove this so I can glue the radio surround section back on

Now I could remove the passengers seat and start work on removing the carpet.

Each side, on the tunnel, has a bracket off the rear of the seat rail mount. This needs to be removed

Don't forget to remove the two screws from the bottom of the B pillar trim, and remove the inner rear door scuff plates too

Now with lots of tugging and yanking, the carpet should come out. Be careful if it's stuck to the various bits of sound deadening, you don't want to rip the carpet.

I removed the underlay mats from both sides too. The drivers' side was still soaking wet near the tunnel; it's crazy.

Now, a closer look at the floor.

It's not that much worse than what I had expected. it's pretty well localised to the outside of the floor pan, which is good.

It did look a bit worse once I took a wire wheel to it though...

Which ended up with me using my new toy and cutting some great big holes in the floor

I like the air body saw. It's not as quick as a grinder, but it produces minimal heat and zero sparks, which is what I wanted. It does confirm though, that I can't draw or cut a straight line if my life depended on it.

Some cutting, bashing and hole punching resulted in the first patch

I chose to lap weld these patches in. It's not as seamless as a nice butt weld, but it takes a lot less work to do.

Second patch in, lightly tickled with a grinder and given a coat of primer

And finally, I seam sealed both sides of the repair

Tomorrow, once the sealer is dry, I will give it a good couple of coats of paint and underseal, and then its job done. It's not in the photos, but I have treated the surface rust at the front of the footwell too, so the whole lot will get painted.

I won't lie, I know it's not the best welding or the cleanest repair, but I'm just thankful to have the skills to even do the repair. If I had come across this rust a year or two ago, before I had done any welding on the Marina, I would have really struggled. My karma and conscience wouldn't let me just cover the rust up, so I probably would have had to have it taken to a workshop and fixed at great expense.

With any luck, once the interior is back together, and some fuel is in the tank, I might be able to take it for a WOF check and see what it fails on... Stay tuned.

[kws]

It's been a lot of work, but Lucas has moved on considerably since the last post. I'll break this down into bite-size chunks. This will be a massive post though as it's a week or two of work.

Rust Repairs/Interior

Right, so continuing on from where we left off. Once the seam sealer was dry, everything top and bottom was coated in primer and then a couple of good coats of paint.

The underside then got a couple of coats of a proper underseal.

When the paint was finally dry, it was time to refit the interior. First, the carpet needed a damn good vacuum. Everyone cleans their carpet on the roof, don't they?

Next I laid down the underlay. The old underlay was ruined at the front, but the rear half was still in great condition, so I cut it in half and refitted the rear. The front was made from a roll of "underfelt" I had left over from doing the TVR Carpet.

Both sides were done in the same way. In theory, because the front section is separate, and isn't stuck under the seat, if/when it does get wet I should be able to remove that section to aid in drying.

With the underlay in, the carpet was next. Gosh this is a big lump of a thing to maneuver around.

I mentioned it on social media, but it's crazy how much just adding carpet to a car makes it suddenly feel a million times nicer and more like a "car". Can't wait to get something in the Marina too.

The seats were next. Just a case of wrangling them from their spot on the back bench, onto the mounting points and inserting the bolts.

The center console would go in next, but first, there was a lot of cleaning to be done, and repairing the heater control panel as the top had broken off it at some point.

To remove the heater panel, the two slider knobs just pull straight off. The two direction control knobs are clipped in, so require gently levering off. Be careful not to scratch or crack the faceplate. A screw on either end secures the faceplate. Once the faceplate is free, you will need to remove the fibre optic cables from the rear of the faceplate by unclipping and sliding them out.

Once removed it was just a case of mixing up some epoxy, cleaning everything and then sticking it together.

I took the chance to glue the crack in the tailgate trim since I had the epoxy out

Until the epoxy was dry, I was at a standstill on the interior, so moved to the next task.

Front Window Regulator Replacement

I already had some annoying issues with the RH front window, such as it trying to jump out of the rail when going up, and being loose in the rails, but after sitting for a couple of weeks the window was now completely dead. Its kind of a blessing in disguise as it allows me to hopefully fix all my window issues in one go.

Removing the window regulator starts with removing the door card. Much to my surprise, there was no vapour barrier fitted to this door, so the insides of the door and all the water when it rains, were open to the door card and by extension, the inside of the car.

With the door card off, the next step is to securely tape the glass into place. Thankfully mine was jammed up, so it was easy to work with. I used duct tape to hold the glass, with cardboard over the top frame so I didn't end up taking the paint off the frame when pulling the tape off.

It needs to be pretty damn secure, you do not want that glass falling into the door, or onto your hand/arm if it drops.

The regulator is held in place by a bunch of bolts. The two with red lines on do not need to be removed as they secure the door handle mech to the plate.

Once you remove all the bolts, things start to get a bit wiggly. I noticed when I removed one of the main regulator bolts that the whole regulator twisted away from the door frame as if it were under a lot of tension. I wonder if this is why the window kept coming out of alignment.

Remove that plate with the big X on it (it has a regulator rail on the back of it too) or drop it down into the bottom of the door if you don't want to disconnect the handle.

One quick bonus bolt to undo is the one above the speaker, which secures the bottom of the window run channel. Removing this allows you a bit more space for moving the motor about.

Disengage the arms from the runners on the bottom of the window, fold the arms together, disconnect the motor and move the motor up into the top corner as much as possible.

This should allow you to squeeze the arms out the hole and withdraw the whole regulator

The regulator was toast. I managed to get it to move after feeding 12v directly into the motor, but it was slow and jumpy. Even removing the motor from the regulator the motor was slow and useless.

Speaking of, it shouldn't be easy to remove the motor as they are riveted onto the regulator. These rivets are slim and take up little room. The regulator I removed has been messed with before as the motor was fitted with nuts and bolts, and had clearly been swapped from a different regulator to make this one go again.

The problem with nuts and bolts is they are quite thick, which means they have a high chance of fouling the inside of the door skin when fitted, which would explain the regulator being twisted when fitted....

Anyway, refitting is more or less the reverse of disassembly. Make sure the regulator is in the same position as the one you removed (use 12v to move the regulator, and keep your fingers clear) so you can align it with the rails. Before fitting, since you have the space, get in there and smother grease on all the rails, and spray the window run channels with silicone spray.

During testing, the window now operates perfectly, smoothly, doesn't try to jump the rails and is super quick. A+ would trade again.

Because that wasn't the only issue with the door, I did another job whilst the regulator was out, as there is no better time to do it.

Door Handle Rebuild

Yup, the door handle was also stuffed. The main issue was easy to fix; the handle needed a new gasket as it was missing, and the handle was all loose and floppy. Secondly, the lock barrel was stuffed as the key needed vigorous jiggling to operate.

The handle is held in place with a pair of 7mm nuts, which with the regulator out, are very easy to access. They're shite to access with the reg still in place.

There are two actuating rods attached to the handle, both need to be removed. They are secured in place with a metal locking clip that you have to unclip from the rod to remove. Its probably the hardest bit of the job.

With the handle out, I compared it with the donor.

I was going to swap the donor barrel into the original handle, but the donor handle was in much better condition, with less missing paint and scratches.

Because the donor handle has a different key, I needed to rekey the barrel to match my existing key.

The barrel is held in place with a big C clip on the back

Once removed, the locking mech comes off. Take note there is a spring under it that returns the key to center.

Insert a key (any key that fits) and pull the barrel out the front. The key is only there to stop all the wafers shooting across the room as you withdraw it. You could just hold you hand over it and catch the wafers, I guess. The donor doesn't matter which order the wafers are removed, but you want to keep the order that the wafers in the original barrel are in or it'll be trial and error to find the pattern again.

I wont go into detail again of rekeying these as I have done it a couple of times now. This one was a little different as the wear on the key meant that even carrying over all the original wafers to the new barrel, the key wouldn't disengage all the wafers. I mixed and matched some from the donor barrel until I had a perfect set.

I lubricated the barrel, inserted it into the donor handle and reassembled. The key works very smoothly now and doesn't need to be jiggled at all.

The new handle gasket went on and the handle was refitted to the door.

Tailgate Wrap Up

A quick little side job was to finish the tailgate work. Once the glue on the trim was dry, I began reassembly.

First was a number plate lamp refresh. These were filthy.

Half cleaned. So much dirt.

After a thorough cleaning, these got some warm white LEDs installed. I want to retain the more yellow light of standard bulbs, but have reduced consumption of the LED.

Now the lights and trim were fitted to the tailgate with all new screws

The tailgate light switch had blown to pieces at some point, so I quickly replaced that too

A good used replacement was fitted

That switch presses on a round plastic fitting (which IIRC is the same fitting as the glovebox strap holders) on the underside of the tailgate. Check this is fitted or the light won't turn off.

The light itself was also packed with dirt (how is there so much dirt in this car?!) and the bulb was broken

I have ordered an LED for this, but in the mean time I dug through my spares and found a good bulb. I gave the housing a good clean and fitted the bulb.

And refitted to the car. Its not an overly effective light, but it'll do. LED should help.

Rear Door Refresh

Moving back to doors again, I moved to the LH Rear door, as this had been having issues opening and closing as the door card was catching on the seal.

The door card came off easily enough. Two screws and a bunch of fragile clips.

At least this door has a vapour barrier, even if the tape is barely holding on, and has had the addition of some brown packing tape to help secure it.

There wasn't much to do in this door, except grease all the window rails, and fit a new handle gasket. The handle is easy to access on these.

Oh, and fix the door card. Its very common on SD1s for the door card to distort and cause issues with the door seals. This usually happens when the door cards get wet. In this case the back edge had distorted, but the rest of the door card was in good shape.

I had heard that you can try saturating the area in PVA glue whilst holding the rear edge in shape, and it dries and stays that way. This apparently works because the door card is made of some sort of compressed fibrous cardboard stuff, and the PVA soaks into it.

With nothing to lose, I slathered glue on, and taped the edge into place.

It does take a few days to dry though, so in the mean time I looked at why the rear window wasn't working. I had cleaned all the front door master switches, so I knew they worked fine, but still had no action from the rear windows (either of them).

The rails were all completely dry with no traces of lubricant, so that was my first stop; grease the rails. No change. Using my jump pack and power probe I checked the motor would actually move.

Initially it was a no, it was dead. I couple of percussive persuasions (hitting with a hammer) soon got it moving through, and after some more lube and a couple of runs up and down it was moving freely.

I tried the switches again, and still nothing. Interestingly, there was no clicking of the relays either, which means there wasn't even power getting to the door. The relays should click whether the motor operates or not, as they are triggered by the switches directly.

I dragged up the wiring diagram to investigate further.

Its a rubbish diagram, even though it's from the official Rover manual (and no better in my printed hard copy either), but has the info I needed. Everything in the green box is the rear windows (except two of the 215 switches at the bottom as that's the master switches). To trigger the relays (the 364s, there are two relays per window; one up, one down), the switches send power to the relay coil. The switches get power from the E4 pick up (orange arrow) which is a feed from the battery. This is then split off to the switch circuits (blue circle).

All of this power is broken by one of two things. First, the resettable overload circuit breaker (259 at the top of the diagram) and secondly the rear window isolation switch.

The issue cant be the overload breaker as the front windows work, and that would kill power to all four windows; thus, my suspicions were on the isolation switch in the dash. This switch works by connecting power when the switch isn't pressed, and breaking the circuit when it is pressed. All this so your little gobblins in the back cant cut their sibblings fingers off by playing with the electric windows.

So I removed the dash top, fished the isolation switch from the dash and had a look.

To open this switch you need to remove the bottom cover. This is just clipped into place. It also holds the retaining clips, which is a pain during reassembly. Use a small pick or flat blade to pup the clips on each side.

That little wire spring is what allows the switch to latch. If the retaining tab breaks and that wire comes adrift, the switch wont latch anymore.

The insides of the switch will now slide out the front of the housing. Be aware there is a sliding contact plate, which has a spring behind it. Dont let the spring fire off into the distance.

The contacts weren't too bad in the base of the switch

but the sliding contact plate was looking very tired

I guess with no use, there is nothing to wipe the corrosion off the contact and it just gets worse and worse.

I used a fibreglass brush to clean the contacts in the body up

And the contact plate got a good scrub

Everything was coated in dielectric grease, and reassembled. I connected the switch up, and suddenly I had both back windows, on the switches. I still need to lube the RH rear window, but although slow it did work. I pressed the switch back into its place on the dash.

Another switch that needed some work was the window switch. I have cleaned these before, and have been cleaning all of them as I take the door cards off. They are very easy to disassemble and clean, and are a very simple design.

I start by wedging a pick down one side, to disengage one tab

And then flip it over and use another pick or small flat blade to disengage the other and pull the front off.

There is nothing to ping out when you take it apart. There is a spring loaded plastic button under the copper roller, so take note of that when you remove the roller for cleaning.

I clean everything out with contact cleaner, and then polish the roller and contacts in the base with the fibreglass brush. Smother it in dielectric grease and clip it back together. Works well, and makes for a nice clicky switch that doesn't stick. The housing is keyed,so cannot be fitted upside down when putting it back in the door card.

The door card was dry about now, as it had been a couple of days, so it was time to take the tape off and refit it.

But first, retaping the vapour barrier. I gave the door and the barrier a good clean so tape would stick, and then used some duct tape to carefully seal the edges.

A couple of clips were broken or missing on the door card, so they got replaced with new ones I sourced from Bresco in the UK.

The door card was then fitted and clipped into place.

The back edge was spot on. It didn't overhang anymore, and no longer caught the seal when opening the door.

Center Console and Dash

Moving back to the center console. The glue had dried, so the heater control unit was refitted, as was the center console.

While the console was out I sourced a good used radio surround so I could correctly mount the radio, instead of it sitting there with bits of foam floor mat jammed around it

I fitted the cage to the surround and inserted it into the dash

The radio was then plugged in and slotted into place

And of course it works. I love the period correct look, so it'll stay for now. I will have to dig my tape adaptor out so I can plug my phone into it and bring it into last century.

I didn't notice until it was mounted that it appears only one side of the illumination is working, so I may have to remove it again at some point and fix that.

It's small touches like mounting the radio correctly that make the most difference. I don't know who thought stuffing floor mats into the gap was acceptable.

Yes, I also dug through my spares and found a heater control knob that still had a white arrow on it and swapped it over later.

The last two pieces for the center console are the ash tray, which I'm working on, and the trip computer.

Unfortunately the ash tray didn't survive disassembly as a previous owner had pulled the top off it and glued it back together with the nastiest glue possible. I tried to reglue it and made it worse. I have a replacement, which is also in bits, but no one has tried to "fix" it before, so I can make it work.

The trip computer is a pain. I have a few spare bits for these, and almost built a complete unit in good condition, but fell short of one button.

I am replacing the main unit, as my original had a faded LED

Whilst the replacement had much better LEDS

The faceplate needed a good clean, and a couple of buttons were replaced with better ones (CLEAR and STP START), but although I know I have one, I seem to be missing the TIME button. I'll find it soon, and then will be able to reassemble and install it again.

As a small side note, when disassembling a trip computer, this is the "ping-fuxk-it" spring that people refer to. It resides in the back of the slider switch.

Something else that's been bothering me, which I had to fix when I had the dash cover off earlier, was to find out why my Speedo was being held in by a piece of folded up paper. Yes, paper.

Thats it there with the green arrow. The whole gauge cluster was pushed back slightly by this.

Looking through the windscreen with the cover removed, and it was obvious why.

There were no screws holding it in. Those two white U shaped tabs should have screws in them. There is another one off to the right that was also missing a screw.

I grabbed some suitable screws from my collection, and worked out how the heck to get a screwdriver in there. Its hard against the windscreen, so no room for a proper screwdriver, and its too deep down behind the cluster for a stubby driver. In the end I used a 1/4" ratchet with a screwdriver bit on an extension.

I used a small dab of superglue in the head of the screw to stick it to the screwdriver bit (so it wouldn't drop into the dash), lined it up through the windscreen and then sat in the car to screw it in. Worked a treat.

No more paper, and no more oddly aligned gauges. Success.

Front Doors

Im going to lump these two doors together since its most of the same work.

With the window regulator in the drivers door, it was time to finish reassembly and button the door up once and for all.

I cleaned all the door switches, greased all the rails, and then sealed the speaker.

Someone has replaced the speakers with some quite nice Pioneer TS-1911s in the back, and some smaller, unlabelled speakers in the front. The rear ones seem to be well installed, but the fronts are literally thrown in place and jammed in with a couple of screws against the frame. Not how I would do it, but it works for now. The only issue is that there is no sealing around the speaker, so water could potentially enter around it.

I ran a bead of non-setting butyl rope around the hole

And then stuck the speaker to it.

That should slow any water ingress from there down. The next step to stop water ingress is to actually fit a vapour barrier.

I had some thin plastic sheeting left over from another project, so cut that to shape and taped it into place. All other unused holes (other than the clip holes) were taped over too.

I'll tell you what, the black may look good, but it does increase the difficulty level since you can't see the screw holes behind so that you can poke holes in the sheet for them. It's better than nothing though.

The drivers door card got the PVA treatment too, but that didn't take quite as well as the edge of the card is quite badly damaged from years of catching the seal. It also got new clips as most were missing, having been replaced with either incorrect clips that didn't work, or a row of 4 screws driven through the door card into the door shell

As part of my revamp I am trying to replace as many bulbs as possible with LEDS, so I tried one in the door warning light. It's a bit uneven, but should be fine. I'm mainly trying to reduce load/consumption. You can see the sad state of the door card here too.

Finally, the waist moulding seal was replaced. I did these on Effie and it's quite a nice upgrade for minimal work. Pull the stainless trim off, starting at the back of the door, pull the old seal out and press the new seal in. The old seal was hard as plastic, and missing big chunks. Not good for weather tightness.

Use lots of silicone spray in the channel and press the seal in bit by bit. Don't be tempted to pull the seal into the channel as you will just stretch it, and may cause it to shrink later.

I ended up just going around and doing all the windows. A couple of them were quite bad, like the RH rear, which was all wavy

Yes, I cocked up and forgot I needed a tail to go over that little triangle bit on the pillar. Oh well.

The LH front door was much of the same, except I knew the window worked on this one. Vapour barrier was present, but the tape was all hanging off. More of that damn brown tape.

There was plenty of evidence that water had been making its way past the vapour barrier. You can see streaks in the dirt at the bottom of the door. No wonder I was having issues with water entering the car over top of the door seal.

I greased the rails, lubricated the channels, fitted the handle seal, and then went to seal the speaker.

Looks like this door had a bit of a water issue.

I cleaned the terminals up, but sadly this is the only speaker not working. I don't think it's this wiring, so will need to dig deeper.

I used more butyl rope to seal this one too.

Before fitting the vapour barrier again I wanted to look into an issue I have had with this door for a while; it's really hard to close. You need to slam it like it owes you money, or it'll just bounce on the first catch.

I thought it was the door card, but the issue was still present with the card removed. I then removed the door latch to inspect it.

I found the roll pin in the middle was falling out, and had actually gouged into the door panel

I hammered this back in, lubricated the latch and refitted it. The issue remained.

Digging through my spares again, I found a spare latch. I cleaned, lubricated that and fitted it.

The issue still remained.

Then it dawned on me, could the striker be out of alignment? I loosened it off and moved it outboard slightly.

I'll be, the issue was better. A few more tweaks and the door shuts first time every time now. It turns out someone had fitted the striker as far inboard as it could go, so the door could barely reach the second catch.

Much to the enjoyment (I'm sure) of my wife upstairs, more door slamming ensued as I went around the car and adjusted all the other strikers so the doors were aligned nicely and latched first time. The rears needed to be pulled in slightly so the doors would shut tighter, but otherwise they weren't too bad.

The last thing on the front door is the door card. This also suffered the distortion to the rear edge, and you can see that it's flat, instead of being at a right angle to the main card

Lots of glue

Pulling it up to the correct angle.

Unfortunately one of the clip mounts was torn almost off the card, so that needed to be glued back on too. I used a clamp to hold it while the glue dries.

I will leave it a couple of days to dry, and then it should be ready to refit.

In the meantime I had cleaned the door and barrier, and retaped it, making sure it was well sealed.

I did find something interesting on the vapour barrier. On the LH side of it, there is a piece of masking tape that I have left in place. The reason for this is there is something written on it. I can't quite make it out, but it belongs with the car.

Lights

As a final task, I upgraded a couple of other lights.

The interior courtesy lights got upgraded to warm white LEDs

While the taillights got the Narva Halogen upgrade.

The old bulbs, like everything, were covered in dirt

The new halogen bulbs are a straight swap

It's hard to photograph, but they put out noticeably more light than the standard bulbs. Halogen on the left, standard on the right.

And both halogen, featuring the warm white number plate lights also.

And that's about it. I'm waiting on the door card to dry, and then I still need to do the RH rear door, but that can happen any time.

Phew that was a lot of work.

[kws]

I should have also said, I took the car for a quick run around the (private, closed and in Mexico) block to get it up to temp and see how it drove after the work I did previously (fixing air leaks, replacing AFM, and binning the restrictive air filter). The car takes a few cranks to build fuel pressure when cold but starts and settles into a nice idle easy enough. Throttle is responsive even when cold, which makes a huge change.

The biggest difference is that the car has gained about twice the power it previously had. Its responsive and can actually haul itself down the road at some pace now. Some lifter clattering was present on the cold start, but otherwise was not present during driving. I'll touch wood, but maybe the engine is starting to be a bit happier.

[kws]

I've had a persistent cold starting issue with Lucas, where it could crank for AGES cough a few times and when it finally catches it would be lumpy and run on less than all 8 cylinders for a minute or so.

I had my suspicions that because the car is parked on a steep incline, nose down, with the low fuel in the tank (about 10 litres) it was sloshing to the front of the tank and starving the pump of fuel until it returned enough from the lines to suck back up again and start. 

I had to start Lucas today and move him off the drive for a bit, and sure enough, with another 25 litres in the tank, after a couple of turns to build fuel pressure he fired straight up and settled in a nice stable idle on all cylinders.

Good to know it was a simple fix, and not the first time I have been caught overlooking something as simple as making sure there was fuel in the tank.

[kws]

After the last big update, not much has happened with Lucas, except for me setting a deadline to have the car on the road again.

I decided a couple of weeks ago that it was time for Lucas to go for a WOF check, with the plan being that at least then I would have a list of what I needed to get the car on the road and could chip away at it.

A couple of obvious things I knew about needed to be sorted, one was the passengers door card which had been sitting on the roof of the Marina for a few weeks waiting for me to refit it, and the other was the power steering pump.

The door card was easy, it just clipped back into place and a couple of screws later it was done. The back edge no longer caught the seal since I had used the PVA glue to hold it into place and reshape it. Unfortunately I later found that the window switch on that door wasn't working, despite me cleaning it... I had forgotten to plug it back in. Damn.

The power steering pump was more of a pain. I wanted to try changing to a spare pump that came with the car because the current pump makes loud groaning noises and surges in assist when at low speeds. I tried sucking the fluid out of the pump and replacing it when I got the car and it made no difference.

The pump lives down here, and although it's very visible and quite accessible, it sucks to change.

Access is best with the air filter removed, but you'll still find yourself bent almost upside down trying to lean down into the engine bay to get at it. I can only recommend a proper flare spanner for the pipe fitting, and ratcheting spanners for the mounting bolts, it would be an even worse job without them. When refitting I suggest starting with one of the two adjustment bolts (closer to the engine) than the outer pivot bolt, as they seem easier to line up without the pivot bolt in place.

I drained the pump, unhooked the two lines, removed the three bolts, removed the belt and pulled the pump out. Swapped the replacement in, fitted it all up, filled it with fluid and started the engine to bleed the pump. In the garage, lock to lock, it was stiff but seemed to work.

The pump was nice and quiet, but wouldn't you know it, once outside and not on the smooth garage floor, it had zero assist when stationary. It was perfect once moving, but without that assist when at idle you had to really tug on the wheel to turn. It wouldn't pass the WOF like that, as one failure condition is if the Power Assisted Steering system isn't working correctly.

So that was that, I ripped the pump out and refitted the old one. It's still knocking at idle when under load, but no longer surges as it did. Let's just call it a good flush for the PAS system then...

Since I was there anyway, a new correct air filter was fitted to the original canister and refitted

You can see how the correct one above, differs from the incorrect carb filter when fitted

I also swapped the fuel filter out since it was looking a bit old and I had no history on it. I was surprised to find the filter wrapped in sandpaper under the retaining strap. No idea why, it was the correct part number filter, and the replacement fit fine without that extra grip wrapped around it.

Finally, I replaced the viscous clutch for the fan. The one that was on the car was locked when cold, and actually seemed to unlock when warm, so although it wasn't overheating, I had no faith in it.

The fan looked weird, and I was lucky to have the offset 32mm fan spanner as this cleared the fan which seemed to be sticking further back than I remember from previous ones I have worked with. A couple of quick taps with a hammer (remembering its reverse thread) and the fan unscrewed from the waterpump.

The fan was indeed weird. It's mounted to the back of the viscous coupling, instead of being inside the hub of the fan

I expected it to look a bit more like this (from Effie)

Neither fan are correct for an EFI car, it should be an 11 blade fan, but it'll still do the job with the right viscous coupling (which Effie didn't have, originally).

As it turns out, from my research, the fan I have is for an Air conditioning spec car, whilst the one on Effie was a non-AC carb car. For whatever reason, the AC fan is mounted further back from the radiator, despite the coupling still being close to the radiator.

The new coupling was the same P/N as the one on the car, so was a direct bolt-on. You can tell it's a correct EFI spec coupling due to the big single female nut for the waterpump on the back, and the bimetallic spiral locking coil on the front.

With that installed, the engine bay was looking mostly the same, but with a couple of nice new shiny bits if you know where to look

Of course, being Lucas, you just can't make this up. I went to start the car to bleed the power steering pump (the original one after being refitted) and was met with the sweet sound of repeated cranking and no signs of firing. A quick check with a spark tester showed I had no spark.

It turns out, this bastard, the GT40 coil, has failed.

I had previously dug out a spare Lucas coil, just in case, and sure enough it was sitting ready to be fitted.

I popped the replacement coil in and the car fired up on the first turn. I don't know how or why the coil failed, but I'm glad it did it in the garage and not when it was out and about, especially either driving or when it goes for the WOF test.

There were a couple of other small nice-to-haves that I wanted to get done. First was to finish reassembling the interior, and tidying it up. This included the boot, which for months had been full of bits I had removed from other parts of the car.

I emptied it out and refitted everything, but before I could finish putting the boot back together I wanted to secure the spare properly. A previous owner had done their best, using a manky old ratchet strap.

But from my spares I produced an original strap, so cut the ratchet strap off and fitted this instead

Now I could put the boot boards and carpet back into place. The carpet is very stained, so I might see if the spare I have is any better, but they all seem to end up in this state.

Of course I couldn't leave the weird mismatch of wipers on the car either, as that really bothered me

A nice new pair of matching 400mm blades were fitted. Unfortunately for some reason the drivers one is shuddering badly on the downwards stroke, but it's better than nothing.

And there we were, ready for the WOF inspection, well, as ready as I thought it could be.

To celebrate the work I gave the car a much-needed clean, for the first time in my ownership. I will say, it shines up alright.

I forgot how nice the lattice wheels are to look at, but how horrible they are to clean >_< I need some more Mag Monster to try and eat the old baked on brake dust.

Obligatory petrol station shot, gassing up ready for the WOF the next day.

Oh, so what happened with the WOF today? Well, much to everyone's surprise, Lucas just went and got himself a clean sheet WOF!

Or near enough clean sheet, anyway

I haven't changed the old service sticker yet, which says it was due for its next service over a year and/or 1000 miles ago, so I don't blame them for thinking it was overdue a service, and it's British, of course it has an oil leak.

So there we are, a couple of days over 5 months to the day that Lucas arrived on my drive on the back of a truck, no reg, no wof, clattering like a bastard, with rust in the floor and electrics that didn't work, we have a Rover SD1 that is running, driving, road legal and everything (almost, damn window switch) works. We've come a long way.

I took Lucas for a bit of a drive around town this evening, and the engine and trans are working great. The engine does seem to stutter and break down at really high RPM (near redline), but I think it's best just to not rev it that high. A new distributor cap and rotor are on the cards anyway which might help.

His first trip on the open road was a surprise too; dead straight and smooth at 100kph, he just glides along.

The engine still taps a bit when cold and the oil pressure is slow to come up, but when warm the oil pressure is good, and the engine makes no noises it shouldn't. Obviously it's enjoying having a bit of care and attention spent on it, and I'm sure not sitting around being neglected is doing wonders too.

I still have some more work to do on the car, regarding things like the injection pipes and thermostat, but otherwise, I will just be using the car as much as I can over summer. Once the Marina is on the road, I will likely start looking for a new home for Lucas, but we will cross that bridge when we get there.

[kws]

Well, since my last update, it's all gone downhill.

I left the last update on a high. The car was running well, the engine was quiet, and Lucas had just flown through a WOF check.

To celebrate this success, I decided it was time to deal with the thermostat. Lucas was running cold on the gauge (about 1/4, where it should be just under half), so this was the logical starting point. I also had a bunch of new hoses to fit as everything was a tad neglected and perished.

I started by making a mess by removing the top hose from the radiator and draining as much coolant as I could.

Followed by removing the hose completely, which revealed this mess

I knew this hose had been weeping from both ends at various times, but this build-up was just gross.

The other reason I wanted to do the thermostat is that it is easier to replace the hose that resides under the housing, which goes to the back of the waterpump. This had an intermittent leak and no amount of clamp tightening was stopping it.

I gently removed the two bolts holding on the thermostat housing, which when removed unleashed another torrent of coolant, this time going straight down the valley gasket and appearing down the back of the engine where it proceeded to pour onto the ground, with some hitting the drip tray that lives under the cars.

The housing was horrific once removed, so much gunk everywhere. The gasket had also been supplemented with too much of what looked like bathroom sealant.

There was a thermostat fitted, which was a good start. It was the wrong one, unsurprisingly. It was some sort of American one, and once the freedom units on the back were translated to normal units, it was about 82c, not the 88c the EFI cars should run.

I don't know if it was stuck open or not, I wasn't too bothered by that as I had a correct 88c thermostat ready to go in. The replacement also had a jiggle valve, which the old one didn't.

With the housing removed, I had access to the hose under it. This wasn't as bad as I expected, but it was swollen and the ends were cracking. The clamp on the manifold side was very rusty, which seems to be a common theme for these.

The replacement hose, ERC2278, was slightly longer and needed a bit of a trim to fit nicely.

The stub it goes on in the manifold needed a clean up too as this was quite crusty

Speaking of cleaning, I chucked the housing in the vice and attacked it with a spinny brush of death on the drill.

It came up pretty well, especially the mating surface

This meant that after running the bolts through a die and a tap into the mounting holes to clean the threads up, I could install the new hose and reinstall the housing with the new thermostat and gasket.

New thermostat installed. As my past experience has taught me, use a thin smear of sealant on both sides of the gasket, and make sure the thermostat is seated correctly and doesn't slip down to get caught between the housing and gasket...

You can just make out the new hose under it, with new stainless clamps

A new top radiator hose was then fitted, with a thin smear of Hylomar on each end, just to seal any pitting in the surfaces.

Speaking of hoses, while in the area I wanted to replace a couple of hoses that I knew looked horribly perished. They were the two Extra Air Valve hoses. You can see these in the above photo, to the left of the thermostat housing.

The first hose, right above the thermostat, was missing a clamp and was badly perished. It looks like it hasn't had a clamp for a looong time.

This wasn't too hard to replace. I did have to undo one bolt that secured the air rail under the throttlebody, so I could move the air rail away from the EAV and get more space to slip the hose in. Other than that, a lot of silicone spray and on it went.

The other hose, that C shaped one on the left, was a bit more of a pain. It came off easy enough, but you can see how much it had swollen

This meant the new hose was a very tight fit over the fittings. In the end I soaked the hose in hot tap water for a few minutes and then used silicone spray on the fittings to squeeze it into place.

It's a big improvement though

With those hoses installed, I filled the cooling system and bled it. The trick I found, in my vast experience of replacing coolant in these things, is to remove the two screws holding the expansion tank and place it on top of the battery. This raises the high point of the system and bleeds air into the expansion tank. You can really notice the difference the moment you lift the bottle up, air immediately starts to bubble into it.

You can just make out in this photo that the hose from the tank to the radiator is above the radiator now, usually it's below the radiator outlet

This bled the system very well, with lots of air coming through, and the thermostat opening nicely. It didn't seem to make much difference to the temp level on the gauge, so who knows. I tested the gauge and when it's grounded out it goes to the full range, so maybe the sensor is wrong. As long as the temp is stable, and it's not leaking, I'm happy enough.

As one final job for the evening, I wanted to replace the distributor rotor and see if it improved the higher RPM stutter.

I removed the very original looking Lucas cap, to find a very original Lucas rotor arm

Now, this is where it went wrong. Much like the RV8 trick of not draining the oil with the filter removed, there is a trick with these rotors too... if they are stuck, don't pull them.

What happens if you do, is that you end up lifting the upper section of the distributor out of the mechanical advance weights, which buggers the whole thing. The advance won't work, and the rotor now sits too high. Basically, I had immobilised the car.

It's not the end of the world though, the car came with a spare distributor... (oh no)

I made note of the rotor position, and removed the distributor.

Here the removed one sits above the "replacement"

Because the wiring has been messed with (the distributor should have an ignition amp on the side of it, but someone has rewired it to work with an HEI unit mounted on the strut tower. More on that later) I had to swap the altered wiring to the replacement distributor. I didn't realise at the time that you can swap the wiring complete with the pickup between the two distributors (even if one was designed for the external amp and the other wasn't), so I cut the wiring and soldered the connector on.

I then fit the new rotor to the replacement distributor and fit it to the car. I got it running, timed it up with the timing light, and it ran like trash. Odd.

In hindsight, I should have paid more attention to what I was putting in the car. I later discovered the replacement distributor was trash. It was broken, everything was loose, and I don't even know why it was included with the car.

So, what now? Well at least I could move the car again, so that night I kicked it out of the garage again, to think about what it had done.

Needless to say, at this point, I was beyond fed up with the car. Going from the high of the car running, driving, coming to temp nicely, the heater working, no leaks, and then being slammed to the ground face first by the car suddenly being broken again... it's not easy.

Oh yeah, it wouldn't be me working on an SD1 without the floor looking like this. You can see the outline of the tray... it tried.

The next day, I set about stripping and repairing the original distributor.

This was the problem. The main shaft was sitting too high. The trigger gear/reluctor ring in the middle should be sitting down, with no gap under it. I have already removed the pickup in these photos; this would attach to the two threaded posts.

The rotor was cracked, even before I started

I had nothing to lose then. The general advice is to smash it off, instead of trying to pull or pry it off. Out came the hammer and chisel.

It's off! And this is why you always grease the inside of the rotor before fitting. It was rusted solid.

Next is to remove, or break, the little plastic retainer (if it isn't already broken). This lives down the center of the shaft, and is meant to hold the two sections together. Mine fell out.

Next, remove the circlip retaining the reluctor ring. Under this is a washer, and then a very flat and very hard o-ring. I had to cut the o-ring off to remove the reluctor ring.

Now gently lever the reluctor ring off, followed by removing the three standoffs that retain the advance plate below it

Now you can lift the whole advance mech free. You will need to unhook this from the vacuum advance lever. This lever just slots over a pin on the bottom of the advance plate. This will leave you with the bare shaft and mechanical advance.

Now the fun part, removing the shaft from the body. Use a punch to hammer the roll pin out of this hole

The drive gear will slide off now. I marked the shaft and gear so they installed the same way around. I don't know if this was necessary, but I did it anyway.

Now the whole shaft should slide out the top of the housing

The advance doesn't look happy. The springs should be flat.

Do note that the two springs are different and must remain in the same positions. One is thicker than the other.

So what happened? Well, when I pulled hard on the rotor, if lifted the top half of the shaft up.  If you're lucky, it might slip back down and be happy. If not, it could do a couple of things that mine did. First, there is a black plastic piece under the fixed plate on the bottom of the top shaft.

This plastic piece (orange arrow) is meant to fit perfectly on and lock into the metal plate (green arrow). Mine was out of place and stuck under the plate, stopping it from sliding down into place.

The other issue is more simple, the advance weights get caught under the lower plate.

Neither is really recoverable without stripping the distributor to some degree.

What I also didn't realise initially, is that the top half of the shaft should move pretty freely. Mine was seized solid. This more or less means the mechanical advance hasn't been working, as the shaft needs to be free to rotate for that to operate.

I unhooked the springs with some levering, and after much wiggling and some prying, the top shaft started to move. There was a buildup of old grease and dirt under it.

I removed and cleaned everything up, making sure the two shafts slid together and moved freely. I retrieved the plastic piece, which was thankfully undamaged, and fit it onto the upper shaft. Here you can see how it should fit together. I guess the plastic piece is a kind of bushing.

I gave everything a light coating of grease

And reassembled the two halves

Now it was just a case of refitting everything back into the housing, step by step, not forgetting the roll pin on the drive gear,

Once everything was back together, I installed the pickup, and using a thin slip of plastic from some packaging, created the required air gap between the pickup and the reluctor wheel. The pickup is magnetic, so you need a non-ferrous feeler gauge.

In the end, it took three distributors to make one good one. I had to steal some bits from another spare distributor I have (which has a locked mechanical advance for use with an aftermarket ECU), as the "spare" that came with the car was in such bad condition I couldn't even scavenge that for much.

I fit the rebuilt distributor to the car, with a new cap and rotor, and timed it up to the 8 degrees BTC, and the car was running nicely, idling smooth and sounding good. The throttle was nice and responsive, and the timing light showed that both vac and mechanical advance appeared to be operating.

The old cap, was a bit old.

The final thing to change was the coil. I had done some reading about the HEI ignition amp that has been fitted to this car, and realised it's designed to work with a low impedance type coil, despite not having a ballast resistor fitted. I still had the old GT40R that came with the car, So I refitted that.

I also finally figured out something that had been bugging me. There was a wire jammed into a relay holder under the dash, running through a hole in the firewall, to the coil. It turns out this was a bodged switched 12v feed for the coil...

This wasn't my sort of bodge, so I set about fixing it. I knew from when I got the car that there was a standard, unused, connector right next to the coil; I don't know what it was meant for, but it has a switched 12v feed in it. When I got the car the aux cooling fan on the trans cooler was powered by this (and running all the time the key was on).

I pulled the wire out of the relay holder, pulled it through the firewall and cut it shorter. I then crimped on a bullet terminal, and popped it into the relevant socket on the plug.

Works a treat, and now isn't running into the car through a relay holder. Nice.

I also removed the HEI unit to check that there was thermal paste under it, as they run hot and need cooling. No, there wasn't, just dirt.

I wire-brushed the paint back to bare metal and used some thermal paste before reassembling it.

The engine was now running great, so all that was left to do was to take it for a decent run and get some heat into it.

Before leaving the garage, I popped this spare standard chrome grille trim on

And then it was time to enjoy the sun, and take the car for a run.

It was a leisurely run, I was out for a cruise, not a race, but I did test the higher RPM performance once or twice, and it was silky smooth to redline now. Obviously something I had done fixed the stuttering. The engine was running awsome, everything was doing what it should, and the exhaust sounded great. Arm out the window, enjoying life.

I got about half way around my usual test course, about 5km into a 10km trip, and I noticed it.

Tick.

Tick. Tick.

Just once or twice, mostly at lower RPM when slowing down.

Tick.

Balls.

By the time I got to the photo spot, the engine was clattering away like a champ. The "fix" lasted almost exactly 100km.

Clack Clack Clack Clack.

Oh well, I was there anyway, so I took some photos.

The drive home was one of shame. Trying to pretend like the noise was coming from the car next to you, not the old British clunker you're in. Everyone looks, but not for the right reasons.

I was gutted.

I am gutted.

I got the car home, and sure enough, the noise is deep in the middle of the Vee, so it can only be something related to the cam or lifters. It's worse when hot, but can be heard intermittently when cold.

Clack. Clack.

Unfortunately, that is it, that is the straw that has broken this camel's back.

Not only do I not have the time, money or space to replace or rebuild the engine, I'm just over it. It's been hard. This car kills motivation. For every success I have had, it's been almost immediately followed by yet another failure.

I replace the power steering pump, and the replacement is broken. I replace that, and the coil dies. I fix the coolant issues, but the distributor dies. The replacement distributor is rubbish, so I fix that. I finally get it running well, try to enjoy a drive, and the engine starts clacking again. It's a soul crushing loop.

What it needs is someone with the space to just rip the engine out, and fit a different one, going through all the other systems at the same time and just sorting it all once and for all. Doing it bit by bit clearly hasn't been working for this car.

So, with that, the car is for sale. I hope it goes to a good home, I really do. Lucas deserves it. It's not his fault that previous owners have been neglectful.

I feel like it's a bit of a failure. I haven't had to sell a car because it's gone over the line I have drawn in the sand. Sure, Lucas is a LOT better than when I got him, but he is still broken and I don't like that.

Who knows what the future holds now. Watch this space.

[kws]

This is what it sounded like upon return from said drive, at idle. Noise slightly amplified due to being against the wall, but its still really loud.

 

[kws]

Well here it is, the plot twist; The car won't be sold. My arm has been sufficiently twisted by all the lovely people online who actually care about the car, and this will go in instead.

What is it?

It's the good high compression one too

It needs a damn good clean, and some refreshing (new seals and gaskets) before it can go in the car, but I have a deadline of about 3 weeks to have the car going—Lets goooooo.

[kws]

Well heck, it's been a real rollercoaster recently, and things have been moving quickly...

So, lots has happened since my last update.

First, Lucas is hanging around long-term.

Secondly, Lucas is getting an engine upgrade

Yup, most will know already, but it's happening; Lucas is getting a 3.9L upgrade.

How did we get to this point?

Well, even before the last update went live, Lucas for advertised for sale. The engine is trash, I had had enough, and just wanted to move on.

I had a couple of people contact me regarding the car, but they wanted guarantees such as that the current engine wasn't terminal (it is) and that the original engine is savable (who knows). In the end one got back to me and declined to proceed further, and the other just never replied again.

In the meantime, the overwhelming support online from various forums and social media has made me think twice, and start looking at my options. I quickly discounted fixing the current engine, as it's just not worth spending money on; it's the wrong engine, it's low compression, has low oil pressure, and an unknown mileage and history.

So that left me with two options. Upgrade, or rebuild the original.

I put out on a couple of places that I was looking for a 3.9 engine but didn't have a huge amount of luck, so I proceeded with pricing up parts to rebuild the original engine.

What I concluded was that parts aren't too badly priced, but shipping was going to absolutely cripple me. Most parts had to come from the UK and we are talking things like $200 freight for just a gasket set alone. That's super hard to justify.

I then remembered I was a member of a local Land Rover buy/sell Facebook group, so I jumped on there and asked if anyone had a good 3.9 engine for sale locally. Within minutes, I had a response that yes, there was one available and it was local to me.

The next day, the engine was in my garage.

It's a high compression 9.35:1 3.9L from a Discovery. Other than the manifolds and cut loom, it was complete. The seller claimed it was out of a truck that had 160,000km on the clock, ran and drove well, and made no unusual noises. Good enough for me. It was the right price too.

The high compression 3.9 should make the SD1 move quite nicely.

	Vitesse 9.75:1	Carb 9.35:1 (fitted)	Disco 3.9 9.35:1
Power (HP@rpm)	190@5280	155@5250	182@4750
Torque (NM@rpm)	258@4000	268@2500	312@3100

The engine is, as the British say, minging. Clearly keeping on top of maintenance wasn't exactly top of their spending list, as both valve cover gaskets had been haemorrhaging oil for a very long time. It was down all sides of the block, top to bottom

As you can see above, I started by removing all the ancillaries from the front of the engine.

The engine is the desired "intermediate" serpentine 3.9, which runs the crank-driven oil pump (vs the earlier distributor-driven pump) and has the correct shape to mate with the SD1 sump (later engines have a different shape to the front of the sump, and front cover). Unlike the SD1 which runs a pair of V belts to drive the ancillaries, this engine runs a single big multi-V serpentine belt.

I looked into using the newer parts and keeping the crank drive pump and serpentine drive, but in the end, it is easier to swap the SD1 front cover, sump, alternator and power steering pump onto this engine. It's more or less a bolt-on affair. To use the serpentine front I would have had to look into whether the cooling fan height matches (apparently it's higher on the 4X4 engines and the water pump is very different), and I would have to find a way to make the power steering pump work as it has completely different fittings. I will keep the components anyway, just in case I want to look further into converting to serp again.

Removing all the components off the front really reduces the length of the engine

Over the past couple of days I have set about trying to clean the engine up a bit, as it was filthy. I have spent hours now, with a brush, degreaser, and brake clean, scrubbing the heck out of it. It was very thick, and stuck well.

It's not perfect, but after today's effort it's about as good as I am going to bother with. I haven't cleaned the front cover, valve covers or sump, as I won't be reusing them.

I removed one of the valve covers, just to see how it was inside. The screws for the cover were all finger-tight, and the gasket wasn't even trying to seal. It's pretty dark in there, so obviously it's been on long interval servicing, but it's burnt on and not sludgy, which is a bonus. Hopefully a few oil changes in quick succession will help this.

I did find this tucked up in the head though. No signs of it being bashed about, so I suspect it hasn't moved much. It was so "weathered" from being in there, it must have been in there for thousands of Ks.

Old mate who serviced it at some point (probably the one that did the valve cover gaskets and didn't tighten them up) just dropped it in there, closed it up and didn't give two thoughts as to where his missing clamp went.

I also pulled the original SD1 EFI valve covers out of storage and gave them a degrease and clean ready for paint. You can tell the LH cover is the proper EFI one because it has the large round flat raised platform on the end for the breather filter, which the current carb covers (and 3.9) don't have.

I've been trying to source another SD1 sump and front cover to make the swap easier, but it's proving more difficult than expected, so I may have to just swap the ones from the current engine over.

In the meantime, I have ordered a bunch of parts; mainly gaskets and seals, to refresh a few things on the engine, and make the swap possible. They should be here within a week, and then I'll start planning the actual swap.

The goal is to have the car up and running again for a work Xmas "car day" on the 21st Dec.... Time is ticking!

To help meet this goal I am going to initially run the engine on the "flapper" Lucas injection system from the 3.5. It does work, but isn't ideal as it will be running at the upper limits of what the factory tuning can handle for the extra capacity. Once the engine has been shaken down a bit, I will then start working towards another Speeduino install. I have 95% of what I need already, and know where to get the other 5% I don't have, it just takes money.

I'm also looking at using the new 3.9 fuel rail with the Speeduino, which would eliminate both the old injectors with the hose tails, and the resistor pack, so I could drive the injectors straight from the ECU in semi-sequential instead of batch firing like I did last time. All things to look into when the time comes.

So there we have it, Lucas is hanging around, and I'm finally getting the 3.9L auto SD1 I have wanted.

Stay tuned for more updates.