It's pretty cold today, so I thought I'd start the overdue (re)build thread on this car. It's a Rover SD1 Vitesse EFI, which was bought 'overfuelling and losing water, with 50p of rust around the windscreen'. I foolishly bought it without hearing it run thinking it'd take a few weekends…
An advanced apology for the pictures in the thread, I will get a proper camera sorted soon.
After a day trip to South Wales to inspect I had it delivered back up here to Sheffield (using Shiply). Here is the beast dumped on the road, helpfully the street lights had packed up!
My driveway to the garage is up quite a steep hill around the side of the house. I was vaguely hoping it'd run well enough to get up the hill and into the garage, so I hooked up the battery from my 800 Vitesse (yes, I have a problem with faster Rovers).
It turned over! It didn't start but when I looked under the bonnet there was petrol spewing out of the flexi hose to the cold start injector!! Much frantic running about, mopping and isolating supplies ensued. I decided to get the battery out of there and started thinking of other ways to get it into the garage.
I decided using a hand turfer winch and ratchet straps tied to newly made anchor points on the ground would be the easiest way; winch in, chock, ratchet in the strap, winch in, repeat… got a hand from some generous neighbours and it was in the garage after two hours
Oh yeah - I bought an engine too, unseen (foolish again) supposedly from a TVR. Turns out it's from an early SD1 3500S and the only valuable part (the heads) have stripped threads. Oh well.
Back to the engine in the front. I could have a closer look at the cold start injector. I don't know if trying to remove it broke it, but the plastic hose connector was snapped and the pipe itself was pretty crispy. It turns out the cold start injector is one the few parts Rimmer Bros don't have, I know other cars of a similar vintage used them - any ideas?
I blocked the CSI tapping from the fuel rail and repressurised the system to look for more leaks. The main feed from the filter to the fuel rail was leaking at the rail end and there was fuel coming from somewhere on the other side too. I don't know about overfuelling, I've not managed to get any in the engine yet!
Only one thing for it, I took the manifold off to replace all the flexible hoses and clips on the injector system.
Closer inspection showed the problem with old flexible pipes…
All pretty grubby but it should clean up.
I'll get on with cleaning that and I've got some injector hose and clips on order.
In the mean time, I started tackling the loosing water/head gasket problem. Off with the heads! First of all, remove the rocker covers.
Oh, rather disappointing. I know it's been stood, but it's full of jelly and sludge in here. It looks like it's been struggling for clean oil, blocked oilways?
Also, check out these rockers and rods. Any idea what the fluffy stuff is? It looks a bit like mould but I guess it could be dried out 'mayo'.
More coming soon
An advanced apology for the pictures in the thread, I will get a proper camera sorted soon.
After a day trip to South Wales to inspect I had it delivered back up here to Sheffield (using Shiply). Here is the beast dumped on the road, helpfully the street lights had packed up!
My driveway to the garage is up quite a steep hill around the side of the house. I was vaguely hoping it'd run well enough to get up the hill and into the garage, so I hooked up the battery from my 800 Vitesse (yes, I have a problem with faster Rovers).
It turned over! It didn't start but when I looked under the bonnet there was petrol spewing out of the flexi hose to the cold start injector!! Much frantic running about, mopping and isolating supplies ensued. I decided to get the battery out of there and started thinking of other ways to get it into the garage.
I decided using a hand turfer winch and ratchet straps tied to newly made anchor points on the ground would be the easiest way; winch in, chock, ratchet in the strap, winch in, repeat… got a hand from some generous neighbours and it was in the garage after two hours
Oh yeah - I bought an engine too, unseen (foolish again) supposedly from a TVR. Turns out it's from an early SD1 3500S and the only valuable part (the heads) have stripped threads. Oh well.
Back to the engine in the front. I could have a closer look at the cold start injector. I don't know if trying to remove it broke it, but the plastic hose connector was snapped and the pipe itself was pretty crispy. It turns out the cold start injector is one the few parts Rimmer Bros don't have, I know other cars of a similar vintage used them - any ideas?
I blocked the CSI tapping from the fuel rail and repressurised the system to look for more leaks. The main feed from the filter to the fuel rail was leaking at the rail end and there was fuel coming from somewhere on the other side too. I don't know about overfuelling, I've not managed to get any in the engine yet!
Only one thing for it, I took the manifold off to replace all the flexible hoses and clips on the injector system.
Closer inspection showed the problem with old flexible pipes…
All pretty grubby but it should clean up.
I'll get on with cleaning that and I've got some injector hose and clips on order.
In the mean time, I started tackling the loosing water/head gasket problem. Off with the heads! First of all, remove the rocker covers.
Oh, rather disappointing. I know it's been stood, but it's full of jelly and sludge in here. It looks like it's been struggling for clean oil, blocked oilways?
Also, check out these rockers and rods. Any idea what the fluffy stuff is? It looks a bit like mould but I guess it could be dried out 'mayo'.
More coming soon
/ '92 Hymer B534 / '98 Suzuki TL1000R
