1985 Rover SD1 Vanden Plas EFI - Now running Speeduino EFI

I took the Rover for its first actual drive since I got the car, today. I have had it two months and driven it less than 100km (but used almost half a tank of gas) 😞

I decided since I was working Saturday today, I would drive the Rover in. It’s a good easy drive, not much traffic and would be a good test run for the car. It also gives me a chance to get the car on the hoist and check over the underside.

In terms of driving the car to and from work, it performed amazingly. Temp was stable, although took a little time to come up when cold this morning, but hovered in the 80-95ish range depending on speed and load.

On the way to work the trip computer said I averaged 12.5l/100km, and on the way home that got a little bump to 13.1l/100km. If I can keep the car around there, I would be very happy indeed.

Idle is a bit rough, and causes quite a bit of vibration through the car, but smooths out the instant you give it any gas. I seem to recall NP70 has a rough idle too. She is fairly primitive, with no form of idle control, just a bypass screw.

It looks pretty good under the artificial light at work.





And then I rolled it onto the hoist.

The overall impression is good. Very little rust, and other than the oil leaks it looks good.

There is a lot of oil down the sides and back of engine, from up high. I suspect this is mostly from the rocker cover gaskets, as all the screws were loose and I would say the gaskets are stuffed. They are on my list to replace ASAP.



It may also be leaking from the trans too, as there is a fair bit back there, keeping all the surfaces rust free.
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You can also see that the exhaust is touching the corner of the trans oil pan. Not ideal. The exhaust has been extensively modified/replaced. It has one muffler, a resonator and a lot of ugly mild steel pipe. It’s not in bad shape though.




I noticed that the rear shocks have been replaced with Spax Gas adjustable shocks, and some red springs of some sort. A lot of Nolathane bushes have been used front and rear too. Standard front shocks and springs.





A lot of the common rust areas are in good shape, with no signs of rust in the boot floor, sills or where the trailing arms bolt to the body.



The front pads need replacing, as they are low, and obviously the reason the pad wear light is flickering on braking. It was failed for the front pads on the last WOF, so not sure what they did there (maybe old pads from one of his other cars like the fuel filter?).

Either way, it was a great drive to and from work, and it turned a few heads going down the road. So happy to be finally clocking up some Miles behind the wheel.

For a classic car owner, there is one thing that happens every six months that is sure to bring dread. The Warrant of Fitness.

A Warrant of Fitness, or WOF/Warrant for short, is an inspection to check the roadworthiness of a car. For older cars it’s every six months, whilst modern cars get away with every year, or in the case of new cars, every three years.

Everything is checked. The body structure, brakes, suspension, electrics, wheels, tires, wipers, seat belts, etc etc. Lots of things to fail on.

For classic car owners, especially British classic car owners, this isn’t a fun time.

The Rover is due for a warrant next month, and honestly, there are a few things that needed doing to pass it. Only small things though, which is a relief.

The main things I know about are the front washer jet being woeful, the rear washer and wiper not working at all, and the brake wear indicator coming on. Everything else is basically as it was when it passed its last warrant (with minimal mileage since).

Today was a lovely day outside, other than the horrible gusty wind, so I decided to spend some time on the Rover. I have been driving it as much as possible, and other than the odd little thing, it’s been solid and reliable *touches wood*. Its even been really enjoyable to cruise around in.

I started today by replacing the remaining two waist mouldings, on the LH windows. The old ones were solid as a rock, cracking and wavy. Not good-looking, and they were putting pressure on the glass making them harder to roll up and down.



So that’s all the windows done now, and boy does it look a lot better. The RH side ones I did a while back are still holding up well. I had read of some owners having their seals shrink, but so far despite living outside in direct sun, mine havent.

After that success I just couldn’t be stopped. Next on my hit list was the washer pumps. I have previously mentioned the weird setup for the front washer pump and how it just wasn’t effective. The rear pump also did not work. It was time to fix them, as both would need to work well to pass the warrant.

The setup from the previous owner, was a Series 1 pump mounted on the inner guard, sucking through the seized standard washer pump. It’s a real bodge job to get around replacing the seized pump.



It wasnt very effective, and the standard jet was old and blocked too (might have something to do with the bottle being full of algae when I got the car). I noticed in the bundle of parts I picked up the other week, that there was a washer bottle in there. It wasn’t from an EFI car; maybe a late 6 cylinder from the looks of it, but it did have two pumps. As it turns out, the pumps are exactly the same as used on the EFI bottles, just in a different location.




It was just a matter of unscrewing the old ones, and screwing the replacements into the retainers in the bottle. Easy. Before I did this though, I tested each pump by feeding 12v to them, and both worked well. The old pumps? The rear washer pump is completely seized, and cannot be freed, but the front one was only binding and some spinning by hand and then feeding 12v, and it came to life, so will be a good spare.

With the replacement pumps in, I refit the bottle, removed the extra pump, hooked up the wiring and hoses, and filled the bottle with water and washer fluid. The results? Both pumps now function correctly, but neither the front or rear washer jets are any good. The front one just barely dribbles out, and the rear does nothing.

Well, not nothing. Magically, replacing the pump has now made the rear wiper work (which previously didn’t). I also saw a sign of life from the rear jet after much pressing of the button….


Yup, a nice thick goopy stream of brown liquid poured down the rear window. Still no water though.

I grabbed one of my favourite T-Pins, and stuck it in the jet. Wiggled it around a bit, pulled it out and hit the button. Another stream of brown stuff down the glass. Ugh. I repeated clearing the jet, and finally saw some brown water coming through. I held the button on whilst clearing the jet with the pin, which unfortunately resulted in a lot of that brown goo ending up on my hands, but hey, the washer jet was clear now and after a while the water coming out was nice and clear too.

Great success.

The front jet needed some attention too, but good thing I preempted this by buying a new washer jet from Rimmers a while back. I pulled the old one out, and fit the replacement. Easy.



With the new jet in, it was a different ball game. Lots of water on the glass, although, lots of water going in all directions too. Quality British design no doubt. But it works, and that’s another tick on the warrant sheet.

Finally, I fixed a small thing that was bothering me for ages. I flipped the bottle around so it faced the correct direction 😄


There are still a few more little things to work through, like changing the front pads. I have the pads, but I’m waiting on a new fitting kit from Rimmers before I can fit them. I also need to give the car a full detail, as I will be dragging her along to the British Car Day in Feb.

Warrant day is getting close, and since my parts arrived, it was time to get the car ready for it.

My shipment from Rimmers arrived the other day, so it was time to give the Rover some more love.

My first mission was to change the oil and filter. I didn’t really have a proper history of the servicing, so I didn’t know when it was last changed, or what was used. The filter appeared new, but the oil was black as anything. The filter had to be removed when the oil cooler was removed before my ownership, but I’m guessing that didn’t extend to an actual oil change 😐

This is a very easy car to do an oil change on, as long as you keep the rules in mind. The main rule, DO NOT REMOVE THE OIL FILTER WITH AN EMPTY SUMP!


It’s a weird quirk as normally I would drain the oil, and whilst that’s draining I would whip the filter off and get the new one ready. If you do this in the Rover, it will drain the oil pump and then you need to prime the oil pump by removing the distributor, and using a priming tool…. Crazy. The way around this is to drain the oil, put the plug in, and then fill it to the correct level. Only then can you remove the filter safely.

Finally I have a car where I don’t need to run it up on blocks of wood to get the jack under it. My low profile jack only barely fits, but hey, it does! It’s a bit dodgy jacking the car up from the front jacking point though…. very very wobbly and it leans to the right, but with some care and a bit of speed, I managed to get the axle stands under the reinforced points.

Once up, I slid myself under and drained the oil. The HUGE drain plug is a 1-1/8″, and it should have a copper crush washer. Mine had a random copper washer, and some old sealant. Typical. I sourced a new crush washer from Rimmers.




Once drained, I spun the crush washer on and wound the plug back into the sump. Then in went 5L of Valvoline VR1 Racing 10W-40. This may seem like an odd oil for an old dinosaur, but it makes sense on paper. Its high in ZDDP/Zinc, which is awesome for reducing wear on the flat tappet cam. It’s also the correct weight as per the owner’s manual, and a semi-synthetic. See, makes sense. Hopefully.



Pouring the oil in was an adventure. Apparently my valve cover gaskets are so stuffed that if I poured the oil in too quick, it would build up in the head, and then pour out the front of the valve cover. Oops. They are on my to-do list, and I have the parts now.

With 5L of oil in the sump (it takes about 5.5L all up, including filter), I spun the old filter off, drained it out (all over the under tray), poured some fresh oil into my new filter and spun it on. Genuine Ryco, yo. Might go genuine Land Rover next time for lols.


With the king lead on the coil disconnected, I cranked the engine over for a few seconds to build pressure and fill the filter. Connected the lead back up, fired the car up and watched as the pressure gauge rose and settled to a nice level. Excellent. With the extra 500ml added, it was bang on Full.

After that I cracked open a new can of brake clean, and went nuts under the car, degreasing all the oil that had found its way under the car. Hopefully it stays this clean, but I suspect there are still some leaks here and there. I’ll check when it’s on the hoist for the warrant. It did leave a hell of a mess on the ground though.


Next on the list was the brakes. Since I got the car the wear indicator on the dash has been coming on and off randomly, and recently it’s been more on than off. I had a quick look when it was on the hoist last and noticed the pads were actually quite low. I made the decision to grab some new pads and change them out and see if the light went away.

ABC in town supplied me with a set of ICER 180672 pads, which are for a few super high performance vehicles like the Ford Transit, Iveco Daily, and the Alfa Romeo AR8 (which I didn’t know existed until now….). Look at it, what a high performance machine, with all that stunning Alfa design.


Anyway, the pads are also designed for the Landy Disco, which makes sense.


So no they aren’t race car pads, but hey, it’s not a race car anyway. The SD1 weighs less than a Disco by a fair whack, so I wont be stressing the pads out.

This is what I was working with. It’s hard to see, but only a couple of mm pad left.



The 4 piston Rover calipers are very easy to change the pads on, once you know what to do. Some of the brake pad kits come with new springs, but use split pins instead of the solid pins mine have. Apparently the split pins are a direct replacement for the solid pins, but in the interest of originality I decided to stay with my solid pin setup. I purchased new pins and springs from Rimmers.

Getting the old pins out was as easy as pushing the spring towards the rotor, and then pushing the pin out. The pin is held in place in the caliper by the spring.


My pins and springs were in decent shape, but I wanted new ones anyway. I’ll keep the old ones as spares.

With the pins and springs out you can wiggle and jiggle the pads out of the back of the caliper.


I gently used a small pry-bar to lever back the pistons one by one, with the upper bleeder open. The color of the fluid coming out was disgusting (and the reason I decided to change the fluid completely).



The old pads were pretty worn. They had started to wear through the sensor, so no wonder it was lighting up on the dash.




Now, keep in mind that these pads had to be changed to pass the last warrant (6 months ago)….. there is NO way they were new pads when fitted. *sigh*

With the pistons pushed back I applied copper grease to the backings of the pads, and slipped them in. New springs and pins were also greased up and fitted.



The wear indicator was reconnected.


And that was one side done. Easy. I did the same to the other side, and the pads were also in a similar condition. The rotors, thankfully, are in good shape with no real lip on them. I didn’t fancy having to change them.

With the help of my awesome fiancé, I flushed and bled the brakes. Before starting I sucked almost all the old fluid out of the reservoir and refilled with fresh new fluid. Starting at the RH Rear bleeder (only one in the rear), I flushed the fluid through until I could see it change color. The fronts were an interesting job to bleed. Both front calipers have three, yes three, bleed valves. It calls for starting with the LH caliper, by bleeding both of the lower valves together, and then moving to the upper valve.




Once both the fronts were done, this is what I was left with. A clear, backlit, jar of old brake fluid.



That is NOT a nice color. It should be a nice clear golden color. More neglect 🙁

The results though are pretty good. I did some heavy 60-10 KPH stops to bed the brakes in, and now they work very well. The pedal is far more progressive than it was, and it pulls up nice and quick, not to mention straight. The wear indicator is also unlit too. Result.

don't make the rookie move I did, and forget to torque the wheel nuts up when you refit the wheels…. I’m lucky I remembered before driving too far down the road, and had the factory wheel brace in the car so I could tighten them up. 😳 The manual calls for 88NM of torque to be used. Also, when road testing, take your phone with you…

The final job for the day, was some new spark plugs. The manual calls for a set of BPR6ES gapped to 0.9mm. I grabbed a set from work a while back, although in factory gap of 1.1, so I had to manually gap them down.


Taking the old plugs out was both a pleasant, and annoying surprise. The plugs were in OK condition, the gap was a bit big, but the color was good. They were the wrong plugs though. 7x BPR4ES, and 1x BP5ES. Yup, one lone plug that wasnt a resistor plug, and a different temp range. All of them were the wrong temp range anyway. The wrong temperature range can result in detonation, overheating of the plug and generally bad running and a short lifespan of the plug.




With the new plugs in, the car feels like it running much more solid. Not necessarily more powerful, but not as weak.

It’s astounding that so many things I'm finding wrong with this car are simple little things that a previous owner has chosen to do wrong, or on the cheap. Getting the correct plugs isn’t rocket surgery, and they are pretty common and cheap.

Its been a long day, but my gosh the car just keeps getting better and better. I’m very happy with how it’s coming along. Next test is the warrant.

On another note, I finally got through the first tank of gas since I got the car. About half the tank was wasted with fuel leaks, and running issues. The second half was pure enjoyment.

I did 190 KM, or about 118 Miles to a tank. Lol. 21.6L/100KM. 😆 Worth it!

The next tank will be better, if I can keep my foot off the carpet.

Typically, like most SD1s, mine has some electrical issues. One common issue is the failure of dash buttons and switches; thankfully it’s not a hard issue to fix.
I have noticed two switches that weren’t operating as expected; the sunroof switch, and the rear fog lamp button.

The sunroof switch would neither open nor close the sunroof, and there was no clicking from the relays for the sunroof. The fog lamp switch had a simpler failure, it operated electrically, but would not latch when pressed, so the lights wouldn’t stay on.

The first step to getting the switches out is to remove the dash binnacle top. This should be secured by a lone screw on the LH end…. my screw was missing. It then slides slightly to the left, and lifts off.


Mine isn’t too warped, which I’m utterly stoked about.

Once off I got access to all the wiring and electronics for the cluster. A couple of things stood out straight away. First was that there was a fair bit of dirt/dust on the connectors, and the warning light for the coolant level was missing its bulb.



I pulled a spare bulb and holder from my spare cluster, and installed it. Now I have a working coolant level warning light. Handy!


It was then time to remove the switches. They are a simple design, and to remove them it’s just brute force to push them out the front of the cluster housing, towards yourself. The connector for the rear fog lamp button is a prick to get at as there is limited space, and it has a locking tab on each side.




With the switches out it was time to get to work on them.

I started with the fog lamp button.


Use a small screwdriver to dislodge the little tabs on each side, and remove the bottom casing.


The reason it didn’t latch? It uses a small spring-loaded pin moving in a little pattern to latch the button when pressed. A common failure is for the spring to go awol, due to a small plastic tab breaking off. My tab was missing, and the spring pin was floating around inside the button.



Then it was a matter of removing the little white block with the pattern on it (as this acts as a stopper for the sliding part of the button), removing the big spring, and sliding the inner part out. There is a tiny spring and metal contact inside that will come out, so take care not to lose them.




The three metal contacts on the base, and the metal U-shaped contact were all filthy and showing signs of corrosion.


I cleaned all of these with a small wire brush and contact cleaner, until they were bright again.



I was going to try using LED in the switches, but mine were a couple of MM longer than the standard bulbs and I found it didn’t fit in the sunroof switch, so I reverted them back to bulbs.


Dielectric grease was applied to the contacts, and the spring and contact were reassembled.




The inner section was then gently slid into place, whilst using a small screwdriver to make sure the sprung contact clears everything OK. I then had to fix the reason I actually pulled the switch out…. the lack of latching.

I used a blowtorch to heat up a small flat metal blade, and used that to melt the plastic over the spring pin, and hold it in place. Once that was done and cooled down, I reassembled it and the button now works as expected. I was a bit dubious that it would pass its warrant if the rear fogs didn’t stay on, so that is another tick on the sheet.


The sunroof switch is a bit of a weird one to disassemble, and doesn’t work anything like the fog button.

First you remove the actual button cap, which just pulls off.




and then you gently lever out the guts


The contacts were badly corroded, and there was even some pitting on the rocking contact strip. No wonder the switch didn’t work.




I cleaned it all up, made them bright and clean again and applied dielectric grease to lubricate and help prevent corrosion.

I reassembled it all, and sure enough the switch now works. Although, my sunroof motor is stuffed.

When I got the car I knew the sunroof didn’t work, and some early investigations showed that there was pretty bad rust in the panel, and the seal retainers. The panel was also very stiff to move, and with the switch out of action I could only move it with the manual crank (which was slow), and even then it would only go so far before the cable starting making clicking noises and slipping.

Clearly the sunroof wasnt maintained, as the rails were completely dry of any grease. This causes the panel to bind, and not slide back. As it turns out a previous owner must have tried to use the sunroof despite the lack of grease, and because the motor couldn’t move the panel it just stripped the teeth off the gear on the motor. I managed with some force, to get the sunroof panel to go back (which was awesome, can’t wait to have open sunroof driving in the sun), but then the motor got stuck on its missing teeth and I couldn’t close the damn thing. I was also on a very tight deadline as I had a Skype meeting to attend.

I ended up unbolting the motor, removing the cables from the motor, and using brute force and lots of lubrication on the rails to get the panel to slide forward and close again. The panel seems to be moving a lot freer now, so once I have a replacement motor I’ll manually open the roof and apply more grease to the rails until it slides freely. I do have plans to replace the sunroof panel with one that isn’t full of rust (or fix mine), but as long as I can get it working, and it doesn’t leak, I’m happy.

Unfortunately I ran out of time to reassemble the cluster, and tidy up the boot…. and remove the sunroof motor, so that will be tomorrows job after work.

So the other day I got the sunroof open, and then got it stuck open because the motor would not drive the cables. Today, I wanted to find out why.

The symptoms I had was that the sunroof was jamming on its rails because there was a serious lack of lubrication, so when you try to open or close the sunroof either using the motor, or the emergency hand crank, it would move a little and then start making click noises from the motor/gearbox.

I presumed this meant there was a stripped gear, but when I removed the cables to manually move the sunroof to close it, the gear that drives the cables was in reasonable condition. No missing teeth and minimal wear. Obviously the damage was inside the little gearbox attached to the motor.

I have another motor on the way, but in the meantime I wanted to know what happened, so I pulled it apart.

This is the cable drive gear. Not in bad shape, still plenty of life left in it.


To get into the gearbox there are three small screws to remove. I’m not sure if its factory or if someone had been inside mine before, but one screw was replaced with a nut and screw that went through the casing.


With the top cover removed, the guts are exposed. On the underside of the cover, attached to the cable drive gear there is a big rubber disc which I presume is some sort of basic clutch so that when the sunroof is opened or closed fully there is some give in the gearbox to stop damage whilst the operator releases the button.


Inside the gearbox there is a worm gear, and a large gear on a shaft that runs into the housing. This also has the stubs that engage with the rubber buffer.


The problem became somewhat apparent immediately


Half the fecking gear is broken off!


The bits were found in the bottom of the housing




So the motor is good, it still operates fine, but the drive gear is a write-off. I’ll hold onto the motor just in case. Unfortunately this sort of failure isn’t from the button being pressed once or twice when the sunroof is jammed, it’s from someone trying over and over until the torque of the motor overcame the strength of the plastic gear. Oh well, now I know.

With the car polished, I can finally reinstall the missing trim.

Since I purchased the car its been missing the LH chrome headlamp garnish. It’s a small thing, but it’s bothered me. The car came with the trim, but the clips were broken and had been mostly painted over at some point.



When I polished the car the other day I also levelled the excess paint from where the clips were, using some sandpaper and a razor. This allows the new clips to fit correctly, as previously they wouldn’t sit flush.

I started with a bundle of new clips from Rimmers


And a bonnet with holes in it


The way the trim attaches is actually somewhat over complicated, but works well. The small clips fit into the holes via an expanding stud (which expands when a pin in the centre is pushed through), and the clips have sprung edges that clip into the metal trim, to hold it on.





And like magic, we have trim!



I still want to re-add chrome to the strip under the edge of the bonnet, but that’s a mission for another day (gosh I want some fog lamps too 😥 ).


In the meantime I also added a couple of other small things I purchased from Rimmers.

A new dash light adjustment knob. The old one was cracked.


And I got some spare glovebox stud things. These are used to attach the straps that limit how far the glovebox opens, and they tend to break if you’re a bit rough on the glovebox. The driver’s side one is also missing a strap completely, so I will need to sort that. The remaining one had a broken tab and didn’t stay in place.


I’m slowly getting there.

I’m slowly getting there, work is finally starting on my Speeduino Project. Checking the spare standard loom was my first job

The other day I received the Jaguar ECU. Unfortunately it’s not quite the one I was after, the housing is shorter, but it appears to have the same sort of mounting points on the front edge as my Rover ECU. With some tweaking I should be able to use it.

The Rover and Jaguar ECUs have a fairly standard locking mechanism for the main harness connection, it’s a big 35-pin plug and locks into the ECU housing. Standard for “Jetronic” ECUs.


Yeah, this one has seen some curse word; looks like its been left in the ocean for a bit, but will clean up nicely. The circuit boards inside are useless to me, so I opened the ECU up and “removed” them, forcefully.





I also removed and saved the connector off the board, in case I decide to reuse the 35 pin connector, I can solder onto this and use it as my main connector.

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With that in mind, I decided to check my spare Rover loom over and see if I might be able to repurpose it for Speeduino. The first mission was to remove all the braided loom wrap off the wires. It was already falling off, and mostly soaked in oil.





It came off easy enough though, with a sharp knife. I was left with a nice toupee of wrap.


In order to fully check the loom over, I also removed all the boots off the electrical connectors, as these cover and hide the wiring. What I was mainly looking for was cracked and broken insulation. When the wiring ages, and when it’s subjected to the horrible conditions in a car engine bay, it turns very brittle and can crack. When it cracks it exposes the copper wiring, which can cause oxidation, breakage, or can even short the wires together.

The main parts of the loom were OK, nothing obvious, but as soon as I started removing the boots at the extremities, I started to see slight cracking. All the plugs are stuffed, but that’s not an issue, I intended to crimp new plugs on anyway.



Upon further digging it got a little worse. One of the injector wires had a break in the insulation


And the wires for what I believe is the Extra Air Valve has both wires with broken insulation in the same spot.



This is enough that I will not re-use this loom and will stick to my original plan of making a completely new loom from new wire. I have all the wire, I just need to put it all together now. This loom does give me a good idea of the length, and the layout of the connectors though.

After the British Car Day show this weekend, I’ll be pushing forward, hard, with Speeduino. Stay tuned.

On Sunday was the annual British Car Day at Trentham. I have a couple of posts on that already, but here’s a quick update on my own car.

Last year the SD1 turnout was quite low, I think there were only about 4 in attendance. I said there and then that I would be boosting that number in 2017 by bringing my own SD1 to the show. Considering I didn’t have an SD1 at the time, this was going to be an interesting plan.

As it turned out I did eventually manage to pick up my SD1 back in November, and since then, it’s been a race against the clock getting the car in a condition that I would be proud to display at the show. Its been almost constant work trying to right the wrongs of previous owners, and wind back the years of neglect.

I finally made it to the show on Sunday, under my own power, in a car that I am proud to say is mine.

Cruising into the show was surreal. Rolling through the gates in a row of other really stunning classic British cars, was my own little SD1. It was running like clockwork, and just idled its way through the gates and across the field to the Rover Club stand.

I parked up surrounded by other SD1s, which in itself was an amazing sight, and as more cars arrived my SD1 soon found itself in the middle of a group of similar cars.

Unfortunately the weather didn’t hold off all day, it was OK for the most part but eventually I did get to see the beading of the water on my paint. Boy does it bead well.

My car turned some heads and had a few people having a real good look over it. I also got a couple of really humbling comments from other SD1 owners, praising my car.

I’m glad I could be part of the show, and I’ll certainly be back next year, in the same car with some differences.

Great work, I will be intetested in where you go with the engine managment, I have a 86 range rover efi which is essentially the same, given how difficult and expensive parts are getting, I may have to go to something similar, I was thinking of starting with the later set up with high impedence injectors and idle speed control, I guess this is more difficult to come br in nz though.

Roughly what does the speedunio module end up costing?