Where do I start? As some might know, I really like my Rover SD1's. Ive spent the last 6 1/2 years restoring a 1986 Rover SD1 Police car. That is pretty much finished, and to be honest it completely burnt me out. I put a lot of effort in to getting it ready for the NEC Classic show, but it did me in. So I had promised myself that I wouldn't do any car or motorbike related projects until at least the spring time. But it turns out I am a weak weak man 
I find my self with a new SD1 project. This car appeared on ebay early October. It failed to sell. It got relisted...guess what, it failed to sell. Relisted again, failed to sell again....and so it continued.
There was a bit of chat on the SD1 forum about the car, and how it needed to be saved, but no one was actually stepping in to take it on.
I got curious (because I'm an idiot) and went to view it. Here are the ebay ad photos....
And here it is when I went to visit it in Brentford, London.
Basically its pretty ruined. Despite the previous owner having a lot of affection for the car, he left it outside, and unused in a yard since 1994! In that time it has had a big stack of pallets fall onto it, damaging the front offside wing, bonnet, roof and smashing a hole in the windscreen. It has also been run into by lorries and forklifts so every panel has been dented. The hole in the windscreen has also let in water which has rotted the drivers door card and driver's seat. Sounding familiar? The owner explained that he had to shift it as the site was being re developed.
So you might ask, why the hell would I be interested in this car??? Well, its rare. There weren't many SD Turbos and there are even fewer surviving. Most of them built were for the European market, where diesels were already popular. In the UK in 1981, this was one of only 3 turbo diesels you could buy, and this was the fastest, in fact it was the fastest diesel car in the world at a crazy 102 mph (although magazine testers at the time were getting higher out of them).
Its also a pretty rare colour, Eclipse blue. And what really got me interested was that it had only done 41k miles, which is feck all for one of these.
I knew it would be rotten, and decided that if it was too far gone to be saved, then at least I could keep the gearbox. Its a good gearbox to have, as the diesels have an extra long 5th gear, so ideal for my 4.6 twin plenum (which needs a gearbox).
It got delivered on Tuesday evening. I didn't have time to do anything other than take a few quick pics before I had to head home.
It is dumped in the car park at work. Which means I only get to work on it at night time. I also have to keep thit under a cover and the mess down to a minimum as its a normal office in a business park, not a breakers yard.
I set about trying to get it running. First thing I did was pull out the old twin batteries and plug in two new ones (yes this bad boy needs 2 x 12v batteries to run). This gave a series of unexpected electrical anomalies. Basically all sorts of lights coming on and off, very inconsistent and a fair number of dashboard warning lights. It was basically all down to wet electrics and dodgy earths.
Next evening I cleaned all the battery terminals, the earths to the chassis, the earths to the looms and scraped the corrosion off all the multiplugs in the engine bay. Still it didn't crank over.
Then I thought that was probably a good thing. With a car that's sat for so long, I really needed to turn it over by hand, and get some oil circulating just cranking on the starter without actually firing. So I removed the fuel filter and put a pan under it to catch any diesel fired out by the lift pump.
I then tried to work out why the starter wasn't spinning. I took a look at the starter relay inside the offside front wing. Yuck!
Totally rotten. Also it was a 4 pin relay in a 5 pin relay holder? The bodging fairy has been at work. I tried to clean all this up but got bored so just added a fly lead to jump the relay holder and trigger the starter.
Ignition on, and I jumped it. Vroooooooooom, instantly. No Bullplop. It fired straight up, and ran perfectly, until it had exhausted all the fuel that was between the high pressure pump and the injectors. Remember no fuel filter.
So much happiness, that the car wanted to live. So I celebrated with a kebab.
Plan is to get it running up to temperature and make sure at least the engine is sound, then I will make a full assessment of the rest of the horrors. At the very least it will need.....4 doors, bonnet, sills, repairs to lower parts of front wings, floors and boot floor....plus driver seat repaired, headlining, 2 door cards etc etc. Yay, let the fun begin!
I find my self with a new SD1 project. This car appeared on ebay early October. It failed to sell. It got relisted...guess what, it failed to sell. Relisted again, failed to sell again....and so it continued.
There was a bit of chat on the SD1 forum about the car, and how it needed to be saved, but no one was actually stepping in to take it on.
I got curious (because I'm an idiot) and went to view it. Here are the ebay ad photos....
And here it is when I went to visit it in Brentford, London.
Basically its pretty ruined. Despite the previous owner having a lot of affection for the car, he left it outside, and unused in a yard since 1994! In that time it has had a big stack of pallets fall onto it, damaging the front offside wing, bonnet, roof and smashing a hole in the windscreen. It has also been run into by lorries and forklifts so every panel has been dented. The hole in the windscreen has also let in water which has rotted the drivers door card and driver's seat. Sounding familiar? The owner explained that he had to shift it as the site was being re developed.
So you might ask, why the hell would I be interested in this car??? Well, its rare. There weren't many SD Turbos and there are even fewer surviving. Most of them built were for the European market, where diesels were already popular. In the UK in 1981, this was one of only 3 turbo diesels you could buy, and this was the fastest, in fact it was the fastest diesel car in the world at a crazy 102 mph (although magazine testers at the time were getting higher out of them).
Its also a pretty rare colour, Eclipse blue. And what really got me interested was that it had only done 41k miles, which is feck all for one of these.
I knew it would be rotten, and decided that if it was too far gone to be saved, then at least I could keep the gearbox. Its a good gearbox to have, as the diesels have an extra long 5th gear, so ideal for my 4.6 twin plenum (which needs a gearbox).
It got delivered on Tuesday evening. I didn't have time to do anything other than take a few quick pics before I had to head home.
It is dumped in the car park at work. Which means I only get to work on it at night time. I also have to keep thit under a cover and the mess down to a minimum as its a normal office in a business park, not a breakers yard.
I set about trying to get it running. First thing I did was pull out the old twin batteries and plug in two new ones (yes this bad boy needs 2 x 12v batteries to run). This gave a series of unexpected electrical anomalies. Basically all sorts of lights coming on and off, very inconsistent and a fair number of dashboard warning lights. It was basically all down to wet electrics and dodgy earths.
Next evening I cleaned all the battery terminals, the earths to the chassis, the earths to the looms and scraped the corrosion off all the multiplugs in the engine bay. Still it didn't crank over.
Then I thought that was probably a good thing. With a car that's sat for so long, I really needed to turn it over by hand, and get some oil circulating just cranking on the starter without actually firing. So I removed the fuel filter and put a pan under it to catch any diesel fired out by the lift pump.
I then tried to work out why the starter wasn't spinning. I took a look at the starter relay inside the offside front wing. Yuck!
Totally rotten. Also it was a 4 pin relay in a 5 pin relay holder? The bodging fairy has been at work. I tried to clean all this up but got bored so just added a fly lead to jump the relay holder and trigger the starter.
Ignition on, and I jumped it. Vroooooooooom, instantly. No Bullplop. It fired straight up, and ran perfectly, until it had exhausted all the fuel that was between the high pressure pump and the injectors. Remember no fuel filter.
So much happiness, that the car wanted to live. So I celebrated with a kebab.
Plan is to get it running up to temperature and make sure at least the engine is sound, then I will make a full assessment of the rest of the horrors. At the very least it will need.....4 doors, bonnet, sills, repairs to lower parts of front wings, floors and boot floor....plus driver seat repaired, headlining, 2 door cards etc etc. Yay, let the fun begin!
