1972 Rover P6 2300TC - Saab B234 Turbo

Theres just enough clearance for a daily, as long as you're careful with speed humps, but looking at it, I can easily go another 2". It drove happily out of the garage down a rough bit onto the building site outside without grounding out. I am however considering making a set of adjustable struts for the front now and adding another set of lugs on the rear hub to drop the rear further, but we'll see!

Another small hurdle cleared today, I dug out my spare front hubs during the week and knocked all the short studs out, dropped them in a bucket of hammerite rust remover dip and pulled them out this morning, quick wire brush and a few minutes with a socket, bench vice and new set of long studs gave me this:





Both are now painted black, waiting for a set of bolts to be reunited with the new discs.



While I was on the wheel studs, I though it was about time to change the rears aswell, so out with the old ball joint puller and big hammer, I set to work:



With the wheel off, I've started to cut the rear arch for clearance for the rear wheels. I've removed the folded edge but left the flange of the inner part of the arch in place to keep the stiffness.



I could now get inside the arch and knock the remaining outer skin out to be tacked in place:



Then seam welded ready for smoothing out:



I put the wheel back on to check for clearance, and because of the longer wheel studs, I've fitted extra spacers in there to alloy the wheel nuts to seat on the wheel instead of shortening the studs. Plenty of clearance now



Time to get these out:



The inner skin was then beaten out to meet the outer skin, then tacked in place, ready for full seam welding to be completed tomorrow.

Top work and lovely welds, I'm loving this car. Keep it up.

Cheers ;D

Since we 'fixed' the welder and I've been practicing its been running much better. I can now weld thin auto body panels with minimal blow through.

I spent most of today dressing the welds on the rear arches and painting them, and having a good old clear out. I'm going to try and blitz the shell this week so I can get on with the final paint job as soon as it begins warming up.

Just catching up on this. Fantastic work goin on here!

Have you still got he original engine or more particularly the carb set up to hand? I could really do with some photos of the throttle/choke linkages if you can

Thanks I've dug my carbs out today and they're both "fronts" probably from a 2000TC so I'll aev some fiddling to do. Looks like it won't be difficult to reverse everything on one or I'll just get jiggy with some linkages. It'd be handy to know what they were like originally though.

Not much has been happening recently on the car but I've been looking at uprating the rear axle. I've been unable to find any information as to how strong they are, and I've heard of the shaft in the extension tube and the output flanges shearing under heavy loads, so before the back end gets jacked up to to the exhaust, I had a look on ebay and found this:





It's the rear diff from a Jaguar, with the LSD unit inside ;D. Here it is compared to a standard Rover diff:







And then to my surprise the Rover driveshafts bolted straight up onto the jag diff with no trouble at all



Dimensionally the jag diff is 2.5" wider and 19" shorter, but on the plus side is designed for greater loads than the p6 diff, has the inboard disc brakes and has an LSD.

To check it over and assess its suitability for fitting I took it apart:





All looked good, so the next project was to see how easy it is to shorten the driveshafts to keep the wheels in the same place. Out with the grinder and tape measure and I had this:



Then with the big hammer:





The driveshaft is now 1.25" shorter than original, so I welded it back together:



That confirms that the concept of fitting the jag diff in the p6 is viable, so I'll shorten the other driveshaft and rebuild both hubs, and start making a mounting plate to mount the jag diff to the body, then when it gets jacked up to do the exhaust, I'll have a go fitting the new assembly ;D

THis is looking great keep the updates coming!