Zel's Eclectic Fleet Blog (Volvo, Rover, Trabant, Invacar & Occasional Distractions)

[Zelandeth]

Don't always listen to service schedules, a friend who was a director of transport at a large company with a couple of thousand of vehicles had several cars with idiotic cam belt changes.. After a couple forked engines he had them changed at a reasonable time.. works out cheaper in the long run

Yeah, there's absolutely no way I'd even consider leaving a timing belt more than five years. Mileage is never going to be an issue on my fleet, it will always be done due to age. Like two plus yearly oil/filter changes. No thanks...oil is (relatively) cheap, engines aren't. Especially as this engine is known for issues with contamination of the oil feed screen in the turbo oil feed. Not as though only getting it's oil changed every other year by the book could possibly have anything to do with that...

[Zelandeth]

Yesterday ended up being quite a busy mess, even in addition to the new arrival turning up so I didn't get nearly as much time to look into it as I would have liked, and it was well into the evening before I could even think about starting to write things up. So apologies this is a little later than I'd planned - You're essentially getting yesterday's update while I'm between jobs this morning. Things weren't helped yesterday by only really being able to spend 30 minutes or so outside at a time before staring to seriously overheat, so that further hurt my efficacy where actually getting anything done was concerned.

Right on time, the car arrived. Delivered by Walsgrave Transport who I've used several times now and have always been fantastic to deal with. Felt rather guilty that I'd completed neglected to account for it being the second day of the school term and warn them about it, still we made things work.



Unlike the last couple of cars I've had delivered by them, this one was actually able to start up and drive off the transporter under its own power and into the parking space, which definitely made things easier. The BX was a particularly awkward one given the lack of a footbrake or more than 3mm of ground clearance without the engine running. With the Rover now on the drive I could get a look around it a bit more properly. Given the asking price I really didn't dig too deeply when I looked at it at the seller's place as provided that it wasn't rotten and that all the annoyingly expensive bits on cars of this age like trim were present I knew I was still getting a decent deal.

So let's take a closer look at what I've got myself into.









The sole item in the glovebox seems somewhat foreboding...







I think a new fuel filter will probably be on the cards...



Why can't more companies provide this information under the bonnet?



The boot also turned out to be full of mysteries, I've barely even touched this yet.



Need to get a cover on at least the positive terminal of that battery, it is giving me serious anxiety from a fire safety perspective. Especially with that wheel sitting right next to it.


So, onto the issues. Which we absolutely knew that there would be.

The most obvious probably being that we currently have the rare Rover V7 engine. I'd hoped that this might just be a fouled up plug, but it appears that we do have a lame cylinder, with number 5 showing very little compression compared to the other seven - you can clearly hear this when cranking. We do have what looks to be exactly the same amount of movement at the rockers as on the neighbouring cylinders based on a really quick visual check, so I don't think we're looking at a wiped cam lobe. Further investigation needed. Optimistically it could be a bit of crud holding a valve open - though based on my previous track record I doubt I'm going to be that lucky!

The oil was badly, badly contaminated with ancient fuel (unsurprising given the car's been off the road for a long while, especially given we've discovered a dead miss on one cylinder). Seriously, it reeked like old paint stripper - I think what came out the sump smelled stronger than what went into the fuel tank. So before I did anything else I wanted to get that changed.

What came out was...well...was this.



Lovely.

No chunks nor any glitter I could detect when I drained the pan, but that's obviously not what you want in your sump. Looking at it, my immediate suspicion is water contamination due to head/gasket issues. Especially given we have a conspicuous lack of compression in one cylinder. Coolant level does look to be spot on though and as far as I can tell the system isn't being pressurised, the oil level wasn't high either - further investigation needed. Either way, I'm glad I made the decision to change it before running the engine beyond parking the car.

Reported electrical faults were that the oil warning light and both oil pressure/temperature gauges were inoperative. A quick check from the driver's seat added choke warning light, indicators (hazards were fine though), heater blower and radio to that list. This collection of things (not so much the radio) made me immediately suspect a power supply issue. Let's keep it simple and check fuses first before I go on a huge deep dive dismantling half the car.

Main fuse box on a P6B is behind the passenger side glove box in case you wondered.



Sure enough, the one labelled "ignition control" was blown. Legend in the fuse box calls for a 25A fuse, but only a 20A was fitted. It's also what went back in as it's the highest rating I had aside from a lone 35A (and no, I am NOT going to be that guy who just stuffs a larger fuse in!). Turning the ignition on then showed we had working indicators, no oil light, and an oil pressure gauge which immediately started heading towards full scale high.

Choke light had also sprung back to life.



Interesting that wasn't deemed important enough for a legend, just a blank amber light.

Thirty seconds under the bonnet later swapping the connections from the senders for the oil pressure gauge/warning light around and we had a working pressure warning light.



Thankfully when the engine was started, the light almost immediately went out (there WAS an element of trepidation there) and the gauge started to register pressure.



The only light I seemed to be missing then was the brake light, though lifting the level sensor out of the reservoir did bring the light on correctly so it must just be the handbrake switch which is either faulty or stuck.



The ammeter does move, though I'm not really convinced about its accuracy as it doesn't seem to move very far in either direction. Temperature gauge is an unknown, the engine hasn't run long enough for anything to register on there yet - I'll probably do a quick test today to at least prove the gauge operates. Fuel gauge is also an unknown, it's not showing empty - but equally I don't think it's moved. Though I have only thrown two gallons in the tank so not sure whether I should really expect it to move visibly from that much fuel - that's not going to make a huge dent on a 15 gallon tank.

I know it's nothing much in the grand scheme of things, but having got at least the dash from "mostly dead" to this stage felt like at least some progress.



The main beam light is actually working there, it's just really really dim.



At least I have some verification now that I do actually have some oil pressure, which was the main target of that exercise.

The radio still doesn't work, but at least does look rather tidier now I've pushed it properly back into the dash and reassembled the little cubby hole above it.



Answers on a postcard as to what these switches do. Guessing based on the absence of a switch for it anywhere else that one is the rear screen heater, the other not a clue.



It's not a car that's devoid of nicely done little details. The rear quarter light mechanism for instance.



Little covers over the locks to keep water out.



No shortage of chrome either.





Definitely channels proper 60s muscle car vibes in the styling from the front.



That's about as far as I got yesterday - well save for the obligatory couple of photos after dark when I went to see how much of the dash lighting was working.

Somewhat surprisingly the answer appeared to be "all of it."



I'd always been curious to see how the central control panel was lit based on its construction - edge lit from below was the answer.



So that's as far as we've got so far.



Watch this space over the next couple of days as I investigate things further.

[Zelandeth]

Today investigated a few things.

Firstly was the fuse issue - with a 25A fuse sourced and fitted, it worked fine for a few minutes before blowing. When it blew it did it quite suddenly, so I reckon we've got an intermittent short somewhere. Around the steering column will probably be my first port of call given that the main things fed off that circuit are the instruments, indicators, brake lights and reversing lights. Wiring chafing around the steering column in the vicinity of the indicator stalk sounds like a good place to start.

The rear seats have been given their first couple of treatments with the leather feed and are already starting to look a fair bit better. That dark stain isn't going anywhere - but I'm not too worried about that to be honest, more just want to make sure the material itself has the best chance of not disintegrating.



Regarding our missing cylinder, I tried dumping some oil down the bore to see if that made any difference. It really doesn't, which kind of suggests to me that it's a top end issue. Most likely a valve not closing fully or a burned seat. Unless something absolutely catastrophic has happened to the cylinder walls anyway, I'd have expected to notice at least some difference when the engine was turning over wet rather than dry. I haven't actually stuck a compression tester on there yet, but based on how the engine sounds I'm expecting to see a big fat zero. Thinking this might be the thing which finally gets me to actually buy a borescope so I can take a proper look at the cylinder and try to get a look at the valves without actually having to pull the head up front.

There definitely is quite a bit of damp in this engine, though it's really hard to say whether that's down to an active leak somewhere or whether it's external contamination. It's clearly sat that way for a fair while too.



Before I actually go pulling the engine apart to any extent I need to confirm exactly what engine it is, as there is a (so far) undocumented rumour that apparently it may have been replaced at some point in the distant past. Given the car has 101K on the clock, definitely not impossible. The number stamped down by the dipstick is very hard, almost impossible to read - though what snippets of it that I can make out seem to point at it being an SD1 Vitesse. It's the only variation I can see in any of the tables with the same 9.75:1 CR and the couple of digits I can make out matching up in the right places.

I have noticed a couple of things which say "unfinished project" as well. Firstly is that the kickdown cable doesn't appear to be attached to the throttle linkage behind the engine (which looks a joy to get at). Secondly was this...



Which is *slightly* more concerning - that's the plate to which the brake master cylinder is attached - which appears to be missing two our of its four mounting bolts. Yeah...Anyone know what thread those should be off the top of their head? Hopefully they're in one of the boxes of bits in the boot.

Suffice to say I'll be going over all the suspension fixings, wheel nuts and such to make sure they're tight before we venture anywhere near the road.

Other things which won't be sticking with us much longer...The rear tyres. Which despite looking in surprisingly good shape, just starting to show some perishing in a couple of places...date from 1992. Early 1992 at that.



The front ones at least have a four digit code, so are from this side of 2000, but pre-date the simple WWYY numeric format. They're in considerably worse shape than the rears though with a fair amount more perishing, plus the offside front has two distinctly visible...what I can only describe as "dents" in the sidewall.



That's gonna sting. You don't exactly have a plethora of choices of tyres in this size and none of them are cheap.

Did ascertain one thing this afternoon. While this only has a single pipe exhaust system on it, it still sounds rather rowdy when some revs are involved it seems. Which I'm okay with so long as it doesn't drone at speed. I tend to prefer quieter for the most part these days...but I'll make a bit of an exception for a V8 provided it's not too antisocial. I'd permit a straight pipe on something like a Land Rover, but a P6 needs to be at least somewhat refined!

[Zelandeth]

Thermometer was showing 32C in the shade here so I wasn't expecting to be up for spending much time outside, and sure enough I wasn't.

My main intention was to try to track down the reason that we were popping 25A fuses on the ignition switched circuit. Of course today that has behaved impeccably. Right. That's going to be one of *those* problems then. The fact that everywhere in the car I look I keep finding more blown 25A fuses suggests to me that this has been an ongoing problem for a while.

On a related note I investigated the temperature gauge - and there's no life from it. Nor any voltage getting to the sender. Given that both the fuel and temperature gauges are showing absolutely zero signs of life this makes me suspect that we may have issues with the voltage regulator in the instrument panel. Of course I don't have one in stock currently so will need to get one ordered. I also need to look up how to get the instrument panel apart as it's not immediately obvious and I don't want to go pulling on or levering things given that we're dealing with plastic which has probably gone quite brittle by this age. I need to ascertain if the clock is getting power as well as that's also on the "not working" list at the moment, so that's another reason I need to get into the panel.

One thing I did successfully do however was fix the radio. Yes I know that should be about item number 3,498,093,453,798 on the priority list...but it was an easy quick win I could tick off, and I wanted to know if the head unit actually worked.



Which sounds precisely as bad as you would expect it to through what appear to be the cheapest speakers that anyone could find in the late 80s. Someone has already cut a couple of holes in the parcel shelf, so I'll probably (discreetly) fit something a bit more modern there to do the heavy lifting (and to fill the holes in the shelf). Not going overboard though. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

There was no power getting to it from its original feed (which was spliced into another factory looking line I need to hunt down on the wiring diagram - as that could be the source of our short potentially), so I nicked a feed from a mystery wire which looks like it goes to some long-dead alarm type unit buried behind the dash. At least I know exactly where that's coming from rather than relying on mystery wiring.

Bit of a shame it's lit amber rather than green, but given the panel above it is also lit green over white it doesn't clash badly.



Definitely something funky going on with the headlight wiring or switch. Mainly in that the headlights come on in dip mode as soon as you move the switch to the sidelight position. Plus only one headlight is working. Will investigate that tomorrow. I'll need to get some new light units ordered anyway as this is still running sealed beams on all four lights, and given the cost of those these days and the failure rate of new old stock ones I'd rather just be rid of them and switch to H4s for the outer, and I imagine H1 or similar for the inners, which are only used on main beam.

[Dick]

Loving this mate, can you change the lights Inn the radio to suit the car? Not overly important but as you're good at repairing computers etc, I thought I'd ask

[Zelandeth]

Loving this mate, can you change the lights Inn the radio to suit the car? Not overly important but as you're good at repairing computers etc, I thought I'd ask

Probably! I've repaired a few head units where the lamps had burned out before. Tedious but by no means impossible. Given that it seems to be fully functional on this one though I'm inclined to just leave it be. It's not really objectionable, and to be honest the radio isn't really likely to see a massive amount of use in this car anyway.

[Zelandeth]

In we go to have a shot at getting the dead instrumentation working. The manual I've got doesn't give any information in to how to remove the binnacle...however the handbook does! Imagine that on a car these days...

Hmm...Why do I get the impression that we have, or at least have had something of a water ingress issue in the car?



With those two flat head screws there out and an identical two at the other side the faceplate comes off.



Which is actually all you need to remove to deal with any issue with panel lighting as the lamps are all replaceable from the front rather than having to faff about removing the whole panel for that. I don't mind that design at all.

Four more screws (the inner Philips head ones) release the panel, and once some cable connections and the speedometer drive are disconnected it lifts out. The cable connectors are a rather familiar layout to those of us used to working on valve era technology.



The speedometer drive comes in from the side to a bevel drive arrangement which actually makes it really easy to get to...which baffled me somewhat as that's usually the single biggest headache when removing/installing an instrument cluster. I certainly learned new swear words trying to reattach it to the speedometer in the P4. You just need to be really careful not to damage any of the dial faces or pointers when removing things.



Our suspect on the bench. One slightly crusty looking Smith's 1300/20 10V voltage stabiliser.



Which sure enough when tested on the bench turned out to be dead as a doornail. The heater was open circuit so not just a case of cleaning the points. This is all that's inside one of these.



Just like a thermal flasher unit...which is basically all it is.

The innards of this one were stripped out and an L7810 10V regulator was attached to the inside of the lid to take its place.





I could have just used flying leads to hook it up and either attached it to the back of the panel or to the bulkhead, but I preferred keeping the original case at least. Plus this should hopefully be a fit and forget solution.

Once everything was connected back up and the sender shorted to ground the temperature gauge (very slowly) started to climb just as we had hoped it would. So the gauge itself and the wiring to the sender is fine.



Under the bonnet I set about reattaching the kickdown cable to the throttle linkage. I don't have a roll pin the correct size to hand, so a bolt and lock nut has been used for now for testing purposes.



The missing bolts from the brake master cylinder mounting plate were located in the boot and reinstated where they belonged.



Had a crawl around underneath the car and couldn't find anything obviously loose or missing, and made sure that things like the wheel nuts were actually tight.

There are definite signs of (relatively) recent money being spent on this car. Aside from the paint which looks to date from 2019, the front brake calipers have clearly been rebuilt (or replaced) in the not too distant past.



This brake fluid clearly hasn't been sitting in here for decades either.



Likewise the starter motor looks pretty recent. Not new, but it's clearly been replaced in living memory.



Rear brakes aren't exactly pretty - but there's evidence that they have at least been doing *something* - which given the car hasn't been properly driven in forever isn't the worst start.



The boot on the Di-Dion tube looks to be in decent shape and there's not oil peeing everywhere...though admittedly that may also be because there is no oil *in* it...Haven't got as far as checking that yet.



Again, the condition of that hose clamp to me suggests that's been worked on pretty recently.

I think the rear suspension likely will need some attention though given that the car seems to sit lower on the driver's side than the passenger's side by a good inch or so.

The braking system passed my patented "stand on the pedal with as much strength as I can muster and hold it for 20 seconds" test without any drama. So with this all in mind I decided to take advantage of the lull in activity around here between the school kick out madness and rush hour starting and went for a slow, careful bumble around our block. This literally amounts to a roughly 300 metre square all on 20mph roads.

Even locked in 1st, there's no real way to get any meaningful revs involved in a setting like this, so I really didn't expect cylinder number 5 to spring back to life - and sure enough it didn't. However after a few circuits I didn't really detect any issues. Brakes are a little spongy, but it pulls up smartly enough and in a straight line. Gearbox seems to shift as expected, smoothly and without slipping, and despite the lack of a cylinder it definitely seems to pull well. No clonks, bangs or rattles from the suspension and it seems to waft quite nicely. Not a bad place to be starting from really.

This allowed me to cover a couple of miles, and to get some halfway decent heat into the engine at least. However it also allowed me to see where the temperature stabilised - right about here was the answer while bumbling around our estate.



Hot oil pressure? Meh, we have some. Which given these engines and the absolutely fantastic accuracy these gauges are reputed to have I'll take as meaning "good enough." The warning light goes out instantly when the engine starts even when at temperature so I'm not worrying about that.



I'll want to make a few more checks on things before doing a slightly quicker test - but that's also something I feel I can only really do at set times as the traffic is so damned busy around here most of the time. There's a petrol station 0.8 miles away on a route that doesn't involve having to deal with dual carriageways or anything like that, and I'd like to make that a target so I can slosh a decent amount of fresh fuel in the tank.

Also on the subject of fuel, a replacement for this fuel pump (or a rebuild kit) will be getting ordered this evening as this could also have been a major contributor to why our oil was so badly fuel contaminated.



The diaphragm is highly unlikely to be ethanol resistant unless it's been recently replaced anyway, so it's a job that would want doing anyway.

I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that we're most likely going to need to pull the left hand head off to investigate what's going on with number five, and have ordered a head gasket set to that end. I'd been holding off that initially while I tried to confirm which engine we had fitted. I'm now 99% sure that this is an SD1 Vitesse unit based on what bits of the number we can make out.



The fact we can clearly read the compression ratio as 9.75:1 helps a lot as that narrows things down a lot. The only engines I can see which have both that compression ratio and a number starting "?0A" with the right number of digits. I'm open to correction there from folks who know these engines better than I do, but that's the result my own deductive logic has brought me to based on the list over here.

[Zelandeth]

First time in...well we really haven't a clue I'm afraid!



Yes this is actually less than a mile from home, but feels like an important milestone.

Missfire is still stubbornly with us sadly. Had hoped if it was something like a fouled valve seat that some revs with the engine under load might have cleared it. We did blow a HUGE cloud of black gunk out the exhaust on the first roundabout exit though! Once the gasket set arrives (and it's less than 32C outside) we'll dig into properly investigating that in more detail. There are a few things I can do to help narrow down if we're looking at a top or bottom end issue but it's just way, way too hot out there to do anything (including exist) right now. So I've retreated into a dark, air conditioned room to do something else. Which is annoying as there are a long list of things I'd rather be doing now - mostly relating to this car as it's the new toy. Also want to get the Caddy properly valeted so I can get it up for sale.

Wheel alignment has been added to the "sort this sooner than later" as there is evidently waaaaaay too much toe out going on at the moment. I'm not expecting the handling on this car to be anything other than seriously floaty, but it's currently a bit ridiculous.

[Zelandeth]

I think we might have found something - even though I abruptly realised that ignoring my prior decision to hide inside from the deadly laser that is the sun was foolish.

Exhibit A.



Doing this between any other combination of valves reveals they're all sitting level...Except for the intake on number 5, which is sitting the best part of 1mm lower than all the others. Coincidence? Seems unlikely to me.

Also noted that there are no shims under the rocker pedestals. Which if everything is standard (including the head gasket) and the head hasn't been skimmed should be fine apparently. If the head has been skimmed or the metal rather than composite type head gasket has been used though, it may need to be considered.

Fact that we do have a valve sitting visibly lower than the rest is definitely an interesting development though. Reckon the next step there is probably to pull the intake and see if something has been inhaled that we might be able to remove...Doubtful, but removing that is a major chunk of the work involved in pulling the head which will likely be the next big step anyway.

[Dick]

Get the heads off. A gasket set won't break the bank. At least you'll know.. I spent ages with my perkins 4.236 thinking it was fuel only to find the head gasket had had a bit of a crisis