Okay...Time for an update.
About 95% of the entries you see here are put together on my phone simply because I don't get much spare time to sit down at an actual computer. However as it had turned into a bit of a long update, I really didn't want to type it up on a touch screen keyboard. Of course, time doesn't stop so the update kept getting longer and I kept not having time to write it up. Which is why it's now been a month and change!
So where were we?
Ah yes. I was scrambling around trying to get the Rover into a state where I could drive over to ConFuzzled while being *reasonably* sure that nothing (or at least nothing critical) was likely to fall off en route. I'd replaced all of the old, utterly fossilised coolant lines and *seemed* to have got the ignition system into a state where it was behaving - though I still very much didn't trust that as I didn't know why it had seemingly randomly decided to eat he carbon brush in the distributor cap, so made sure to have a complete set of spares for that right down to the distributor body itself in the boot with me on the trip. I also decided well in advance that I was going to head over to Birmingham via the A5/A45 route and avoid the motorway where possible. Especially given that there's a fair chunk of the M1 I need to cover before getting to the M6 is a supposedly smart motorway - a.k.a. about the worst place on the planet to break down. Especially in a car which is a very muted colour and doesn't even have hazard lights.
Of course this was the start of the May bank holiday weekend when I made the drive over there and the traffic was absolutely horrendous. It should be roughly an hour and a half trip via that route, took me just shy of three hours. My clutch foot was definitely complaining that I'd chosen the Rover over the Invacar. However despite that she made it there without missing a beat or overheating. I didn't really expect overheating to be an issue given the cooling system on this thing seems pretty over-engineered, but nevertheless it was nice to see. No matter how over-engineered it may be, I'd not really done any acid test up till that point to find out whether the radiator for instance was badly silted up or anything like that.
To call our little gathering a car show would be over-selling it a bit I think. It's more just an excuse for those of us at the wider event who have an interest in any way in cars to gather together for a few hours, mingle and if you have something that you think is interesting, show it off.
Before mentioning anything that was there, it's worth mentioning those who couldn't be. Shortly after last year's event, we were saddened by the very sudden loss of one of our number to cancer. We knew he'd been diagnosed a year or so back and had been receiving treatment, and by all accounts seemed to be doing absolutely fine when I saw him in May. So to get that news only a few weeks later was quite a shock and was really sad. Especially for someone so young, they were only in their mid 30s.
It was touching to see that the organisers had set aside a place for them this year.
Treasure and make the most of the time you have with your friends and family, you never know what's around the next corner and when they might be taken from you.
For once I DID actually remember to get a photo or two of my own car there to prove it actually happened.
I have a bit of a history of going to shows and succeeding in taking photographs of everything else there, often including the architecture of the venue but totally failing to get ANYTHING involving my own car. It's something I just seem to have a complete blind spot for.
By and large the vehicles there leant towards the more modern end of the spectrum, with probably half a dozen 70s or earlier exhibits present including the Rover.
This Series Land Rover being one which I imagine must have a bit of a story behind it when you look at it closely.
How did that manage to end up all the way back over here? I had hoped to talk to the owner and find out, but ran out of time.
Parked next to it was another rather interesting beastie.
Which I believe was made by Simca, though I'm prepared to be corrected there. The extent of my knowledge is basically that it looks like it would go pretty much anywhere, and is powered by a flathead V8. I actually followed this into the area when we were setting up, and kept nearly stalling the Rover because I couldn't hear the engine over this thing. Have to wonder where they had come from as I don't imagine a long on-road journey in that would be exactly comfortable.
The other representative of the 1970s I snapped a photo of was this Chrysler New Yorker.
This particular example is on air springs and can do all sorts of tricks that really aren't my thing. While I'd personally prefer it as it left the factory, it's not my car and I still enjoyed seeing it there.
I think the only other car of this sort of era that was here was a VW Transporter which I totally failed to get any photos of.
If I was to ever buy an MX-5, I think this would be pretty much my perfect car.
Though my problem with the MX-5 is simple - and that's having spent a year owning a Suzuki Cappuccino. Which basically to me feels like an MX-5 which has been distilled down to about 2/3rds scale, but without losing any of the good parts. To such an extent that to my brain driving an MX-5 always feels like I'm driving an unnecessarily large and heavy version of the Cappuccino. Still a great car don't get me wrong, there's absolutely a reason they're so popular. I'd just always miss the way the Cappuccino could change direction seemingly by telepathy, fit into even the smallest of parking spaces and the incredibly clever roof.
Seeing a very standard looking MX-5 at an enthusiast meet is a bit unusual, but nowhere near as unusual as seeing on of these looking like it had just left the factory.
I'm used to these looking for more like its companions a row or two over.
Turned out on closer inspection to be an automatic as well, that must have been really unusual even back when it was new never mind in 2023.
I wasn't the only person there with a Rover.
I still reckon these cars deserved a lot more praise than they often seemed to get. We had a fair number of them through the garage I worked at back in the early 2000s and they never left anything other than a positive impression on me when I drove them, and we definitely never had any headaches with warranty work on them.
It pleased my sense of order that after the event was finished that we wound up with the two Rovers parked next to each other.
I'm not sure if this example has actual competition heritage behind it or is a replica - but if it's the latter it certainly looks (and sounds) the part.
This is a car which really makes me sad to see what eventually happened to MG/Rover.
As it shows what their design and engineering teams were capable of coming up with, even with virtually nothing to work with. The result was a car that's cracking fun to drive and ticks all the boxes that it was designed to. You do have to wonder what they could have come up with given the opportunity if mismanagement and perpetual union bickering hadn't repeatedly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Not going into too much depth on the rest of our event as it's so vastly off topic for a car related forum. In summary though, a long weekend of our own very special blend of chaos.
I think my ears stopped ringing from the dances a couple of days later...I was in one of the overflow hotels a good five minute walk away, and you could still hear the music from there even with the window closed.
That's two years in a row now I've got a room with a view out the window rather than looking over the roof of the NEC itself. I'm sure my luck there has to run out eventually.
Something which really stuck with me was a moment when the representative of this year's charity was thanking us for our hospitality during the closing ceremonies. Now this is a gent who I'd have to guess is in their mid 70s who had been dropped head first into five days of our madness. Which for anyone I'd imagine could be something of a culture shock. Their summary of their weekend though was "I wish that the world outside could always be like this." A few minutes later we also made them cry when they discovered that they were going to be seeing £40K worth of funding coming their way that had been raised for them over the weekend. Not bad for an event of a couple of thousand people.
In fact, I can tell you exactly how many attendees we had - and we knew before the doors even opened this year. 2661. We know that because we actually had to close registration early for the first time this year because that number is the maximum capacity the venue is rated for on its fire safety certificate. I don't envy the organisers having to decide what to do about that going forward...we're already using the largest convention hotel in the country so it's not as though they can just look to move to a larger venue. I know I've heard a few people mentioning temporary buildings like you often see at hotels for big weddings and such - but given the layout of the site the only place you could put something like that is in the car park - which is already stretched well beyond capacity during the event. I mean everything is, the weekend is a massive balancing act of queue and crowd management for the organisers in a lot of areas, and there's really not much they can do about that short of well...moving next door to the NEC itself. However I can't for a second see how that could be anything even approaching financially viable, assuming they'd even enter a dialogue with us in the first place, which isn't a given by any means. That was one of the big headaches Scotiacon found themselves facing when they were looking for a new venue having outgrown our hotel in Livingston. Many hotel chains basically just hung up the phone and refused to even enter discussions once they found who they were talking to. Which is really frustrating - it's not like it's 2002 any more, I think most people who live in the real world have figured out that we're mostly harmless by now. A bit odd yes, but mostly harmless.
A couple of days later I went to fuel up the Rover - and it decanted a not insignificant amount of fuel that was meant to be going into the tank onto the ground from somewhere under the car. I suspected that this was most likely due to failure of the rubber elbow between the filler neck and the inlet on the tank so ordered up a replacement.
When I went to fit it I discovered that the elbow was in fact entirely intact, however one of the hose clips wasn't where it should be, so there was nothing fastening it to the filler neck.
I suspect this may have been like that for some time, however I probably disturbed it enough to break any seal when I replaced the missing bolts on the filler neck itself a week or two previously. Nice easy fix though, just lubricating, repositioning and tightening that hose clip.
There's a little perishing of the outer rubber in a few areas but the inside looked like new - so having bought a replacement for that bit hose will hopefully be insurance against it ever actually needing to be changed.
I couldn't help but notice this while crawling around in that corner.
Which I suspected might have been the cause of a hollow metallic rattle I had heard intermittently from that general area. A quick dig around in the drawer of random fasteners (doesn't everyone have one?) for a nut and bolt that fitted had that clamp fastened so it actually gripped the exhaust and did indeed put a stop to that annoying rattle.
One feature on the Rover which hadn't worked since I got it, nor apparently for some time from what I'd heard was the brake fluid/handbrake warning light on the dash. The previous owner had checked that the float switch itself worked, and had freed off the handbrake switch, however power was never apparently getting to the circuit. As this car only has single circuit brakes, I *really* want to get as much of a heads up as possible if anything were ever to happen that resulted in a loss of brake fluid, especially as the reservoir isn't one you can see the level in without removing the cap.
Let's investigate!
Quick pause here to clarify something...This car has a positive earth electrical system. For the sake of my own sanity I am still referring to the vehicle body as "ground" and the supply side as "power." The only difference this actually makes is the voltmeter showing -12V rather than 12V, but it seems to confuse some people. Myself included when I tried to keep positive and negative straight in my head, just sticking with power and ground is far easier to follow.
This is where I wasted quite a bit of time. My assumption would be that as with most dash indicator lights this would have a permanent supply from the ignition switched circuit and have either of the switches providing a ground path downstream of the lamp in the dash. Turns out that if I'd looked at the manual first I'd have seen that's not the case.
The fault it turned out once I'd looked at that wiring diagram wasn't hard to find - that join immediately to the left of the number 75 on the diagram is where the power to the circuit is provided and splits off to both of the switches - this is a crimped terminal which is actually one of the tags on the brake fluid reservoir. This crimp had failed.
One replaced crimp terminal later, we had a working warning lamp.
I have confirmed myself that the fluid level float switch does indeed work perfectly. While I do and will continue to check it at regular intervals, that's just a nice warning light to have. You can't exactly fail to notice it on this dash either. It is both prominently placed and rater bright.
Another discovery made while tracing wiring was that there's actually a front courtesy light hidden away under the dash top. This (for about 24 hours anyway) sprang back to life when the missing lamp was replaced.
I imagine it probably had a cover of some description somewhere in the last 60 years, though it must have been a very slim one to ensure it wouldn't foul on the glove compartment lid.
By this point a little stock of parts I'd been waiting for had arrived. Among these was a replacement radiator cap. The spring in the original one had failed and the system wasn't holding any pressure whatsoever as a result, despite the rubber seal actually being in perfect condition.
I had deliberately not even considered replacing that until all of the original coolant hoses had been changed as I didn't simply want the coolant to find another weak link to escape from...Yeah, about that...
https://youtube.com/shorts/4w65O3P2iyg
Figuring out exactly where that was coming from (or indeed what was dripping was - I initially thought it was oil) took a fair bit of head scratching and standing on my head in the engine bay.
There was a lot of water running down over that side of the engine, particularly towards the rear. Though the whole side of the block pretty much was wet. Having caught sight of a drip actually running off the rear of the deck of the cylinder head, my initial conclusion was that the head gasket had likely failed externally. Though obviously I wanted to be as sure as possible of that before I set about taking things apart. Especially after a couple of folks had pointed out to me that head gasket failure on these engines is vanishingly uncommon unless something pretty catastrophic has happened which given how well the engine was generally running seemed unlikely.
Further investigation continued, with all the intake ductwork removed and using a combination of my phone and/or mirrors I managed to get a look at most possible areas...largely without coming to any conclusions until I spotted this.
Zoom, enhance.
It's harder to see in a static image than it was looking at a live display, but that was very clearly a bead of water running down from the rear corner of the inlet manifold where it looks like there might be evidence of a blown out gasket visible. Comparing that corner to the new gasket that I had in stock showed what to my eye definitely looked like it must be a coolant passage.
Definitely seemed to be the smoking gun I was looking for.
This was a few weeks ago. I do not handle high temperatures well. I'm from Aberdeen, so anywhere north of about 20C is considered to be warm. Anywhere near 25C and I struggle to function and will be found hiding in the nearest space with air conditioning thank you very much. So this was an absolutely ideal time for me to be messing about with cars...
Did I let common sense get in the way there though? No.
Wasn't the worst job to get that off to be honest. Couple of bolts were a bit awkward to get to (not least because the remote brake servo gets royally in the way when trying to get to the couple above the generator), but that was the worst of the complaints. The single largest cause of cursing wasn't anything on the manifold itself, but was the forward carb to manifold nut. Between the float chamber and the brake servo access to that is absolutely awful and it can only be moved about 1/24 a turn at a time while scraping your knuckles raw. Getting it back together again was about 50 times worse I can assure you.
Everything came apart just fine, though a couple of the studs did unwind from the head rather than having their nuts unscrew, though I didn't really mind that. Just meant I needed to keep track of where a few things had come from for reassembly. Kind of wished they all had come out later on as it would have made cleaning the side of the head up easier.
I was quite pleased to find this once the manifold was off, which tied in exactly with what I had expected to see based on my theory of where our leak was coming from.
A very clear tear in the gasket exactly where we expected.
You want a summary of the next hour or two? Hot and tedious. Two hours or so of scraping off the remains of the old gasket which really wasn't impressed with the idea of being removed. I think this was at about the 80% progress mark.
My original plan had been to pause there for the day and go cool off, leaving myself the task of reassembly for another day. Yeah, that didn't happen. In a fit of either determination or stupidity - delete as you see fit - I pushed on to get everything back together. About an hour later things looked like this.
Of that hour I think I good 45 minutes was probably spent swearing at that carb retaining nut I mentioned earlier. It REALLY is awkward. Which given you can freely see it when standing next to the car is really deceptive. It doesn't look hard to get to. I think I may well find a cheap spanner to cut down specifically for that job in the future, as if you have something short enough not to foul on the brake servo or its mounting frame it would merely be "a bit fiddly" then.
I'm still not quite sure how I managed to complete this entire job though without dropping a single tool or fastener into the bowels of the engine bay.
After a quick test drive around the block I found two obvious leaks. Neither of them coolant!
The single drop nearer the camera was quickly traced to be coming from the filter housing securing bolt on the oil filter assembly.
That just needed to be nipped up another turn or so. The larger looking oil leak slightly further back was coming from the exhaust valve tappet cover and I was already aware of and just waiting on the arrival of a new gasket for.
Having left the car parked overnight there was what looked to be one or two drips of additional oil from the bell housing area which I'm really not worried about but no coolant on the ground.
While this had solved the obvious leak of coolant, that side of the engine wasn't entirely dry though.
There's only one way I can think of for having leakage like that, and that's a crack in the block. Given the relatively low rate of leakage (none ever seems to get as far as the ground even overnight), fact that this is a wet liner engine, the amount of scale in the area suggesting that this has probably been weeping here for years if not decades, and the high capacity of this cooling system (15 litres plus change) I'm simply going to chalk that up under the heading of "Keep half an eye on but otherwise don't worry about."
Given how generally tired an example this car is, going hunting for a replacement block or pulling this one out and seeing if a specialist welder could repair it just doesn't make the slightest shred of sense.
A few people suggested that this is actually exactly the sort of issue for which Radweld - a product I usually go to great lengths to avoid given the amount of hours I've spent trying to unclog cooling systems on more modern cars that have been subjected to it when what was needed was a replacement for an utterly destroyed radiator or water pump - is designed, and also the type of engine which it was really made with in mind. Not as though there's a microchannel radiator for it to clog up! The residue in several areas also makes me think that the car has actually been run with it for goodness knows how long anyway. So a bottle was chucked in. A few weeks on, and you know what? While there's still some seepage there it's definitely significantly reduced the rate of coolant loss from that area.
I've had a couple of people suggest trying to seal the crack with epoxy as well. My hesitation there is mainly that I think for that to be effective is that I'd need to get the areas in question fully clean - and more to the point fully dry - including the area within the crack itself - for it to be really effective. To even have half a shot at that I'd definitely need to take the manifold off again to get sufficient access and I have to admit I'm not inclined to do that again right now. So I'm just going to keep an eye on it.
With the coolant now (mostly) staying inside the engine I had one significant oil leak remaining.
There was a pretty steady drip from the rear of the exhaust valve tappet cover down onto the starter motor, and from there down onto the bell housing and/or onto the exhaust depending on how annoying it was being on any given day. I'd bought a gasket to replace that a while ago but managed to order the wrong one. Pretty sure that was an issue with fat fingers and touch screens as I knew exactly which one I was looking for. Was only a couple of quid though so no big loss.
I continue to be slightly astonished every time I remove a cover at how clean the innards of this engine are.
This along with how smoothly it runs just continues to convey to me an impression that while cosmetics were never high on the agenda, that throughout a huge portion of its life that this car has been very well cared for mechancially.
The cause of the leak was pretty immediately apparent as soon as the cover was off as a badly compressed and deformed gasket.
Pretty obvious when compared to the new one how much it had lost its shape. New gasket was probably twice as thick as well.
This was a pretty nice job in that it took a whole 20 minutes I think start to finish, including giving the area a clean down to try to get rid of some of the leaked oil. Mercifully this gasket hadn't been glued in place like the inlet valve tappet cover was so it peeled off intact without any real protest.
After a test run (including a fast run up and down the A5) there was no leakage visible in this area or under the car after she had sat for ten minutes or so.
There's a tiny bit of seepage visible now from around the mounting bolts as I think the O-rings in there have gone flat and need to be changed. We're talking a tiny bit of seepage here though rather than anything I'd describe as an actual "leak" so I'll get a set of those ordered next time I'm buying parts but am not making a separate job of it in itself.
I had a dentist appointment a week or so ago up in Leicester (an hour or so up the M1 from here), and I procrastinated for quite a while over which car to take. With the work that I'd done on the Rover it seemed like a good opportunity to get a bit of confidence back in the car...though taking the Caddy was by far the most sensible option. Yeah, we all knew the sensible option wouldn't win didn't we?
Particularly on the way home I decided that it was time for a bit of an acid test for this car. Up until that point I had always been treating it deliberately gently (I mean, I'm someone who always tends to drive with a decent degree of mechanical sympathy, but even within that context I'd been treating it as a bit of a china doll). I decided that it was time to treat the car more normally and stretch its legs to take advantage of what for its time were pretty impressive performance figures. So we came back down the motorway not bumbling along behind a lorry at 56mph, but making properly good progress.
Couple of observations. Firstly is that people really don't know what to make of seeing something that looks like this howling past them in the overtaking lane. Secondly, for a car with its design roots firmly in the 1940s, this thing has absolutely no business whatsoever cruising so happily at the legal speed limit on the motorway. A shed load of wind noise from the passenger door that I've still not had a chance to sort the alignment of properly, a good deal of straight six howl from the exhaust, but no driveline vibration, no buffeting, no odd handling traits...she cruises along at 70 odd absolutely comfortably with plenty more to give. Feeling how competent the car feels at speed like that really does make me respect more how well engineered a vehicle it is. I think it also does show quite well how incremental rather than revolutionary a lot of the improvements have been in a lot of the core fundamentals of how to actually make a car function as a car gave been since then. Probably the one exception there is of course with how much more of a consideration safety has become. Though that really didn't start to be seriously designed in from the ground up by most (I know there were exceptions, Saab and Volvo both being well ahead of the curve to name two) manufacturers seriously until well into the 80s.
After that run I was glad to see that neither the oil nor coolant levels had shifted even slightly, and it seems that I've not used more than a couple of drops of oil since. I reckon the rear main is weeping a bit as she does still leave a few drips from the rear of the engine when parked overnight - but not nearly seriously enough for me to worry about it. As far as I can tell there's no leakage from there when the engine is actually running. She does need the coolant topped up a touch every couple of weeks though I don't feel the usage is excessive for a vehicle with no expansion system with how hard driving in Milton Keynes works a cooling system with the amount of 70mph - stop - 70mph - stop - 70mph - immediately park at retail park - repeat...type of driving that goes on.
To pulled a plug after that run up to Leicester to get a read on how the engine was running - and I think that speaks for itself really.
Nothing wrong with that. Never mind for a plug from a 60 year old, 150K mile engine. Suffice to say I'm leaving the carb and such well alone if it's looking that happy.
I think that brings us up to date on where things are with the Rover. Aside from a couple of photos I took last week when the van was off the drive and I had TPA out for a run so she didn't get too jealous of the new arrival. I'd been wanting to get a photo of this pair together since the day the Rover arrived.
Jobs I have on my list which I really need to get done soon are twofold currently. First is trying to get the passenger door aligned better so the top edge doesn't stick out a good 1/4" past the gutter and make a godawful racket above about 30mph. Secondly is to figure out why I have so little rear suspension movement. I'm not 100% certain whether the dampers or springs are to blame here - though the springs do look quite dry and rusty so I reckon would really benefit from being stripped down, cleaned and greased (they should be greased - have checked the manual on that as I know that's not *always* true for leaf springs). I was going to replace the shocks (they're not expensive) as a first test there as access is decent - however the top nut on one is of course just spinning the whole body so I need to borrow a helper to hold the shock in place while I unscrew it (due to the positioning I can't reach to do it myself).
TPA hasn't been out a massive amount lately for two main reasons. Firstly is that one feature she lacks is any form of forced cool air ventilation. Or indeed a heater which switches fully off...about 10% output is as low as it goes. Opening the windows (which are split sliding ones remember rather than wind down ones) generates biblical amounts of wind noise but doesn't actually seem to do much by way of actually getting air into the cabin. So she's not exactly an ideal choice when the weather is hot. Something I've pondered now and then would be to install a Citroen 2CV/Land Rover style fresh air flap in the front bulkhead under the dash for use in hot weather as having some positive airflow through the cabin would make it vastly more comfortable. Especially with the fact that no small amount of heat does soak through the rear bulkhead from the engine compartment on longer runs. I have noted on the last couple of trips that the handbrake feels a little sticky so will need to take a look at that soon. I suspect it's the lever arm arrangement under the floor which is sticking as the pull itself and the cables at the rear all seem to be moving freely - it's directly in line with the front wheel as well so gets nicely coated with any crud kicked up off the road.
It's about time that I had a good crawl over the car underneath again anyway to make sure nothing's working loose, no brake lines chafing on anything etc anyway as it's been quite a while since I last really went over the car end-to-end. I've still got that nice new hub to install as well.
The van is currently thoroughly on the naughty step. The decision was made that it would be going up for sale shortly before acquisition of the Rover. Main bearer on that being that it simply isn't being used at the moment and I can't see that changing in the near future. It simply doesn't have enough floor area for us to travel with two dogs, or space for us to all go away as a family. Since Covid arrived my desire to make runs out and about to places on my own has basically evaporated, and health concerns that getting said lurgy have left me with means I simply can't see me really doing that so much in the future anyway.
I was pretty much inundated with enquiries virtually the moment I listed it - including a whole bunch from other forums other than the one place it was actually put up. I think I actually did manage to reply to everyone, but it was really difficult to keep track. To be honest the whole thing was pretty poorly planned and executed on my part with the whole US trip happening right after I listed it for sale. That was utterly daft - but you make stupid decisions in times of stress when trying to do 50 different things and suffering from sleep depravation!
Pretty quickly got a buyer lined up though, the condition (I decreed rather than them) of the sale was that I was to hand it over with a fresh MOT on as it only had a month of so left as of the advert going live. I wasn't expecting this to throw up any real issues based on prior experience aside possibly from a slightly sticky brake caliper which had shown up a couple of times before and tended to play up for a few miles if the van hadn't been used in a while. It's one of those things which had been on my radar for ever - but always resolved itself and stayed fixed every time I thought about investigating it before I actually got to it. Sure enough, MOT fail on brake imbalance on the front axle and one sidelight out. The latter was annoying as I checked the blasted lights the day before the test. It's usually brake lights that do that to me.
I had neither the time nor inclination to go digging into the braking system (I despise working on that thing on the jack at the best of times), so instructed the garage to strip it down, sort it out and bill me accordingly. Got a phone call the next day. It needs a new caliper, and they can't get one. Great. When I got there to pick the van up (they don't have room to keep it sitting around in their yard, which I fully understand), I was told "You might be able to strip it down and clean it up." Yeah...thanks for that. I thought that's exactly what I was trying to pay you money to do for me...
Anyhow...I'm not getting involved in that right now, so set about sourcing a caliper. The couple of listings for actually new ones were well north of £300. Reconditioned for £150-200.
Ordered reconditioned caliper number 1.
What turned up was a vaguely caliper shaped block of rust. I'm sure it was professionally reconditioned. Some time in the early 1980s I reckon. At best it would need a complete rebuild before it would be any use. The seller then proceeded to ghost me. That's now sitting with PayPal to sort out.
Ordered reconditioned caliper number 2.
An offside caliper appeared rather than the nearside one I'd ordered. At least in this case the seller couldn't have been more apologetic, and had even refunded me before they'd got me a return prepaid address label to send it back. Sadly they didn't have a nearside one in stock.
Ordered reconditioned caliper number 3.
A vaguely shiny looking nearside caliper actually turned up, so was deposited with the van back at the garage to fit. Guess what...It doesn't work. Initially they suspected that there might be a problem actually with the braking system itself, but eventually established that there's plenty of fluid being delivered to the caliper...it's just not getting INTO the caliper it seems. I'm inclined to agree with their diagnosis given that with the old caliper in place while there was a noticeable pull to the right under braking, it wasn't extreme. Whereas with the new one fitted it's pretty obvious that the nearside front brake is now doing pretty much nothing.
At this point I did what I should have done in the first place, and drove over to Worcester and dropped the original caliper of with Bigg Red to be rebuilt. That was the Monday afternoon...got a phone call on Tuesday to say it was ready to collect. Wednesday I ran back over there and collected it.
I was slightly taken aback when the bill for that was £110. I was braced for double that given it's not exactly an insubstantial caliper and that as I understand it a lot of their work is on equipment for rather more exotic and expensive vehicles. They were an absolute pleasure to deal with as well - and I can honestly say that based on this experience I doubt I'll be mucking around with rolling the dice on third party calipers or trying to get stuck ones to behave again myself in future. They'll just get chucked over there to be sorted professionally.
It's booked in on Wednesday to have the newly rebuilt old caliper refitted and an MOT retest. I have also ordered a set of flexi lines just in case (though the garage seemed sure it wasn't a hydraulic delivery issue, I just don't trust my luck at this stage) as they're not expensive and I'd just rather be prepared at this point!
I'll obviously be asking the garage to provide me with a written report stating that the fitted part was defective so hopefully I'll be able to get a refund from the seller. If we were talking £30 or so I wouldn't be bothered with the hassle - but we're talking the best part of £200 here (not including the amount of wasted labour I'll be paying for them to have fitted, chased a non existent hydraulic supply problem, remove it and refit the one I've had rebuilt) so I'd really rather like my money back for it!
Then hopefully I'll get a van back with a fresh MOT which can get that moved on to its new home and get some of my driveway back and only have ONE car rather than two parked on what should be the lawn.
I think there have been some retro technology adventures going on as well over the last few weeks - but those will have to wait for a later update as this one is already long enough, an has taken me the best part of this whole afternoon to get written up as it is and I'm fresh out of functioning brain cells now - though let's face it there weren't many of those here to start with!
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Next day update:
Had a couple of people ask me what's inside the huge great air box that looks like an exhaust silencer. The answer is a fair amount of empty space and a very ordinary air cleaner element.
Not sure what this has actually come from (and it helpfully has zero markings on), as at least when most of the documents I've read on these cars were written, the correct elements were unavailable and this one isn't the worst fit at all.
EDIT: I have since originally writing this ascertained that the correct filters are now being manufactured again and are readily available.
Had very little time available today but was determined to tick at least one thing off the to do list. Today's was functionally irrelevant but felt like an achievement.
Spot the difference. Well aside from the location and time of day anyway...
Hopefully those being missing will stop being the thing that everyone I speak to about the car in person immediately points out to me now.
Also had a look at the passenger door.
The issue is clear to see here.
The top of the door sits the best part of 1/4" too far out. Which now I've noticed a very distinct gouge directly above the trailing edge of the door and paint flaked off the gutter I almost wonder if the door top has been bent by someone breaking in (or attempting to).
The whole upper edge sits too far out though, which means that most of the leading edge sits proud of the gutter.
The result of this being absolutely horrendous amounts of wind noise. It is honestly quieter with the passenger window open than closed.
Here's the driver's side for comparison.
That door has dropped slightly through wear so doesn't contact the seal along the top edge very well, but even so it doesn't make an undue racket. The passenger side is horrendous though.
There doesn't seem to be any adjustment range left in the hinge setup, so I think a bit of brute force may well just be needed here to convince the top of the door to sit closer to where it's meant to.
