Lady Charlotte - 1966 2000SC

We've just got back from our weekend at the RSR Jubilee and RP6C 50th Anniversary Rally and it was a cracking weekend. We stayed at a local pub about a mile from the venue

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We arrived around 7:30pm on the Friday after a pretty wet drive of around 330 miles. The volume of spray on the roads was tremendous and I think we got caught in stationary traffic on around half a dozen occasions. However, The Green Dragon Inn in the lovely village of Sambourne was also holding its annual village fete. So we had live music in the pub for the Friday evening and a fantastic atmosphere to kick start our weekend.

We set off for the RSR road run on the Saturday morning and met loads of fellow P6ers in the car park of the King's Court Hotel. The road run looked interesting enough but all I wanted to do was get to Gaydon for a look around the museum. This was my first visit and I wasn't disappointed. So much motoring history under one roof I really couldn't take it all in. There were lots of little P6 bits and pieces dotted around the museum, including this one hiding in the timeline of cars:

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And these Rover 2000 cigarettes!

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This is the 1,000,000th Austin off the line and it was signed by all of the workers

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After a short break for a bite to eat we spent around an hour in the museum's theatre watching all the old Rover Review films :D brilliant.

The evening event was the RP6C 50th Anniversary Dinner and we were fortunate to be joined by Reg Mason, founder of the RP6C. Reg talked about how the RP6C was formed in his living room by 7 people and in those early days committee meetings were held in peoples' living rooms on a rotational basis. We couldn't do that now as committee members are scattered all over the UK.

Sunday morning we arrived, as instructed, just after 10am and watched the fields fill up with cars. It was a great sight to see. Most of the pictures will be elsewhere on the forum but every single P6 that turned up was a star of the day. From the early pre-production FLK cars, those that people have put their own personal touch to and those that retain much of their originality, every single P6 there made the day the great event it was.

We had a couple of familiar faces from the classic car press, including Danny Hopkins with his Three Thousand Five and Sam Glover with his......DAF...

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It was all over far too quick and I think I managed to walk up and down the line of P6s once. I didn't have time to look at any other make of Rover there which gives you an idea of the number of P6s there!

It was also great meeting so many people who frequent this forum, testrider, stina, happy days, hermione, brian-northampton, redrover and pilkie to name just a few.

I took Lady C there simply to enjoy the event, not even imagining she would have any chance of a trophy of any kind in such illustrious company. I'm delighted to say I was wrong:

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This is the RSR trophy for the Most Regularly Used Rover. Guess I'll be going to next year's RSR National Rally now.

Dave
 
Brabus said:
Congratulations on the award. Its a beautiful car.
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Thanks :D

Today's little job, in between watching Andy Murray win the Wimbledon Mens' Singles title and enjoying a scorchio day, was to replace a front bottom balljoint. Having done a few of these now I make sure I give myself plenty of time in case anything goes wrong. No pictures with this one as you've all seen them before. For this one, though, I left the replacement balljoint in the freezer for a few days and, given that it was so hot here today, I left the swivel pillar out in the sun for about an hour before I fitted the new joint.

The old joint came out with no great drama "PHEW", the new joint went in with a minimal number of precussive applications :D and all was well. I also replaced the front wheel bearings whilst I had the assembly off the car.

Ideally I would do the top and bottom balljoints as a pair but the top one needed replacing for the car's MOT in February and top joints are soooo much easier to replace than bottom ones, so the bottom one got left for a bit. It was not showing any signs of wear at that stage anyway, but as you all know, I do a few miles in Lady C :D

Next job is to stop the annoying buzz from the gearstick that has been getting steadily worse over the past few months. Might try some heatshrink over the end of the "plum" :wink: "but what about the gearstick?" I hear you ask!

Dave
 
Dave3066 said:
Next job is to stop the annoying buzz from the gearstick that has been getting steadily worse over the past few months.
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More scorchio weather today but I wanted to get the gearstick sorted so out it came to reveal an early stick that should have a bush on the end....

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So I cleaned up the end and put a bit of heatshrink tube on it

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I formed a bush of sorts out of plastic and shaped it to fit before gluing it on with some Araldite and putting some more heatshrink over the lot.

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A liberal coating of high melting point grease was applied before refitting the gearstick. We'll see how long that lasts then :D

Interestingly the light alloy bracket that secures the gearstick in has elongated holes, unlike the one's fitted to later cars.

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I guess this provides a useful bit of adjustment as things start to wear :? :?:

Since it was so scorchio today, this was sitting in full sun...

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....what else do you do when the sun is shining so hot?.......well of course you refresh the waxoil in the door bottoms :D The heat helps everything flow really well so that's another job done :D

Must be Pimms o'clock by now :D

Dave
 
Great job on the gear stick. Have you considered epoxy putty? I have used it for a few things and it is quite hard when set, I will do my gear stick would be good to compare but when I am back on the road will probably cover in a year what you do in a week. :LOL:
 
arthuy said:
Great job on the gear stick. Have you considered epoxy putty?
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I'd forgotten all about epoxy putty, or double bond as it was known in the RAF. We used to fix all sorts with it. Should make an excellent repair.

Dave
 
I decided to fit some LED lamps to the Lady C. With all the talk about driving conditions and the level of light standard bulbs produce I thought I'd do the sidelights (a'la happy days) and the stop/tail lights. I wanted to try a couple of different suppliers and types of LED lamp for comparison. I waited for the light level to fall towards dusk and tried them out. Here's the results, sidelights first:

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The type on the left is a single large LED costing £1.10 for 2 and the type on the right is a group of 6 costing £3.49 for 2, so quite a difference in price.

The following 3 images show, from left to right, the standard bulb, the single large LED and the group of 6 LED

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Quite a difference between the 3. The LEDs have a crisper, blue light and the group of 6 produces significantly more light than the others. I've fitted 2 of those to the front sidelights.

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Now for the stop/tail lights:

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Both are very similar with the one on the left having 18 LEDs surrounded by 6 around the outside, costing £7.45 for 2. The one on the right is of similar layout but slightly different profile, costing £13.98 for 2. Again, quite a difference in price. Interestingly, whilst the LEDs are clear, they light up red.

The following 3 images show the standard tail light bulb, the LED and the stop. There wasn't a great deal of difference between the standard bulb and LED but the stop light was notably brighter with the LED. The LED on the right gave the brightest light on both tail and stop. So I've fitted those.

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This image shows the difference in output of the 2 LEDs on stop

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Total price for front and rear £17.47

Dave
 
Very interesting results there. Would you mind posting details of the supplier?
Out of interest, do they still look as bright when viewed from the side?
 
Willy Eckerslyke said:
Very interesting results there. Would you mind posting details of the supplier?
Out of interest, do they still look as bright when viewed from the side?
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Willy

Hyperlinks in the text will take you to the suppliers (all ebay) :wink:

I'll put up some pics from various angles when I get a chance, but yes they look as bright from the side.

Dave
 
Looking good. I did try putting leds in my indicators a while back but they kept frying the relays. In this position i think they'll be fine though. If they light up once the loading will be fine :) (and put less strain on your alternator!)

Rich
 
Thanks Dave, sorry I hadn't spotted the links. Very useful, I'll order a couple of sets myself.
Don't worry about the photographs from the side, if you say they're fine, that's good enough for me! :D
 
rockdemon said:
put less strain on your alternator
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...or dynamo :wink:

I'm tempted to have the sidelights on all the time now, kinda like DRLs. The other thing I now have to do is buy some spares from the same supplier as I don't want to end up having to put filament lamps back if one of the LEDs fails.

Dave
 
New LEDs looking good Dave. Although I am a bit of a stickler for originality, it is tempting for me to do my side, tail & stops with LEDs. I nearly always drive with my side/tail lights on in the interests of safety and having higher intensity stop lights can't be a bad thing?

I did try putting leds in my indicators a while back but they kept frying the relays.
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That's seems odd Rich? You would have thought that the LEDs should draw far less current and have a lower surge at switch on? Wonder if it's maybe something to do with "back emf" on the relays causing polarity to momentarily reverse and for current to surge the wrong way through the LED unit?? Off hand, can't think of anything else.
 
It might be that they don't draw much current.

The relays for the flashers are metallic which break when the heats builds up. Without the resistance of the bulb the heat is generated a lot quicker and would eventually fry the unit.

A lot of the led bulbs have little resistors in them, cars with bulb failure systems also have a problem with LED bulbs as they confuse it.

Colin
 
Sounds like a good theory Colin. I was thinking the cold resistance of a tungsten lamp is very low. However, once it is flashing and the filament is hot (and remaining hot between "on" flashes) I suppose it will be remain high. It must be something like too high a current when the flasher contacts close/open, as the average current through the flasher contacts must be the same for tungsten and LED - otherwise the flash frequency wouldn't be right? I'm almost tempted to see if I can dig my old scope out of the garage and plot some current waveforms for tungsten vs. LED :LOL: but that is probably taking things too far..... Maybe an electronic flasher to replace the old thermal type would allow LED flasher lamps to be used?
 
yup - you have to use an electronic flasher but that didnt seem to behave. This is Dave's thread though so suggest we take it offline to discuss further :)
 
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