My '72 P6 V8 is back in use on UK roads and once again wearing its silver on black 'K' plates!

Sowen, I meant that I've now gone ten clicks firmer than the sloppiest setting, leaving about 30 clicks more to experiment with before the shocks don't shock any more! Perhaps I should've used the middle of the adjustment range as the base setting? I've not firmed 'em up that far yet! Another 10 clicks 'til the middle setting. You're gone almost all the way to the end of the range then? Must be much firmer than mine is currently at.
I did visually inspect the DeDion elbows and couldn't see any signs of imminent failure, but I'm no expert! Hope they don't fail, but do have a spare pair if they do - which I'll probably reinforce and fit at some point.
 
10 clicks from soft is pretty soft then! I'm curious as I can't remember who's got the adjustables fitted, and how far they've been adjusted, just as a rough comparison to how different mine is? I'm running stiffer and shorter springs, yet the ride is still better than almost every other car I've driven. It doesn't wallow too much and bodyroll is now minimal even with the original arb fitted.
 
Refurbished and guaranteed LT77 5 speed manual gearbox arrived this week! Yippee! Haven't got all of the various bits'n'bobs I'll need for the swap yet, but now the pedal box, master cylinder bracket, bell housing, gearbox and remote are ticked off my list. I'm excited!
Finally discovered why my rear passenger door kept coming slightly open when I drove over cobbles or hit a bump in the road; there's a little sliding catch in each door lock striker plate, with a tiny coil spring to pull it back into place. If it doesn't return properly, it doesn't retain the door properly. Fortunately, having broken one terminally rusty car to build mine, I have two of just about everything, so I fitted a spare and that solved it!
 
Looks even shinier today, having spent a few hours with a proper polishing machine eradicating the many scratches I had managed to put on the bonnet and bootlid rubbing off bird shit. :roll: My arms were still vibrating an hour or so after I switched the polising machine off! Also swapped out my winter tyres/steelies for my summer tyres/Magstars, now attached with the correct wheel nuts. Thanks to whoever it was on here that tipped me the wink to the vendor, whose name I can't remember now either. :roll: :oops:
 
Swapped the damaged radiator for a spare, after having giving it a spruce up, including soldering a crack at the small outlet to the intake manifold. Fitted a Kenlowe fan in front of the new rad, and a controller in the top water hose, wired as per Testrider's method (nice one!) to the battery lead stub in the drivers footwell. Nothing leaked when I started it up, and when the temp reached 88 degrees the fan switched on, carried on cooling when I switched off the ingnition, and soon switched back off again. Considering I find changing a light bulb a small accomplishment, I'm quite chuffed. Still have to make a nice cutout to the top lip of the front valance, and refit the front mask and bumper. Took off my fog lights as I haven't once driven in fog here, and I fancy a less cluttered look for the spring and summer.
 
Perhaps it is all in my imagination, but I'm convinced that the replacement of the engine mounted fan with a Kenlowe electric push fan in front of the radiator has made for a marked difference in acceleration! A week on from having cut the necessary relief in the front valance and I still can't help but boot the blighter away from the lights and reveling in the extra oomph. Talk about value for money. I should have done this donkey's years ago!
I re-set the idle speed back to an oh-so-civilised 800-odd rpm too*. It had crept up and up, but the lock nuts on the set bolts were well and truly tight, so I'm a little bit mystified, I'll keep a closer eye on them now, whilst enjoying less 'thunk' when engaging reverse. :oops:
Next job is to replace the brake servo with a spare that I've been sprucing up, and hope to reassemble and fit tomorrow... Getting bored of topping up the fluid reservoir! I reckon there'll be about 3 egg cups full in the servo when I crack it open.
*Still waiting for a rev counter that has been tweaked so as to work with my Lumenition. It has ended up finding it's way back to the vendor, after a long while, but I guess that's preferable to simply getting lost in the post.
Once I've got my brakes back in order, which is going to have to include setting up the handbrake properly (Harvey would guffaw if he saw the height of my handbrake lever...), I'll have to tackle the wipers, which don't always park in the right position, have knackered the paint on the scuttle panel on both the right and the left, and never had a speed adjustment function since I've owner the thing! Reckon I'll have a few questions for y'all when I get the wipers out and on the bench...
Always something to tinker with, eh?
 
Got the replacement brake servo looking presentable with a lick or two of paint, after a lot of sanding, and now have it all back together, with the help of a Lockheed repair kit that must date from the '70s, judging by the yellowed instruction sheet. Haven't actually managed to fit it yet, as swapping the drivers side motor mount took waaaay longer than I envisaged! Bloody fiddly, as I couldn't reach the top bolt from above because the NADA warm air collector is in the way. WIth the knackered motor mount removed I noticed it had a smaller outer diameter than the replacement, which also benefits from a third metal plate sandwhiched in the middle. Hope this one lasts longer! Alas, no photos, 'cos I forgot to bring my camera to the garage. Still, nothing really exciting enough to document here with pics, to be honest.
 
Mr Task wrote,...
I'm convinced that the replacement of the engine mounted fan with a Kenlowe electric push fan in front of the radiator has made for a marked difference in acceleration!
Click to expand...

It certainly will have as you've freed up some horsepower with its removal. Driving the metal bladed fixed engine fan, water pump and alternator costs in the region of 33 horsepower in parasitic losses.

Ron.
 
BRV3500H sailed through her first bi-annual TÜV test today, without a hitch. 8) Kein Mängel gefunden, or No advisories. I'm pleased about that.
 
Finally got around to re-fitting my rev counter, which gave up the ghost last October. Thanks to J R Wadhams who had it repaired and lent me a loaner in the meantime! Nice to have all the instruments working again. In particular, the rev counter, now at last reading accurately. I had to run a new wire from the negative side of the coil to the female connection, and plug the male and female wires behind the instrument together. It should now not get fried by the Lumenition, which was the diagnosis for the original failure.
 
P6-HundredThousandMiles.jpg


:D This afternoon the Blue Meanie reached a significant milestone; 100,000! It's a bitsa, having had an engine swap, and a complete rebuild, so the figure doesn't really mean anything, but I thought I'd share the fact with y'all anyway. I figure if I keep up my current annual mileage it'll be another twenty years before I reach 200,000 miles. Hoping I'll manage that.
I've fixed the brake problem I had over the festive period, and I'll treat the motor to a filter and oil change at the weekend.
Today the drivers door keyhole has come loose, as the passenger side has been for a while, so I'll have to strip the inner door panels and replace the little retaining wires, which must've vibrated their way out and down into the murky recesses of the door bottoms. I'm nowhere near satisfied with the amount of heat that reaches my passenger compartment either. I put in a new matrix last winter, but at it's best I'd describe full blast as an angel's breath. Cold here now! Sounds like the fan motor bearings haven't got and grease in 'em anymore, makes a hell of a racket but doesn't warm me up!
Always another little job to do, eh? Not to mention the manual conversion I've been planning for eons... It is going to be a busy year!
 
The Blue Meanie has been running like a bit of a pig for the last week, doesn't sound right, stutters away from the lights, and has developed the incredibly annoying habit of simply refusing to start again after I stop and fill up at the petrol station! The first time I had to wait a half an hour before it would start, but today I had to resort to calling out the ADAC guy (that's the German version of the AA). With or without choke, it just wouldn't 'catch', and I tried it every ten minutes for an hour and a half until the roadside assistance turned up. Typically, when the ADAC dude tried, it sprang straight to life! Predictably embarassing. However, it won't idle, it coughs and splutters and dies. To keep the motor running I have to keep my foot on the gas, so I limped it home and it'll have to languish in my garage until I can get an appointment at my preferred Garage for a tune-up.
The ADAC guy suggested we remove the spark plugs, which turned out to all be very black and sooty, which he attributed to me mostly driving only short distances.
I know I'm getting fuel, as I removed the petrol hose just before the offside carb, held it in a beaker, had someone turn the key for me and promptly I had a paper coffee cup full of high octane juice! I can see I have a spark, as if I take off the high tension cable from the coil to the distributor and hold it near the inner wing I get nice sparks, just about visible in today's bright sunlight.
How long do a set of spark plugs generally last? What plugs are the best for a 10.25:1 V8? I know have NGK fitted, but I forgot to note down which ones. Doh! BP-something or other, I'll check again.
The ignition cables, Lucas HiWire, look fairly elderly. They were once red, now faded to a pale pink. I guess it wouldn't hurt to treat the engine to a new set. What do you chaps think, are Magnecor cables worth the expense?
I notice the rubber bung in the side of the distributor body, where the little blue and red wires from my Lumenition module go in, is pretty old, and the hole has widened a fair amount, so there are oil fumes getting in there. The passenger side valve cover sweats oil at the front, right next to the distributor. Inside the dizzy it was dry, and the contacts in the cap (original Rover item, black) and on top of the rotor (also original Rover, black) were clean. No moisture in there.
Incidentally, the battery is new, a Bosch item, shows 12.7 volts across the terminals, and cranks the motor nice and fast when I'm trying to start it up.
Oh wise ones, what should I do next? :roll: :oops:
sunny-day-but-car-will-not-start.jpg
 
Does sound like a fueling problem rather than spark. I know when I was having problems such as hot restart I appeared to be getting sufficient quantity of petrol when I removed the hose from the carburetor but it still was ultimately a failing fuel pump.
i doubt that your spark plug leads are the likely cause I think had they been the problem you would have noticed it when driving prior to the failure.
A start maybe to simply clean all your spark plugs first and check all the carb hoses and the vacuum hoses and connectors for splits.

Graeme
 
Fitting a new ignition coil today hasn't done the trick. It is still running rough, coughs out at idle if I don't ride the gas a little, and stutters away from the lights. It managed a motorway blat at 70mph but feels like it keeps missing beats... Is there any way to test if the Lumenition box is playing up?
 
Mine displayed similar symptoms when I last started it up and tried to move it to another garage
and it took a more knowledgeable mate fiddling with the carbs to get it sweet again.
 
I was working on a v8 recently where the fuel filter was so full of junk it was slightly impeding flow. To add to this, it's efficiency at filtering had declined. It was letting tiny dark brown particles into the carbs, possibly rust and old fuel from the tank.
This was not immediately obvious as it didn't look clogged at a glance and fuel was getting through.
The result was similar to your symptoms. I cleaned the carbs out fully, they were insanely varnished. The float chambers also had a few mm of brown sediment at the bottom. Blew out all the fuel link pipes and replaced the filter.
Did the trick in this case.
ps you might want to check the spark strength from after the dizzy, not just from the coil
Jim
 
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