what the barn's full of

…and the Rover is no more.

The SD1 started its journey to its new owner in Georgia this morning. It’s been an interesting ride with this car – over the last three years I’ve learned more about Lucas EFI than I ever thought possible, as well as grown to appreciate just what Rover were trying to do with SD1. It’s a huge shame they were initially dogged with so many issues here in the US, as the straight-six versions doubtless would’ve sold very well into the 1980s.

Much has been written about the SD1 in the USA, and why it failed. Rover was a one-model range at the time, and – in Europe – completed a gap in Triumph’s lineup after the withdrawal of the 2000/2500. Had the planned Lynx ever actually been produced, it and the SD1 would’ve made a rather nice range.. together with the “new” Triumph 1500. Even the Rover 213/216 would’ve probably sold well over here, as is evidenced by the visibility today of their Honda brethren.

It was my daily driver for a while, and – as well as proving it’s possibly to run a thirty year old British car on a daily commute – it still managed to average nearly 30mpg. It’s been to a few shows, confused a lot of people (‘what kind of Chevy/Pontiac/Ferrari is that?’), and been surprisingly reliable. It only broke down on me once, which was a) in the driveway so it doesn’t really count, and b) is because I ran out of fuel ‘cuz the fuel sender didn’t initially work. The kids also loved the fact that it was a little bit special and – for a British car – pretty big and comfy inside. It even did the school run a few times, during which there were occasional complaints about its fundamental brown-ness.

…but on it must go. It’s going to someone who knows exactly what it is, and will hopefully appreciate it as much as I do. It’s been replaced in the “fleet” here by a Rover P6, which is a whole different animal… but more on that another time.

By tedlit, ago

…and it’s off to the golf club…

I’ve had a few older XJS’s over the years – all coupes, and the newest was an ’86.. but last week, I became the proud owner of a ’94 XJS convertible. It’s a 6cyl and has a list of issues as long as my arm.. but hey, it makes a change from switching head gaskets on Land Rovers. I drove it 75 miles home and didn’t hit any real problems… which I count as a result, right?

So far, I’ve fixed:
-Convertible top goes up but not down (bad relay + contacts)
-No turn signals (bad flasher contacts)
-No left-side lights (bad contacts at headlamp)
-Terrible throttle response (throttle cable stretched almost 1″)

…and need to fix:
-Both front seats are mostly destroyed
-Front footwell carpets are missing
-Right rear turn signal lens is cracked
-Driver’s door is dented
-Some genius removed the rear spoiler but didn’t fill the holes in
-Clearcoat on trunk is bizarrely faded
-Stereo is truly, truly awful
-Steering clunks like it has no bushings in it at all
-Car pulls to right under braking

I count that as not too bad a list….. for now.

The car apparently has quite the history – it came to me with a sticker for a well-known retirement home in the back window and a story that the previous-previous owner had to sell it because he had his license confiscated. At that explains the bizarre damage to the driver’s door…!

By tedlit, ago

Off to Texas

image

This is now one well-travelled Sterling. It’s on it’s way to Austin, TX.. where it surely remain on the road for many years. I shall miss it, but not as much as if I didn’t have two more sitting in the barn…!

By tedlit, ago

Just a big blob of rust…?

The P6 has always sounded a bit exhaust-y. I initially put that down to a small hole in the ancient rear silencer, but further complaining and investigation led to the conclusion that there was also a leak near the manifold. Normally, this means a holed gasket.. or a broken stud in some join somewhere.. either way, not the worst job in the world but certainly one of the more annoying.

However, after an afternoon of removing 16 of the finest rusted-up 1/2″ British bolts, I found this:

I think it’s supposed to be an exhaust manifold. It has the consistency of Swiss cheese, and there are four or five good bulges in it. I didn’t realise cast iron could do that, but apparently – if made in Birmingham – it can.

By tedlit, ago

The art of clearcoat

Some time in the late 1970s / early 1980s, there was a revolution in the shadowy world of automotive paintwork. Metallic paints were all of a sudden in vogue in Europe, and everyone needed the latest and greatest metallic brown and orange finishes on their cars (cf. the 1981 Triumph TR7 colour book). Unfortunately, British Leyland et all soon figured out that metallic paint looks terrible when sprayed by robots built in Birmingham, so the industry investigated ways around this.

What the paint people collectively came up with was “clearcoat” – essentially, a veneer that is added after the colour coat to protect, give gloss, and cover up mistakes. This was not a new idea, but it was rather expensive to implement. This meant two things – one, it only initially appeared on high-end Japanese and European cars.. and two, when it made it to mass-market British (and yes, Jap) vehicles, cost-cutting meant the benefits of the fancy new process were, uh, diluted somewhat.

Fast forward to 2013; it’s now fairly rare to see an ’80s Accord or old Nissan without the characteristic flaky roof or bonnet.. and while this is obviously a far worse phenomenon in hotter climates, practically every Civic in Canada suffered the same fate.

However, quality control fixed most of the problems over time, and by the 1990s automotive paint processes were much improved………..

….except in Birmingham:

This is a 1994 Land Rover Discovery. It’s spent its entire life in the Pacific Northwest – where there is no sun – and the bonnet and roof are a spectacular mess of flaking clearcoat and faded colour coat. I kinda feel sorry for it – it’s not like the Discovery doesn’t have enough other problems. It’s the opposite of a ghost flame job in a certain light.. whereas in actual daylight it just looks terrible.

By tedlit, ago

How to fix a door with a hammer

I have owned several cars with dubious bodywork over the years. The cut-n-shut 1983 Metro springs to mind, as well as the Triumph 2500 with socks in the sill. These were fairly well-hidden jobs though.. and obviously some of my cars are, uh, less valuable than others. Obviously, it’s worth having a dent in a newish Jag repaired professionally, but if the car in question is a $250 near-wreck with 200k miles on it?

Well… this is what happens.

I’ve posted about this car – and its coolant issues – before, but I didn’t really address the awesome bodywork. This is a 1990 Sterling 827 with 198k miles on it. It’s an SL model, which means actual leather seats and a real, genuine 4-speed slushbox. I owned it for a while, and I drove it 80 miles daily for a year or so. It had previously been used for transporting hay and other farm-related unmentionables, so cleaning it out was probably one of the more interesting experiences I’ve had.

Apparently a horse fell out of an adjacent trailer into the door (yes, really) and the requisite door and wing panels were pulled back into shape with a convenient hammer and pry bar. The door never quite opened all the way, but the poor car was fine. OK.. so it had a busted radiator and no A/C, but those were simple fixes.

Oddly enough.. no one would park next to me at work when I drove it. Who’s going to notice another dent, eh?

By tedlit, ago

This is some rust.

It’s inside a 1967 Triumph 2000. It sat outside in the sunny Northwest from 1986-2008, and when we removed it from the hedge it was parked in, there was more foliage inside the car than outside. If you look closely, you can see my pristine barn floor through the 12″-wide hole.

Oddly enough, it wasn’t too hard to persuade the car to run. The pine tree in the boot will arguably be more of an issue though.

By tedlit, ago

Where have all the Range Rovers gone?

Once upon a time, in the years 1974-2006.. there were “Classic”-shaped Range Rovers everywhere. Every street had a green one on someone’s driveway, and every farm had a black one covered in mud with no tailgate. Every school run would show a handful of wheezing, oily, leaking monsters dropping off little Johnny in his Barbour jacket.. and every organic market had a line of them with carrots sticking out the back.

However.. somehow, they’ve all vanished – and I’m concerning myself with the mystery of where they’ve all gone.. and if one or two end up in my driveway in the meantime, so be it.

Some of them went the way of this otherwise-not-too-trashed example:

…whereas others have been cannibalised for far-more-valuable MG, TVR, Morgan, and Buick (yes, really) cheap V8 conversions. Given that a running Range Rover can be had for $500 or so, it’s not really a surprise.. and that’s an awful lot of rusting 4×4 steel and Lucas wiring problems for your money. The problem with this as an explanation is that most of the heaps in scrapyards, Craigslists, and so on are Discoveries – they’re not Range Rovers at all. I don’t think the sales figures were all that different.. so that still doesn’t explain where any of them have actually gone.

The perennial reputation as a money pit doesn’t seem to help – yes, there’s always an ever-increasing list of electrical problems to deal with, and no car marks its territory quite like Solihull’s finest. You never know. Maybe there’s a stash of tens of thousands of them on an airfield in Arizona.. or in a cave in Wales.. or in a bog in Oregon.. it could happen, and if anyone finds out they’ll be worth a fortune. I look at it this way.. when the apocalypse comes, the wipers coming on whenever you turn the heater on is not going to stop us escaping to higher ground.

I’m not selling mine.

By tedlit, ago

The world of beige

Somewhere around 1997, Kim and I were looking at Minis. This is not news, however one of the cars we looked at is newsworthy – and my memory of it was prodded uncomfortably last week.

Unlike many people who were Mini-shopping, we didn’t really care how old/new it was – as, at the time, any Mini would’ve been awesome. We were looking at 70s Minis and 80s Minis, as well as terrorising the local Rover dealer for a shiny brand-new metallic orange Mini.
On one sunny day, we found ourselves in picturesque Tunbridge Wells to look at a late-70s Mini 1000. “Original paint, no rust, low miles”, it said. This is normally lies, but lies can be interesting so off we went.. ad in hand. Sure enough.. the car looked good. The paint was a little faded, and it only had 60k-or-so miles on it.. and there certainly weren’t any gaping holes of death in either the floor or the A-panels.. so it was worth a test drive.

At this stage, it is worth pointing out that the car was parked on the street at the bottom of two hills. The guy (somewhat trustingly) gave us the key, said “have at it”, and off we trundled.. up hill, down dale, round the roundabout, and through the countryside. Eventually, it was time to return – and, as we arrived at the top of the hill, the test drive turned into a cartoon. Mini brakes aren’t great, but we discovered we had none.. so as we careened down the hill at 35, maybe 40mph, we remembered that the car lived at the bottom. Much pedal-mashing later, we sailed past the cars’ home and straight up the hill the other side… stopping about halfway up. “I know! We’ll roll back down!”. So.. several iterations of this genius scheme later.. we finally stop somewhere near the intended driveway and run away back to our own, brake-having car.

What have I missed out? The Mini was this glorious colour:

It’s called “sandglow”, and looks like baby vomit. This Jag is for sale, and with that paintwork I expect it will be for some time.

By tedlit, ago

What’s big, red, and eats Audis?

This, apparently:

This is a 2000 Jaguar XJR, which has recently found its way onto my driveway. This photo was taken as it came off the trailer, having been covered in the best of Arizona and New Mexico on its journey here to sunny San Antonio. The colour is an interesting one – Jaguar call it “carnival red”, but I’m not sure what kind of carnival they’re referring to. The guy selling the car described it as “merlot”, and that’s perhaps a little more apt.

I had to sell the XJ8 last November, and I missed it rather a lot – which is why this one has now appeared and will (hopefully) be driven the 2,100 miles back home later this month.

98-01 XJs have a couple of big flaws that mean they’re ridiculously cheap for what they are. The first is the cylinder liners – Jaguar (along with BMW, VW, and a few others) used Nikasil liners from 98 for about three years.. and it turns out they don’t like high-sulphur fuel very much. Jaguar also decided that they’d save about 50g of weight by making the timing chain tensioners plastic rather than metal.. so when they disintegrate, they disintegrate quite catastrophically. Both of these “issues” were addressed later in the run of the X308 Jag; updated tensioners are available to fix that problem, and any Jag that’s still running with good compression at 12 years old is likely not going to suffer liner problems anytime soon.. in fact, a Nikasil-engined Jag that’s lasted ’till now will likely keep going for a very long time indeed.

If you’re a fan of Internet-based paranoia, you’ll know that the other well-publicised failure in these cars is the transmission. The XJ8 has a ZF-sourced gearbox that eats A-drums for breakfast. The fact that they’re marked as “sealed for life”… and consequently no one changes the fluid or filters.. is nothing to do with it. Oh no. The big problem with this flaw is that there’s no warning of imminent failure. It’s just CLUNKmmmfmmmfmmmffthpppbt.

The XJR has a different, Mercedes-sourced box which is supposedly much more reliable.. but this remains to be seen!

By admin, ago