1970 Rover 3500 - EMF

Welcome .Thats a VERY NICE motor you have . Great condition for 41 year old.

Welcome to RR, that's a very nice P6! I notice you're in Nottingham - we have a meet at the Limes Cafe on the A614 every month if you fancy coming along? Next one is 13th Feb, details in the Events section.

Wow! This is beautiful! And such a lovely colour too.

David

Thanks guys, I'm glad you like it, we do. I know it's a bit of a cliche, but it's really like part of the family now.

Anyway, on with some words and photos of the work done.

As I didn't really see my car a a project I didn't ever take any photos of the work I was doing - I considered it to be maintenance and not something worth recording. It wasn't until 2009 when I started work on the engine that I thought it would be wise to record what I'd done.

April 2009 Top End Rebuild

A number of factors including a (long) conversation with Chris at RPi and seeing Vaultsmans project on the Classsic Rover Forum lead me to remove the cylinder heads, initially just to replace the head gaskets prior to taking a long driving holiday that I'd booked in the Alps in July, but as we all know it's never that simple.



As the engine had done lots of short journeys in it's past the insides were pretty filthy and you can see the sludge in the lifter gallery and where the head gaskets had been leaking.



I ended up replacing the camshaft (with a Viper Hurricane one), followers, timing cogs (with steel ones) and chain and fitting a high flow oil pump kit. Then I decided to look for some later cyclinder heads with bigger valves and found some SD1 heads on eBay complete with new rockers, shafts and all the valves ground in for £60 - bargain! I fitted those along with composite head gaskets to lower the compression ratio.

I finished it all off with stainless bolts although I didn't have time to paint any of the engine parts and the Alps trip was looming and I wanted to get it run in and any bugs ironed out.

I can honestly say that starting the engine for the first time to bed in the camshaft was the most nerve racking thing I've ever done - you have to switch it on and then instantly bring the revs up to 2000rpm for 20 minutes - but it's performed faultlessly since.

The changes allowed the engine to run fine with no loss of power on 95 RON fuel and no octane booster whereas before it was run on Shell V Power 99 RON plus octane booster. I wasn't sure that I could get 99 RON fuel in small Alpine villages and didn't want to end up stuck having to run the car on cheaper fuel with it set for 100 octane stuff.

To prove it made it to the Alps and back here's a couple of pics taken when we stopped for lunch half way down the Stelvio Pass.





We had a great time in the Alps, I can post some more about the trip with lots of pictures if you like?

April 2010 Electric Fuel Pump

Whilst the engine rebuild was sucessful I still got occasional vapour lock, once near the top of the Furka Pass in Switzerland after stopping for some cows to cross the road! There's much debate about whether fitting an electric pump instead of the AC mechanical one treats the symptoms or cures the root of the problem - either way it means that I don't have to wait for 2 hours for the engine to cool down before I can carry on my journey so I tried to copy the factory NADA (American export cars sent to California) style by fitting it at the back near the tank inside the chassis rail.





You can read more about how I did it here.
www.classicroverforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7342.

It's a fairly complicated conversion because there are two fuel lines - main and reserve - that run to the reserve tap in the engine bay, but there's obviously only one outlet on the pump. So, the reserve tap has to be relocated to before the pump and a new single fuel line now runs from the pump at the back to the carbs up front. It took a day, cost about £80 all in and was well worth it.

May 2010 Electric Fan Converstion

In order to free up some horsepower, save fuel and generally make the car more efficient I fitted a Kenlowe electric fan. It's a 13" heavy duty model which came with a two speed controller for it's 265W motor.



I had to make a cut out in the front valance to clear the motor housing but otherwise it's a good fit.



The control unit is fitted next to the washer bottle and takes it's control supply from the fuse box on the inner wing and the main power for the relay is via a 30amp wire connected to the main battery cable stud in the drivers footwell. With all that in place I removed the fixed fan from the front of the water pump.

It seems to keep the car at a steady 85 degrees in traffic, but as the engine is only on tickover there's little or no charge coming from the alternator so the fan does not spin quite as fast as the manufacturer intended.

Appearance.

For the first couple of years the only change I made to the appearance was changing the black plastic mirrors to chrome ones as seen here at the P6ROC gathering at Duxford, June 2008.



EMF has always been a fairly individual looking car even in a line of P6's, with it's Minilites, wider tyres and less common Zircon Blue colour, so I decided to take it a step further with some subtle modifications.

When I was at school I used to read Custom Car, Street Machine and VolksWorld magazines and all the best looking cars had a smooth, clean appearance. As I learnt more about Rover and the P6 I heard about the different light lenses available for the export market so I bought some clear indicator lenses for the front and red ones for the rear which I think look great. Currently they have orange bulbs in them, but I'll be changing them to LEDs soon.

Another bit of tidying up saw the front overiders come off (it never had any at the back) along with the V8 badge in the grill.



Here's a shot of the back of the car with the red indicator lenses. One of my pet hates are the series II reflectors. I think aesthetically they're a really poor design and spoil the lines of the wing, looking like the after thought that they were, so as part of this winter's refurbishment they're coming off. I've got a few ideas of where to move them too, but I'll keep them under my hat for the time being!



So that about brings us up to date with the mechanics and appearance and in the next post I'll tell you about what I've been upto recently and the plans for this year if you're interested?

Cant believe how good th metal is on this, thats a very small repair int he grand scheme of things! Whats the black stuff your using to protect?

Wow, that's in very good condition! I wish I could say the same about my P6 3500... Great work, looking forward to more updates.

Thanks for the welcome fellas. The base unit condition is pretty remarkable and totally justified me going a grand over budget when I bought it to get the right car.

I got some more work done over the past weekend and I'm getting into a routine of removing parts, scraping off flakey underseal and paint, cleaning up the steel and then covering it with Expoxy Mastic.

I've moved round to the drivers side now and started cleaning up inside the wheel arch and bulk head.





I got bored of sitting with my head under the car and constantly looking at that hole which needs to be repaired, so I moved to inside the engine bay instead.

I've lifted the remote brake servo unit out and untangled the wiring loom and power steering hose which were woven through the brake lines. There's lots of surface rust around here as the previous owner had the servo replaced twice and whoever did it didn't bother wiping up the spilt brake fluid.



That's all cleaned up and gone now, covered with more Epoxy Mastic for an instant feel good factor!



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Under the wheel arch still needs sorting though, but it's not far off being ready for paint now so I might get some more done in the week if I'm lucky.

Will, I like the idea of a lowered car, but for me there's a couple of good reasons why I can't really do it.

The front springs are actually a nightmare to remove and are under a lot of preload - 17" static length down to about 11" or 12" on the car with the wheels off the ground - ordinary spring compressors don't work so I'll leave it for now.

Also, I use my Dad's garage for winter storage which is at the top of a steep driveway and it wouldn't go in with any less ground clearance.

This car is in remarkable condition.

If you are going to weld it yourself, my advice would be to practice a lot on scrap metal first, not on the car.
Also read tony's panelwork thread.
One thing that I do not like to see is where a bit of flat metal has been stuck in to replace a piece that had ribs & pressings etc.
Your car deserves proper repair, not 'MOT' welding.
You know it makes sense
You are doing a great job so far.