Christ, long time no updates!!
Sorry about that guys. I won't go into details but I had a bit of a financial meltdown in the middle last year and and to be honest I'm lucky to have come out the other side of it still owning this thing! But I'm back in the game again now and it's time to pick up where I left off!!
So where did we leave it? I hadn't really done all that much since buying it really, only collecting a few parts and got my plan together. So I suppose gathering more parts is a good place to start before getting my hands dirty!
^ During my 'down time' I got a bit frustrated that I had no cash to put into the project and no progress was being made. So, I put an add on Freecycle to see if I could score some spring assistors so that I could at least get the rear end up a bit.
Sure enough someone answered my Freecycle plea and by bizzarre coincidence that person actually turned out to be Retro Rides member
Mattblack! Legend
The assistors should raise up the rear another inch, and since then I've also scored a set of rear uprated springs and shocks for a fiver off Ebay that will also raise it by about an inch which combined with the assistors and the planned extra tall tyres should see the rear of the P6 at the right altitude for me
Before I can fit these items though I have to get hold of some rear bushes so that I can replace the lot while its all in bits.
^ Another job that I could do was to remove the front panel and play around with cutting away the front sheetmetal. That's my girl's little brother lending me a hand there
^ I also cropped the bottom of the front wings off to see how it looks too. It doesn't matter so much about making a mistake at this stage because those wings are rotten and are being replaced.
In fact, I have a pair of fibreglass front wings taking the pony express from down south to my Leicestershire lair as we speak!
Seth's wife
Katie kindly collected them from Bedfordshire, and Seth has today (all being well) handed them over to
Kevfromwales at the swap meet who's then going to drop them at
AlistairK's (I'm not sure if he knows it yet or not!) and that's local enough for me to collect sometime soon.
^ More recently I snaffled this series 1 grill, £5 from Ebay
I much prefer the look of these grills to the plastic sries 2 front end.
^ So that's it loosely fitted on. I need to keep a bit of the front panel for the grille to locate into at the bottom so I'll be trimming the top 2" from it which means the front panel will end just before the front bumper in line with where the front wings have been cut and should look fairly neat.
Also, note that the series 1 grille has a massive gap when the badge is not present! Good badges are £4.2Bn on Ebay so instead I'm thinking of chopping some more of the grill away and putting a moon tank there instead? Unfortunately moon tanks are even more expeensive than badges but I know which I'd rather have up front
And, as you can see I also poked the inner headlights out to see how it looks. I like it, looks evil! But.....
^.....I have these from a 60's Volvo that I've had kicking around for a while. I popped them in the grill to see how it looks:
^ I'm undecided. What do you guys reckon? It will all look better once it's all put together properly and the suspension raised, but you get the idea
So what else I have been doing? Well, unfortunately I found myself having to sell the carbs off the Rover to stay afloat. Like I said I'm fortunate that it was only the carbs!
The way I saw it though I was looking to replace the SU's with a Holley or similar anyway so it wasn't going to be the end of the world.
I managed to score a 4 barrel Holley from Ebay for exactly the same price as I sold the SU's for! Great I thought, why isn't everyone doing it?! I soon found out when I priced up a manifold.... Gulp! Over £350 for a new Edelbrock manifold and they go for well over £150 second hand. No, what I needed was a cheaper solution!
^
jrevillug put some pictures on my manifold wanted thread showing someone chopping up an SU manifold to fit a single carb and I also did a bit of scouring for info on the internet myself. But what I found was the carbs that the SU manifolds are generally being adapted for are the smaller Weber 500's and Carter carbs. Compared to those my Holley is a bit of a monster!
But with nothing to lose I began chopping the tower off the manifold to see what I can do with it.
Here's what you get when you've finished cutting. Obviously it will need much skimming to get flat but I lobbed the carb on to see if it will physically fit on there!
^ Well no, not really! The carb body and mounting holes hang over the manifold so no simple drilling and tapping to be done here. However a quick measure up shows that the 4 barrels of the carb will line up with the inlet holes on the manifold. So once they're enlarged it should bee just a case of making a thick alloy adaptor plate to mount the carb to the manifold
That's what I'm currently doing right now, and once I've finished it I'll post up the results
In the meantime......
^ ..... I picked up this Weiand scoop up. What do you think?
I'm not sure how it will look on the Rover, I can't quite decide. I do love the idea of it but it has to look right and I think we can only decide that once the P6 is at the right height with the right tyres and everything else finished too.
There should be another update coming pretty soon, I'm aiming to get the old girl finished and MOT'd as soon as possible!
Thanks for looking guys