A 'gentle' rebuild of my 3500

I had a busy morning yesterday fitting the new rear springs from Mark Gray. As you will know the new springs I fitted in 2011 made the car sit very high at the rear and gave an awful crashing ride hence the reason behind this change.


A noticable differnce in height, the new springs also feel slightly softer now they're on the car.


Nearside


Offside
The high ride height is very evident in the before photos. The nearside has always sat a bit higher but I noticed a shim whem I removed the spring so I took this out. It still sits a little higher than the other side, I think there is another shim in there which i will remove at a later date.



It now sits level and looks like a P6 should and not like Starsky & Hutch's Gran Torino!
 
Well done Mike , sitting pretty , down in the weeds as they say . A mate of my Husbands said he thought mine looked like the springs were shot , he didn't believe me when i told him they were totally right and i have assisters on it that raise it by 1/2 inch or so :D
 
stina said:
Well done Mike , sitting pretty , down in the weeds as they say .

At the risk of taking this thread down a rabbit hole, I've always found this picture a great example of how a P6 should sit

rover-2000-sc-automatic-brochure-cover_zps27f6a941.jpg


Looks to be fully laden with a couple of people in the back seats too.

Dave
 
Re: Its been months!

Hi Everyone,

I can't remember the last time I was on the forum but after a long break Im back. What with work, LOTS of home improvements and a lots of family commitments the Rover has languished in the garage since attending lasts years 'Drive it Day' at Brooklands. That was the end of April :shock:

I had started the engine every few weeks and drove it out of the garage to get to things but since the MOT, tax and insurance expired in August I decided to SORN it as I knew I would be using it for the rest of the year. Once Christmas and new year were out of the way I endeavoured to get the Rover out of the garage and look at getting it back on the road but after recharging the battery it was found that the electric fuel pump I relocated to the rear had stopped working :x

I purchased an identical pump and fitted it today. The car now runs again. Not sure why the old one stopped as I checked everything before buying the new one, but once i removed it and connected directly to a battery it ran :? I did try this when it was still on the car so I can only assume that it had become blocked. In addition my non working fuel gauge now works. I thought the sender had packed up but it turned out that the earth had come loose in the boot :oops:

I also took the oppurtunity to change the oil and filter so now the car is all ready for an MOT test which I'm going to try and sort within the next couple of weeks. Hopefully it passes.

I did have a little mishap last week whillst reaching up to a shelf to retrieve a back of tap washers. Unknown to me was door hinge next to the bag that I dragged off the shelf which in turn hit the rear wing. It didn't dent the panel but because its had a poor respray in the past it managed to take a large chunk of paint off.



For the time being I'm basically going to touch it up so its not as noticeable as I'm going to look into a full respray. When funds allow of course :roll:

Plans for this year. Well apart from getting back on the road I managed to aquire nearly all the nescessary bits to fit a boot mount kit last year. I have a complete lid that I'm going to transfer the parts over from, but I'm still on the lookout for a wheel cover, stay and bracket and the badge itself if anyone can help? I also want to redo the underseal behind each wing one at a time over the course of the year and try and either refurbish my heater or buy a replacement and refurbish that and swap them over.

Hopefully I get to put some serious miles on it this year and hope to see you guys at some of the up and coming events :D
 
Glad to see you back on the forum again Mike. I put a similar scratch on the wing of my car a few years back whilst putting my bike in the boot, very annoying.
 
The Rover sailed through its MOT today with no advisories :wink: just need to sort the tax and I'm Rovering again :D
 
Thanks guys :D I have to say that it would have failed on idle emissions because its a post 1975 car and Co2 must be no greater than 4.5% but with a suitable application of revs the friendly MOT man said that the emissions passed :wink:
 
With the ongoing saga of my car misfiring and eliminating loads of items I decided to remove my petrol tank (a job I've been meaning to do for ages) and give it a clean to make sure that there wasn't any grunge blocking up the pipes in the sender.


It was quite straight forward to remove and the sender came out easily after bending the lock ring that had rusted in.


Shining a light in the tank shows it to relatively clean. I will give it a rinse out when its aired sufficiently.

The only real issue I could see was the main feed pipe that was bent and twisted. I can't see this helping flow. I can't see twisting this back will work well enough and may actually snap it off.



Finally, to help me get the car in and out of the garage and back up onto my ramps when I refit everything I have rigged up a temporary tank. Seems to do the trick :)


In the meantime I will be ordering up a new sender gasket, lock ring and filler neck gasket (this has split). I may have to replace the sender due to the twisted pipe :?
 
20413267819_7b3e6e3dc8_c.jpg


Shame. If you've resigned yourself to replacing it it's got to be worth getting a bit of heat on it and trying to wind it back straight first. ( Providing a replacement is readily available of course)

That was done by someone who only had one spanner of each size..... :roll:
 
Seeing as I felt I had nothing to lose with my old sender I did attempt to straighten out the pipe. I had it almost straight without any problems and decided to push my luck and tweak it a little more. I should have left it alone as I ended up cracking the pipe :roll:

With no other choice I started a fruitless hunt for a replacement. In the meantime I dropped it off at a radiator specialist who said they would attempt to repair it but was concerned that the heat involved would melt the plastic electrical connection. I couldn't find a sender and they DID repair my old one with no issues whatsoever :D



All I need to do now is fit everything back into the car.
 
A very informative thread.
Lots of photos and very inspiring.
There are lots of issues that you have encountered and solved ( with some help of other memebers).
This has helped me to resolve some of the same problems you had.
Many thanks for taking the time to do this.
Steve
 
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