Familiar car, unfamiliar owner...

Hi, my name is Martin and I live in sunny Somerset. I recently became the proud owner of a P6 that will be familiar to forum members - I discovered the build thread on here by accident after buying the car. I had some V8 cravings that needed satisfying and this fitted the bill perfectly! I absolutely love driving it, it's the perfect antidote to modern driving and sounds great :D



There's a few little things I want to do to her - the gearbox is a bit noisy, so I'm on the lookout for a late LT77 (D suffix or later) to rebuild and fit. Also, I want to move the rear number plate below the bumper and completely smooth the boot lid and a few other minor things, so will start a project thread when I get round to doing something.

 
Nice car that, I watched the progress of it and the work he did was excellent.

if you are going to revert to the standard badges on the side panels, I will have the ones you take off 8)

Richard

PS Which part of Cider country do you come from?
 
Hi Martin,

Followed the link from my old thread and your post!, certainly didn't expect yourself to be the new owner and to be so close, literally about 20 miles ish!
So glad you like the car and enjoying it, I do miss it as does my 9 yr old son LOL. I see the USA style plates have gone, did the local police have words ?
Good to see the car pretty much as I sold it back in May this yr, but of course you can change it to how you like :D if I had kept it then I was going to get a 3500s interior in the boxpleat leather and get an exchange the gearbox, as you say its noisy but it was free! Certainly made a huge difference when I converted it to manual from the old clunky BW35 box, totally changed how the car drove, immense fun :D anyway I wont rabbit on about it too much as my old thread tells the story!
Welcome to the forum, it has a great range of people with years of technical knowledge, it certainly helped me get the car finished with every body's help & enthusiasm, great bunch of guys n girls.
Hope fully one day I'll be in a position to build another Hot Rod P6 8) identical but in light metallic blue, black sill covers, black vynal roof, 3500s seat, 5 spd LT77,Of course the Cragars :p
possibly webasto sun roof...watch this space, well in few years time, all the best Damian

PS: I still have a set of the black in silver pressed plates if you'd like them.
 
Sorry, I didn't have any time to type a proper reply the other day, so decided to link to another post containing a little more info. It's funny that the car has come back to Somerset via Salisbury. The guy who bought it was going to keep it, but what he really wanted was an SD1 Vitesse and he was offered one shortly after buying this. He didn't have enough room to keep both of them, so put it up for sale again.

Regarding the USA plates, I wasn't ever stopped, but didn't like the uncertainty every time I passed a police car! So I decided to put something a little more legal on there, the US size UK ones work well IMO. I did like the US style ones though - the rear one currently adorns our lounge :D Thanks for the offer of the UK plates - I may take you up on that as I don't know how well the US sized one is going to work below the bumper. Is the rear one shaped to fit the standard plinth?

I love the wheels - they were the first thing that caught my eye. It's strange how it goes, I'd only just decided that I wanted a V8 classic and started looking at P6's for sale. After a couple of weeks of looking at cars on ebay, etc, I decided that what I really wanted was a red one, then this one appeared. It wasn't too far away to go and look at and it just so happened that I was off work for a week, so could go and see it. The rest, as they say, is history!

Body wise, I'm not planning much. I want to move the rear number plate to below the bumper, to give it the same look as the Australian one that was part of the inspiration for this one. For the front end, I've got a pair of the V8 police spoilers planned, plus a custom front grille, based around the series 1 grille, but with a custom centre section. I've also got some new trim for the sides, to replace the current trim, which is pretty rippled in places.

Mechanically, the ultimate goal is a Rover 4.6 engine, with an R380 gearbox and Jag XJS rear diff. That's a long term plan though - I'll need a bigger garage before I can even contemplate that amount of work. Changing the current gearbox is going to be interesting enough - the car only just fits length-wise! I admire what you managed to achieve in your single garage - you did a good job.

Thanks for the welcome, the forum seems great - I've already learnt quite a lot from it in terms of gearbox info and will start my own thread when I get to actually doing something. I've enjoyed driving it too much so far to want to take it off the road for works, although with the weather turning, I doubt there will be too many more trips out.

I hope you get to building your next one soon - I'd like to see the result, what you've got planned sounds great.
 
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