The Elegant Thirsty Dinosaur

Re: The Elegant Thirsty Dinosaur - ETD gets a friend (ETD2)

rottenlungs said:
I took the Elegant Thirsty Dinosaur on her longest journey to date yesterday. 420Kms across the Lower North Island of NZ to a car show.

My son took a great shot of the run towards the show. There`s not a single modern car in sight!



Name the car at the back, the rest of them are Moggies in a club 'peloton'

The car behaved herself almost perfectly. I did note a tendency to run rough at idle after coming to a stop after a long period of high-speed cruising. Had apply a minuscule amount of choke to prevent stalling.

Cheers

Citroen Traction Avante also known as CV2 , Cv5 , CV11
 
Re: The Elegant Thirsty Dinosaur - ETD gets a friend (ETD2)

Yep. That`s it. There were a few DS`s there as well. My mrs has informed me that I must restore a DS once the Mercedes is complete.

Good show at Wanganui. Not huge, but nice and diverse. The Wellington Rover club guys were parked next to the Capri club. There was a Capri there with an SD1 v8 and Celica 5spd. It looked small inside the Capri`s vast engine bay.

Cheers
 
Re: The Elegant Thirsty Dinosaur - ETD gets a friend (ETD2)

So where are all the photos you took ?
Gerald
 
Hi all

I started on the winter programme of work on the ETD today. There are three main tasks:

1) Remove and replace all seals on the timing cover, with possible helicoiling. I think there is a stripped thread on one of the fuel pump bolt holes, and possibly the distributor clamp bolt also. There is a lot of oil leaking from the front.
2) Rebuild / rebush the front suspension
3) Strip and repaint the rear passenger door. My respray 3 years ago was pretty good, but the rust suppression on that door did not work. At last this task is zero cost as I have all the paints and spray gear.

I started on the timing case today. I have got the radiator / power steering pump, water pump , distributor out the way. One water pump bolt sheared (those little 7/16ths ones are crap), but luckily I got the stub out once the pump was off. I`m going to repaint all the cowls and the fan etc while they are off the car.

I`m very tempted to get a new camshaft and followers while I have the timing gear out. If I did, I would fit the 3.9 cam.

I`ll post some pics soon.

Cheers
 
rottenlungs wrote,...
I`m very tempted to get a new camshaft and followers while I have the timing gear out. If I did, I would fit the 3.9 cam.

Hi James,

If your existing camshaft and lifters have anything over about 75,000 Miles (121,000km), then you may as well replace them. The factory camshafts from Rover have always been more prone to wear than those made by other manufacturers.

When you refit all the bolts, coat the threads with an anti seize lubricant, such as the product made by Loctite. It has no thread locking properties, but it will prevent any problems with bolts corroding or seizing again. Once applied, bolts will all undo perfectly.

Good luck with it all, post some pics if you get the chance. :)

Ron.
 
Thanks Ron.

The car (and the engine as far as I know) has 108,000Kms on it. I`m thinking that it is the right time to do the camshaft.

I was looking at a kit which included a 3.9 cam, lifters and new chain / sprockets. I was going to get a composite valley gasket and the little end seals etc too. All up it looked like about 200 pounds. This was from Rimmers who I have used before for small items. The annoying thing was they wanted the same again for shipping to NZ.

One question, does anyone know where (in Aus / NZ) to get camshafts from for a sensible price? If not, I`ll just bit the bullet and pay the postage..

Thanks
 
Actually , I found a kit with the various gaskets included and the postage came down to 80something. Think I`ll go with Rimmers. They`ve been good so far.
 
camtechcams.com.au do a selection of camshafts for the rover v8,
Scott

EDIT: 9/7/14, FYi, camshaft (CT37) $250 (in 2012), freight within Australia $28, and GST within Oz $27.80, all up $305.80.
 
Hi

Haven`t reported in on the Elegant Thirsty Dinosaur for a while.

Here she is meeting a very nice blue 2000 TC - there aren`t many non-v8`s in New Zealand.



Now that the new 3.9 camshaft is bedded and in celebration of her 6th consecutive warrant of fitness, I finally got round to replacing the speedo cable in order to fix the wobbling needle.

Wins were good, I rung on Thursday of last week and the part was in my letterbox down here in sunny New Zealand 4 working days later. Genuine Austin Rover badged part, has a 1985 sticker on it.

Installation was reasonably straightforward, except for getting the speedo cable the correct side of the wiring loop where it comes up through the dash to the back of the instrument cluster. The other thing I found difficult was getting the thread onto the gearbox angle drive to start. It kept wanting to cross-thread, and the brass thread looked pretty delicate. Got there in the end.

I drove past one of those signs that tells you how fast you are going. My speedo read 51 when the sign said 50. Pretty darn good for a 40 year old machine, I reckon.

Also, I managed to fix the petrol reserve cable. The tap has been getting stiffer for ages, and sure enough, as I leant on the reserve lever to try and push it in, the cable came out of the back of the bezel. Oops. When I had the speaker out to get to the speedo cable grommet I managed to refit and recrimp the cable in the back of the bezel. Excellent. I love it when things can be fixed rather than replaced. Slightly sheepishly, I also oiled and excercised the tap itself and things are much smoother now.

What`s next? Some repainting of areas where the rust killing was not very successful, and winter rebuild of the front suspension.

Cheers all.

James
 

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Hi Peter

I replaced the stock worn 3.5 cam with a new 3.9 one, along with new chain and followers. I actually swapped a head over as well, to deal with some broken stud issues.

Is it noticeably different? To me it is. Throttle response is better, and there is definitely more torque available down low. I suspect the main improvement is the lack of wear and a nice tight timing chain.

Some of that may be psychosomatic, however!
 
Yes this was my thinking. Simply replacing well-worn timing gear is likely to put back a double digit BHP figure and sharpen-up the throttle and you'd notice that. so it's difficult to isolate the effect of the cam. Ideally I'm looking for a masochist who changed the timing gear and then shortly after took it all apart again for the cam :)

I'm reading mixed advice over this. You lose a little top end power but gain torque low down. And its the latter that matters with the autobox.

I'm going to put later EFi heads on too which have larger valves so hopefully a stronger top end to match the bottom end.

Having the correct valve-timing also changes the exhaust note at idle quite a bit too (again could be my imagination)....
 
Hi all

After a 6 year hiatus, the Elegant Thirsty Dinosaur is back in my sights! The ETD is my 1975 3500 Auto, PAS - an NZ assembled car we`ve owned for 19 years now.

After my last major renovation back in 2011 / 12 the car was on the road continuously from 2012 through to 2019. Sadly, it failed the WOF (kiwi MOT) in 2019 and then between covid and life in general impetus was lost and the car has been off the road since.

Also, my DIY respray has finally reached end-of-life. There is quite a lot of surface rust/ roughness which necessitates another respray. Back when I first painted it I said "If I get 10 years out of the paint Ill be delighted'. Well I got about 9, so not too bad.
I`ll have to redo every panel except (maybe) the bonnet + boot. The aluminium panels have survived remarkably well compared to the ferrous ones.

The car is Davos white. Strictly speaking it should be Arctic white as a 1975 car, but Davos was matchable at my local paint shop so I changed It. I`ve been contemplating a colour change - there`s something about Lunar grey that has always caught my eye. It would be more work though

There are a few other issues I have identified:

1) The interior needs some love. It is all original but now there is a split in the driver`s seat Ambla, the window winders are very crunchy in the back doors, the cracked dash top needs re-covering and the carpet is worn out. There is some corrosion in the floors which needs to be stabilised too - nothing serious but it needs to be controlled.

2) I rebuilt the rear calipers and rebuilt the front suspension about 2 years ago. Sadly the top ball joints are worn out already (after only about 1500kms). Also the front calipers seem to be binding a little. I`m not sure if this is servo issue or the front calipers themselves.

3) Speaking of servo I found brake fluid under the air valve diaphragm - not ideal - I`m going to have to redo the servo.

4) A few electrical issues - grotty earths and dodgy wiper motor switches. Also broken heater controls.

5) Power steering needs flushing , filters and probably more - it works but has got less assistance than it used to have

6) Weeping core plugs, a faulty oil pressure sender and some oil leaks at both ends of the crankshaft, though these leaks are not unbearable, yet. On that not does anyone know if you can change core plugs with the engine in-situ ?

So one or two things to do!

I spent a day assessing. Fixed the two corroded side light fittings , finally got the bonnet release working properly and removed the rear valance panel , which is the rustiest.

Cheers

James
 
My front winders were "crunchy" too after the car was laid up during an extended gearbox replacement (almost two years!) The cause seemed to be corrosion on the spring in the mechanism- as the spring coils wind up, they tighten and close together- any rust in there gets ground between the faces of the spring giving the crunchy feel. Whilst winding up and down I blasted the loose stuff free with brake cleaner and then lubed them up with white lithium grease- this made a marked improvement.
 
Hi all

After a 6 year hiatus, the Elegant Thirsty Dinosaur is back in my sights! The ETD is my 1975 3500 Auto, PAS - an NZ assembled car we`ve owned for 19 years now.

After my last major renovation back in 2011 / 12 the car was on the road continuously from 2012 through to 2019. Sadly, it failed the WOF (kiwi MOT) in 2019 and then between covid and life in general impetus was lost and the car has been off the road since.

Also, my DIY respray has finally reached end-of-life. There is quite a lot of surface rust/ roughness which necessitates another respray. Back when I first painted it I said "If I get 10 years out of the paint Ill be delighted'. Well I got about 9, so not too bad.
I`ll have to redo every panel except (maybe) the bonnet + boot. The aluminium panels have survived remarkably well compared to the ferrous ones.

The car is Davos white. Strictly speaking it should be Arctic white as a 1975 car, but Davos was matchable at my local paint shop so I changed It. I`ve been contemplating a colour change - there`s something about Lunar grey that has always caught my eye. It would be more work though

There are a few other issues I have identified:

1) The interior needs some love. It is all original but now there is a split in the driver`s seat Ambla, the window winders are very crunchy in the back doors, the cracked dash top needs re-covering and the carpet is worn out. There is some corrosion in the floors which needs to be stabilised too - nothing serious but it needs to be controlled.

2) I rebuilt the rear calipers and rebuilt the front suspension about 2 years ago. Sadly the top ball joints are worn out already (after only about 1500kms). Also the front calipers seem to be binding a little. I`m not sure if this is servo issue or the front calipers themselves.

3) Speaking of servo I found brake fluid under the air valve diaphragm - not ideal - I`m going to have to redo the servo.

4) A few electrical issues - grotty earths and dodgy wiper motor switches. Also broken heater controls.

5) Power steering needs flushing , filters and probably more - it works but has got less assistance than it used to have

6) Weeping core plugs, a faulty oil pressure sender and some oil leaks at both ends of the crankshaft, though these leaks are not unbearable, yet. On that not does anyone know if you can change core plugs with the engine in-situ ?

So one or two things to do!

I spent a day assessing. Fixed the two corroded side light fittings , finally got the bonnet release working properly and removed the rear valance panel , which is the rustiest.

Cheers

James
(6) Weeping core plugs, unfortunately with the V8s there’s a core plug at the back of the block, hard up against the firewall; maybe someone here knows of a fix ( ? ) to replace without pulling the engine

-G
 
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