A month before the practice day

July 14th 2017

... and things are starting to come together.

The Rover workshop manual gives dire warnings about locking the flywheel and cam sprockets before dismantling anything.
I thought I would make a special tool to replace the starter moter which engages in the ring gear teeth.

It was simple and although the welds are a bit shite, they are solid.

This is it in place. (Note the old pedal box, which has to go to make room for the inlet manifold)

This is it engaged in the ring gear.

The manual shows a fancy tool inserted between the cam gears, but a bit of angle trimmed to size does the job. The tape is a warning device. If it is hanging off, the gears have moved.

I did all this because I thought it best to replace the timing belt. The car had done 47,000 miles, but better safe than sorry. I changed the tensioner and water pump as well. They all came in a kit for £50.

Spot the new and the old ones

There was water staining around the old water pump

All new bits installed. The "special tools" worked a treat.
(The white dots on the gears wheels are not mine. Someone must have tried to change the belt without locking them before me)

Alternator

I decided to fit my competition alternator on the driver's side. On the Rover the original is on a massive casting on the other side which supports the aircon as well. There just isn't room on that side. I cut down the power steering pump casting to use as an alternator bracket. I would have to use the 3V drive belt part of the pulley as there is no path for the bigger drive belt to this side of the engine. 

Plastic casings get in the way.

The advantage of using this casting is that I can use the original belt tensioner.


Because of the nature of the alternator (it's a fork lift truck one in reality) I couldn't easily (cheaply) get a 3 groove drive pulley which would fit without machining the back of it. I got a 5 groove one that will fit straight on and the belt should run happily on that as long as I have aligned it right.

Some simple plates bolted to the casting give me a sound mounting point for the alternator.

And there we are. Bish, Bash, Bosh.
(Yeah. need a new drive belt)

It seems to be aligned. There are some washers on the mount that I can move about to fine-tune it.
I still need to make a stay for the top mount to keep it secure.

Cooling

At this point I decided to plan the cooling system, as much as I could.

The water pipe from the head outlet will go straight to the radiator with an in-line filler cap.

The second outlet which would be the heater circuit on the saloon car goes straight to an alloy pipe which I will cable tie to the inlet manifold. Alloy gets hot pretty quick and my hope is that it will transfer its heat to the inlet manifold to avoid icing. Then it will return to the engine inlet pipe behind the thermostat housing (Thermostat removed, remember). The outlet from the inlet manifold will go to the expansion tank which I will have to site in the passenger footwell. Of course I'll have to move the bulkhead back to separate it from the passenger compartment. I really am running out of space under the bonnet.

I do have a remote thermostat housing to fit, but I'm buggered if I know where it will go.

I stuck the radiator/fan in to make sure there was room.

It's all starting to look a bit full. The spindly bit of wire above the pedals is a former to show the bonnet height at that point.

More Clutch

I have made a bracket to take the clutch cable. It's a bit numb looking at the moment. The angle isn't quite right.

However I can get that sorted more once the car is actually running.

The bottom end was easier than I thought with a bit of 6 mm steel plate under a bellhousing bolt doing the business. (The sumpguard is just loosely in position. That will be refined later).

PropShaft

Fitting the prop-shaft should have been a doddle.

There had been an occasional bang, bang, noise from the rear before I took the Imp engine out. Turns out the tailshaft of the gearbox is too high and the UJ was twatting a chassis rail.

To lower the tailshaft I needed to pack the bracket between its face and the chassis. The bolts were captive and not long enough to take any more spacers. So I had to drill out the pop-rivets holding the floor panels in, remove both side floors, and cut the bolts from their brackets.

As you can reach the top of the bolts with a spanner from beneath the car I decided not to weld the new bolts in place. However you couldn't withdraw the bolts from above because of the floor panels so I cut a couple of holes above the bolt heads and will pop rivet a little cover over each bolt, making replacement a lot easier.

No pics of that as I was getting pissed off with that unexpected job.

This is about up to date now.

The jobs remaining are all the small, but time consuming ones. Gauges, New fuel pipery, Wiring and Ignition, Bulkhead, Cooling system, Sumpguard brackets, Body panels.

Then of course I have to go round the whole car and make sure I have tightened up everything I have replaced.

And then check it all again.