What does £2500 of Rolls Royce look like? Not bad actually..
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A long overdue update….
I went through the thread a few weeks ago and updated all the image links to Flickr, due to photobucket holding my images to ransom!
Apologies in advance for the lack of pictures in this update, I do have some ‘before’ pictures of the underside, but I haven’t taken any since I have done some undersealing so I’ll upload them later all together to show the comparison.
I didn’t manage to get the car useable in time for our wedding in July, nor was my wife’s spitfire ready. My best man saved the day by hiring us a Morgan for the weekend which went down very well indeed.
morgan wedding by Hi -, on Flickr
At the last update I had welded up the boot floor and given it a coat of primer but the car still had running issues where it would cut out after driving ½ a mile.
I had the auto electricians out again to fix some more minor niggles, various dashboard stuff which wasn’t working. Almost all of it is working now, the fuel gauge seems a bit dud so I’ll have to remove that and try and fix it.
The cutting out problem seemed to be something to do with the carbs (I had whittled it down to a fuel starve issue), so I bought 2 carb rebuild kits and a friend rebuilt the carbs for me. Carbs seem a total work of wizardry to me, hugely over complicated as far as I can see, I much prefer an injection system! My friend managed to rebuild the carbs although it wasn’t easy due to all sorts of excess gubbins (unknown solenoids etc) on the carbs, however the car still refused to run correctly.
After our very busy summer I bit the bullet and had the car collected by a local specialist who deals with older Rolls, Bentley and Jag cars. He did a whole host of work (at a very reasonable rate) to it including:
Re-setting the carbs, balancing and sorting out linkages etc,
Fixing various fluid leaks and burst pipes (PAS and Suspension fluid)
Remove exhaust manifold (it was leaking), skim and refit with new gasket/bolts.
Top up all fluids etc,
New wiper arms and blades
Supply and replace fuel pump and lines.
I’m sure there were other small items but that was the bulk of it.
I got the car back from the garage and it is now running correctly, it no longer cuts out after ½ a mile!
I then set about tidying up the underside of the car. I removed the spare wheel cage and spare wheel. The cage needs repairing as it is split but is easily re-usable. The spare wheel is very crusty (and the tyre is toast) so I will look out for a replacement, it is only a 15” steel wheel so not anything too special.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the underside is actually very solid and in very good condition, it looked awful but on closer inspection most of it was an old layer of underseal that was flaking off coupled with a bit of surface rust.
Cue lots of rubbing down, my arms were killing after this! I bought a kit of 5 cans of Wurth underseal (the paintable kind) which came with a useful spray gun attachment to save on finger ache!
It came out really well, hopefully it will offer good protection. (pictures to follow)
Then it was MOT time yesterday! I hadn’t finished the undersealing but was confident it wouldn’t be an issue as I could feel it was all solid. It went straight through the MOT with no issues, just and advisory for surface rust on the underside which will soon be redundant. It felt really nice to drive on the 80 mile round trip for the MOT – although it did feel a tad slow.
20171222_110647 by Hi -, on Flickr
Of course it decided that an MOT was too much for it as promptly blew a hole in the exhaust on the way home, I’m going to try and patch that up in the next couple of days so I can use the car on Christmas day without ruining everyone’s day with exhaust noise!
The current ‘immediate’ jobs list is:
Fix exhaust,
Finish undersealing,
Fix fuel level sender,
Fix interior blower (either a dud motor or no power getting to it).
Then longer term jobs include a full polish of the paintwork and a visit to my friendly bodyshop to sort the rust bubbling on the front wings and below the OS headlight.
Previous total £2770.50
New costs:
Auto electrician (again) £100
Carb rebuild kits £80
Garage bill for various works £770
Underseal £48
New total - £3768.50
I went through the thread a few weeks ago and updated all the image links to Flickr, due to photobucket holding my images to ransom!
Apologies in advance for the lack of pictures in this update, I do have some ‘before’ pictures of the underside, but I haven’t taken any since I have done some undersealing so I’ll upload them later all together to show the comparison.
I didn’t manage to get the car useable in time for our wedding in July, nor was my wife’s spitfire ready. My best man saved the day by hiring us a Morgan for the weekend which went down very well indeed.
morgan wedding by Hi -, on FlickrAt the last update I had welded up the boot floor and given it a coat of primer but the car still had running issues where it would cut out after driving ½ a mile.
I had the auto electricians out again to fix some more minor niggles, various dashboard stuff which wasn’t working. Almost all of it is working now, the fuel gauge seems a bit dud so I’ll have to remove that and try and fix it.
The cutting out problem seemed to be something to do with the carbs (I had whittled it down to a fuel starve issue), so I bought 2 carb rebuild kits and a friend rebuilt the carbs for me. Carbs seem a total work of wizardry to me, hugely over complicated as far as I can see, I much prefer an injection system! My friend managed to rebuild the carbs although it wasn’t easy due to all sorts of excess gubbins (unknown solenoids etc) on the carbs, however the car still refused to run correctly.
After our very busy summer I bit the bullet and had the car collected by a local specialist who deals with older Rolls, Bentley and Jag cars. He did a whole host of work (at a very reasonable rate) to it including:
Re-setting the carbs, balancing and sorting out linkages etc,
Fixing various fluid leaks and burst pipes (PAS and Suspension fluid)
Remove exhaust manifold (it was leaking), skim and refit with new gasket/bolts.
Top up all fluids etc,
New wiper arms and blades
Supply and replace fuel pump and lines.
I’m sure there were other small items but that was the bulk of it.
I got the car back from the garage and it is now running correctly, it no longer cuts out after ½ a mile!
I then set about tidying up the underside of the car. I removed the spare wheel cage and spare wheel. The cage needs repairing as it is split but is easily re-usable. The spare wheel is very crusty (and the tyre is toast) so I will look out for a replacement, it is only a 15” steel wheel so not anything too special.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the underside is actually very solid and in very good condition, it looked awful but on closer inspection most of it was an old layer of underseal that was flaking off coupled with a bit of surface rust.
Cue lots of rubbing down, my arms were killing after this! I bought a kit of 5 cans of Wurth underseal (the paintable kind) which came with a useful spray gun attachment to save on finger ache!
It came out really well, hopefully it will offer good protection. (pictures to follow)
Then it was MOT time yesterday! I hadn’t finished the undersealing but was confident it wouldn’t be an issue as I could feel it was all solid. It went straight through the MOT with no issues, just and advisory for surface rust on the underside which will soon be redundant. It felt really nice to drive on the 80 mile round trip for the MOT – although it did feel a tad slow.
20171222_110647 by Hi -, on FlickrOf course it decided that an MOT was too much for it as promptly blew a hole in the exhaust on the way home, I’m going to try and patch that up in the next couple of days so I can use the car on Christmas day without ruining everyone’s day with exhaust noise!
The current ‘immediate’ jobs list is:
Fix exhaust,
Finish undersealing,
Fix fuel level sender,
Fix interior blower (either a dud motor or no power getting to it).
Then longer term jobs include a full polish of the paintwork and a visit to my friendly bodyshop to sort the rust bubbling on the front wings and below the OS headlight.
Previous total £2770.50
New costs:
Auto electrician (again) £100
Carb rebuild kits £80
Garage bill for various works £770
Underseal £48
New total - £3768.50
You have my sympathy with the carbs. Many, many years ago I seriously over estimated my abilities and tries to rebuild the carbs on my MG midget. That resulted in a walk of shame to a local garage with me handing over some boxes of bits for the professionals to deal with.
It was like trying to rebuild a watch.
Good to hear it's running and you've just got some tweaking and back breaking filthy underseal to get done.
It was like trying to rebuild a watch.
Good to hear it's running and you've just got some tweaking and back breaking filthy underseal to get done.
Yes I'm very pleased with it so far, it still feels a bit like a project car as it is full of junk inside (tools, boxes etc) so hopefully once I've cleaned it out later today it will feel less like a project and more like a Rolls Royce!
I have no idea what the garage rate is per hour, I didn't ask! I did say to him when he collected it that I couldn't spend a huge amount on it and asked him to let me know each time the bill increased by £250. He didn't charge me labour for fitting the fuel pump and lines, I am not quite sure why but I am not complaining! It is a very reasonable bill considering that included a 3rd party collecting the car on a truck and delivering it to him and a 3rd part skimming the exhaust manifold.
I bodged up the hole in the exhaust as best I could earlier today, it is very much a temporary fix just because I really want to use it over Christmas if at all possible. The exhaust system looks quite simple (and quite rotten) so it should be easy enough to buy a load of piping and some silencers in the correct sizes and build myself a whole new system.
I have no idea what the garage rate is per hour, I didn't ask! I did say to him when he collected it that I couldn't spend a huge amount on it and asked him to let me know each time the bill increased by £250. He didn't charge me labour for fitting the fuel pump and lines, I am not quite sure why but I am not complaining! It is a very reasonable bill considering that included a 3rd party collecting the car on a truck and delivering it to him and a 3rd part skimming the exhaust manifold.
I bodged up the hole in the exhaust as best I could earlier today, it is very much a temporary fix just because I really want to use it over Christmas if at all possible. The exhaust system looks quite simple (and quite rotten) so it should be easy enough to buy a load of piping and some silencers in the correct sizes and build myself a whole new system.
Not much of an update, but I did manage to use the Rolls over Christmas and even managed to get a couple of nice pictures of it. I must remember to keep the camera on me and not rely on my phone in the dark though as they don't come out very well!
(yes that is antlers and a red nose you can see adorning the car!)
The fun didn't last too long though as just a couple of days after Christmas I was on the way to collect a little fiat which I had bought on a whim....
(I can't wait to get a photo of the fiat and Rolls side by side)
And the rear suspension started leaking fluid, all in the boot and onto the road. I got it back to the specialist chap who worked on it before as he can make up the pipes in his workshop (they have an odd flare on the end of them) and he is currently fixing it. I'm not sure if it is a pipe of just a seal which has burst as I didn't have much of a chance to look at it properly. Hopefully it will be back tomorrow or early next week!
(yes that is antlers and a red nose you can see adorning the car!)
The fun didn't last too long though as just a couple of days after Christmas I was on the way to collect a little fiat which I had bought on a whim....
(I can't wait to get a photo of the fiat and Rolls side by side)
And the rear suspension started leaking fluid, all in the boot and onto the road. I got it back to the specialist chap who worked on it before as he can make up the pipes in his workshop (they have an odd flare on the end of them) and he is currently fixing it. I'm not sure if it is a pipe of just a seal which has burst as I didn't have much of a chance to look at it properly. Hopefully it will be back tomorrow or early next week!
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