1985 Rover 3500 Vitesse

1985 Rover 3500 Vitesse

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1275 GT

Original Poster:

364 posts

165 months

Friday 20th July 2018
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KelvinatorNZ said:
Your carpet looks fantastic, very nice. Are you also missing the boot floor carpet? Such a pain to get hold of frown
Thanks, I'm really happy with how they cleaned up. Yeah I'm also missing the lowest carpet section, such a pain I can't find one anywhere. In the end I bought a Range Rover carpeted wheel cover to cover the spare wheel. Once the boards are in with the main carpet over the top though it doesn't bother me so much.

Joe

PorkRind

3,053 posts

204 months

Friday 20th July 2018
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I was up till 3 am last night reading this post / researching about the 3500 - amazing post and some wonderful skills by the OP, hats off to you smile.

Usget

5,426 posts

210 months

Friday 20th July 2018
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FFS, this thread led me onto spending an hour (which I didn't have spare) reading KelvinatorNZ's thread!

1275 GT

Original Poster:

364 posts

165 months

Monday 30th July 2018
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PorkRind said:
I was up till 3 am last night reading this post / researching about the 3500 - amazing post and some wonderful skills by the OP, hats off to you smile.
You need to be careful with that, the last time I did that I ended up with one in my garage...
Thankyou though, really enjoyed getting it to its current state.




Usget said:
FFS, this thread led me onto spending an hour (which I didn't have spare) reading KelvinatorNZ's thread!
The Readers' Cars Section is a dangerous place, I've lost so many hours!




Sorry it's been a while without any updates, it's been a busy week! But lets get back to some Rover.



With the car awaiting its interior before even considering an MOT I wanted to be sure I hadn't missed anything with the rear suspension or metal work.

I'd had a precautionary look at the rear trailing arm body mounts when I was poking around the boot. I didn't find any holes, but an excess of underseal meant I'd just left it alone. This had been nagging on my mind as it's a known weak spot on SD1s, and I'd rather know if I had problems rather than ignoring it and finding out at MOT time. So I went digging.



Got the car nice and high up and off came the wheels.

(the observant of you will already notice the trailing arm removed by the car, got a little carried away without taking any pictures)



It also shows my rear shocks, they're suppose to be the self levelling Nivomat type, but I've got some weird arrangement with helper springs. I've no idea what they are, but the ride is nice and they don't leak so they can stay for now.
As much as it doesn't look like it, I'm doing my best to not do a full nut and bolt restoration. The aim was always if I did one day though I wouldn't have to redo anything again...






This is under the car looking back at the rear axle, you can see the breaks in the underseal showing a bit of orange, which is why i wanted to go digging.
(Drivers side shown as I'd removed the passenger side before I got any before pics!)
I scraped off as much underseal as I could around the bolts so I could get as much penetrating fluid on them as possible, I did not want these to shear!




Pretty grotty

I was amazed at how well the trailing arms came up with only the ends with damage to the coatings. All the old underseal came off revealing a lovely powder coated finish. All the other brackets didn't fair so well and were stripped, treated, and primed before painting as per usual.





Mmmmmm gloss black.


Before.




After.



So with the easy to replace parts sorted, more importantly how was the car!?



Definitely needed looking at!

With any residual underseal and surface rust removed I was left with this.



Previously I'd said this was was on the brink, and although it was a bit dramatic this highlights what I was talking about. At this stage the this is completely savable with no more than some decent rust removing and treating. But in another year of the car being outside and used I definitely think you'd find much more serious rust. Another thing which made this job so much easier was I was the first person here! No bad previous attempts or repairs.

The Driver's side was better, but still in need of immediate attention.



So lots of deox gel, followed by treatment, zinc primer, and top coat, you get the idea by now!



Once it was all dry this was then covered in XCP Rust Blocker, like waxoil but this actually works.





All components ready for assembly.

All nylocs replaced with stainless counterparts, but original zinc plated bolts reused, as these were near perfect.





Another coat of XCP rust blocker and I was happy. Considering its a 33 year old British car thats done some real mileage i was really happy with how this went!



Wheels back on, done.

Joe

CR6ZZ

1,313 posts

144 months

Monday 30th July 2018
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Superb Joe. Well done.

KelvinatorNZ

628 posts

69 months

Monday 30th July 2018
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Interesting mods on the trailing arm with the cupped washers. Normally its just standard flat washers either ends of the bushes. LOL at the garden hose on the arm too; the standard inserts are still available if needed.

Also, no fuel tank protection plate?

You must be close to MOT time now, just the interior to go back in?

1275 GT

Original Poster:

364 posts

165 months

Tuesday 31st July 2018
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CR6ZZ said:
Superb Joe. Well done.
Thankyou smile


KelvinatorNZ said:
Interesting mods on the trailing arm with the cupped washers. Normally its just standard flat washers either ends of the bushes. LOL at the garden hose on the arm too; the standard inserts are still available if needed.

Also, no fuel tank protection plate?

You must be close to MOT time now, just the interior to go back in?
I did wonder if that was how its suppose to be, but it's been done nicely enough. I Wonder why someone did that?
The garden hose did make me laugh too, at some point I'll pull it off again and replace that along with new bushes as I didn't have time to wait for new ones to be delivered.

No, no fuel tank skid plate. It was always rumoured that it was a TP thing, so that puts it past July-August 1985. So mine being a March 85 car might be right, and I can't see any evidence of one ever being on there either. But I've no actual information on when they were brought in. The extra stock certainly went out to India for the Standard 2000 and came back to Rimmer Bros, as you can still buy them NOS. I do have a spare knocking around though too, might be a good idea to put it on, but I'd have to pull the tank and paint that first, and then I'd have to paint the skid plate too.

Yeah this was done at the beginning of June, so almost caught up. Just the interior to go! I've got a lot of pictures for that!

Joe

KelvinatorNZ

628 posts

69 months

Tuesday 31st July 2018
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Im looking forward to your photos of the interior, should look near new if its anything like the care you put into the exterior.

The fuel tank protection plate is interesting. My '84 Vitesse has one, but it does seem a bit hit and miss on which cars do. I thought it might've just been early ones but have seen later cars with them (could be retrofitted though as you say). I need to take mine off and drop the tank too, the exterior of the tank is looking VERY tired.

Eddieslofart

1,328 posts

82 months

Tuesday 31st July 2018
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Enjoyable read, thankyou for taking the time to share Sir. cool

1275 GT

Original Poster:

364 posts

165 months

Wednesday 1st August 2018
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KelvinatorNZ said:
Im looking forward to your photos of the interior, should look near new if its anything like the care you put into the exterior.

The fuel tank protection plate is interesting. My '84 Vitesse has one, but it does seem a bit hit and miss on which cars do. I thought it might've just been early ones but have seen later cars with them (could be retrofitted though as you say). I need to take mine off and drop the tank too, the exterior of the tank is looking VERY tired.
Hopefully they won't disappoint!
I think I've got most of the changes that they made down through brochure changes, but as far as the tank guards go I've got no idea.
I should probably address mine too, but getting petrol all over you when you're lying on the floor is pretty grim...



Eddieslofart said:
Enjoyable read, thankyou for taking the time to share Sir. cool
Glad you've enjoyed it.

Well lets begin the interior. Like all things we need a decent before.



The biggest area up for renovation was the headlining, like so many SD1s it had started to droop. But disappointingly it wasn't for the usual reasons. The car had actually already had a replacement trimmed fibreglass headlining board (usually the original compressed cardboard material droops) and the adhesive holding it to the board had failed. Looking at the rear of it they didn't do a good job with the trimming either. You can also see one of the 3 Very visable clips that hold up the rear of the headlining, these also couldn't go back as they were.



The headlining had also come away around the grab handles, and generally looked tatty, another big problem was the material around the sunroof aperture had began to sag down. Lots of work to do.



You can also see from this picture that the replacement material doesn't match the original lining material on the back of the sun-visors. As this is plastic welded onto the visors, and the only material that I wasn't replacing, this is what I matched the new material too. I did seriously consider trying an OEM+ look and trimming it in alcantara, but in the end I bottled it and decided to go for a factory finish.

This was a whole saga in itself, and went on for almost a year. I've had samples from almost all the automotive trim suppliers I could find. I was told originally it was a colour called empire grey in brushed nylon, but woolies who used to stock it couldn't help, and I wasn't happy with the replacement they offer now. In the end I found a supplier in sussex who had a massive range of colours with the required foam backing, and had a colour that I thought was a better match. To ensure I had enough material I've now got a 10m roll of the stuff!





The rest of the interior was actually in quite good nick, no noticeable damage, just in need of a damn good clean.


There's a little overlap here from when I pulled the headlining, but I think its easiest to pool it all together.



All the grab handles have to come out, rear view mirror, A, B, C, and D-Post trims have to come out too.



That removes the headlining board, exposing the sunroof cassette. This un-bolts and the whole sunroof assembly can be removed (once the cables have been disconnected)



You can remove the lid without dropping the cassette but I needed to address the lining too.

With the lid removed you can really see the lid needed sorting, as it had been hand painted by a previous owner, and was all mat.



The underside is remarkably good though, something that is very hard to find with these panels!



Even the brackets that hold the seal in place were in reasonable condition.

The lid wasn't something that I felt comfortable painting myself, as the Vitesse is so low the rooflline is very visable so it needed to be perfect.
So I consulted a good friend of mine, a professional painter and a very good one at that, who agreed to it. He asked me to do some prep work and deliver it to him in bare metal, as this would ensure the best finsh, and as he was going to do it out of hours at his work.



So off came the paint. Under the red was the original gold, I'd been told by the previous owner that it was already a replacement lid, and the best one he could find.



With the nitromors taking off as much as it would I then sanded down the edges with an orbital sander as instructed, and took the rest of the panel back to bare metal, all brackets on the rear-side where removed (bar the plastic buffers, these are critical in position to the operation of the sunroof. Unfortunately I didn't get any further pictures of it in bare metal, but it was lovely. It was thoroughly treated before paining, and was returned to me looking like this.



Before painting my friend found and brought round his original colour swatch book, and in bright sunlight we compared the colours to the original paint on the roof. There's actually 3 different shades of CNE Targa Red, and the closest match was actually the master shade.

While the lid was away I began stripping the Cassette.



It's a massive assembly that houses the entire sunroof mechanism.



It was filthy, but still functioning fine. The entire sliding mechanism is held in with carefully calibrated runners, these are marked carefully to make reassembly possible!
You can also start to see how the sunroof panel is trimmed. The passenger side is folded over and still attached, the drivers side has rubbed through at this point you can see the remains of the foam and detached causing the sag.



Made by INALFA



With all the runners marked and thoroughly pictured this can then be removed, and the lining pulled off. It is carefully glued around the runners and to the rear edge, with the front edge stitched into a formed plastic bracket, that is clipped over the front edge of the sunroof panel.
Now I'm starting to see why nobody re-trims the aperture!





Next up I removed the material from the headlining board.



You can see from the foam remnants how little glue was used!



No wonder it failed.

I also stripped the D-Post trims, as these are also done in the same material. Underneath was some surface rust and I couldn't leave them like that.



I did take careful note of the tape that's applied to prevent the material pulling through the sharp edges before I removed it though .



Usual process but matt black top coat this time.


This covers all the lead up and prep for the sunroof, next up I needed to actually start with the new material!


Joe

anonymous-user

53 months

Wednesday 1st August 2018
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Excellent work !
You're not wrong about the different shades of Targa Red. I bought a new MG Metro in that colour and it needed regular trips to the body shop (Dad took it out first day I had it and clipped a parked car, g/f rear ended someone, garage dented the spoiler, I jackknifed a trailer into it). Every time it was painted they used a different shade. It looked like a patchwork quilt under street lights !

J.C...

156 posts

104 months

Wednesday 1st August 2018
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Brilliant thread and such a cool car. I’ve only just discovered it today and done the whole thing in one sitting. I’m absolutely amazed at all the little repairs you’ve colour matched perfectly.

KelvinatorNZ

628 posts

69 months

Wednesday 1st August 2018
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Im still amazed that BL used pressed steel to form the D pillar trim. Seems way over kill, but its probably the only thing that wont warp or crack as time goes on

M4CK 1

469 posts

126 months

Wednesday 1st August 2018
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Great to see these cars. Loved them and Range RoverV8's, ever since my uncle would borrow them from work. Boy these would pull like a train, gave me fright of my life when having reached over a 100mph the boot opened and felt like I was in a giant hoover.

oobster

7,065 posts

210 months

Thursday 9th August 2018
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Might be of interest:

https://www.minichamps.de/artikel_neu/rover-vitess...

Available in the next couple of weeks I believe.

OP: If I purchase one i'll put 1-18th scale reg plates of your car on it!

BiTurbo228

55 posts

172 months

Thursday 9th August 2018
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Now we're talking. I've wanted an SD1 for ages. Nearly bought one but a manual XJ40 turned up first. Then nearly ended up with a pickup conversion but that went before I could get it :S

Now they're not cheap as chips anymore and I've missed the boat somewhat!

I'll just have to live vicariously with your excellent example wink

1275 GT

Original Poster:

364 posts

165 months

Thursday 9th August 2018
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Grahamdub said:
Excellent work !
You're not wrong about the different shades of Targa Red. I bought a new MG Metro in that colour and it needed regular trips to the body shop (Dad took it out first day I had it and clipped a parked car, g/f rear ended someone, garage dented the spoiler, I jackknifed a trailer into it). Every time it was painted they used a different shade. It looked like a patchwork quilt under street lights !
I bet you were heart broken to have it damaged so much, and I'd be even more disappointing to get it back like that, I bet it looked good when you received it though.


J.C... said:
Brilliant thread and such a cool car. I’ve only just discovered it today and done the whole thing in one sitting. I’m absolutely amazed at all the little repairs you’ve colour matched perfectly.
Thankyou smile I went back and added some more pics so hopefully it still reads well. I'm really happy with how the repairs went too, doesn't look out of place amongst some much more expensive metal when I've taken it out.

KelvinatorNZ said:
Im still amazed that BL used pressed steel to form the D pillar trim. Seems way over kill, but its probably the only thing that wont warp or crack as time goes on
I was too! But then again those panels (A post, B post, C post) Are the only ones that don't warp! I'd love a metal dash binnacle cover, and rear speaker covers!


M4CK 1 said:
Great to see these cars. Loved them and Range RoverV8's, ever since my uncle would borrow them from work. Boy these would pull like a train, gave me fright of my life when having reached over a 100mph the boot opened and felt like I was in a giant hoover.
It's a shame you don't see more of them, they have become a very rare sight. I bet that was scary.
Mine isn't pulling as well as I'd like at the moment, but I have a plan to make sure the fuelling is correct....





oobster said:
Might be of interest:

https://www.minichamps.de/artikel_neu/rover-vitess...

Available in the next couple of weeks I believe.

OP: If I purchase one i'll put 1-18th scale reg plates of your car on it!
Now I'd love to see that!
I've got the blue 1:18th one coming in the next few days, the red one on order, and I'll be buying all the racing variants too! I've been waiting for a 1:18th model for ages so I'm making the most of it.

BiTurbo228 said:
Now we're talking. I've wanted an SD1 for ages. Nearly bought one but a manual XJ40 turned up first. Then nearly ended up with a pickup conversion but that went before I could get it :S

Now they're not cheap as chips anymore and I've missed the boat somewhat!

I'll just have to live vicariously with your excellent example wink
The car that just wasn't meant to be by the sounds of it, I've always liked the shape of the xj40s, and they have the same sunroofs as SD1s apparently... I was so lucky that this one came up at the right time.

They have started to climb a bit value wise haven't they, won't change me using it as much as I can though.

Apologies for the lack of updates, I started a new job last week so everything's been a bit hectic. Hopefully I'll get all the pictures uploaded tonight though.

Joe

Andy Meads

320 posts

202 months

Thursday 9th August 2018
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Your work on this car is inspiring. Such care and attention to detail is a rare quality. The design really has aged well.

It reminds me of a red Vitesse a friend’s dad had back in the 80s. I’ll never forget it. He drove me through Basildon at a totally insane speed when I was about 9.

Well done!

Edited by Andy Meads on Thursday 9th August 21:39

1275 GT

Original Poster:

364 posts

165 months

Thursday 9th August 2018
quotequote all
Andy Meads said:
Your work on this car is inspiring. Such care and attention to detail is a rare quality. And the design really has aged well.

And it reminds me of a red Vitesse a friend’s dad had back in the 80s. I’ll never forget it. He drove me through Basildon at a totally insane speed when I was about 9.

Well done!
Thank you, that means a lot to me, I'm glad you enjoy reading my ramblings.

Now that's the kind of memory that stays with you for life, I'm glad reading this made you think of it.




Well we're finally at the trimming stage.

I've never done anything like this before, but I'd done my research.
Everything was impeccably cleaned with all the residual glue removed to give the new material the best chance of staying on the board.


This is definitely a two man job, and you have to work quickly and cleanly. The new material is so light in colour that any marks would show up like you wouldn't believe.

First thing up for trimming was the main board.



I rolled out the right amount of material and roughly cut it oversize.

At this stage I didn't get too many pictures as it all happens quite quickly.

The gluing is done in two stages, with the material laid onto the board, half is folded back onto its self, and the contact adhesive is then sprayed onto both the board and the rear side of the material, and let to go tacky.
It's then worked onto the board, making sure its carefully pushed into the hand grab areas. This is very tricky, as you have to stretch it enough to form it onto the board, but if you overstretch it, it will ruin the material, and mark it.
The same is then done for the otherside. This is even harder as you've got the sun-visor recesses. But I got there in the end.



With the board nicely trimmed it was flipped to cut off any excess, leaving enough to wrap around the edges.



At this stage we made a mistake. Anyone with an SD1 will already see it. We trimmed and edged the sunroof aperture...

This is suppose to be left with excess to tuck around the cassette opening. Of course this realisation didn't happen until it went into the car. It means instead of stretched material around the aperture I have a slight view of the cassette. Annoying, but I can live with it.



The trimming went so well apart from that.



Look at that match!

D-Posts next!



Gorilla tape applied in the factory locations to prevent any future damage before trimming.





Not bad, not bad at all.

Now for the tricky bit, the aperture.



First up was stitching the original plastic former onto new material. This was done with new heavy duty thread matched to the original, and done by my very skilled mother! It's an amazing job, and something that I couldn't have done myself.



Now I could offer it to the sliding panel. This was of course cleaned to an inch of its life before too.

The side profile of the material is very complex, with lots to avoid to ensure correct operation.





A hard task to replicate.





Very happy again with how this turned out.





Again all brackets were cleaned to make sure no stains would happen!



So much work to get to this stage!



Of course the cassette had to be impeccably clean too!



Mounting the panel to the cassette went really well, with all the brackets lining up to their marked positions, and the cutouts clearing the sliding brackets.



Look at that aperture, I can now see why this job is avoided when replacing the headlining. It was some serious effort.

So close to going in the car now though.


Joe

Cupramax

10,469 posts

251 months

Thursday 9th August 2018
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clapbow