mk2 V6 Rover Vitesse project vehicle

After a friend bought a 820 Vitesse with a damaged gearbox for the parts I was fortunate to be offered the rolling shell as a project. Not being able to resist a challenge I accepted (of course !) With the help of another friend we towed the shell over to my house so I could begin work on it.

Well, ha, where to start ... looks like everything at the front end of the car is totally different. I'd already assembled a few months ago all of the parts I thought I would need, namely a spare engine, autobox, steering rack, selector, wiring loom etc. Mostly from an 88 Sterling and a 89 827Si. With the donor I stripped the gearbox off first (the turbo, radiator and intercooler had all been removed for parts), both front hubs and driveshafts and then the engine. This left a very big hole under the bonnet !

Next I removed the rear-most crossmember to replace the steering rack, which although it looked totally different still seemed to fit everything in OK. The pipe-work for the V6 steering is totally different also, so I've changed that now. That's all refitted and ready to go now.

I've just removed the front bumper and the O/S wing, all ready to run wiring through for the new engine. Also the dash is all unbolted and ready to be pulled out so I can wire all the feeds for the PGM-Fi section of the loom in.

Engine

Work was already in progress on a new engine, as I was planning to replace the current one in the mk1 Vitesse before the summer. It was a running engine that I bought, but I decided to check it out while it was out of the car anyway. Probably a good job that I did as I found some quite bad wear on the bearings. Click these pictures for larger versions.

The crank is being polished and new bearings sourced by a local engine repairer, should be back with me for the start of next week when I'll hopefully be able to re-assemble it all for refitting quite soon. More pictures of that will appear on a seperate page here.

Since the engine is rebuilt - not exactly how I wanted it :( I put it back in with the help of a few friends to guide things and make sure we didn't snag anything. (click for full size pictures)

Then slid the gearbox on from under the nearside wheel arch, then put that hub and driveshaft back on.

Refitted the oil pressure gauge and warning light sender, followed by the offside driveshaft and hub. Bolted and torqued it all up so it's back on its wheels again, which makes a change ! Then installed the cooling system and autobox cooler pipes. I've also fitted an old Mini oil cooler in front of the radiator (temporarily as the condensor will go in there soon) with the pipes running to the gearbox, though it's not plumbed in at the moment as I would like to get a temperature reading off the gearbox oil in 'normal' setup before I go messing with it. Fitted the front bumper back on too, so once the wiring is threaded in behind the wings and they are back on the lights can go back in too.

Finally finished with the wiring loom, got it all trimmed up and rebound, and it's about halfy the weight it was originally but still looks about as big !

Next the wiring was plumbed into the car, getting it through the holes from the engine bay to the car was probably the worst part of the whole operation. Once that was done the 8 fused power feeds required to run the engine were connected to fuses in the 820 loom and other feeds like the fuel pump and starter connected. Once the battery was charged it started first time (a bit loud without the front exhaust section though !) and I then refitted all of the cooling system and other peripherals.

A few pictures of the finished item -

SRS. 4/3/02.