I've not managed to do too much work over the past few weeks as work has been quite demanding and it hasn't really left me much time to worok on the car. Things have happened though.
I had managed to start the engine about a month ago, but the following few times, after attaching the oil pressure gauge, I noticed that there was no reading at all. This concerned me a little as all that hard work I had done could have been detroyed if this wasn't sorted out. So I looked around the Internet for some advice on what I needed to do, checked the Haynes manual and looked through the newsgroup to see what was needed.
It seems that the thing to do is to prime the oil pump before you start the engine. Not really knowing what that meant I went and did all the research above. It turns out that one of the biggest problems with rebuilding these Rover V8 engines is that the oil pump does not prime itself. In other words, the oil pump cannot suck the il from the sump so that it can be pumped around the engine. It needs a little assistance.
There are a number of suggestions as to how this can be done. For me, to ensure that I would only need to do this once I made sure that I covered all possibilities.
The first recommended method of priming the oil pump is to take the pump cover off the engine and completely fill every visible hole with vaseline. I also filled in the hole where the oil pump gears also fitted (just to make sure). What this attempts to do is to remove all the air from the pump so that when you turn the engine over a vaccum is created that sucks the oil from the sump. The reason that you use vaseline is that when the oil heats up it simply melts the vaseline away. Any other agent may not dissolve as nicely.
I tried this method and still didn't get a reading on the pressure gauge.
So the other way recommended to prime the oil pump is (having packed the pump with vaseline) to remove the distributor, use an electric drill with a length of dowel with a slot in the end over the top of the gears which can be seen at the bottom of the distributor casing, and spin the drill at a few thousand RPM's. It is also advisable to take off one of the rocker cover assemblies. As you turn the drill on you should see spurts of oil come out of the top of the rocker assemblies. BE CAREFUL AS THE OIL WILL COME OUT RATHER QUICKLY!
So I gave this a go and the first thing that happened was that a large splodge of vaseline ended up of the garage floor. I had fogotton to refit the oil filter. So I filled the oil filter with clean oil and re-attached it. Tried the drill again and a shot of oil hit the garage wall. I was a little surprised at how little effort the drill needed to turn the pump!.
Tried the drill again, just to make sure, and oil continued to flow. So I reassembled the rocker covers, refitted the distributor, checked the timing was OK and then started the car.
The oil pressure gauge struck into life immediately. The early reading was arounf 40psi which I'm told is about the correct setting. This will go down as the oil gets warmer, but as I don't have exhausts on this thing yet I don't like to run the engine for too long. It upsets the neighbours and no back pressure isn't good for any engine (so I'm told).
However, I did leave the engine run for long enough so that I could try the gearbox and test the clutch. Had some difficulty in trying to engage gears. It was if though the clutch was not being completely dis-engaged. Perhaps the cable isn't moving properly, I'll need to investigate this one. I also want to try to flush out the gearbox and change the oil, so that's the next plan of action. I also have a baffle/cover plate that I never fitted to the front side of the bellhousing. That has now been cleaned up and is ready to be bolted in place.
This weekend I managed to get an accelerator cable off a Sierra. I need to see how this is going to fit onto the standard Rover inlet manifold - the cable ends are completely different. If anyone has done this I'd be interested to hear how it was achieved. Thanks for now.
Well, not much has happened over the last few weeks as I have been laid up due to having my toe nails removed. Not very pretty, but ingroing toe-nails are no fun, especially at my age! So they've been removed, I've been hobling around in pain and the car has stayed pretty much as it was. Some things have changed though.
I have managed to sort out an accelerator cable that fits onto the Ford accelerator pedal and the standard inlet manifold for the Rover. To do this I took an ordinary cable from an old Sierra (from the scrappie), chopped off the linkage to the Ford carbs, leaving me with a cable that was open ended on one side. The fitting to the pedal and into the bulkhead remained the same. The only thing that I did when removing the cable from the dead Sierra was that I used a little too much force removing it and consequently tore off the plastic retaining teeth that fit into the bulkhead. No bother though as I can simply get another one in due course.
The open end of the cable needed to be fixed in two places on the inlet manifold. Firstly, there is a bracket where the outer cable is fixed to. Then the inner cable attaches to the linkage on the carburettors. I managed to fix the outer cable by sliding it into fixing normally used for brake lines. This allowed me to fix the olive to the end of the cable and to then bolt the fixing together around the bracket to give a nice, clean join. The inner cable was the run onto the linkages of the carbs and fixed with a cable join. This is very similar to what you see in normal electric 'choc-blok' connectors, with the plastic removed.
All that done, the accelerator cable now works a treat.
Now for the next cable - the clutch cable.
Before I could attach the cable to the bulkhead I needed to fit in a cover plate at the bottom of the bell housing, between the bell housing and the engine block. I had forgot to put this in as I was putting the engine and gearbox together. So with the plate all cleaned up and painted, I fitted it. I had to bend back the joining plate that helps hold the engine and bell housing together, but this will get straightened up with the use of a block of wood and a jack - using the engine weight to push it back into place.
When I tried the clutch earlier, with the engine running, it seemed as though the clutch wasn't disengaging properly. This gave me a nice grinding sound when I tried to change gear. Pilgrim supplied me with a bracket that fits to the top of the bulkhead that helps to elongate the cable so that it takes up some slack of the inner cable. On the clutch conversion detailed by Pilgrim it is the outer cable that pushes the release fork, thus disengaging the clutch. If the inner cable is too long, the clutch fork is not pushed far enough, so the need for the bracket.
The only thing is that I wish I new this when I started. In order to fix this bracket in place I had to removed the steering column, pedal box and servo unit so that I could drill some more holes in the bulkhead to fix this thing to. What a hassle. Anyway, with the pedal box removed I decided to clean the pedals and paint them black so that they looked tidy too. I drilled the holes, bolted the bracket in place and then refitted everything together.
I haven't yet managed to try the clutch cable yet as my feet are still sore from surgery. Next on the agenda though is to change the gearbox oil, straighten up the plate between engine and bell housing, tighten all bolts to the propshaft/diff/gearbox, and see if I can drive this thing out of the garage. Then it'll be a case of save some money for Christmas pressies and come the new year hope that Santa brings me a body tub for the car (and exhausts, wheels, trim, seats, lights......)
