Zelandeth

Yep, this is using the holder one of those discs were in. Those have been safely stashed in the paperwork folder now so they can't walk off. As far as the boot lid wiring goes, the reversing light does work, as does one of the number plate lights. It will be getting a more permanent fix in due course though. Will probably tackle that when I properly investigate why the boot lid doesn't latch properly.

I'll try to remember to grab some measurements at some point. Did forget one small detail I added today. Always just feels odd having an older car without a disc in the window.

The cloth outer being tired I'm not too worried about, and generally it seems healthy enough - just something has obviously chewed on that bit and there's bare copper showing in a few spots. That will not be the last time I mix up positive/nagative when writing it down... I did just have to do one bit of wiring correction. Albeit a 30 second one. The brake/running light filament connections to the lower bulb had been flipped at some point so you got a bright running light and dim brake light. Easy fix though. Can't remember if @LightBulbFun was still after close ups of the rear plate. If so, there you are! No markings I can see at a glance on the front.

Had a spare half hour this afternoon and managed to dodge the showers to investigate the (main) oil leak on the Rover. Sure there are a bunch, but there's only one I'm currently bothered about as it's making quite a mess. Have to admit I was really, really surprised by how clean a scene greeted me when the rocker cover was removed. Not entirely sure if this is the cause of THE leak, but it absolutely won't have been helping. I've already got a full upper gasket set on the way, but I've blobbed a bit of instant gasket in there for now to see if it will help. Leaving it to set for a couple of hours before I test it. It's absolutely not a fix, and a new gasket will be going in when it arrives. Stripping things down to this state takes less than ten minutes so it's no massive hassle. It looks like the exhaust valve cover is weeping a bit too, so I'll change that at the same time. The kit does include everything needed to do the head gasket, which at some point I will have to do - because of this O-ring which is clearly not in the best of health. Leaving it alone until it becomes an issue or I have other reasons to disturb things. I'm not going looking for work at this point. Not sure why you couldn't do that by removing the water pump...or may be that you need to slide that in which makes it impossible to situate properly...or the expectation is that you would just have the head off semi-regularly anyway to be de-coked back in the day anyway. Obviously less of an issue with modern fuels and oils. Though I did find some... Methinks some heat shrink will be getting deployed there. Especially on that leftmost wire which is a direct battery positive...yeah, that looks completely safe doesn't it?

Test drive successfully completed. I can confirm that she is now running *way* better. Definitely feels more willing in addition to being smoother. I've definitely got a lot better at driving the car smoothly as well...still not 100%, but vastly better than I was when I first collected it. I really will need to do an onboard video at some point. The noise in first gear in particular is something from a very different era.

To be honest I'm surprised it was running at all - the heel of the points was just barely touching the spindle. Guess it proves the oldest bit of advice out there - always check the basics before assuming something complicated is amiss!

Fixed it! For now at least. Root cause: There was no points gap. Must have closed up when the securing screw was tightened up when they were last set. Been there, done that myself more than once. Gap has been set using a bit of card for now, I'll dig the feeler gauges out later to fine tune it. There is definitely some wear on this distributor though, and I think the lobe for number 1 is the most worn, so it was basically getting no spark. Taking bets on it finding a new way to do the same thing in about 30 miles time... While I had the distributor off the car I got the fine timing adjustment control knob freed off so that now works again.

Switched over to the new cap and leads (one of my old Lada spares is long enough for the king lead) and it made precisely zero difference. Old rotor on is worse. Then noticed I can absolutely reliably make the miss come and go by pushing the whole distributor assembly towards the rear of the car. Okay, so that's my avenue of investigation for the afternoon when I've next got five minutes. Worn distributor shaft running off centre? There is a spare distributor in one of the boxes which seems in good order so no massive headache if that's the case.

Seems like you did for a while! Then it decided to come back. Only so many things it can be. Even with the acorn doodad removed the spark from no 1 lead itself is really weak, so that may have been a problem, but wasn't the only problem! I'll re-terminate the lead first as that involves the minimum of faffing about then see where it gets us.

Wouldn't surprise me at all if they're original. They all seem to have identical labelling on. They've definitely held up pretty well I say! A full new set came with the car, so as soon as I've got fresh coolant to go in they'll all be getting changed.

The trip home was bloody awful. However we got there eventually. Time to get back to this. Spot the difference. Yep, first new door seal is in. Looks a bit healthier! One down, three to go. You can still see a little daylight around the top of this, but it's far better than it was. The wind noise is still there, but has been reduced by several orders of magnitude. I did notice when getting back from the test run I could smell a bit of coolant, sure enough it was dripping from the hose to the heater matrix. The staining there suggests it has been for quite a while. The hose actually just pulled straight off as it had compressed so much under the clip. Lost about 50ml of coolant changing this as it's the highest point in the system and the leak was positioned such that it had let the water drain down into the rest of the system. I've noticed that she does have a bit of a miss now and then, especially when cold. While the surprisingly good impression of a V8 burble at idle might be amusing on the right car, it needs sorting. Investigation has shown that we have a really weak spark on no 1. Which is interesting as I know SiC has already done some fault finding on this. We seem to have an absolutely solid spark at the other five cylinders (my eyes have just about stopped spinning from checking that), however removing the plug for no 1 at idle when cold does nothing. Removing the bakelite lead holder entirely from the equation (as they have a tendency to go electrically leaky) we still have a very poor spark from that HT lead. So it basically has to be the lead itself or the distributor cap I think - that's the only thing not shared with other cylinders I think. Ran out of time today, but hopefully that will be pretty simple to sort as there's only so many variables involved. Also noted this when I got back from a run this afternoon. That's oil. Quite a lot of oil. Not quite as much oil as the Jag used to mark it's territory with, but close. I was initially concerned this might have been coming from the rear main, but I'm not so sure now. I'm not expecting this car to ever be 100% oil tight, but that's a little much. There's definitely evidence of quite a lot of oil running down the right hand side of the block towards the rear. Also visible pooled oil on the inlet manifold above that area. I need to remove some stuff before I can really try to track this down. It's currently a little buried as the right hand side of the engine bay is kinda busy. Wondering if it might be something as simple as a wrecked intake valve cover gasket given it does look quite well squished where I can see it towards the rear. No idea when the valve clearances were last checked anyway so would definitely not hurt to check those anyway. I'm just waiting on coolant arriving so I can get the rest of the cooling system hoses changed.

Just took us nearly two fscking hours to transfer between Heathrow terminals 3 and 4 because the trains have gone to hell - but nobody actually seems to know what's happening so we wound up getting directed around in circles. Just what we wanted after an 8 hour overnight flight (with no entertainment as the screen was broken) when hauling around a 45kg case! ... Finally escaped the airport and have merged straight into a stationary queue on the M25. I am officially done with this shit.

Well our time in the US is drawing to a close. One last meet up with some friends tomorrow for brunch then it's off to the airport. Thankfully a direct flight home from Detroit rather than faffing about with any transfers. We're used to flying through Detroit as well so that makes it feel at least a bit less stressful. I'm only *slightly* concerned about my luggage having a critical structural integrity failure en route with how much stuff has ended up crammed into it... I'm just resigned to the fact it is going to be overweight. Even so the fee for that is still far cheaper than the cost of shipping even half the contents home so we'll just deal with that. While it's been nice to see folks again, I'm really ready to be back home again. While I really appreciate family putting us up, it's quite stressful staying here. Ready to be back in a place where I'm in control of things like the temperature and where I'm not worried about unknowingly doing something that annoys someone. Plus I really want to get back to looking over (and driving) the Rover! Don't necessarily expect any sense from me for a few days though. The time difference travelling to the UK from US sucks. We'll basically be losing 5 hours - so we depart here at 1835 local, and arrive in Heathrow at 0715 the following morning - which my brain is going to think is 0215 in the morning...given I have sleep and energy management issues at the best of time, jetlag generally does wreck me pretty well these days.

Standard pressure cap setup with a flat rubber seal on the cap which sits against a shoulder in the bottle. Irked me that a £2 part had been skimped and wound up causing me a whole bunch of headaches. Granted that pretty much set the tone for ownership of that car when it barfed half the contents out of the cooling system on the journey home.

Speaking of the green hoses - don't forget there's one which joins the bottom halves of the fuel tank around the central tunnel. That often gets missed when the rest of the car are changed, with predictable results. Someone had changed that on my orange one... unfortunately they'd changed it for a piece of heater hose... Tail lights will polish up with some elbow grease, but are about as fond of staying that way as the rest of the paint work. My Rapid was this colour and it had to be the worst paint for oxidising I'd ever come across. A well sorted example does drive really well though. Always surprises me how smooth and rev happy the engines are for a relatively old fashioned OHV design. I'd probably buy and keep a head gasket in stock if there's no history of it having been done vaguely recently (seems especially common to be an issue with cars that have sat around). Plus side is that it's only a few hours work to change so long as it's not warped and the most specialised tool needed is a torque wrench. Check that the seal on the coolant expansion bottle is present and in good shape - otherwise you can end up in a situation where water boils in the head and stops circulating under heavy loads.

If it's a piston pump as it looks like it won't care about direction of rotation of the motor. So long as the piston goes up and down, the direction of air flow is determined by the valves in the head. Or not if they're not sealing properly. Hopefully it's not an absolutely massive pain to get to a fitting to confirm there is actually compressed air coming out of the correct side of the pump while it's going.

Which is great fun the first time you take an engine out and it tries to flip itself upside down.

Visiting one of the northern states with hard winters is quite an eye opener... I'm in Michigan quote frequently, and it's absolutely normal to see cars you can see daylight all the way through. Or pick up trucks where the bodywork is clearly holding the chassis together. Always interesting being overtaken by something doing 90+ down the freeway which is visibly flexing in the middle as it goes down the road.

Today's spot in the Eastwood Mall car park.

Probably a silly question, but you've confirmed that the compressor is running, I know that. Have you however confirmed that it is actually moving air though? I've lost count of how many "new" items I've had arrive DOA from eBay/Amazon in the last few years.

Regarding the lumpy running on the 205 - have you got a clear line on the return? I wonder if there could be a tiny leak on the pump itself so it *is* pulling air in, but not from any of the lines - should be visible on the return though I'd expect.

Why on earth would anyone buy a car with suspension like this over here?!? Just in from an hour's drive and feel like I've been beaten up. It's not even a European car for goodness sake...why spring the damned thing like an Audi?!? Oh...of course. Because everyone has to pretend to be the sodding Germans and no body even has the choice of comfort over track lap times any more...

Last case finally arrived...at some point overnight. We've no idea when, we just discovered it when we opened the door to go out this morning. It didn't help that Air France managed to put the wrong person's stickers on the cases versus the bag claim stickers on our passports, so the bags didn't have the right people's names on. So I had them looking for a soft shell pink case rather than hard shell green one which was actually AWOL. Got there in the end...moral of the story, don't use Air France, and for the love of all that's holy don't travel through Paris. Rental car is a very boring 2021 Ford Explorer. At least they've put the physical buttons back on the centre console rather than the idiotic touch panel nonsense the 2015 one we usually used had. Engine is a wheezy four cylinder unit which feels about 100bhp short of being able to handle the weight of the vehicle, and the suspension is thoroughly European...great on Mid West concrete slab roads...

Yes, we will absolutely have to do a back to back comparison of the two. They couldn't really be much different in design approach if they tried. I do wonder how many people this catches out. Thankfully I've enough experience with stuff from this era that positive earth isn't a surprise. Trying to figure out if a car is positive or negative earth when there's no battery and two red battery leads can be a good game though. -- -- -- We did make the connecting flight - just! Involved a mad sprint across the airport, literally, not helped by getting pulled asode for an enhanced security check - while the personnel there spent 80% of the time nattering among themselves than actually looking at the bags. Plus had the joy of starting the first one with the guy pointing at my backpack and repeatedly shouting "Non!" At me repeatedly, you know context or anything would be way too useful. Then got exactly the same treatment at the gate. I seriously hate that bloody airport. Then we eventually got to Detroit, having spent the whole flight with the person in the seat directly behind me complaining that they'd been feeling awful the last few days, and coughing and sneezing their lungs out. You know if you're feeling sick and have to make a flight, maybe you could have at least put a mask on for the benefit of others, or at least try to cover your mouth when you cough/sneeze. So fully expecting to have the joys of whatever that was to look forward to. While we made the connection, sadly our luggage didn't. Three of the four cases should be arriving here this evening it sounds like - though the tracking system has currently no trace of mine. We're hoping this is a tracking system glitch, but we'll see. It may be that my one has indeed just vanished into the aether. We'll see I guess!

Well this trip is starting well. Got an absolute grilling going through security, and we've been boarded onto the plane to be told that due to conditions at the destination airport that they're not expecting to depart sooner than 0830. We were due to depart ten minutes ago. We have a connecting flight. We left two hours between the two. Not that with at how short notice this was all arranged we had much choice. Based on current estimates, we will arrive 10 minutes before our connecting flight is due to leave. Unless that is also delayed, we've got problems. It also means we're sitting here at the gate on a full, fully boarded regional jet which is hotter than the surface of the sun, and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. What fun.