Antediluvian Rover

[LC Torana]

You leave a car for a few daysmonths, and look what happens.

Groan.

 

So let's open the boot.

 

Oh, I need a carriage key to open the inside of the bootlid.

 

There's one in the toolkit under the dash...

 

...so we'll use that.

 

Now unscrew the spare

 

Oh.  That needs cleaning.

 

And I'll just glue up that loose bit of lino.

 

Chock the back wheel.

 

That hubcap will have to come off.

 

The original tools from 1949:

This is a SERIOUSLY well made car.

 

Loosen the wheelnuts, and jack 'er up.  The original 1949 Rover jack is in perfect working order, and is well up to the job, but when I'm at home, I don't use it, I use a trolley jack like any normal person.  The reason why is that the original jack is used from inside the car, through a trapdoor in the floor, and the jacking point is at the centre of gravity, so you jack up one whole side of the car!  I much prefer to just jack up one corner for wheel changing, thank you very much.

 

And I always pop a stand under a chassis rail as well, no matter what jack I use.

 

Spare wheel was filthy so I cleaned it up both sides.  The car will need 4, probably 5 new tyres before it gets submitted for a roadworthy as each tyre, although mostly brand new with full tread, are all nevertheless old and cracked.  And this spare I'm putting on is the worst.  But for now, while the car is standing getting worked on, I'm just tubing up the old ones.  Plenty of time for buying tyres when I get to drive the car.

 

The rest is straightforward wheel changing 101, until I came to look at the wheel I took  off:

 

That's the ravages of brake fluid you're looking at.  The front brakes are hydraulic, and the wheel cylinders were leaking badly.  That's another story I'll tell another day, but there were rivers of brake fluid running down the inside of this wheel, which is now rather rusty.

 

What should I do guys?  Just wire brush it and use this?

 

 

In the meantime, I'll get back onto what I went out there to do - steam cleaning the chassis, ready for repainting under there.

[Split_Pin]

More of this sort of thing! I love how the factory jack works!

[LC Torana]

OK.  First a stiff and then a soft wire brush, then two coats of chemical rust converter:

 

 

Hmm.  Still rather rust-coloured under that plastic surface.  So let's sand it down and apply a third coat.

Much better.  So mask it up ready for painting:

 

Good.  So now for the prescribed three coats of wheel paint:

 

You might think this job is pretty rough, but by my standards, it's quite outstanding.

 

So now it's time to get in touch with my inner tube.

 

Onward and upward.  Might get this car on the road by April 2031, if I crack on.

[dollywobbler]

Excellent. More please.

[alf892]

yeah c'mon!

[LC Torana]

Apologies for lack of recent posts, but life gets in the way sometimes.

 

Customers' radios are on the workbench and the 1949 Rover must wait.

 

Edit: come to think of it, this radio is older than the Rover!

 

Normal service will hopefully be resumed soon.

[rml2345]

Excellent stuff so far. There are houses now that aren't as well built as that Rover.

[beko1987]

Lovely! Imagine the hard time that rover would give a modern widowmaker jack... How does the rover jack work then? I'm struggling to work out how it goes from the inside out and lifts the whole thing...

[LC Torana]

I have never heard of a "widowmaker" jack so googled it, and found the "Hi-Lift" jack - never seen or heard of such a thing ever before.

 

You could not use one of those to jack up this Rover, or indeed any similar car; these have no jacking points on the body whatsoever. You must jack it up from or under the chassis. If you tried to jack it up via the body you would bend something.

 

Trolley jacks, bottle jacks, BMW-style scissor jacks and screw-bottle jacks can all be used simply by sliding under a suitable point on the chassis.

 

The vertical-screw jack, as supplied with the Rover P3 and P6, needs to go into a hole in the side of a chassis rail (or equivalent), and jack up the car in a "side-on" manner.

 

In the case of the Rover P6, there are jacking points in the sills you use from outside the car.

 

But in the P3, the chassis rails are a loooong way inboard from the side of the car, due to the width of the running board.

 

Hence the trapdoor in the floor - the factory jack is used inboard of the chassis rail, and the jack is long enough for the crank handle to be turned from inside the car.

 

In a few days' time I'll post a photo of the factory jack (very busy few days ahead), but a photo of the jack in operation will be impossible as the garage is just too tiny.