Daves 1987 Scimitar SS1 (Shite Sports 1) Now on the Road!

[coalnotdole]

As some of you will have seen on the N24 thread I have somehow ended up buying a "Modern".

I'm still a bit uncertain how this happened or indeed who's to blame (although I'm fairly certain its myself).

 

At Beaulieu auto-jumble with Joe a couple of weeks ago I spotted an advert on the noticeboard for a "Scimitar SS1, Tax & Test, Headgasket Failure, OFFERS" for some unknown reason I tracked the seller down at his stall and had a chat about the car which turned out to be in bournemouth.  

 

Elderly seller with a collection of austin 7's and edwardian motors had bought it 3 years ago for his wife to commute a couple of miles a day to work, she had wanted a new polo but he'd had an SS1 years ago and I don't think she got much say in the matter! Apparently it served her pretty well up until retirement 6 months ago at which point it got parked up in favour of a Saab and a Romahome.

A month back the seller took it for a spin round the block to show a friend who was interested in buying it and much steam and water happened.

 

 I think writing down his contact details was more a matter of going through the motions rather than an intention of actually going to view the car and a couple of days later I had deliberately forgotten all about it, at this point Joe sent me a flurry of texts asking when I was going to view it - what are mates for etc etc?

 

Anyway ended up driving down to bournemouth with Joe the following bank holiday weekend and had a look at the car and a quick test-drive which resulted in the engine spewing mayo out the side of the head and lots more steam.

 

 

 

 

 

Chassis looked good and the panels were all pretty straight so being put on the spot somewhat by the sudden arrival of another potential purchaser who had turned up early to view I ended up doing a deal for the car including delivery to lymington ferry terminal. 

 

Collecshun Post to follow...

[Jim Bell]

Pop up lights are more important than head gaskets.

[coalnotdole]

The headlights r broken. They don't pop up or down.

When you turn them on the drivers side electric window winds up.. And continues winding up even after the glass has fallen out the top of the door. Probably a bad earth or something.

[mouseflakes]

The headlights r broken. They don't pop up or down.

When you turn them on the drivers side electric window winds up.. And continues winding up even after the glass has fallen out the top of the door. Probably a bad earth or something.

 

Sounds great.

[Rocket88]

Bought one of these for the [ex] SWMBO some years back................fun to drive, but prone to self disassemblement , there was always ANOTHER self tapper in the footwells after every drive.......................

[Jifflemon]

I'm probably looking at this the wrong way, but i'd be throwing that CVH away and adding something a little more modern and zesty! Zetec or duratech are the obvious starters

[Jim Bell]

Or a perkins.

[cort16]

I imagine even a 1.6 CVH would make one of these quite lively. Cheap and easy to get bits for. What's the coke can for?

[Fabergé Greggs]

Love these. Always had an itch for a Nissan turbo powered one.

[plasticvandan]

had a mint 1400 one of these,my Rialto van was much quicker! didnt gel with it at all,and a ball ache to work on being so low to the ground

[wuvvum]

Bloody hell, a 1300!  Brilliant purchase, congratulations.

[coalnotdole]

I had deliberately forgotten all about it, at this point Joe sent me a flurry of texts asking when I was going to view it - what are mates for etc etc?

Ahem selective memory alert...! You also glossed over the fact that I went to make a phone call and when I came back you'd bought it!

 

I'm probably looking at this the wrong way, but i'd be throwing that CVH away and adding something a little more modern and zesty! Zetec or duratech are the obvious starters

I'm sure that would be a worthwhile upgrade but neither dave nor mysyself have time for another project. The prority is to get it back on the road asap.

 

Hopefully Dave will update soon with the next installment of misery!

 

Cheers

 

Joe

[Guest Hooli]

My work a preformed skip to through the CVH in when you need to get rid, how handy is that?

 

Strangely enough I still have the 'special tool' for removing CVH valve springs without removing the head somewhere in my tool collection.

[anonymous user]

The interesting electrics can, apart from bad earthing, be caused by the box under the bonnet housing the relays. My red one didn't like not being used, which was a shame as I never drove it and any time I did fancy using it I had to allow another half an hour to clean all the relays. I'm sure one of mine had a tow-bar, but I can't remember which one, or imagine what it would have been expected to tow.

 

I'm not sure if it's a myth, but I seem to remember being told that the ones with twin windscreen wipers do not have a galvanised chassis, but that the single wiper ones do. All I do know is that my B reg one was rotten and the D reg one wasn't.

[coalnotdole]

The quick test drive i'd taken had made it pretty obvious any hope of driving the car back from bournemouth to the isle of wight was going to be futile.
The seller however seemed very keen to get it out of his life and off his driveway (where it was now spreading a large beige pool of emulsified oil) he offered to tow it to the nearest ferryport on a hired trailer for a nominal fee.
After some brief haggling in which I raised my price more than he lowered his we shook on a deal and I paid a deposit and left. The arrangement was to speak after the bank holiday and arrange a date for delivery.
 
Tuesday afternoon I get an answer phone message saying "I've got the trailer I'll drop it off in lymington tomorrow evening" this threw my world into turmoil a bit as the tow i'd been planning for getting off the ferry and back to the yard wasn't available, insurance hadn't been sorted and the cashpoint wouldn't let me take out the outstanding purchase balance on one day.
 
  

 

 

 

I spent the day of the collection working for an engineering firm not far from the ferry so had very little time to run into the cornershop en route to the ferry and buy a couple of bottles of water just in case, I also took a can of oil and made sure i had a towrope in my van which I parked near the ferry terminal in case of a failure to proceed when exiting the ferry. 

Caught the 5pm ferry across to lymington as a foot passenger and waited in the carpark for matey to arrive with the car on a trailer behind a very rusty saab.

 

No photo of car on trailer i'm afraid but heres one with mateys saab in the background:

 

 

 

The car got quite a bit of attention in the carpark whilst waiting for the ferry "Nice old Fiat" and "I used to have one of those but red, it was horrible"

 

Other than the non functioning clutch and a moderate smell of burning despite having topped up with several litres of sparkling welsh mineral water, the car drove onto the ferry with no problems:

 

 

 

 

Got to go as we've got a crane booked. will bring uptodate later.

 

Dave

[tooSavvy]

Kool...

 

I have a fanciful image in mind >>>>

 

Garry Glitter hand cuffed to door/throttle jam in reverse/shoot off car deck/davvy jones = everyone on deck cheers & claps/you get total loss payout. Win Win

 

* idea may have been inspired by film 'Double Jeopardy'

 

 

TS

[coalnotdole]

By the time the ferry arrived at the island the SS1 had spread a decent sized puddle of emulsified oil across the deck and around the front wheel of a convertible audi.

I like to think anyone who saw it assumed it was coming from the Audi.

 

It took several attempts to get the car to start which was probably a combination of heat soak, fuel evaporation and general awfulness.

 

Once it fired I stuck my foot down and did about 50mph out of the ferry terminal and down the road to a pay-and-display to dump it for the night awaiting a tow:

 

 

 

Next morning I got a tow back to the yard and that afternoon I started to strip the head off:

 

Balls:

 

Interesting:

 

Some genius had re-used the stretch bolts which coupled with a skimmed head had meant most of them bottomed out in the block! The NS/R bolt was already snapped and just sat in the head wobbling about. I broke one other bolt getting the head off and all the rest were bloody close to breaking.

 

At this point I decided CVH's are shit.

[coalnotdole]

With the head off and two snapped studs my blood pressure had gone up a bit but nothing that I didn't think could be sorted:

 

Whilst turning the engine over to get the cambelt off I noticed fluid spraying over the drivers side of the engine bay - turned out to be petrol from this split pipe between the pump and carb:

 

I decided to have a go at the easiest broke bolt first. much hammering and heating later I managed to drill right down through the snapped off section. Opened it out a bit and tried a stud extractor - didn't want to shift and the extractor felt like it might break so I drilled it out bigger and went for an 8mm extractor. Stripped the square off the drive tool for the extractor so went and got a big adjustable spanner and stuck it on there. more heat and penetrating oil.

 

Eventually this happened:

 

Now I've plenty of experience of getting broken easyouts out but these are sykes splined extractors and bloody hard so Instead I started trawling gumtree for a replacement engine,

 

This was a TurboTechnics 1.6 that I went to look at, nice engine with some decent bits:

 

Unfortuantly I decided that the turbo was most likely going to foul the chassis and not really having £400 to waste on an engine that doesn't quite fit I declined it:

 

Back to the existing engine and eventually I managed to drive the broken stud extractor down through the bolt (good job I drilled right through eh?)and into the unthreaded void under the bolt.

Then I progressively opened out the hole using left hand drills in the hope the remains of the bolt would come out.

Then i tried picking the remaining threads out with a scribe, then running a tap down the hole.

Unfortunately the threads were harder than the block and the tap wandered sideways a tiny bit when it hit a remaining bit of bolt on one side of the hole.

 

Eventually managed to get the remaining bit of bolt out the bottom of the hole:

 

 

With the bolt all out I just needed to remove the broken stud extractor from the bottom of the hole. Turned out they're not magnetic! Balls.

 

Bit of string and some superglue:

 

It only bloody works!:

 

Then I drilled the more awkward stud and tried the stud extractor again (lucky I bought two sets):

 

Not a bad job drilling through given the access:

 

So in summery:

Both studs out.

One damaged thread which wants a helicoil.

CVH's are still shit.

[andy18s]

If that TT engine is fairly complete then it should fetch a good price on eBay. Rocker cover has a few quid itself.....

[coalnotdole]

If that TT engine is fairly complete then it should fetch a good price on eBay. Rocker cover has a few quid itself.....

It's pretty complete. Has carb and plenum, Bosch dizzy with turbo advance module, couple of escort rs intercoolers and goodridge turbo feed pipes etc. matey wouldn't go less than £400 and bearing in mind I'd want to rob the rocker cover for the ss1 I wasn't sure I'd turn a profit on the rest of the kit? Matey had it built using a Orion 1.6 as a base engine and had it in his escort van before fitting a diesel. Reckoned it was running 9.5 boost so imagine it goes well!

[andy18s]

If it's a genuine TT conversion then it's much rarer than a std RS Turbo...I imagine the old school fanatics would fight over something like that

Edit...

If it has a carb setup then it could even be 1 of the factory XR3 one make challenge that preceded the RST.......

[coalnotdole]

In between swearing at the CVH I've started to play with some of the other issues - Mainly Electrical. This hasn't been made easy as reliant went bust before they finished the workshop manual for the ss1.

The only wiring diagram is a 1980's ford style "flow gram" with every circuit shown running top to bottom of the page and with no resemblance to actual placement on vehicle or joint position. its also hugely inaccurate and a bad photocopy of a bad photocopy. I think the originals all went in the skip.

 

The list of faults was something like this:

• Electric Windows Raising when Headlights/sidelights turned on - Diagnosed - needs new early Montego window switches as switch illumination circuit on incorrect switches is backfeeding window motors.
• Digital Clock not working - Sorted - recent stereo "install" had chopped through cable
• Interior Lights - either one or the other always permanently on - Sorted - incorrect wiring
• Windscreen wiper wheelbox/spigot rotates with wiper arm - Needs new wheelbox and dash out to replace
• Front Popup headlights non functioning - Now working but a bit slow - corrosion and faulty contacts in the interlock units as well as catching on the body panel due to poor fit and someone welding some of the adjustable brackets rather than bolting them back together. still need to grind off welds and properly fit and align
• Electric Aerial catching fire - Now disconnected, think joe may have a NOS one but have put a £2 bid on a "fung shik" brand one on ebay, just incase
• Modern Stereo/CD - Removed including awful wiring, and correct model Blaupunkt cassette unit bought on ebay
• Reverse lights not working - still to do
• Handbrake warning light not working - still to do
• Dashboard illumination partially working - sorted - lots of bulb holders had dropped out
• Heater blower not working - Sorted - Motor badly seized, now working on all 3 speeds but a bit noisy
• Boot light not working - investigated - damaged light unit maybe able to solder it up

Dash Digital Clock now working - Clever bit of kit really, with the lights off its this bright, but as you turn on sidelights and then headlights it progressively dims so its not too bright at night. I thought it was just poor wiring at first!

 

 

Interior Lights:

 

 

After removal of awful stereo and wiring, heater controls also now illuminate and all the switches work:

 

 

Headlight surround removed:

 

 

Headlight Pod:

 

 

Headlight motor/pod assembly:

 

 

Popped the front wheels off and it all looks pretty good, wants some new bushes but otherwise ok:

 

 

Boot liner removed to access electric aerial:

 

 

Boot liner:

 

 

Headlights`down:

 

 

Headlights up!:

 

I've ordered new headbolts and some 2d helicoils, gasket set is also on order.

As a backup option i've also bought a 1300 CVH which was supposedly running when removed a few years ago. its cheap enough and only in pompey so will go to collect that tomorrow evening. Anyone want a FWD 4 speed gearbox to suit CVH? No?

[Jim Bell]

Outstanding. Best use of superglue and string yet.

[Guest Hooli]

Brilliant use of superglue n string.

 

Buttons look like Vauxhall?

[coalnotdole]

Buttons are range rover I believe

[vulgalour]

Excellent stuff here.  Should be a little gem when you're finished with it.

[Tayne]

Buttons are range rover I believe

 

 

Possible, they look kinda like the Classic ones, but they probably started off in the Allegro 2.

[worldofceri]

Brill. That is all.

[garethj]

If superglue and string aren't available I've had success with bluetak and a stick.

 

I award this thread 9762846/10

[inconsistant]

Pop up head gasket lights failure are for winners.