S525 OVP - Restoration: The Long Road Back

[pab]

On Sunday morning having taken a few hours off from the club stand at the NEC, I made my way over to Dunchurch to meet up with Christopher.After a discussion the previous afternoon we decided to move the car to his house.

As previously stated the car now has a current MOT and the rest of the documentation is in order.

The car was ready and waiting for our arrival having had a telephone conversation with Lates on Saturday evening..






With Christopher behind the wheel I followed behind to make sure that everything went well,this is the first time the car has been on the open road under it's own steam in such a long time..and she looked quite at home on the open road.





The next stop is the body shop..

[pab]

Well she made her way to the National, albeit on a low loader. Many thanks to CDTi for the wheel trims and to Mofo for the fog light blanking covers.

[pab]

The car is suffering from fuel starvation, she will start and can be driven gently, but under acceleration she will cut, and become very difficult to start.

Andi Willi managed to get into the car with his Delphi Diagnostic equipment and discovered a few old fault codes which he printed off. Interrogating the car again nothing out of the ordinary showed up to concern us with the problem.








The previous evening Sworks and myself discussed the issue and agreed that the fuel pump and possibly the filter could be the issue. The car had been stood for a great length of time with water in the fuel tank, which has probably damaged the pump.

Also during the course of the cars life it will have been topped up with gerry cans containing contaminated fuel, so the filter could be clogged.

The plan is to source a good second hand tank containing the pump and filter, which will be the easiest and cheapest option.

[Reebs]

The poor running issue (which caused it to arrive on a trailer for the National) has been fixed as of last Tuesday.

The fuel tank had a gallon of mud and rubbish in there so Christopher tells us, the fuel filter was on the verge of collapse so a replacement tank/pump/filter combo has been put in and the old fuel for the most part discarded as it was so contaminated. It ticks over and pulls fine now and Christopher has taken it for a good run to road test it.

The car is taxed and insured so not on retention as such. What it needs now is a bodyshop quote or two. Cleaning and cosmetic refurb now required as I understand it.

[Reebs]

Christopher sent through some pictures of the work he has been doing in cleaning the interior up by the way.

The inside was filthy to use his words, so required a strip down of the centre console area and removal of the door cards.

Before:



During:





The black MG steering wheel has now been replaced with a light smokestone Rover one and a smokestone airbag is on its way up from Bexhill On Sea courtesy of Seancar





After:



There are new carpets on the way too, as the ones in the car are beyond repair. The seats will be removed when the carpets go in and they too will get a thorough clean.

[Christopher]

To add to Paul's update I have also repaired the following:

- Fitted the door cards properly
- properly wired in the mirrors as they we non adjusting and unheated (bullets to be fitted when backs are sourced)
- fitted driver door stay
- tightened loose bits on the inside everywhere
- removed dangling 3rd brake light, cleaned up and now need sticky taope to affix to rear window

Faults that need to be looked at:
- SRS warning is on (could be seats will check when they come out when new carpet arrives)
- fuel gauge is reading EMPTY all the time and temp is -30deg out side! These two were a recent fault and happened together - last week in fact so had no time to diagnose (Was in New York until yesterday!)
- knocking at engine firewall at low revs (goes away at higher revs)
- click-clicking when steering at full steering lock

Cleaning yet to do:
- complete engine bay clean
- refit carpets
remove and clean all seats and refit
- remove rear doorcards, clean and refit

Apart from that she drives quite well - however the carpets have NEVER been cleaned and they stink to high heaven, I did a bit to make it drive-able but the sooner they are changed the better!

Cheers

- boot area - entire remove, clean and refit

[Reebs]

OK, high time we updated everyone with the rather laboured progress of the restoration of our unique club car. So lets get cracking.....


With the major mechanical and oily bits now sorted, and a series of MoT tickets awarded to her in the intervening years, OVP spent a rather relaxed period with Christopher while he periodically stretched her legs and tinkered here and there with the car which included sourcing an original and similarly aged Arran White front bumper to replace the stop gap later Wedgwood Blue one we had, but with his work calling him abroad a great deal of the time the project stalled somewhat and OVP's paint finish still needed addressing of course.





Also, someone had decided to liberate the rear nearside steel wheel trim which was nice of them...NOT.


With the knowledge that this car was approaching it's 20th Birthday in November 2018, and that we were going to have another stand at the NEC that year, it seemed a good opportunity to show the car off to the public if at all possible, so it was arranged that it would travel down South where I and others could spend some time preparing it for its regeneration.

First and foremost, OVP only ever had one key given to us from the Longbridge plant, so a trip to forum trader cb750chris in Fareham was a top priority.

He was able to supply a fob and immobilisation chip, cut the new blade and program it to the vehicle. Whilst doing this he did of course have to access the car's EWS engine immobiliser ECU and he soon discovered that through a water leak many moons ago, the board and pinouts had become corroded







This would account for the random issue OVP suffered from when sometimes the key fob would lock the doors and sometimes it would not, and the only way to secure the car would be by manually central locking it from the inside then opening the drivers door, getting out and locking that from the outside using the key in the lock



So once the contacts from the car's plug had been cleaned up, Chris produced a replacement ECU which he magically coded to the car and 'hey presto', a brand new key and 100% functioning locking system were restored.

It just so happened that Chris had on his drive, another 75 classic trim vehicle which had seen better days and I asked if I could take a look inside.

One of the oddities of OVP is that over the years at Cowley & Longbridge, it had been subject to random original bits being taken off and then later replaced with whatever was to hand, and the car was littered with examples of this, including the drivers door window switch pack which although correct in being for front windows only, was wrong in that it had the later mottled finish, not the original smooth design. This meant it didn't match with the panels on the other three doors.




Later mottled finish switch pack found on OVP (notice bent pins too)



Earlier smooth finish switch pack - from donor Classic car

So after a bit of negotiation, a direct swap was agreed upon , Chris also let us swap the passenger side sun visor over. OVP had a vinyl covered one, where it should have been fabric. Both of course not having illuminated surrounds as this is a base spec car.

A huge shout out and big thank you goes to cb750chris who worked wonders that rainy Sunday, he's a top bloke and can't come more highly recommended.

[Reebs]

Time to address a rather holey problem. As can be seen from this screen grab, part of OVPs career was as a police car appearing in various television dramas and as such needed to have a set of 'Blues and Twos' added.



However, when the time came to return it to Longbridge as an on site ambulance and security car, they were removed, but no thought was given to plugging the holes



The car had two holes on the passenger side, and three on the drivers, the middle one for the wiring.

Our initial thought was to simply acquire the standard plastic studs used on all saloons for the optional roof bar mountings, but as these holes were drilled in a non standard adhoc fashion, the studs were far too big and wouldn't fit.

The solution came from elsewhere on the car, we finally managed to find an exact size fit using the black plastic fir tree clips that fasten the carpet edges to the door sills.

Though, curiously with OVP, these were not present, instead all four doors had their carpet edges secured by philips screws



Anyway, after a raiding party at the local breakers, said fir tree clips were obtained and finally fitted to plug the holes. The larger centre hole for the wiring harness, did in fact fit using a standard roof plug BTW



Next it was time to address the interior and the first thing to do was reinstate it's Rover looks, over the MG appearance it had been given.

A light smokestone airbag was fitted to the now matching steering wheel and the ZT gear knob and handbrake grip and gaitor were replaced with the correct Rover ones.


Before as an MG



After, back as a Rover

Next a thorough deep clean of the carpets and seat covers using a wet carpet cleaner, detergent, elbow grease and a fair amount of Febreeze, to make it smell better. New pedal rubbers were fitted too.


Before






After

[Reebs]

The interior light cluster was ill fitting and the push buttons were very temperamental, sometimes working and other times not having any of it, so we investigated and discovered that the plastic mounting screw brackets of the cluster had broken at some point in the past and been glued back, rather badly. The metal conductor tracks had signs of corrosion on them too, leading to the temperamental behavior, so a light smokestone replacement assembly was substituted and the problems eliminated.

While off however, we noticed an additional set of wires running into the cluster, thick orange cables with a multi pin connector on the end



I asked Trikey about these at the NEC show and he was convinced they were for a built in car phone.

There was also another white multi pin connector present, perhaps for the activation of the Blue Police lights?



The driver's door internal pull handle was loose and the chrome surround was hanging off, coupled with the fact that both the driver's and rear off side door were missing their door lock pins meant the cards had to come off.

Once again a trip to the friendly neighbourhood breakers yard, this time accompanied by forum member SD1too proved fruitful as a replacement door pull, and two locking pins complete with the important green plastic clip needed to secure them into the door lock assembly were obtained.



and with Simon's help soon both door cards were back on and working properly again.

Another job that needed doing was to replace both front door internal door rubbers as both had been damaged by the seat belt buckle getting trapped in the door shut when folk got out too quickly.

As it's an early car, we needed to replace them with the velour fabric finished ones, not the all rubber versions of later cars, and here's a top tip if you didn't already know, the front door rubbers are not 'handed', so you can fit a driver's or passenger's one to either side of the car.





I should also mention that while the car would have originally had a driver's side cup holder fitted, it would have been one of the first things to get swiped while at the Longbridge plant as a company vehicle. But with the assistance of forum trader Mickyboy, we were able to reinstate one back into the car along with some other pieces of damaged exterior trim that it badly needed and a driver's side carpeted heater closure panel for the footwell, so another shout out here to a forum trader; Mickyboy thanks for coming up trumps for the club

[Reebs]

Time to turn our attention to the engine bay. As you can see, it was rather dusty and tired looking



So who better to call upon than forum member Teflon and his excellent skills with a polishing mitt.

Cliff came over on two separate occasions and got to work straight away on all of the black plastic components, pipe work, and metal surfaces. His fine brushes and detailing experience working wonders on the 1.8 NA power plant, I've never seen a man happier in his work.



One thing we both agreed on was that there is plenty of space to work in, on these 1.8 engines, in stark contrast to the BMW M47R or Rover KV6 derivatives.



Slowly but surely the transformation started as a beautiful swan began to emerge from an ugly duckling (OK, a bit of artistic licence there )








One thing you might notice now you can see it from under the grime, is that on the earlier cars the battery strap retaining bolt is huge. It's long enough to stretch right up to the top of the battery box lid, which makes it so much easier to tighten and loosen than the later type that as we all know has to be dropped down to the base of the battery box floor in order to do up. It's a shame they didn't retain this original design.



Also, worth noting is the fact that the coolant expansion tank is not black plastic as was the case for many of the early cars, we don't know if this was replaced at some point with a later cream tank, or whether it was original to the car.