Alex And Vard's 1993 Manual 530I M60B40 Conversion

[IanIOM]

Chris

No such thing as a right off(unless its burnt out) just varying amount of work increases!

How bad is the rover?

[Alex SBY]

From the photo I saw of it and what Vard says it sounds pretty bad and well beyond economic repair.

Vard, I'm gutted for you. Being brutal though it's only a car and tbh it did its ultimate duty inasmuch as the fact you are able to tell the tale. :)

It's a sad thing what's happened but we'll sort something out and out of this !Removed! occurrence something better will result. In the meantime you can enjoy V6 smoothness using the 827 for as long as you need.

[Guest Mister Dabsy]

Nice one Alex, a true friend B)

[Vard66]

It's pretty broken if I'm honest.

[Guest Mister Dabsy]

One tub of IsoPon P30 and a little gauze 'n she'll be fine :lol:

Seriously matey, just glad you're ok, a side-slide may have been much worse !!

[IanIOM]

Tax worse! That looks much worse than it is.at a guess,wing,bonnet,bumper head lamps front panel and a tug on the inner wing. Fix it chap

[Guest Mister Dabsy]

To be brutally honest, I would write her off, buy her back from Insurance and break her or use as a donor...

[Vard66]

Ha!

Hell if Insurance have to know about this. I'm still trying to build up a years NCB after my shunt in Jan 2010.

It's to be a donor however - I have a '95 Woodcote Green Vitesse Fastback, partly stripped on my driveway that I *was* breaking. This is now to be the chassis to recieve... well, most of the workings and interior and running gear from the BRG Vit.

[IanIOM]

Its a great shame,im not a great fan of the rover 800s however it is a shame that a car which has lasted this long loses its battle.it did its job and saved ya life! So is the bmw gonna become the daily?

[Vard66]

lol, I wish.

For the moment, Alex has incredibly kindly offered to loan me another 800, a manual 827 Sterling (Sterling means toys, lots of toys, climate, cruise, heated electric leather...) for as long as I could need it, on the proviso that I sort upkeep and make sure it's mechanically sound for the banger rally it was bought for this coming August.

[Guest Mister Dabsy]

Nice... Don't prang this one eh :P :D

[Vard66]

Who the !Removed! f**k decided it was a great idea to put the slave cylinder on the side of the bellhousing and not the bottom? F**king goddamn inaccessible b*stard piece of useless c*ckknocking design cr*ppery.

Right. Now that's out of the way.

Have come inside for a few minutes for another brew, and to take a moment, after belting myself in the eye with the brake fluid slicked end of the inspection lamp whilst trying to relocate myself under the car.

Currently trying to get the union to seal into the new slave cylinder, after two abortive efforts at locating it correctly, one fairly moshed male union head, one bloodied forehead, one eyeful of brake fluid and the one aforementioned black eye full of brake fluid, at least three skinned knuckles and as many swearwords as you can fit within an hour, speaking continuously.

Can NOT for the life of me get the union to locate all the way into the cylinder and seal - am going to try something desperate and put a metric f**ktonne of PTFE around the pipe itself and then slide the union back over it.

I'm getting truly tired of this s**t being so goddamn awkward.

[IanIOM]

I have an 91 Audi 100 saloon quotto, the slave cylinder is ontop of the box, yes thats right pressed right up agaisnt the transmission tunnel! thats hard work!

[Alex SBY]

Well, IT DRIVES!

I popped back up to Vard's on Friday and since then we've had this beast running and given it a quick road test.

The fact it runs still is something I simply cannot get over.

We had a slight issue however, the car had a definite missfire. Now, me being a worrying git instantly had visions of more headgasket woes, however taking a step back and a more objective approach saw us tackle this issue methodically. The old M60B30 engine, whilst having epic HGF still ran on all 8 cylinders. We took the decision to swap over all the coil packs. Well, we tackled it bank by bank. To start with we replaced one bank of coil packs with the old 3.0 ones, and then started it. Missfire GONE! :D

Today we've put back all the 'garnish' under the bonnet, including the underbonnet soundproofing and the engine cover. It now is really looking like a car again!

That still left the issue of the bleeding clutch (no pun intended there). The Slave cylinder pipe would simply not stop leaking. In the end through a mixture of ingeniuity/desparation we elected to adopt a 'Westcountry repair' entailing copious amounts of liquid metal. Unsurprisingly this did not do the trick. But at least we had a clutch.

We've since tried splicing/joining pipes with the square root of sod all luck. So we're now biting the bullet and re-making the pipe to the slave cylinder.

Once that is done, it should be pretty much time to get the car on the road. And I so cannot WAIT!

[Guest Mister Dabsy]

Wooo Hooo... I can't wait either B)

[Vard66]

Little update; the BMW is pretty much finished!

She was off the ramps on Saturday... only to go back up on the ramps for us to investigate why the gear linkage was making contact with the prop-shaft - something I suspected quietly when I reassembled it, because I couldn't remember, but I was fairly sure it shouldn't have been just clearing the prop by about 2mm...

Also because the new hydraulic clutch arrangement was somewhat... bodgetastic, the union in the slave cylinder having been slathered in Wurths chemical metal in an effort to seal it for good.

So now, one fresh piece of copper pipe flanged and fitted, and after some doubts and irritation, finally !Removed! sealed.

No.

More.

Brake fluid.

I cannot state those words clearly enough - if I never feel brake fluid on the back of my hands again, I will be a happy, happy man.

So now, she is off the ramps, WITH a clutch, WITH the gear linkage fixed, and going like an absolute train.

Also, by complete coincidence, we have managed to remove the odd, transverse roof bars. It turns out I could have had them off months ago, if I had been a fidgety, fiddling redneck type.

Like Ian.

While idly standing around waiting while I had a !Removed!, before I moved the BMW out of the way so he could move Alex's Vitesse Coupé to where the BMW was standing, Ian decided he had a key in his hand, he should find something to poke it into, so he tried one of the locks on the roof bars, because one of the rubber covers wasn't on it properly.

And it worked.

Turns out you can use a Rover 800 key to unlock the locks on a 5er's roof bars. No, I wouldn't have tried it myself either, and I was equally gobsmacked when he showed me.

Yer man Vard is a happy fella.

[Guest Mister Dabsy]

:lol: B)

[Vard66]

100 mile motorway/fast road/rush hour traffic road test today revealed a minor issue - the PCV appears to be fecked.

Other than the idle issues and smoking caused by that however, she's running a !Removed! treat, and pulling like an absolute rocket.

I was fully expecting to be underwhelmed by the power delivery after driving something with a T16 in it for so long - going from aggressive, lag-then-boost format power delivery to smooth V power curvature, but I am hella damn impressed.

It's progressive so it's not instant and neck-snapping, but I am damn impressed, and if I'm honest, rather enamoured at how it simply keeps piling the power on and on the more you keep your foot in it.

Tomorrow we are going to remove the PCV from the B40 inlet manifold, and see if the B30's PCV is intact. If it is, that's £60 saved, and it's not going to cost us anything to try it out.

[Guest Mister Dabsy]

All-in-all Still a great result ;)

[Alex SBY]

I realise it's been some time since we updated this thread. Long story short, it's DONE! The PCV sorted the poor running/smoking issue, and aside a binding caliper (that was spectactular - a nice lot of smoke there too), once the PCV was done it was pretty much it done. The car came home with me to Devon a couple of weeks back.

Since getting this old beast of a car back from Vard I've concentrated on the stuff which is more my forté; namely detailing, cleaning and doing some of the lighter jobs.

I've waxed this car thoroughly, replaced the god-awful "angel eyes" (#one look and you're hypnotised#) headlights with proper original ones, and fixed the split washer bottle. All the latter parts came from an M60B30 engined E32. Amazing how many parts these cars share. Anyway, I diagress.

The BM came up a treat, and looked so much better with the new lights in. One strange fault appeared though:

The "Angel Eyes" (#You keep thinking, about his angel eyes#) had been fitted by the previous owner, and had seen the headlight leveling adjustment motors long since disappear. The E32 headlights we got had the motors in, so I duly undid all the bodged up lash wiring for the "Angel Eyes" (#he'll take your heart and you must pay the price#) and worked out how to put things back to standard, which I did no problem.

I fitted the drivers side lights, tested it all, fine. Proper job. Upon refitting the passenger side light, however, I turned on the ignition to test it all, popped the lights on only for the car to tell me that LITERALLY every single bulb on the car had blown (it hadn't).

I cleaned all the connectors, checked, double checked everything, and could find nothing wrong. Resigning myself to the fact this was a Jaguar XJ40-esque foible I'd have to live with I went in.

After a quick google, it transpired that there was a batch of faulty headlight leveling motors issued at some point. If these are fitted to the E34 (and ONLY the E34) they can be prone to throwing up random bulb failure warnings. Thinking this was tosh, I went out to disconnect the motors.

Imagine my surprise, when no fault messages came up on the dash! So, for now, it's being left with non-working headlight adjusters (no loss as the car did not have them anyway when bought), and I'll get some as and when I find them.

Jobs left to do now include:

* Source load cover blind thing for the boot

* Investigate and rectify that infernal "clonk" from the rear end. I think it's top mounts.

* Source another spare wheel - I kinda buckled one on the car (long story) a few months ago, so we had to fit the spare.

* Rectify aircon leak (a casualty of the transplant)

* Fit personal plate (I know, I KNOW)

* Investigate why it stalls every-so-often randomly. Always when approaching junctions under clutch down. It did this when it had the 3.0 engine in, too so this is rather odd. We suspect it is because it remains running an automatic ECU (the 3.0 engine also was being run by a 4.0 auto ecu) and it could be confusing things.

On the road, the car is driving splendidly (aside that occasional stalling thing). Power like you would not believe. Fuel consumption is, well, horrific. But I put that down to having a lead right foot. This car is, quite simply, EPIC.

[Alex SBY]

Here are some pictures, taken this weekend following epic polishing. I'll let them do the talking.

Jobs on the list now are to sort the a/c, and I've decided to ditch the self-levelling suspension in favour of dampers. That clonk has to go!

I'm now pressing the car into daily use this week, also if anything materialises using it this week that will be attended to as well. Fingers crossed!

I advise you all buy shares in Shell. Their turnover will be a lot more this week! :lol:

[IanIOM]

This is fantastic to see it finished! and looking good!

[yelgdip]

Don't suppose you want an M5 LSD for your toy, got a 3.64 LSD for £300 plus postage or you can collect from Bournemouth

[Vard66]

As of late Oct, this has in fact been sold; to none other than Munky (Joe) who came up and helped with part of the conversion/build.

As I speak it's undergoing some changes; namely some matte blacking of various chrome to fit with the shadowline trim, I believe he's painted the faded wood inside a dark grey, and she is having the SLS deleted and suspension replaced with coilovers in the new year. I believe Joe is also hunting for some Style 32s for her in the new year.

Still healthy as can be though, and in good hands.

[Guest DazH]

Thanks the the update Vard, its been a while matey

Daz