1985 Rover 3500 Vitesse
Discussion
After having a lot of fun writing the thread on my 1275GT, I thought it was time to start a thread on my latest project.
Bought in October 2016 as an almost running project, (MOT ran out a few days before I viewed it) the old girl needed some love.
Nearly 2 years later and it's almost ready to go back onto the road!
It's a 1985 Rover SD1 3500 Vitesse. Its a late Single Plenum with a factory Deep Chin Spoiler, Aircon (sadly non functioning), and dealer fitted cruise control. The majority of the car is still wearing its original paint with a few touched up areas mainly on the drivers side which is its weakest side. I've spent the last 2 years on and off sorting a few scabby areas and removing the layers of underseal to reveal lovely factory paint, rebuilding the engine, and generally going through every single thing on the car.
The day I viewed her, October 2016.
To April 2018.
To now, 2021.
If people are interested, I'll start writing up what I've done, I took a lot of pictures...
Joe
Bought in October 2016 as an almost running project, (MOT ran out a few days before I viewed it) the old girl needed some love.
Nearly 2 years later and it's almost ready to go back onto the road!
It's a 1985 Rover SD1 3500 Vitesse. Its a late Single Plenum with a factory Deep Chin Spoiler, Aircon (sadly non functioning), and dealer fitted cruise control. The majority of the car is still wearing its original paint with a few touched up areas mainly on the drivers side which is its weakest side. I've spent the last 2 years on and off sorting a few scabby areas and removing the layers of underseal to reveal lovely factory paint, rebuilding the engine, and generally going through every single thing on the car.
The day I viewed her, October 2016.
To April 2018.
To now, 2021.
If people are interested, I'll start writing up what I've done, I took a lot of pictures...
Joe
Edited by 1275 GT on Saturday 27th November 11:32
Thank you for the kind words and enthusiasm.
I entirely blame the Goodwood Members Meeting live streams. The brilliant races with SD1s dicing against minis and capris just entice you back to those cars. At the time I had already run a 1275GT as a daily driver, and my attention turned to the v8 memories of my dads SD1 he had in the 90's. He had also aspried for a Vitesse, but even in 1990 they still carried quite the premium over the lesser models. He ended up with a very nice 1985 3500 VDP in Moonraker blue and would probably still have it if it hadn't been stolen in around 1999.
We'd talked about it for quite some time, and both decided that this time it had to be a Vitesse.
Like everyone that's after a Vitesse I had set my heart on a Twin Plenum. At the time I really didn't know the specifics of what made them different. There's so much hearsay it's hard to work out what's true or not!
I had visited an auction earlier in the year with the intention of going home with a very nice looking Silver Twin Plenum. But after the price reached way over my budget, (and almost 4x the original estimate) it wasn't meant to be.
I then found an amazing looking TP Vitesse advertised in a classic car mag with 39k miles from new. I viewed it and fell in love, it wasn't perfect, but it wasn't far off. A deal was done, and the following week before I picked it up was spent doing some serious digging. It was a converted single plenum, the owner got seriously cagey when i went back to him, and ultimately I walked away.
There was then a rumor of a Twin Plenum that had sat in a garage since 1997 on the Owners Club Forum.
I viewed that and initially wrote it off as a rebadged 2600. But that is a different story that I'll tell when I get around to restoring it...
At this point I was getting a little desperate.
Enter an ebay listing for a Red Single Plenum Vitesse that had been listed for sale earlier in the year. ( I hadn't been interested as I only wanted a twin) But this time at a much cheaper price.
So after a phone call I hopped in the car and went down to Cambridge to have a look.
I knew I was in trouble as soon as I was greeted by this on the guys driveway.
I was probably there for 3 or 4 hours making sure I found all of its secrets.
The most obvious being the original engine under a carpet in the guys shed. I suppose that's why it was suddenly cheaper!
I did try to drive it, but it was a spluttering mess that would barely move under its own power.
A few days later after narrowly avoiding a bidding war with another SD1 Club member we agreed a price.
I hired a trailer and borrowed my friends Discovery, and again drove back down to Cambridge.
I hired the largest trailer they had, and low and behold the Rover didn't fit. Of course all the spares the car had were in the boot, and had to come out to remove the bumper! But it went on eventually. A spare bit of carpet saving the spoiler.
Damn Tailgaters....
You can also see the original engine under an old floor mat in the boot of the Disco. He had a few enquiries asking to sell it seperately, but luckily he also agreed it needed to go with the car.
One of the few older cars that aren't dwarfed by modern cars.
The car was complete and in alright nick when I got it, having been in almost constant use its entire life with around 132k on the clock.
The car had been cherished by its previous long term owner, and sold in may '16. The new owner had the car for approximately 2 weeks before it suffered a major mechanical failure (Engine blew up). Both the repairs he paid for, and the replacement engine he eventually had installed never really worked. Hence why after only a few months of ownership it was back up for sale and mine! Running and driving, but not well.
You can kind of see from the next picture what I was going to be dealing with, a car prepared for living outside, lathered in underseal. It definitely had a few areas that needed a little more attention as well as the mechanical problems...
But I do like a challenge. I think it was 2 days before I had most of the interior out. I'll sort the pictures of that when I get a chance.
Joe
I entirely blame the Goodwood Members Meeting live streams. The brilliant races with SD1s dicing against minis and capris just entice you back to those cars. At the time I had already run a 1275GT as a daily driver, and my attention turned to the v8 memories of my dads SD1 he had in the 90's. He had also aspried for a Vitesse, but even in 1990 they still carried quite the premium over the lesser models. He ended up with a very nice 1985 3500 VDP in Moonraker blue and would probably still have it if it hadn't been stolen in around 1999.
We'd talked about it for quite some time, and both decided that this time it had to be a Vitesse.
Like everyone that's after a Vitesse I had set my heart on a Twin Plenum. At the time I really didn't know the specifics of what made them different. There's so much hearsay it's hard to work out what's true or not!
I had visited an auction earlier in the year with the intention of going home with a very nice looking Silver Twin Plenum. But after the price reached way over my budget, (and almost 4x the original estimate) it wasn't meant to be.
I then found an amazing looking TP Vitesse advertised in a classic car mag with 39k miles from new. I viewed it and fell in love, it wasn't perfect, but it wasn't far off. A deal was done, and the following week before I picked it up was spent doing some serious digging. It was a converted single plenum, the owner got seriously cagey when i went back to him, and ultimately I walked away.
There was then a rumor of a Twin Plenum that had sat in a garage since 1997 on the Owners Club Forum.
I viewed that and initially wrote it off as a rebadged 2600. But that is a different story that I'll tell when I get around to restoring it...
At this point I was getting a little desperate.
Enter an ebay listing for a Red Single Plenum Vitesse that had been listed for sale earlier in the year. ( I hadn't been interested as I only wanted a twin) But this time at a much cheaper price.
So after a phone call I hopped in the car and went down to Cambridge to have a look.
I knew I was in trouble as soon as I was greeted by this on the guys driveway.
I was probably there for 3 or 4 hours making sure I found all of its secrets.
The most obvious being the original engine under a carpet in the guys shed. I suppose that's why it was suddenly cheaper!
I did try to drive it, but it was a spluttering mess that would barely move under its own power.
A few days later after narrowly avoiding a bidding war with another SD1 Club member we agreed a price.
I hired a trailer and borrowed my friends Discovery, and again drove back down to Cambridge.
I hired the largest trailer they had, and low and behold the Rover didn't fit. Of course all the spares the car had were in the boot, and had to come out to remove the bumper! But it went on eventually. A spare bit of carpet saving the spoiler.
Damn Tailgaters....
You can also see the original engine under an old floor mat in the boot of the Disco. He had a few enquiries asking to sell it seperately, but luckily he also agreed it needed to go with the car.
One of the few older cars that aren't dwarfed by modern cars.
The car was complete and in alright nick when I got it, having been in almost constant use its entire life with around 132k on the clock.
The car had been cherished by its previous long term owner, and sold in may '16. The new owner had the car for approximately 2 weeks before it suffered a major mechanical failure (Engine blew up). Both the repairs he paid for, and the replacement engine he eventually had installed never really worked. Hence why after only a few months of ownership it was back up for sale and mine! Running and driving, but not well.
You can kind of see from the next picture what I was going to be dealing with, a car prepared for living outside, lathered in underseal. It definitely had a few areas that needed a little more attention as well as the mechanical problems...
But I do like a challenge. I think it was 2 days before I had most of the interior out. I'll sort the pictures of that when I get a chance.
Joe
Edited by 1275 GT on Sunday 13th December 15:30
Lucky enough to see this one, I think - http://www.ukemergency.co.uk/a152-suw-metropolitan... - last Sunday, on the M3. Really funny watching all the lane 3 muppets diving for cover once they'd clocked it 
!
!Thank you for all the kind words, I wasn't expecting such a strong positive response!
I absolutely love it, so I'm very happy to see other people think that too.
Its currently just missing bits of trim, its sunroof, and headlining. I'm currently working away to restore and refit this stuff. Aim for the car is to get it finished in the next few weeks and enjoy it as much as I can over the summer.
Well you lot asked so here we go!
I realised quite quickly that I'd bought a car on the brink, If it had spent too much longer outside, it would have been ruined. What the car deserved was some real love. So we'll start with the nasty grotty parts of the car. I started stripping the interior out days after I got the car.
For a 33 year old British car it was remarkably good. Some bits of corrosion where inevitable but I'd found them when I viewed the car, so not unexpected.
As the boot was where I found corrosion that was the starting point.
Makes an excellent bench for stripping! My dad really enjoying being back in an SD1.
The rear speaker covers were original, but sadly completely shot.
Original Feb 1985.
The boot carpet was dirty but present, (apart from the incredibly rare under spare wheel bit!
You can also see some appalling after market stereo wiring. All Fixable though.
The boot was by far the worst area, with the bottom area of the inner arch both sides making up the most of the corrosion. All other surfaces where covered in a wax oil substance, which had saved the car.
The chassis legs are immaculate though, as are the rest of the inner arches, boot floor, and rear panel.
I wanted to make sure that the lower arch corrosion didn't intrude further into the structure of the car, so out came the boot carpet and rear bench.
I also wanted to inspect the inner rear wings. Easily done with the boot carpet removed.
Passenger side looked amazing, apart from the previous owners bashing to fit 6x9 speakers...
Drivers side has a weird repair, that is still a mystery. But the general condition was again amazing. Coming from minis this really is unprecedented!
Both absolutely covered in wax so no corrosion here!
With the trims removed I could also inspect the door steps.
The rear drivers side door step will need attention.
The rear seats come out easily, and again nice to see unmolested factory wiring. Weird to see it in a ribbon rather than taped up!
I did find a mouse nest under the rear bench, but luckily for me they hadn't use the seat material, or the foam supports!
Even found a spare tailgate vent! Really pleased to not find any further corrosion, and the carpet and body work I unearthed was in really good nick.
Looks like I stumbled onto a good car!
With the rear bench removed I did find that one of the folding rear seat brackets was severely bent, another item that I'd need to replace.
I had invested in a wet-vac, so I put it to good use to see how the velour would clean up. The answer was very well!
Another thing I found when removing all the seats was this.
The original dealer supplied Supercover Membership card, now that's a seriously cool find!
With no horrors found I started to develop a plan of action.
First was something that had come up when the car previously sold, the non-functioning speedo.
When the car sold previously it transpired that the speedo had stopped working. Some investigation by the previous owner revealed the speedo transducer had failed. These are one of the many rocking horse poop items on the Vitesse, and actually caused it to lose hundreds of pounds worth of bids when it sold. These are hard to find and are specific to the rear axle ratio. For a manual Vitesse it has to be the orange plastic gear.
Up the car went, first thing to see is how disgusting the underside of this car is. Absolutely covered in a thick tar like underseal. Meaning everything you touch leaves you absolutely filthy.
But once I'd found it one 10mm bolt and hold down clamp later.
You can see the previous attempts to open it up and repair it. It did not work.
So a replacement was sourced.
Hard to find yes, but when they do come up about £50 on ebay so not the end of the world like everyone made out. I had to try it out, so after cleaning it up and installing it it took about 10m after pulling off, the speedo jolted back into life. A very satisfying first fix.
Of course it still ran like a pig, and after shutting it off to inspect oil pouring out of the dipstick hole the starter died, I had to drag it back to the garage with the help of a neighbors Landrover.
I wouldn't say my first driving experiences were entirely positive...
Didn't stop me falling for it though.
I'd made a reasonable assessment of the bodywork, but with the weather being terrible I turned my attention to why it ran so poorly.
It had had a replacement '87 Range Rover 3.5 EFI V8 (9.35:1) installed by it's previous owner after the original detonated causing some rather serious damage.
I knew I'd rebuild the original engine eventually but I wanted to get it running with the replacement just to get it going.
With the plenum top removed it didn't look great...
So off came the inlet manifold, worse still... Look at the leaves, and the liquid metal to repair a rotten valley gasket!
Removing the valley gasket you could see the distortion, assumed to be caused by crankcase pressure!
The Valley was also suitably disgusting, you can also see the condition of the cam.
The rocker covers coming off was much worse though, that's one neglected V8! There's skimping on oil changes and then there's that! No wonder it developed so much crankcase pressure it was forcing oil out of the dip stick hole!
The previous owner assured me he'd been sold a "nice running V8" to drop in. He also paid 2 mechanics to install it for him who didn't raise any concerns during fitment. He really didn't have any luck with this car!
So not only was I preparing for other repairs, but 2 engine rebuilds where now on the cards!
Joe
I absolutely love it, so I'm very happy to see other people think that too.
MX6 said:
Very nice indeed, can't remember the last time I saw one of these out in the wild. It would be good to see some details of the resto. Any future plans fot it, or is it "finished", as it were?
It seems a lot of people want that too, so I'm happy to oblige. Its currently just missing bits of trim, its sunroof, and headlining. I'm currently working away to restore and refit this stuff. Aim for the car is to get it finished in the next few weeks and enjoy it as much as I can over the summer.
MarkwG said:
Lucky enough to see this one, I think - http://www.ukemergency.co.uk/a152-suw-metropolitan... - last Sunday, on the M3. Really funny watching all the lane 3 muppets diving for cover once they'd clocked it !
What a brilliant sighting, I believe that one is still part of the metropolitan heritage collection, and was pressed back into use to attend an accident on the way to a show not too long ago. !Well you lot asked so here we go!
I realised quite quickly that I'd bought a car on the brink, If it had spent too much longer outside, it would have been ruined. What the car deserved was some real love. So we'll start with the nasty grotty parts of the car. I started stripping the interior out days after I got the car.
For a 33 year old British car it was remarkably good. Some bits of corrosion where inevitable but I'd found them when I viewed the car, so not unexpected.
As the boot was where I found corrosion that was the starting point.
Makes an excellent bench for stripping! My dad really enjoying being back in an SD1.
The rear speaker covers were original, but sadly completely shot.
Original Feb 1985.
The boot carpet was dirty but present, (apart from the incredibly rare under spare wheel bit!
You can also see some appalling after market stereo wiring. All Fixable though.
The boot was by far the worst area, with the bottom area of the inner arch both sides making up the most of the corrosion. All other surfaces where covered in a wax oil substance, which had saved the car.
The chassis legs are immaculate though, as are the rest of the inner arches, boot floor, and rear panel.
I wanted to make sure that the lower arch corrosion didn't intrude further into the structure of the car, so out came the boot carpet and rear bench.
I also wanted to inspect the inner rear wings. Easily done with the boot carpet removed.
Passenger side looked amazing, apart from the previous owners bashing to fit 6x9 speakers...
Drivers side has a weird repair, that is still a mystery. But the general condition was again amazing. Coming from minis this really is unprecedented!
Both absolutely covered in wax so no corrosion here!
With the trims removed I could also inspect the door steps.
The rear drivers side door step will need attention.
The rear seats come out easily, and again nice to see unmolested factory wiring. Weird to see it in a ribbon rather than taped up!
I did find a mouse nest under the rear bench, but luckily for me they hadn't use the seat material, or the foam supports!
Even found a spare tailgate vent! Really pleased to not find any further corrosion, and the carpet and body work I unearthed was in really good nick.
Looks like I stumbled onto a good car!
With the rear bench removed I did find that one of the folding rear seat brackets was severely bent, another item that I'd need to replace.
I had invested in a wet-vac, so I put it to good use to see how the velour would clean up. The answer was very well!
Another thing I found when removing all the seats was this.
The original dealer supplied Supercover Membership card, now that's a seriously cool find!
With no horrors found I started to develop a plan of action.
First was something that had come up when the car previously sold, the non-functioning speedo.
When the car sold previously it transpired that the speedo had stopped working. Some investigation by the previous owner revealed the speedo transducer had failed. These are one of the many rocking horse poop items on the Vitesse, and actually caused it to lose hundreds of pounds worth of bids when it sold. These are hard to find and are specific to the rear axle ratio. For a manual Vitesse it has to be the orange plastic gear.
Up the car went, first thing to see is how disgusting the underside of this car is. Absolutely covered in a thick tar like underseal. Meaning everything you touch leaves you absolutely filthy.
But once I'd found it one 10mm bolt and hold down clamp later.
You can see the previous attempts to open it up and repair it. It did not work.
So a replacement was sourced.
Hard to find yes, but when they do come up about £50 on ebay so not the end of the world like everyone made out. I had to try it out, so after cleaning it up and installing it it took about 10m after pulling off, the speedo jolted back into life. A very satisfying first fix.
Of course it still ran like a pig, and after shutting it off to inspect oil pouring out of the dipstick hole the starter died, I had to drag it back to the garage with the help of a neighbors Landrover.
I wouldn't say my first driving experiences were entirely positive...
Didn't stop me falling for it though.
I'd made a reasonable assessment of the bodywork, but with the weather being terrible I turned my attention to why it ran so poorly.
It had had a replacement '87 Range Rover 3.5 EFI V8 (9.35:1) installed by it's previous owner after the original detonated causing some rather serious damage.
I knew I'd rebuild the original engine eventually but I wanted to get it running with the replacement just to get it going.
With the plenum top removed it didn't look great...
So off came the inlet manifold, worse still... Look at the leaves, and the liquid metal to repair a rotten valley gasket!
Removing the valley gasket you could see the distortion, assumed to be caused by crankcase pressure!
The Valley was also suitably disgusting, you can also see the condition of the cam.
The rocker covers coming off was much worse though, that's one neglected V8! There's skimping on oil changes and then there's that! No wonder it developed so much crankcase pressure it was forcing oil out of the dip stick hole!
The previous owner assured me he'd been sold a "nice running V8" to drop in. He also paid 2 mechanics to install it for him who didn't raise any concerns during fitment. He really didn't have any luck with this car!
So not only was I preparing for other repairs, but 2 engine rebuilds where now on the cards!
Joe
Edited by 1275 GT on Sunday 13th December 17:03
CarlosV8 said:
Looking forward to more of this. I had a 3500 SE which I sold to fund a grotty TP Vitesse. Sunk loads of time and money into it but it was never quite right. Should have kept the first one!
Would still love a well sorted Vitesse one day though.
I really enjoyed reading your thread on the TP, a real credit that you got it back on the road, and a real shame you had to sell it in the end. I hope you enjoy my efforts! Would still love a well sorted Vitesse one day though.
I know what you mean, but the draw of the Vitesse is so strong, even over a better SE.
Joe
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