Good evening. I'd like to introduce myself and my SD1 to this forum. My name is Fritz (I'm not German, though; for some reason most people assume that you actually are when your name is Fritz ), I'm 27 years old and I live somewhere between Luxembourg and Heidelberg. I'm studying in Heidelberg and I work in Luxembourg on weekends. This gives me the opportunity to enjoy loads of German Autobahn .

More important to this forum, this is my SD1:



It used to be an LHD SP Vitesse manufactured in 1985. I have been an SD1 lover for all my life (Dad bought his first SD1 in 1978) and so, after a few disappointing experiences with Renault R5s, I bought this SD1 from my brother in the summer of 2000. In the first place, he had bought it for parts.

Back then, Amy (as I'm calling her) was silver-coloured and pretty rusty. She had Spax shocks with matching springs, the rest of the car was stock except for a huge sticker on the hood showing Bart Simpson with his pants down. That one didn't last long under my rule, though Together with my brother, we cleaned most of the rust from the engine bay, converted it to a carb engine and installed things like a Rimmer Bros. sports exhaust system and polyurethane bushes all around. I drove the car for 2 months, but then the engine broke down for good from old age.

As I wanted to keep Amy, a decision was reached: I wanted her fully rebuilt. So she was stripped down and handed over to a friend of my father's who ran a bodyshop nearby. From that point on, time passed slowly... In the winter of 2002 (yes, the bodywork took 2 years!!), I got my car back. She had been entirely cleaned of rust and spray-painted in a pearlescent blue colour from Alfa Romeo.

This time we fitted her with a Vitesse engine, which had been equipped with a four-barrel Edelbrock carb. It started overheating, though, and we converted it back to a carb engine upgraded with a Piper 270 cam from RPi. In spring 2003, she was back on the road. Not for a long time, though.

In October 2003, on one of the last days before putting Amy to sleep for the winter, a German (ah, it's always them!) crashed into me with his rusty Ford Escort. Insurance decreed it was a total. As Amy was already 16 years old back then, they tried to lower the price they were going to pay me, which resulted in a two-year-long legal issue during which I wasn't allowed to touch her so that "experts" might haggle over the car's worth.

This was the sorrowful view (and I'm not talking about the fat guy!)



In the end, my lawyer proved the better one, and I got paid a generous sum to rebuild Amy. These are some pictures from the rebuilt. I think they are self-explanatory.







While her body was being tended to, I had acquired a few more goodies for Amy:

- a 3.9 litre RR enigne, which I had fully balanced, then equipped with Stage 3 RPi heads, a Piper 285 cam and of course the 4-barrel carb previously used
- lightened flywheel
- overhauled gearbox
- 18" Team Dynamics rims with 225/40/18 tyres
- Jag front brakes
- rear axle from a 2600 for a shorter transmission ratio
- some things I may have forgotten

So... this is Amy in her current shape:







There's a load more to tell about my dear car, but I'm too tired to write it all down right now. I hope you enjoyed my story, if there's any comments please post them.

Take pics of front brakes. I want to see how small they look under 18" wheels

Clean and cool looking SD1 and Autobahn opportunities....

I don't things can be any better than that

Lovely looking car, and welcome to the forum

Jay

welcome to the forum fritz (never thought i'd hear myself say that! )
beautiful car. keep away from escorts in future mate!

Welcome, nice car
I always liked that colour but it looks even better on the SD1

Welcome on in, great car and great story

Welcome to the forum Fritz...hope to have some nice chats ...I must say that that is perhaps one of the top 10 Sd1`s in Europe if i may be so bold....happy motoring........

Thanks for the welcome and kind words everyone.

@ Lehto: I've tried to shoot a few pics, but there is a problem with lighting. You can't make out the discs, as it's too dark in the garage where Amie sleeps right now.

Here are a few more pics I took when Amie was not home, but there's still plenty of SD1s to see:

A carb VdP on the left and a Vitesse in the rear. The busy guy is my older brother (owner of the place and the SD1s):





If you drop a handful of peanuts into this engine bay, none will reach the ground! It's a Vitesse with A/C and running on LPG.



I also noticed that I forgot to tell about a few woes I've had with my current engine. It got fully rebuilt with RPi Stage 3 heads, as I mentioned before. About 1200 miles after the rebuild, I suddenly noticed severe power loss and backfire. We soon found the reason: A valve spring had broken for no apparent reason. Luckily, RPi sent us a new set of heavy duty Real Steel springs as replacement, so she got back on the street soon. By now, a cylinder head gasket seems to have failed and the engine's losing oil by the litre. Note that the gasket got renewed in last summer, and that I've driven it for about 2500 miles if that!

Quote:

I must say that that is perhaps one of the top 10 Sd1`s in Europe if i may be so bold

In my book, it's the number one because she's mine! But I know there's a few more nice ones out there... They are quite rare, though, on the continent and you don't see them on the streets. Sadly enough, most people consider Rovers not worth preserving. In the end, this only makes them more exotic!

That's a nice car, the colour and the wheels really set it off. Good to hear that the Edelbrock setup is being used, I've heard good reports regarding ease of setup and good power increases. Are you using it with the Edelbrock Performer manifold? How much power do you think you are getting out of the 3.9 now?