Sherwood Motors, 1957

The car dealership in the foreground at 1:20 in this film, Sherwood Motors, is where my 1956 Rover P4 90 was first purchased new in January 1957. This was filmed by CBC in Vancouver in 1957. My car is still badged with Sherwood Motors, and I have the original purchase invoice.
Amazingly, the purchaser lived in Victoria, BC in a house on Cook St., right next door to where my wife was living as a child at the time. She does not remember the car, and we did not purchase the car until 56 years later, with the history and connections unbeknownst to us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHCEAw0GkCE&feature=youtu.be

Rear seats only please...

I pretty well finalized the rear half of the cabin installation. Just need to clean up some wrinkles and fill in a couple of small gaps.
The front is still awaiting the proper tube for the radio, as I need to have the radio working before I install it, and the installation must precede reinstallation of the dashboard.

It certainly is satisfying to see the rear seats installed.

Before:

 After

Jig saw puzzle

Continuing work on the interior panels... some strange little fittings around the back window... 7 separate little panels around the rear of the back doors. A couple of them needed new hardboard, so I cut a couple of panels using the old panels as templates, though fortunately the vinyl is still in good shape and just needed contact cement to glue them on.
I have come to the further conclusion that the radio may not be repairable... it would be too much trouble to adapt it to fit the replacement tube, which may not make it work anyway. I may end up asking Santa for a Retrosound radio.

More trimmin's

Continued to work on the interior today. A few challenges, but progress made. I managed to refit the hard panels around the headliner above the windscreen and doors. The front one was a bit difficult and had to solicit assistance to hold the panel in place while I screwed in the visor mountings. So far I have used all of the panels from the parts car with just a little bit of cleanup.

I then went to work on the radio, as it must be installed before completing the front dashboard. It turned out that I was sent the wrong tube... it was supposed to be a 12ac5 as marked on the box, but inside was something quite different. I did try to install the 12ac6 tube that I had, it fit, but the radio still does not tune in to stations. I may just give up and buy one of the modern "retrosound" units.

Fit 'n Trim

This morning I sorted and cleaned all of the interior trim pieces. A few of them will need to have the hardboard replaced.
Then I went to work on the headliner onto its frame. All went quite well. I am using the vinyl trim from the parts car. It was not installed quite properly in that car, so I salvaged the little clips from the good car to install the vinyl onto the frame. That should work better.
At the end of the day I was able to install the completed frame back into the good car. Looking good!

The trim pieces assembled in Pat's studio.

Here are the clips that were used for the original felt headliner in the good car. A bit rusty, but they worked fine on the new vinyl.

This is why the headliner had to be replaced!

New headliner installed.

The Furflex is flying

More nice progress today, starting with installing the furflex (door trim) around three of the doors. The trouble is that I ran out after three doors. I guess I was supposed to order 12 metres, not 9 metres! Oh well, UPS needs the business.

The furflex is quite easy to install... there is narrow wood pressboard already installed around the doorways, so it is just a matter of tacking the new stuff in place.
I also installed the radio aerial, as per photo. Just a quick drill job... it took all of 10 minutes.

At the end of the day It spent an hour stripping the upholstery panels and the headliner out of the parts car. It should be quite useable in the good car, but will need some cleaning and refitting, and some of the pressboard that it attaches to will need replacing. I will use the old boards as templates for the new boards... my next project.

Progress!

I have been busy with producing a play for local theatre, so haven't taken a "car day" for a while. I made good progress today, and installing the carpets is the first major step toward envisioning the finished project.
This is also the day that I really went to work on dismantling the parts car, as I had to take out all of the furnishings and door panels. It is lucky that I got onto this, as the door panels had gotten quite wet due to lack of window seals. I think they are quite salvageable.
It was time consuming to remove the old front seat runners due to rust. Indeed I was not able to remove one of them, but I did get it loose enough to retrieve the carpet piece from underneath.
My next car day will be spent cleaning and refurbishing the upholstery as gleaned form the parts car, and then beginning the installation.
I am awaiting shipment of the furflex (round trim around doors) before attacking the headliner.

"Finish"ed?

Nowhere near "finished", but it is very satisfying to see some real "finish" today. I got a second coat of varnish onto the dashboard, and a first coat onto all of the door window surrounds. Despite my worries in the previous post, reassembling the door latch mechanism on the driver's door went rather easily. I then moved to the right rear door, where a long bar on the mechanism had detached itself from the latch. I got the broken one out, and then moved over to the parts car where I retrieved the rather decent replacement part. In so doing, I got a bit of a taste for the future project of swapping over the interior trim and upholstery, as I had to remove the door panel. Again, it looks to be a rather hopeful project.

The Doors

While the cat's away....  Pat is away for the week at a ceramics workshop on SaltSpring, so I get the whole week for working on the car as much as I can. I also took over her studio so that I could do woodwork refinishing in a warm environment.
I began with stripping off the old varnish from the dashboard, and after a while sanded it and varnished. It looks lovely!

 It was then time to have a look at the doors. I spent some time trying to free up the window cranking mechanism which had seized up on two of the doors. On one of them, the door handle mechanism had bent over, blocking the crank rods. On the other, the channel had gotten blocked with its own felt runner lining that had bunched up. I had to pull it right out so will have to determine whether or not to replace it. I think the window will crank just fine without it.
I had forgotten that two of the doors had seized door latches, so that has become a big job, and may well take up the rest of the week. It is very difficult accessing the latching mechanism as it is within the door, and the mounting screw are pretty seized. After a couple of hours and some skinned knuckles I managed to extract the driver's door latching mechanism. It is now on the vise, and I have freed up the seized part. I am not particularly looking forward to the reinstallation. And then I must go to work on the right rear door which has a broken rod in the mechanism. That will also require extracting the replacement from the parts car. Ho hum!
This evening I stripped the varnish off of the two rear door window surrounds. It will be quite satisfying to get those spiffed up. At least I can see the product of my work, as opposed to the door latches which are just necessary grunt work.

The culprit:

Radio head

Finicky work with not much to show today. The main project was disassembling the faceplates on the radio to polish and paint them. I am still not certain if I can get it to work, but at least it will look good!
Mad Phil, the local upholstery guy dropped by while I was working. It looks like he can do the headliner in the proper material at a cost I can afford, so I will probably go that route instead of installing the cheap looking vinyl stuff from the parts car.
He confirmed that the seats in the parts car are  mostly re-do rather than original, but it is good quality stuff, and worth using.
The rest of the day was cleaning and grinding around the doorways of the car in preparation for touch up paint.

The Chap!

The Rover P4. A gentleman's car! Click here.

First Step Forward

Today marked a big step in the restoration... the first installation of a newly restored element rather than disassembly which I have been doing up until now.
The item installed was the newly painted instrument panel. Needless to say it was quite a project trying to reconnect the rats nest of wires and cables. I won't know if I was successful for a couple of months when I hook up the battery again.
It also occurred to me that this is the best timing for swapping in the radio from the parts car, as I already had the dashboard partially dismantled. It turned out to be surprisingly easy to remove it from the parts car... just two screws and it slid right out, with just one wire to be cut.
Installing it in the good car though turns out to be a much bigger job. The centre glove box is the proper location, and the unti is designed to fit there. However, I did have to cut part of the metal dashboard frame, and the clock seems to be in the way. I checked the parts car, and it appears the clock is a bit smaller in the parts car, so my next project will be to swap the clock, then hopefully the radio will fit.
The other issue is... does it work? I did hook it to a 12 volt battery on a workbench, and the display light came on. When I twiddled the dial though, I did not get any significant reception, just a bit of snapping sound in a couple of frequencies. There is no aerial, so that may be the issue. I will check it out on my next car day.

Gauging the Situation

Today I tackled the instrument panel. It is a simple black metal faceplate that has rust and corrosion on it, but to repaint it required it to be removed. Sounds simple? Well it would have been, except that it had 13 various dials and lights attached to it, and some of those dials had as many as 10 separate wires attached. It is a real rats nest!
So, it required careful labelling and photographing of all of the wires and pieces as I disassembled them so I have even a vague hope of getting it put back together again.
It was a four hour project to disassemble, and will take at least that to reassemble once it is painted.

Brusha rust

Today was the first "Rover" day in more than a week. I started by pulling out the old "furflex". That's the round furry trim around the doorways. It pulled right off. more or less. It is attached with small tacks into some soft wood stripping installed inside the door frames. It should be fairly easy to reinstall. I will investigate buying some in red... my donor car has some quite new furlex, but it might not come off undamaged, and it is a light gray colour. I would prefer red.

The next job was to grind and sand off all of the scaly rust around the rear seat platform and the "ceiling". I found that a small wire brush attached to a power drill did the job quite nicely, and my rotary sander did very quick work of the "ceiling". This photo shows the rear seat platform half done.

I decided to pull off the rubber running board mats to see what was underneath. The rubber had been replaced once before. It was attached by a combination of glue and small screws. Three of the four running boards had a small aluminum strip attached under the rubber.

It was no surprise to find lots of rust there, but as you can see the drivers door sill is perforated. Fortunately the remaining metal is quite strong, so it should be patchable.

All of the interior is now sanded and ground as much as can be superficially. I will have to now decide what to do about stopping the rust. Rust Mort or POR products probably... and then I will begin work on the dashboard and instrument panel before beginnign to reinstall the interior upholstery.

 The good news is that this is the first, and hopefully only, rust perforation that I have found.

Headline attraction!

With some trepidation I took out the headlining today. I had never worked on a car's headliner before, and could find little information on how it all is assembled.
As it turned out, it was relatively straightforward, and looks fairly straightforward to swap in the headliner from the parts car eventually.
At the front, sides and rear of the main headliner were hardboard trim panels which were attached by simple push clips, and an occasional screw or two. Once they were pulled off, it was apparent that the main headliner frame was removable as a whole unit with just a few screws.
The inside of the metal roof is covered with scaly rust, but as with the rest of the body, it appears to be just surface rust, and easily treatable. The car looks quite the mess at this point, all stripped out and rusty, but the reality is the work has gone very well to this point, and things are looking very manageable.
Next step will be thorough scraping of the interior and exterior. I will have to ask around as to what kind of treatment of the rusty surfaces will be most effective, and then begin reassembly.

Naked seats

September 10/13

Did that title get your attention? I had the entire afternoon available to work on the car, so I went to work seriously on the interior of the "boot" and the cabin.
I am very impressed with the appointments of this car.... very nice leather looking liner all around the trunk... no bare metal like usually found in an american car. It was in fairly good shape, and fairly easy to remove, just a few rusty screws. When all was pulled out, the bare trunk looks not bad at all. There is some rust to be scaled off in the lower right and lower left corners, but nothing worrying.

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I then went to work on the seats. The rear "squab" (Brit for seat back) is pretty well shot. It looked a bit ugly under it and in the corners, but really not as bad as it looks. The rust is just scaly stuff on the surface, and the upholstery bits are replaceable.
The front seat came out in two parts... the seat cushion just lifted right of, but then the frame and squab had to be unbolted from the floorboards. The slothead screw bolts were pretty seized, and only after a good deal of whacking the screws with an impact driver did I realize I could have just loosened the nuts from underneath.
The carpet is pretty well shot.... some of it just comes apart in the hands, but underneath, everything is pretty solid. No threat of floorboard rust through.
I will have to make some decisions about carpet replacement. The grey donor car has brand new properly fitted aftermarket carpets than can just be thrown right in, but there are a couple of problems. Firstly, they are black, not red, and secondly they are some kind of shiny synthetic material. They will look quite OK, but not "original" enough for my satisfaction. I think what I will do is put in the black ones until I can afford to have red ones made, then swap the black ones back to the other car.
The car looks pretty stripped down at this point with no interior and no doors, but it feels good to be progressing so nicely.
I am thinking I will do as much as possible to the interior before refitting the seats. The next steps will probably be polishing and refinishing such items as gear lever, instrument facia panels, and then the interesting project of refinishing the wood trim. I have been in touch with the upholsterer, and he may be able to go to work on the headliner sooner that expected. It would be nice to get that done this fall before reinstalling the seats.

Buried treasure

Rotten carpet

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Rear Seat platform. Not as bad as it looks.

Naked floorboard

Begin strip down

September 6/13

Now that it is known to run, it is time to begin stripping the car down to clean up the rust and ready it for the upholstery.
So I began assessing the door problem again. I figured out how to remove the right rear door fairly easily (though the bolts were seized and took some work), and with the door on the work bench I was able to peer in more easily to figure out the workings. It turned out on that door, that the main issue was simply seized mechanism, which I managed to free up with WD40, though that was tricky having to aim it by mirror and upside down. The right rear door was trickier still, as I ran into a catch 22.... the mechanism couldn't be easily fixed with the door shut, but I could not open nor remove the door with it stuck shut! In the end, I managed, with assorted scraped knuckles, to get some WD 40 in there, then pry the mechanism with a little nail bar. Eventually it popped open, so I was able to then remove the door. That door will require a new mechanism, which I guess I will steal from the grey Rover.

September 7/13

I removed the front doors today. This was an uneventful project, as I had the experience of the rear doors under my belt. Having the doors off will make access to the interior seats and upholstery much more workable.

It's Alive, It's Alive!

September 4/13

It runs like a top! I knew I was close to getting it going, because I had spark. So today I swapped in the new looking aftermarket fuel pump from the grey Rover. It did not go quite smoothly. Once I had it installed,  there was still no gas coming through. I tried blowing out all the fuel lines, syphoning fuel into the lines, etc, etc. In the process I broke the new pump by pulling out a non-solderable wire! So I had to but another new pump from Kenmac. During the process, Pat noticed fuel leaking from up in the right rear wheel well. It turned out to be a rotten fuel line, but it was quite easy to splice in a section of new rubber line at that point.

Finally, I decided to dump in another 20 litres of gas... that was the problem! I still don't understand why the 15 litres I had added earlier was not enough to get the fuel moving.
So, hit the ignition and starter, and VROOM! It started, and purred like a pussycat!
I moved it around the driveway a bit to check out the brakes, clutch, transmission and things.
It runs very smoothly, and the brakes and steering work very nicely.... showed me just how bad the steering and brakes were on the grey Rover!