I thought it had been sounding a bit throaty lately. Mid-overtake it happened. ROARRR chink… chink… Oh bugger! That’s what too much use of the loud pedal does to an old car, or the very, very deafeningly LOUD pedal as it had now become. Turned out my MG had spat its new exhaust centre section clean out of the downpipe. I managed to tie it to the gear selector rod with an old bit of wire I had stashed in the...

Well this weekend was spent righting some of the wrongs of the previous weekend, however there were inevitably some problems too

I fitted a new diesel tank, ran the return fuel lines and finalised the fuel system - even the gauges appears to work! No pics of this I'm afraid.

Then my assistant put the steering column back in as the van needed to be made mobile for next weekend.

...

This weekend was a very up and down few days

First the downs:
Finished my turbo adapter - went to bolt it up and one of the studs broke out so I had to weld another in. Also when fitted there was a large step in the airflow so I've had to reprofile that too
Filled the tank with diesel - Then spotted the tank had sprung a leak. This is the tank that I'd spent 2 days painting and corrosion protecting So had to spend the next half hour removing the diesel I'd just put in!...

As people may know I'm a bit of a diesel tuner at heart, and my van is no exception.

I have some aim power figures in mind but I'll keep them under wraps for now. But they are higher than the standard turbo will support.

As some other people might know I'm a cheapskate too and so I didn't fancy splashing out many many hundreds of pounds getting a custom hybrid made. So I found a turbo I thought would be suitable. It was indeed suitable, however the exhaust was totally...

The bigger rover geeks amoung you may have worked out that the rover 600 is a fly-by-wire engine, i.e. the throttle pedal isn't in any way mechanically connected to the engine, i.e. it is all electronically controlled. This means that there is no throttle arm to move which gives me a bit of a headache.

On the 600 the throttle sensor is connected directly to the throttle pedal, something which isn't easy to replicate in the maestro as there is no room. So I came up with an ingenous...

Things have been stalled of late due to 2 car shows, a visit to my parents and poor weather.

But this weekend I got a little more done.

I managed to get hold of a maestro turbo radiator for it, and a slimline fan as the space between the radiator and the engine is rather tight.

I've also fitted a Saab intercooler. Whether is withstands the boost pressure or not is another matter but only time will tell.

Most of the pipework is now complete....

Well progress is being made at quite a pace now thanks to some help and assistance from a certain forum member.

This weekend the PAS system has been sorted thanks to a new custom PAS pipe and some creative pipe bending to make the PAS cooler. I'll see if I can get some pictures when I'm next up there to show you how it went.




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Today finally the engine is in and suspended from the engine mounts! Hurrah!

Well ok I know it doesn't sound like much but it got me excited. I utilised 2 of the standard engine mounts, (the gearbox one and the rear lower dogbone one). The nearside gearbox mount fits without modification. The rear dogbone mount needs altering a fair bit to fit You have to cut out a fair amount of the aluminium casting on the engine...

Fitting this engine has to be easy compared to how difficult all this wiring is.

Tonight I spent yet another night trying to do the wiring needed to make the immobiliser work in an alien vehicle.

The picture above is about 1/4 of the wiring loom for the car, after I've disected it and pulled out all the wires I need. Well all the wires I think I need! Only time will tell if I've...

Well what have we here? A pair of racing Maestros? Yes, but even more significant is that they're both MG 1600s.

For those not familiar with our 'fleet', the white/blue one is a recent acquisition. Not only does that bring our current total up to 11 cars (of which only 2 aren't Maestros), but it also adds another 'pair' to the line-up. We now have a pair of MG1600s to go with the pair of...