3 Pedal Mafia's 24 Hours of Lemons Rolls Royce Silver Shadow

What better way to use a ratty Rolls than to be one of the finest racing machines of all time!

Here's the story of buying our new Lemons car: http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/our-new-lemons-car-pardon-me/58420/page1/

We took advantage of the 50 degree weather here today and actually looked to see what the hell we got ourselves into.

First, we had to drain the gas tank. The 26 gallon tank was full of 5 year old gas. Jeff filled all of our race cans, and this stuff will gradually be burned up in the daily drivers, as it didn't seem that bad, then we put in 5 gallons of fresh gas

While this was happening, I was cleaning out the carbs. This thing has 2" SU carbs, and a very odd intake tract, which as an indicator of how this car was treated, involved both PVC pipe and dyer hose. The float bowls weren't bad, everything seemed to cleanup OK with ample doses of carb cleaner.

Jim worked to clean all of the grounds and clear out the trunk, this thing has a built in kill switch in the trunk!

Chrissy worked on doing some general de-scuzzification, this thing is full of so many neat touches, it's amazing.

Now that we had the carbs ready and the wiring better, we tried to turn it over, no luck, so of course we just hit the starter with a hammer until it worked! We poured some gas in the float bowls, and cranked for a bit. It seemed to turn over well, had good compression bumps, but wasn't starting. We pulled a plug and had spark, so we sprayed some carb cleaner in the intake, and it sputtered to life!

It would run only briefly, as the float bowls don't hold much, and the fuel pumps weren't working, even after hitting them with a hammer. Once we got the pump out (just a dual ended SU pump, so just two of the pump on my MG stuck together), and cleaned up the points and moved the linkage, and we got both sides working, so tomorrow we will get the pump in and it should then run on it's own.

And for those of you who think this is too nice, here's the floor on the driver's side

As always, there is more on our team Facebook page, including a video of it running!!

http://www.facebook.com/ThreePedalMafia

More to come tomorrow!

Sweet, I may have to spectate another Lemons race when this thing is ready to go

Nice looking forward to seeing more of this

"My driving is rivaled only by the lightning bolts from the heavens!"

The perfect car to take on the infedels http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cODolsPxhaU

So when we cleaned the trunk today we found a three ring binder filled with micro-fische copies of some fantastic history of the car such as service records showing major repairs with less the 10k miles on the clock, a copy of the original check the car was paid for with and a fantastic letter from what we think is the original broker/importer and possibly the original salesmen.

Here is the letter completely unedited!

Re: Chassis SRX 6927 Further to your Teletex of July 30th, we are putting a hold on the above mentioned car for Peter Satori. We do not want a repetition of the Roy Carver episode and therefore if Satori makes the deal it will be necessary for him to contact APY/LD regarding pick-up date, method of payment and any further work that he may require, such as new car per-delivery preparation. I must emphasize that we will release no information from this office. All requests must be made directly to APY/LD.

so have you signed up on any Rolls forums to ask questions about how best to make it into a $500 race car?

i'm sure you'd be welcomed with open arms..

novaderrik wrote: so have you signed up on any Rolls forums to ask questions about how best to make it into a $500 race car? i'm sure you'd be welcomed with open arms..

I am filled with visions of their members ordering new computers after seeing such an abomination...

the 'Roy Carver episode'... that oughta be a good story

Sonic wrote: What better way to use a ratty Rolls than to be one of the finest racing machines of all time! Here's the story of buying our new Lemons car: http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/our-new-lemons-car-pardon-me/58420/page1/

I just saw this in the hotlink thread. You need a similar sign

Here's the Peter Satori dealership in the mid-70s:

GO FAST WITH CLASS!

hmm http://www.flickr.com/photos/retrocounty/8215389539/

Also from the Hotlinks Thread. Maybe you can have a custom Rolls-Royce version made for you?

I think the car should be named The Roy Carter Episode.

The possible need for wheels was brought up in the other thread. Maybe Bassett or Diamond could make some at a fair price?

We've gotten a bit of good info now about who Peter Satori and Roy Carver are, both RR dealers in So Cal. I'm still quite intrigued by what the "Roy Carver Incident" might possibly be.

Even though it might have started at the Peter Satori dealership, by 1971 with 8000 miles it was in South Florida, per the service records. At some point, it was painted the lovely gold/brown it is now, instead of the garnet red that it was when it left Crewe.

I'm sure the RR fans are going to be "most displeased" with what we are doing to the car...oh well, that's why there are so many of them who pamper their cars, this is better than the car being scrapped. "Hey bub, got any French's?!?"

As for wheels, if we go larger than the stock 15's, we will have Diamond make some up. Some 245/45/17 would be sweet, stock is 235/70/15.

After working on it on Sunday, the fuel pumps are back in and it starts up now normally. It doesn't seem to run on all 8, though, but who knows why at this point, after sitting for so long. We fiddled with it for a while, finding that the ends of most of the HT leads were not crimped tightly, so we took them off and tightened them up, and it seemed to run a bit better. I pulled 4 plugs, and they looked good, with proper gap, and not too worn. It did move, stop, and steer ok overall. I got it up to about 30 and into second gear, and that alone was enough, let alone thinking about having this on track! One half of the high pressure system was not building pressure, so we need to track that down, it is probably a hydraulic pump or pressure accumulator...my guess is the pump.

One odd thing: -Attached to the cylinder 6 spark plug (3rd one on the pass side), was this thing:

Does anyone have any idea what the hell this is? It was only on the one on the car that had it. My only guess is that it is part of some compression tester and was left in there by accident.

Asked and answered over on the Lemons board. Its a spark plug anti fouler, you've probably got some blowby on that cylinder

^Spark plug anti-fouler. Used temporarily for cylinders with bad rings, keeps the plug a bit further out of the oil.

EDIT: damn, beat to the punch!

Well it seemed to run better once removed...we shall see.

What's the bolt pattern?

A track RR and a Fubaru. So many purists on this forum. I love it.

Details on the bolt pattern are hard to find and I haven't measured it yet, but it seems as though it is 5x155, with a 117mm center bore

thats a spark plug nonfouler. check the compression on that cylender. its proably slinging some oil, or running rich in that chamber. i used them a bunch on heavy oil burners.

its nice to see a rolls being used for EXACTLY what rolls didnt intend it for.

also, id run some marvel through the whole deal. i wouldnt be suprised if the lifters are gummed up, making it run funny. wouldnt hurt to get all the sludge out of it eaither, from where it was never fully warmed up, and never worked hard.

needs more brakes, and a ton more suspension, though.

and whats wrong with PVC and dryer ducting?

if it's sat for a while, give it a bath in diesel fuel and ATF. Fill the engine- I mean, literally, up to the intake manifold. Take out the plugs, turn it by hand a few times, let it sit a few days. Then drain it all out and put in fresh oil (cheap), run for a while, then change the oil again.

After that, do some Italian tuneups.

Dusterbd13 wrote: and whats wrong with PVC and dryer ducting?

I've found dryer ducting doesn't stay airtight well enough. Plus, if the wire inside the ducting breaks, it can get ingested by the engine. As soon as I'm off the computer, I'm going down to the garage to replace the engine in a Miata that did exactly that. Right now, there's a piece of wire stuck in both the intake AND exhaust valves on #3 and both that cylinder and #2 are pretty hacked up.

So it's not my favorite intake design.

fair ebough. ive only used ti to duct cold air to factory snorkle style aircleaners. therefor the filter would catch that. but in a post filter application , it coulod be, and in you case, is potentially nasty.