A TCL First? '67 Rolls Royce project thread...

11 minute(s) of a 242 minute read

another quick update:

bits and pieces of the car flying all over the country right now!
the waterpump is off to canada to get reworked by jim (same guy from RROC who did the brake pumps)
distributor is off to minnesota for a rebuild
top tank will be dropped off for rework locally tomorrow
im going to powdercoat the fan and hub while theyre out to keep making things look nicer before putting them back in
yesterday i found heater hoses that should be perfect matches for the stock parts after trimming
and i think ive got generic matches for the top and bottom hoses as well, but should find out for sure this afternoon... fingers crossed!

more pictures to come as things start trickling back in, probably late next week.

7-2-2012

yeah we do need to get this thing out for some good photos once its all cleaned up and outside again. i was thinking some sort of older house... but nothing has come to mind yet locally thats isolated enough...


some quick updates, got the top tank back a few days ago, looking very nice. distributor should be headed home in a few days as well, and waterpump should be here by the end of the week.

ive been distracting myself building the new engine for my gti while waiting on RR parts... should be back onto the RR within a week or so

7-11-2012

havent updated this in a bit as ive been waiting for parts to come in from all over, but some big news on the history/background front!

ive now got copies of all the original factory/ordering documents from '67. theres probably around 45-50 pages worth of handwritten notes and forms filled out at the factory along the build process.
ill post up some shots of the more interesting bits of that - theres everything from the original order sheet, notes from each build station on what was done and how in tolerance various parts were, serial numbers of major components and valves fitted to the car, notes from the engine test station on how it was running/how the carbs were tuned, and notes from the final inspection on what had to be redone/adjusted before delivery (looked like even the factory had a hard time adjusting these gearboxes to shift smoothly, and fitting the brake system to be leak free ), there are also warranty cards showing the first 2 owners (through the early 70s) in the UK - the second of which was a tv station!

i also got a call back the other night from the US owner's son who was able to fill in the gaps between 1987 and when we picked it up, and he also has pictures of it from when they brought it home in '87 and throughout his dad's ownership of the car that hes going to copy and mail to me. he was really excited to hear that the car is being taken care of as i guess it was one of his dad's dream cars and he just had to have it when they found it.

ill type up the whole story as he gave it to me (was pretty lengthy, i had to take notes) when i get a chance, but suffice to say it had an interesting couple of years in the mid 80s before they found it in michigan in '87. how it got to michigan from the UK is also kind of bizarre.


just waiting on the waterpump to arrive and reassembly should start early next week


were scouting some local photo shoot spots as well! should be some good updates with lots of pictures rolling in really soon

same here, and im really curious to check out the pictures of it when they got it in the 80s.... itll be interesting to see whether the SS2 bumpers/mirrors and shortened grill were already on it, or whether that was added during the 80s...


also just got off the phone with jeff from advanced distributors who refurb'd the distributor... he said the advance springs were basically stretched out to the point of almost not being operable. apparently we were getting the same advance during cranking and idle that itd normally see at 1900rpm! he also delayed the start of the advance curve until about 1000rpm to smooth the idle out. he says the other RR lucas stuff hes done folks have liked that better than the stock setting, because of this we'll run a little more advance at idle than stock and it should purr at 500rpm
also mentioned the upper bearing and the bushings in it looked like they were in really good shape, hes always had to put new ones in these but this looks like a really low mileage example, which seems to jive with the rest of the car.

highly recommend him for any lucas or bosch distributor work, really nice guy on the phone and really reasonable prices
www.advanceddistributors.com

7-17-2012

had a minute tonight to go through my notes from the conversation with the former owner's son, whos now likely an older gentleman himself. heres the gist of what i wrote down, we'll just call the guy i spoke to T

i got in touch with t after finding some paperwork with his name and his fathers name in the stack of papers we got with the car. thanks to a helpful member on here who was able to scan some old court cases i found the estate lawyer for t's dad's estate and he was able to get t in touch with me...

anyway, the story!

t's dad and his dad's brother in law were traveling to michigan in 1987 to pick up some things for a charity auction back home in oregon. they stopped at a bank that was having a repo sale, and noticed the RR in the back lot, looking like itd sat there for a while. t's dad had always been a big RR fan but had never owned, driven, or worked on one. they offered the bank $13,000 to take the thing off their hands. bank accepted and after a tuneup, a new battery, and some new tires they drove the car home to oregon.
the bank told them theyd had the car several years after having repo'd it off of a boat in new york. apparently a guy had flown to the UK to buy it a few years earlier and shipped it home to himself, along the way something went wrong - t thought he remembered something about a bankruptcy but wasn't sure - and the bank wanted their car. it then sat in flint michigan until his dad picked it up.
prior to this guy shipping it to the US, it had been owned by an elderly lady who had a driver - according to the owners manual and paperwork that they had received with the car from the bank [unfortunately this was all missing when we picked it up]. the car had worn out paint on the high edges of the fenders and roof when they got to it in 1987, so they suspected an overzealous polishing job by the lady's driver had worn out the lacquer.
the car never had a set of oregon plates, t remembers his dad saying that it was legal at the time as it had been imported that way and had been registered in oregon under the original british plate.
he said his dad really loved the car and drove it everywhere when he had it, he also did a majority of the maintenance on the car [likely circa late early 90s] as his dad was a mechanic his entire life.
after his dad passed the car was sold to a pawnshop in idaho (as part of the estate settlement i assume) whose owner had a friend that was a former RR tech in california. they worked on the car for some time before t remembers not seeing it around - likely when it was picked up by the guy we got it from and brought to washington.



anyway, crazy stuff, kind of a neat story... the theme of which seems to be that it was relatively unused for some time in the early 80s. then used for 10-15 years, then unused again for quite a while again.

i still owe you guys some shots of the factory paperwork, planning on getting to that this week, along with some shots of all the new cooling system stuff

7-22-2012

as i promised a while while back... therell be pictures of the factory builds sheets. so theres finally a pic heavy update


heres what else has been new in the meantime. just waiting on the waterpump to come back and we're back on the road...


repainted top tank with a resoldered inner center baffle and new seals and whatnot...





i had a buddy help with some powdercoating on the fan and hub, so thats all looking great now... cant wait to get that on the motor



cant wait to get these on the motor as the top tank and fan blades were kind of an eye sore before.

and finally the refurb'd distributor



should actually have some ignition advance now!


and finally, onto some random shots from the factory records.











price sheet... looks like it was sold at a bit of a discount being a dealer demo



theres just pages and pages of stuff like this: