Rover SD1 3500 SE

When we were originally looking for a suitable track-car the main requirements were that the car should be rear-wheel drive and would be relatively cheap to buy and develop to the standard that we wanted.

Various options were discussed and cars viewed; including a Nissan 200SX (turbo-charged, therefore capable of being cheaply tuned but with Japanese parts prices), a Porsche 924 (cheap to buy but potentially very expensive in the long term) and BMW 3-Series (reliable but expensive on parts). We then saw a Rover SD1 on PistonHeads and after a quick look the decision was made!

The Rover SD1 is generally fairly cheap to buy, has an excellent cheap parts availability thanks to Rimmer Bros, is British, has the iconic Rover V8 engine under the bonnet, is relatively cheap to tune and develop and has a long and proud history in motorsport (Group A saloon car racing, touring car racing, rallycross, etc). All in all the Rover SD1 is a very well designed classic car that won the European Car of the Year award in 1977.

The main disadvantages were thanks to the British Leyland build quality of the time, rust and dodgy electrics. Fortunately, a few of us having owned various B.L. related products including old Range-Rovers and Minis, these were two things that did not unduly daunt us at Lloyd Specialist Developments.

The car we bought was originally a 1982 3500 SE Rover SD1 in Monza red with a tan interior. The original owner had previously put a 4 litre Rover V8 block in the car with lightened and balanced internals and had re-fit the twin SU HIF44 carburettors and standard heads. The camshaft is a Piper 270i, which produces good torque from low-down the rev range and excellent driveability. The bodyshell was in relatively good condition thanks to the original owner having kept the car in a garage and regularly Wax-oyling it. 

Whilst the car was to be developed as a track-car we also wished to ensure that the car could also be used as a practical daily driver, useful for when we had one of our daily drivers in the workshop. This has made our job more challenging as many more compromises have to be made when developing a vehicle for multiple uses, a track-only car would have been much more straight-forward to develop.

As far as developing the car for track use was concerned, the main priorities initially were to service the brakes and upgrade the suspension. As the photos of the car in original form testify, the standard SE suspension was definitely designed for comfort rather than good handling on the track!

Suspension

It was decided that, as a starting point, the car should both be lowered and stiffened to both lower the centre of gravity and reduce the excessive body-roll. To achieve this, we fitted 60mm lowering springs and front adjustable Spax strut inserts. The rear dampers were already adjustable Monroe air dampers. All main suspension bushes, including anti-rollbar bushes have been upgraded with Rimmer Bros' Rover SD1 Vitesse polybush kit. This meant that we had to change the rear Watts linkage to a Vitesse Watts linkage to accomodate the different size Vitesse bushes. The next stage is to make and fit camber-adjusting plates in the top strut mounts.

Bodywork

Although this Rover SD1 was in relatively good condition, it is an SD1 so a complete shell refurbishment was required to be certain that we did not own a rotten car! This involved stripping down the shell and removing all of the interior as well as the bonnet, doors, boot, sun-roof and all of the glass in the shell, including the windscreen. We also removed the fuel tank, exterior lights and all exterior trim on the car to leave us with a bare rolling shell. This proved to be a real eye-opener, this seemingly good condition Rover SD1 had a completely rotten boot floor and serious corrosion in multiple areas.

To remove the corrosion in the boot area we removed the boot floor with a plasma cutter and angle grinder and re-styled the back end of the car so that a rear bumper was no longer fitted. This made the rear end of the car much lighter and meant that the rear axle and rear suspension could be easily serviced without having to lift the car in the air. The area around the Watts linkage was also braced to stiffen the lateral axle location, whilst the two rear-most chassis legs were left intact to act as a crumple zone in the event of a rear end collision.

The nearside rear arch was also repaired and the rear bootlid replaced with a second-hand corrosion-free one, whilst the bonnet was replaced with a new old-stock item from Rimmer Bros.

The four doors were rotten along the bottoms so they replaced with earlier reconditioned series one doors but this posed some unforeseen problems. The internal door locks of the earlier series one are a different lock, in a different location on the door trim! This meant that the door trims would not fit, and the earlier doors did not come with their trim panels. Usually this would not be a problem with a 100% track-car but as this car was being developed as both a track car and a practical daily driver, we had decided that we wished to keep some basic interior trim in the car.

Interior

We removed most of the sound-proofing (we like the V8 sound any-way!) to allow us to easily maintain the floor pan and wiring. The rear seat and seat bolsters were put back into the car, one of it’s key features as a practical daily driver.

A main roll-bar was designed and welded in for safety. In order to get the cage feet mounted in the correct locations we had to cut two sections out of the inner sills and plate them in (see pictures).