Well, another Senator has recently entered my ownership, think this one is my 11th!! It's a 1990 3.0 12v with gold-top engine and manual gearbox! It's also non-CD spec so quite rare, rarer still being manual from the factory. Being non-CD spec, it doesn't have air-con, heated seats, trip computer, cruise control, or electric shock absorbers, has a manual winding sunroof, grey cloth seats, basic stereo, plastic steering wheel (as opposed to leather) and steel wheels with plastic trims.
I got it off ebay a few weeks ago. I didn't really need it, but i couldn't resist as, if all else failed, i have a spare engine & gearbox for the track day Carlton.
Photos....
Rear arches not too bad, at least they're still there. I've owned worse......!!
Gold-top engine....
Which unusually has v-belts instead of a serpentine belt (only the early gold-tops had v-belts)
But at least it has the solid fuel rail...
Sadly it doesn't have an LSD.....
But at least the mileage is sensible...
When i got it, it did have a few faults...
ABS light on.
Alternator light on.
Steering wheel off-centre.
Bad vibration from front wheels.
Reluctant to pull from low revs.
But it did come with near enough a full MOT! And it behaved itself all the way back from Swansea which was a relief!!! The engine is super-quiet, the gearbox feels nice & tight & the cloth seats are well comfy!
A few things i noticed about this car was that it has the earlier 271mm front discs, later gold-tops had the 296mm ones, but at least the ones on this car looked brand new! It also has a cable clutch gearbox (my old manual gold-top had a hydraulic clutch box). Not
that either of these are real issues, but i know know that earlier gold-tops had v-belts and smaller front brakes, the later ones getting the serpentine belt and 24v front brakes!
Anyway, first job was to sort the alternator light. The alternator was charging ok. I swapped the regulator, no change. So i swapped the alternator next, and the light went out!! The only modification i had to do was for the connector for the dash light as it was a post type on the old alternator and a spade type on the replacement. But that job was easy enough.
Next job was to address the vibration. I found part of the reason for the problem...
Not sure if you can see in the photo's, but both of the front tyres were badly flat-spotted. Someone must have done a spectacular emergency stop in this!! So i temporarily put some GSi 10-spokes on the front, they weren't very well balanced but marginally better than the wheels that came off!!!
I didn't have a lot of time to fiddle with the car for a while, so drove it like it was till i had chance to do some more. I accumulated some parts, and managed to get the following done....
Replace both front wishbones (the vertical bush fell out of one of them!).
Replace both drop-links.
Replace both track control arms.
Oil changed for Valvoline VR1 20w50.
All filters changed.
New dizzy cap & rotor arm.
New spark plugs.
I ran out of weather this time, so had to wait till the following week to finish off. Luckily, i managed to blag the workshop at work which made things a lot easier...
While i had the car up in the air, it was time to remove the cats. I managed to acquire a set of home made straight through pipes, which appear to be a pair of cherry-bomb type silencers with the correct flanges welded on!!
Old cats...
Replacement pipes...
Also put a nice new lambda sensor on there too...
Being in the air, it was rude not to give the underbody a good looking over. It has had the back of the sills welded previously, it has also had the rear chassis rails done. The repairs aren't pretty, but they appear to be strong enough. For the next MOT it is going to need the front rails doings, as both sides are going crusty in the usual places...
Offside rail...
Nearside rail...
Because the steering still wasn't straight, i manage to adjust the track control arms to level the steering wheel up again. I did this by sight and it seemed to be ok for now! The decat and new lambda made a world of difference to the performance, it now pulls a lot better, but still has a slight hesitancy when cold, so i have some new plug leads on order as the current ones are probably as old as the car!
Last weekend i managed to get a full set of Omega Elite 16" alloys from a fellow ABS member. I already had a set of 4 in the garage, but these had been used on my track car at Marham! The new ones had some good, some not so good tyres, so i bought a couple of ebay cheapo tyres to make up a set of 4. Got the wheels fitted and the trackign sorted properly. It now turns in so sharply i have to be careful i dont spin it. It doesn't feel quite right if i'm honest, but this might be down to having 225 section tyres and cheap chinese tyres on the back!!
On the down side, a couple more problems have now reared their ugly heads. One of the nearside rear handbrake pins has come through the backplate, so that wheel is making a racket. There also appears to be a wheel bearing on the way out too, although this might just be the noise of the loose handbrake show rubbing on the inside of the drum. Just waiting for new shoes to arrive, i already have a set of inserts to sort the pin hole out.
Today i also ditched the original basic spec stereo. It wasn't working properly. I have now fitted a Blaupunkt twin-deck system out of a higher spec car, cheers to Murph for supplying this. Annoyingly, the CD unit doesn't fit my car properly. The head unit fits ok, but the cd unit touches the heater box and sticks out slightly further than it should. You can just about make this out in the photo...
I can only assume that the heater box is different on cars with air-con, as this car doesn't have air-con, and i can't think of any Senators that had this system which didn't have air-con! It's not a huge problem, the system still works ok. One advantage of the Blaupunkt head unit is that it has an aux socket, so i should be able to plug an mp3 player into the head unit. These systems have a reasonable sound quality for a 20 year old unit, so i'm quite happy! I've got new speakers int he back, need to replace the fronts and the tweeters as one of the tweeters is dead.
So, there's a few jobs still to do...
Fix handbrake problem.
Fix ABS.
Sort out the slight hesitancy.
Replace front speakers and tweeters.
Investigate possible wheel bearing problem.
Once the above is sorted, i should be able to enjoy driving it for the rest of the current MOT as there ought not be a lot else still to do!!
