Rover Vitesse, Finally Back & Tailgate Struts

Its been a long month; without Tess, internet or for the most part, a home. But now all of that is over.

We purchased, and finally moved into our house just over a week ago. We are still surrounded by an ever shrinking pile of boxes (where does all this crap come from, and where does it go now?!) but at least everything is with us again.

Our two goldfish were being babysat whilst we had no home, as we didn’t want to try to move them each week to a different AirBNB. Sadly, after over 6 years of him being around, our little guy Stan “High Fin” Lee passed away the day before we were to pick them up. He was an old chap, so it wasn’t totally unexpected, but its a shame he’s gone, and he couldn’t wait a day and not make the babysitter feel bad. His little bro, Dwight, has taken up residence in our lounge now, and is doing well. RIP in the big tank in the sky Stan.

Dwight doing Dwight things.

Anyway, Tess also came home the other day. She had also been babysat which was a great help, as she was able to be stored away in a dry garage and I didn’t have to try to move her around. A huge thanks to our babysitters for their help.

Tess seems happy in her new home, although she takes up an awful lot of it

In order to help reduce what we put into storage, I filled the boot and back seat with spare parts. There was a lot of weight in there but the new suspension handled it OK.

One thing I did change as soon as I got her into the garage, was to replace the tailgate struts, so that I didn’t end up being decapitated by the stupidly heavy tailgate. I went to Supercheap with a spare strut and matched it up against the ones they had on the shelf, and tried to get the highest force they had, which was 450N. These are a little longer than the original struts, so you do have to take care when fitting them as the top edge of the tailgate might contact the body, but in normal use they work perfect, even with the Vitesse spoiler.

The other small thing I did was to add my trickle charge hard wire connector to the battery. As Tess sits around a bit, it’ll be good to keep her battery topped up, without having to have clips on the battery and the bonnet open.

So that’s where we are today. A good second-hand brake booster and master cylinder arrived this morning, so that will be fitted shortly, and then we should be back on the road. I have big plans to get this car in better shape, including stripping out the interior for cleaning (and fixing the heater box issues).

More on that later.