After about three months of driving a non-overdrive 1500 Dolomite the loss of performance compared to a 2-litre Vitesse got a bit too much. A friend of my younger brother was selling an 1850 with overdrive and the asking price was reasonable, so I bought it. In truth it wasn't an 1850 in the truest sense. The previous owner (a Mr. Morris, ironically) had owned two Dolomites - a blue 1850 and a yellow 1500HL. The 1500 engine was shot and the 1850's bodywork had just about had it. He fixed this by transferring the 1850 engine and gearbox into the 1500 shell. To simplify the dealings with DVLC he had scrapped the 1500 and registered a change of colour on the 1850. To this end the identity of the 1850 got transferred to the hybrid. When I bought the car it came with a spare front subframe, with blue paint on it, which meant it was the 1850 one and the front springs on the car were still 1500 ones. Also included was a spare (1850) rear axle, which meant the diff on the car was a 1500 one. Plus I got a spare propshaft, four doors, two cylinder heads (one 1500, one 1850) and some other junk.

A fortnight after buying the "yellow peril", as it came to be known, I had to drive down to Slough to visit my older brother. About half way down the "IGN" light came on - which I took to indicate an alternator failure as it had always taken a while to go out on startup. Since it was daytime I figured I would continue the journey and replace the alternator when I got there. Well I arrived in Slough, slowed down through the traffic, and got to my brother's place with steam coming from the bonnet. The 1850 engine is well known for head warping and corrosion, so I stopped immediately. On opening the bonnet I found the alternator had not actually failed but rather had fallen off, and wedged itself between the block and inner wing. The fan belt was therefore dangling loose, and the fan wasn't working, hence the overheating when I slowed down. Whether the cooling system was totally sound before that I don't know, but from then on at least it had a slow coolant loss.

Time went by and the peril developed a rather nasty vibration. On acceleration or coasting down it wasn't too bad, but if you tried to maintain a steady cruise it shook terribly. I didn't do much about this at first, because it was due for an MOT soon. It failed the MOT on a few points - bald tyres and poor brakes, and a leaky rear shocker. When I came to replace the shockers, I discovered that they were not actually leaking at all, but rather they were covered in axle oil. The left hand hub oil seal was dead. Well it was the wrong axle anyway so I reconditioned the spare. I also took a look at the propshaft while I was under there, and found the cause of the vibration. The rear UJ was so utterly shot that the propshaft had to be replaced. It was lucky I had a spare....

With a new MOT (which ended up costing more than the car had), yellow peril was back in service. One winter's day I set off to go to work. When I turned the lights on, one of them blew - oh well, never mind. About half a mile up the road the engine cut out. It was obviously damp ignition, but I had no WD40, and neither did the work colleague who pulled over to help. He took me to work, and I returned at lunch time to rescue the car. Of course it started immediately this time, but I decided to replace most of the ignition system anyway. After I had done so, I got my strobe light to reset the timing. I leaned in through the window to start it, but it didn't want to. I tried more choke, no luck. I tried less choke, no luck. After some fiddling like this the engine finally fired. And promptly ignited the unburnt fuel that had collected in the front silencer, which is fitted under the driver's seat. The resulting explosion, six inches from my feet, brought my neighbour out to see what had happened.

By this time the coolant leak had become quite noticeable, so I decided to fix it. A quick check suggested it was coming from the O-ring seal between the inlet manifold and the head. This proved non-trivial to replace because the manifold gasket is in two parts, and the manifold is held on by bolts not studs. Also there is a bypass pipe down to the water pump. When I first reassembled it and started up, there was a horrendous screaching whistle, because one of the gaskets had got folded and was acting as a reed in the flow of air through the leak. Well, fixing that O-ring led to leaks from the bypass pipe, so I replaced those O-rings too. That made the first one leak again. When I had got all three sealed, I still had a coolant loss problem, this time from the side of the block. My initial thoughts of cracked blocks subsided when I realised the coolant was emerging from a drain cum vent hole for the "dry" part of the water pump. In trying to fix the water pump seal I managed to break the impeller, so I bought a new water pump. Guess what ? I still had coolant loss. In fact it was getting worse. Having filled the system to the brim, I drove to London and back, and the coolant level got to the point of causing overheating. Yes, you've guess, it was leaking from the head gasket. I decided I wasn't going to spend all the time and money fixing that well known disaster area if the car wasn't going to last. I knew the brakes weren't great but what else was there ? I decided to take it for an MOT (six months early) to see just how badly it would fail. It passed. Which earned it a new head gasket. And a timing chain while I was at it. The trouble is the new gasket didn't fix the leak. At least not immediately. After a couple of hundred miles still leaking I decided to re-torque the bolts (should be done at 500 miles anyway according to the book). After that the leak was no more, and the cooling system had absolutely no loss at all.

Since yellow peril was originally a 1500, it still had a 1500 wiring harness. This includes a main power distribution block (H-shaped piece of copper in a plastic housing) bolted to the left hand suspension turret. Or not bolted in this case. One day I drove the car to church, and while it was parked up this block fell off. Onto the exhaust manifold. Which was hot, and melted the plastic. This shorted the battery through the main power lead, which melted and caught fire before breaking the circuit. Over the next year I had several ignition failures (four in one journey was the record) which I fixed with an electronic booster module. Then the clutch master cylinder jammed, so I replaced all the seals. Then the slave cylinder leaked, so I replaced that. Then the driven plate centre exploded, causing it to jam. By the end of 1994 I was thoroughly fed up with the yellow peril. Its time had come, and it went to the great scrapyard in the sky, but not before we'd salvaged anything useful off it!

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