The ship did not reach the Scottish shipyard until 14 July 1881, and was refitting until February 1882. New vertical compound steam engines and twelve cylindrical boilers with a working pressure of replaced the original defective machinery. The spar torpedoes in the bow were replaced by underwater torpedo-tubes for Whitehead torpedoes and the ship's propellers and rudder were also replaced. Her funnel was also reduced back to its original height. On 4 February 1882 Petr Veliky conducted sea trials with her new machinery and reached a speed of with an engine output of . The new engine and boilers were slightly lighter than their predecessors, and the ship now displaced . Immediately after her sea trials the ship departed Scotland for a Mediterranean cruise. Petr Veliky made port visits at Algiers, Athens, Corfu, Naples, La Spezia and Toulon before being recalled. She visited Cadiz, Lisbon, Brest, and Cherbourg before reaching Kronstadt on 12 September. The ship remained in the Baltic Sea for the rest of her career and had her light armament modified several times. During the 1880s her rear 4-pounder guns were replaced by two and two others on her bridge were moved to the roof of the forward turret. Petr Velikys boilers were replaced in 1892, and by the mid-1890s the ship mounted two 4-pounder guns on each turret, six 5-barrel revolving Hotchkiss guns on the bridge and four Hotchkiss guns. Petr Veliky was considered obsolete by the late 1890s and a number of proposals were made to reconstruct her. The most elaborate scheme would have involved raising the turrets and building a new armored casemate between the turrets and deck with six guns. The existing 14 and 12-inch wrought iron armor plates would be replaced by Krupp steel plates and thick respectively. Despite saving by substituting the lighter steel armor for the wrought iron, the ship would have gained in displacement and her draft would have increased by about 12 inches. This plan was approved, albeit with a very low priority, and her turrets were removed in October 1898, but nothing more was done. On 11 June 1903 Admiral F. K. Avelan, Minister of the Navy, ordered that she be converted into a gunnery-training ship. A new design was approved on 2 February 1904, although the Baltic Works in Saint Petersburg had already begun cutting the ship down to the berth deck. The side armor was removed