Project 1994 Rover 414SLi - Fin.

[vulgalour]

Front driver's door is noisiest and the rear driver's door doesn't work at all.  Passenger side works fine.  I'm told the solenoids have a small plastic component that breaks and is impossible to repair which is probably what's happened with the front door.  The rear door may just be unplugged or may be broken.  One day I might fit a new set of solenoids, but for the amount of hassle it isn't, I'll likely leave it as is.

 

Big annual drive tomorrow down the A1 and M25 to get to Maidstone, a good 5.5 to 6.5 hour trek on the sorts of roads I don't enjoy at all, especially at this time of year.

[nisfan]

I can confirm the AS 220 bike does make the same noise but I just thought they all done that!

[vulgalour]

Drove to Maidstone a few days ago.  Car performing excellently, as is to be expected from such a fine British* motor vehicle.  Returned about 42mpg at speeds comparable to other road users and with the exception of one incident of nearly getting squished by a big articulated lorry that didn't see me, a completely uneventful journey.

[vulgalour]

 

The alternator belt on the Rover has been quite noisy since we got the cold weather and unlike the Princess where it's a case of undoing a bolt or two, pulling the alternator to the desired location to tension the belt and then doing the bolts back up, it's rather more involved on the Rover. First, jack the car up and get it on an axle stand, then unbolt the undertray. My undertray has been split in the centre so you don't have to take the whole thing off, which is handy.

20180206-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Looking up from underneath the car you can see a long rusty looking bolt to the bottom right of this image. That's the tension adjuster bolt. I need to adjust that because the alternator belt has gone just slack enough to screech when it's really cold which is one of the most embarrassing noises an old car is capable of producing.

20180206-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Access is not great. You sort of have to feed a 10mm spanner in behind the front crossmember to get to the bolt. You can get a good amount of turn if you can get your hand and the spanner around the oil filter and if the engine is cool enough that you don't burn yourself on the exhaust manifold, which is what I ended up doing. You can't do this from above because you can't even see the bolt, goodness knows why they put the adjuster underneath like this. You can just make out my white-gloved hand and the head of the spanner either side of the crossmember. That's really as much visibility as you get for this job.

20180206-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

With that tightened up and proper tension restored to the belt, it is pleasantly quiet again. I'm guessing there's just been enough miles on this new belt to stretch it a little, exacerbated by the cold weather since it did shut up once everything had warmed up under the bonnet. I just consider this routine maintenance, really.

[vulgalour]

20180301-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

20180301-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

[RobT]

Jam sandwich Rover.

[vulgalour]

mmmm jam.

 

Collected a full SEi half-leather interior for the Rover tonight.  It's the interior I wanted but couldn't find and popped up for a sensible price through the club not too far away.  Before I fit it I need to visit Castle Cleland to salvage those hatchback specific bits and I need to redye my spare carpet red (because me), and then I can get it all installed.  Quite looking forward to the upgrade and the potential comfort improvements since the SEi interior has some more adjustments, better padding and better side support on the seats.

 

More news on this tomorrow when I unload Mike's car and can show you all what I got.

[Ghosty]

Shame there was never a 216SEi, that'd be an ace car.

[vulgalour]

I have a cold, again, because of this sodding winter.  That meant we had to cancel our plans for picking the Rover carcass for the few bits I need but it's okay, it turns out the weather would have cancelled it for us anyway.

20180317-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

I don't feel too bad about being ill because of that, there's no way any of us wanted to do anything outdoors in that weather, even if well.  Previously, I'd bought some more of the Simply Spray dye I used to refresh the Princess' carpet because I didn't want a dark grey carpet in the Rover.  Instead, I wanted a dark red carpet.  Now, I'm aware that dye usually has to go over a lighter colour and I was taking a risk by using a hue that was about in the same place as the old colour.  There was a very good chance this wouldn't work, but there was realy only one way to find out.  First coat always goes on alarmingly bright and certainly more purple than I fancied.

20180317-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Second and third coats mellowed out considerably and once dry it was exactly the colour I wanted.  Looks a little brown here because of the odd lighting in that room.

20180317-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

The reason for this colour change is partly personal taste, but mostly to match the new interior that I'd picked up from fellow R8 club member, who has an absolutely spotless R8 Tourer in Nightfire Red (sadly too dark to get a photo when I visited to collect the interior).  I do really like the interior already in my car, and it's in reasonable shape.  The interior I wanted was either the one with red inserts that only seemed to come in the Cabriolet or the half leather with black chevron cloth.  Happily, I got the latter in the form of all the seats and door cards.  They are for a hatchback rather than a saloon,  this is actually also what I wanted since I'm converting my saloon to folding rear seats using hatchback parts that pretty much bolt straight in since the body tubs are essentially the same.

20180317-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

I wanted it to also look factory inside without being a factory option, so that's why the burgundy carpet.  It picks up the colour fleck (burgundy, blue, and green) in the seats.  It's really subtle and nobody would normally notice.  Generally, if you can pick up a small detail like this and incorporate it into a personalised interior, it doesn't look personalised for some reason.  Instead it ends up looking like a factory option.  It also looks less cheap than if you had a plain black carpet with plain black seats.  There's probably some sort of colour theory thing about this that explains just why it is.

20180317-05 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Rover will be going on SORN at the end of the month for a bit so I can stagger the MoTs I've got to pay for rather than having them a week apart.  I can then get through the minor welding (rear arch repair, mostly) and interior swap while it's off the road.  If the weather is nice, I might even get through the minor paint issues I'd like to resolve too.

[Cheezey]

That carpet looks ace. A subtle nod to older Rovers as well.

 

I love SEi seats. I've never encountered nicer quality leather in a car. It doesn't seem to wear. I think I may have read somehwere that the Rover leather of this period was doeskin.

[vulgalour]

On the whole the leather is in really nice shape.  There's the usual bit of wear on the driver's seat bolster, but other than that it's still lovely and soft and because of the chap I bought it from, really clean too.  I'd not considered the old Rover link with the carpet colour but you're right, of course!  Mmmm... that particular smell P4 interiors have.

[fordperv]

Looks great vulg, how many tins of the simply spray dye does it take to do a carpet?

[vulgalour]

This one took 2.5.  The Princess took 3.  Handily, they can be bought in packs of three too.  I'm going to get some more to do the boot interior to match and probably the parcel shelf too.  Tempted to give some vinyl/plastic dye a try on the parcel shelf speaker pods and match it to the carpet colour rather than just painting them black.  I'll be leaving the door cars and dashboard black though, tempting as it is to do them red.  If it were an 80s car I think I'd risk dying all the plastics red, I think it could pull it off then, not so much a 90s car like this.

[vulgalour]

This has been sat around for ages while I've been using the Princess as my daily but since we're off out tomorrow to hopefully scavenge some bits in it, I wanted to be sure it wasn't going to throw a problem at me. On opening the driver's door I was surprised to see the floor mats were wet. It's never stood outside for this long without moving before, so it has been unintentionally a good opportunity to find out where the water is getting in.

20180324-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

What was surprising was the rear floor mat that had the moisture trap on was properly wet. This was mostly because the lid had come off and the water sloshed when I moved the car.

20180324-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

It's quite a lot of water.

20180324-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

On hunting around the cabin and checking door shuts, everything was very dry, peculiarly. No sagging or staining in the headlining, no damp smell, no mould... then I saw the driver's door frame and the culprit became clear!

20180324-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

I have a spare door to go on and I know this frame is a little bent so after all this time it looks like the water ingress issue is actually from the driver's door frame not sealing properly. Hopefully fitting those replacement doors will fix this!

[vulgalour]

Went on a little daytrip yesterday. Big thanks, once again, to Krujoe for being, well, Krujoe. If he were a stick of rock he'd have GOOD EGG written through him. The drive over highlighted on one particular section of B road that my suspension can make you seasick when the undulations are just so, it's the first time the improved suspension has really made me unhappy since doing it. Still, got us to the destination without drama other than that and being such a narrow car, even road-hogging SUVs and the like could be avoided on the narrow North Yorkshire lanes. When I got home I had a boot full of goodies and stuff.

20180325-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

One thing that did surprise me was how well the Rover acquitted itself clambering up into the slightly damp field. The route in is two slightly deeper grooves in the muddy grass with some strategic grip-giving rocks which was fine the last time I visited, but now we're sitting a little lower. Made it without a hitch, all the same. It was a lovely day for this sort of thing too, bright and clear and with a cool breeze. I barely did any work, Joe and Mike just got stuck in and bish-bash-bosh everything was out. I mostly just took some pretty pictures and pointed at what bits were needed.

20180325-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

20180325-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Joe's camera is better than mine, he took some better pictures, and caught me putting my work boots on.

20180325-04Krujoe by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

20180325-06Krujoe by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

20180325-05Krujoe by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

It really is a super location and a beautiful part of the world. I was jolly tired because of the clocks going forward and being up, effectively, three hours earlier than usual. That meant we didn't stay as long as we might and even though I thought I'd be okay to drive back, Mike did have to take over while I had a nap in the passenger seat. One bonus of this was that Mike got to confirm that some of the niggles, and some of the things I really enjoy about the car, weren't my imagination. Overall, his impression of the car was much the same as mine that it's a very nicely put together thing now, that the gearbox isn't quite as good as it could be and that about 60-65mph is the sweet spot for higher speed driving with anything higher being a bit of a dronefest from combined engine and wind noises. Very, very strange being a passenger in my own car, but Mike is a good enough driver that I could relax once he'd got used to the very light clutch.

 

The scavenged parts then:

20180325-07 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

1 pair red rear seat back/parcel shelf supports

1 pair green rear seat back/parcel shelf supports (just in case I cock up the red ones)

1 pair rear arch plastic trims - the saloon trim is narrower because saloon seats are wider

1 pair rear seat back locating pins - these are spotwelded with a bracket to the inner arch, we salvaged a large piece so it can be attached as per factory

4 captive nuts in plate - the plate is also on the saloon, but has no holes or captive nuts. This allows us to drill the relevant holes in the saloon so the seat back hinge can be bolted down.

BONUS - pair Kenwood speakers in good shape.

 

We did learn that underneath the captive nut plate there are fuel lines running. None of us especially wanted to drop the fuel tank on the spare car so Mike very skillfully sliced the section needed out without blowing us up. I won't be reusing the plate itself that we cut out, it's purpose is to be a template so I can save time figuring out just where to drill holes and fix nuts. The same is true of the inner arch mounted pegs. The base of the back seat is much easier as that lines up in the saloon without effort so there was no need to salvage any pieces from the hatchback body.

 

Actually converting the saloon body won't be that challenging. A couple of spotwelds and a couple of captive nuts are all I need to add. The large metal brackets need trimming down to lose the parcel shelf supporting bit, but the holes in the are identical to those in the braces already fitted to the saloon, so they're a bolt-in swap once the excess is trimmed off. The thing that might make the job a long one is dropping the petrol tank might be a necessity just to do it all safely so there are no lines or tank at risk of getting accidentally drilled through when sorting out the captive nuts for the seat hinges. Once this is all done, it should look perfectly factory, especially if I don't mess up trimming the red brackets which are an identical colour to the rest of the car.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Did you do your trousers with some left over dye as well Vulg? 

[vulgalour]

They may have been the inspiration for the colour choice.  Style, dahlink.  Style.

[Isaac Hunt]

I have a spare door to go on and I know this frame is a little bent so after all this time it looks like the water ingress issue is actually from the driver's door frame not sealing properly. Hopefully fitting those replacement doors will fix this!

I have experienced this on a 414SLi. Car has been in the family since new, so I know it's history. The N/S/F is the offending door our car. The door itself 'took a kicking and keying' many years ago. The Kicking 'popped out' and the body shop took care of the keying. More latterly the door took a bit of a bump in the hinge area. Perhaps the knocks have put it all fractionally out of shape. The more recent knock was never repaired, the car being some 25 years old has other cosmetic challenges that some may say 'it's a knacker with no lacquer'. It is possible that there is also some 'settling' of the seal.

 

Good luck with your conversion to hatch rear seats, i've not heard of that being done before.

[MikeKnight]

It does have a VERY light clutch and I'm used to driving my 75 diesel (the Supra is an auto), so every time I changed gear RRRRVVRRRR.

 

Goes like stink if you let it stretch its legs past 3.5k rpm. Stupid R65 gearbox has extremely long legs on 1 through 4 then fudges 5 by making it oddly short, more like a 4.5 overdrive gear. Really odd to drive on a motorway. Going 70 for more than a half hour would literally drive you past the edge of sanity.

 

50.. 60.. oh this is fine.. 70.. BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR oh sweet jesus.. back to 60 we go.

[vulgalour]

Crikey, been a while hasn't it?  I've been rather distracted by the Princess and having that as my daily for a while so the Rover got somewhat neglected.  As a result, it flattened its battery and then refused to talk to the keyfob when trying to jump start the car with said Princess.  Took the battery off, recharged it and left the battery off the car for 24 hours.  Today, after a bit of a dance of keyfob button pressing and manually locking/unlocking the doors it finally decided to play nice and talk to the keyfob again.

 

I then went for a bit of a blat around the yard because the brakes had stuck on a bit.  Of course it's perfectly fine now and talking to the keyfob normally, I shall just have to remember to give it a little excercise a little more frequently so this doesn't happen again.  It's look rather sorry for itself too since the yard get fairly dusty and you can see the rust creeping back on the door bottoms that I need to sort with the spares I acquired a while ago.  I've almost finished the jobs I need to do on the Princess so once those are done I can get stuck in on this one.  I'm rather uncomfortably aware of the time limits between now and moving house but I should be okay, nothing that I need to do is too difficult, it just needs me to have some indoor time and space to work through.

 

20180520-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Nugget has been keeping the Rover company so it hasn't got lonely.

20180520-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

[vulgalour]

Hey look, an update!

 

Today I finally got to start work on the Rover.  It's been a long old wait to get here.  I started by emptying everything out of the car and then cracked on working out what order I needed to remove the various trims and what I could get away without removing.  First was to remove all of the boot trims, since they all overlap and join onto bits I need to remove anyway.  The two braces that support the  saloon rear seat back unbolted easily except for one bolt that sheared.  This isn't a problem as that particular bolt isn't needed for the folding seats.

20180806-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Front seats were easy to remove, suprisingly so for a modern car, and the instructions for disarming the seat belt pretensioners were clear and easy to follow too.  The seats themselves were one of the easiest sets I've ever removed from a car, so that was a satisfying thing.  With the rear seats, boot trims, and rear seat support braces removed, even more broken glass appeared as did quite a few dead insects.  The mounting points for the folding seat brackets all appear to be in place in the car already so it looks like it's going to be a very easy job to swap them over.

20180806-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

The saloon carpet is a shorter than the hatchback carpet as normally the rear seat is never moved.  Fortunately, the carpet I dyed is from a hatchback so it will cover that bodywork you can see here that was under the rear seat.

20180806-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Down the side of the driver's seat, wedged between the seat runner and carpet, was some treasure.  There was also an old twisted barley sweet, which wasn't really treasure.  It's a spot you can't get to with the seats in place, or even see really.

20180806-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

I've got the door cards, centre console, and carpet to remove now.  Once that's done I can get the car on the lift and get the petrol tank off so I can weld in the captive nuts for the folding rear seat base.  On the saloon, they didn't add the captive nuts or drill the plate it goes through, the shell is otherwise identical.  I didn't have enough time to remove the rest of the interior I needed to today, so instead I hit the arch with tools to see how bad the rust was.  Happily, it's actually a smaller repair than I expected and the repair panel I've got is much larger than I need for this area.

20180806-05 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

More when I do some.

[vulgalour]

I did some more.  First job was to finish stripping out the interior and to do that I had to start with the centre console.  Mine differs from the HBOL because it's got the higher spec armrest centre console.  To remove this you pop off a little plastic cover (annoying cigarette burn on mine) to get to the two bolts at the front.

20180808-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Then lever out the insert for the arm rest which allows access to the bolts hidden in there, specifically the outer two to the left of the second photograph. With those bolts undone, the whole piece just slides back and off.

20180808-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

20180808-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Then I removed the front half of the centre console which is held in with two easy to find screws on either side, and the gear knob that you just unscrew, before lifting the whole panel away.  This gives easy access to the carpet which can then be removed from the car.  With that removed, it reveals some very dense sound proofing foam which explains why the cabin is so much more refined than you might expect.  I noticed the passenger front one was a bit wet  There's no obvious sign of water ingress here and it's not a huge amount of water, but it's obviously coming in from somewhere. You can just about see it if you look carefully, quite difficult to photograph.

20180808-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

That said, the floors were exceptionally clean inside, I was a little scared I might find some rot hiding but they actually still look factory fresh which I'm delighted about.  I also found a very shiny 1p coin dated 1994, the year of the car's manufacture, underneath the carpet underlay.  Coincidence, or did someone put it there when the car was built?

20180808-05 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Because of the water in the footwell and the shocking state of my windscreen I decided to use some of my savings to get it replaced.  I didn't bother going through the insurance because there's no saving to be had, my excess is about the same as a new screen fitted.  I'm pretty sure this car has had a windscreen in its past too and I'm wondering if it could be letting a bit of water in.  I've gone with a local fitter that did Mike's Supra windscreen and they did such a good job I trust they'll be well able to do this one.  To help them, and so I can give it a clean up, I removed the trim that goes along the bottom of the windscreen and the wiper arms.  I'm going to freshen the wiper arms up since they're looking a bit grey.

20180808-06 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

The door cards were all removed too.  I'll be salvaging the wood trim from them because the wood on my new cards doesn't match my dashboard wood.  All of my original interior is very sun-bleached, including the wood, so I'll stain and varnish the original inserts anew so they all match properly.

20180808-07 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Then Mike and I got the car on the lift and prepared to remove the fuel tank.  What horrors would be hiding, we wondered.

20180808-08 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

After undoing the tank straps, there's an assortment of pipes to disconnect on the passenger side of the car and an awkward electrical connector on the driver's side.  Happily, the tank was empty enough that it didn't spill more than a few drops of fuel and wasn't too heavy.

20180808-09 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

 

The tank removed it revealed that the underside of the car was as exceptionally clean here as everywhere else.  There's some minor surface corrosion on the exhaust side that I'll clean and paint and then all of this will get a good smear of underseal to keep it this way.

20180808-10 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

20180808-11 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

20180808-12 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Likewise the tank is in reasonable condition and will also get a clean and fresh underseal where required.

20180808-13 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

The last job of the day was to load the Princess with all the plastic trim so I can clean it at home.  I also found what I hope is the source of the occasional odd smell in the car which is that something had been spilled down the side of the centre console a long time ago, before I owned the car, and got into the carpet in a spot you can't clean without removing the seats.

20180808-14 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Next visit to the unit should see the tank refitted, Friday the new windscreen is fitted, and I could be ready for new MoT as early as the end of next week.

[oldcars]

Great work. The underside of that is better than my 75.

[mrbenn]

That is exceptionally clean underneath. And £1.26p cashback, the car that keeps on giving!

[vulgalour]

I'm genuinely surprised at how clean this car is underneath given their reputation and the way it had been treated for the year or so before I got it.

[Ghosty]

Seems the metal was inconsistent, or the manufacturing process. Some R8s rot like buggery, some never get touched at all. There doesnt seem to be much of a middle ground.

[danthecapriman]

That is exceptionally clean underneath. And £1.26p cashback, the car that keeps on giving!

Only 26p. That pound coin isn’t legal anymore!

 

Seems the metal was inconsistent, or the manufacturing process. Some R8s rot like buggery, some never get touched at all. There doesnt seem to be much of a middle ground.

A mate of mine had a 218D, it was immaculate except for one of the rear quarter panels. Weirdly it had rust spots breaking through all over it totally randomly. The entire rest of his car never rotted or looked rough.

 

 

Great work on this Vulg, it does look really clean and solid.

[Pillock]

You can still pay the pound coin into a bank, I did 20-odd of them out a piggy bank last week.

[dozeydustman]

Some vending machines still take the old pound coin. I haven't tried this in the coffee machine at work though.

[vulgalour]

It's not the only pound coin I've got of that sort, I'll cash them both in one day maybe.

 

---

 

On the left, an original saloon seat brace.  On the right, a cut-down hatchback seat brace.  They're similar enough in the right places that they are interchangable with some jiggery-pokery of the hatchback piece.  The modified hatchback piece also bolts into the existing fixing points in the saloon body, as I hoped it would.

20180809-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

With the modified brackets fitted, you'd be hard pressed to see what I've done, which is perfect.

20180809-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

For the seat back bracket, we had a look under the car and found that two of the captive nut holes are pre-drilled in the strengthening plate which made lining up for the other two holes really easy, especially since we had the piece cut from the donor hatchback to help make sure all the holes were in the proper places.  This was a pleasant surprise as this was potentially one of the more difficult bits to get right.

20180809-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Once drilled out, the bolts could be dropped through from the top, bolted from below (I hadn't welded the nuts in yet, since we were trial fitting) and the seat catches aligned properly.  Everything fell into place with minimal fettling, it was surprisingly easy.

20180809-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

The rear seat base needed two holes drilling for the captive nuts, only afterwards did we realise you can't actually get to the other side of this so instead the holes were made big enough to accept the bolt heads and they'll become captive bolts instead.  Alignment on this was also easy since there's cut-outs in the sound-proofing foam in exactly the right place and the seat base sits in the saloon's seat base location perfectly, probably because my suspicion that the shell is identical up to the rear suspension turrets is correct.

20180809-05 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

I didn't get as far as welding in the captive bolts for the seat base today, and only three of the captive nuts decided they wanted to stay welded, so I'll go back and do those tomorrow probably.  I also haven't fitted the seat back side pegs yet that serve to allow the seat back to fold down without going all wobbly sideways, but again, that's not too bad a job to do and they look like they'll go straight in on the car easily enough.  However, enough fixing points were secured that the seat could be trial fitted and I can say with confidence that you can indeed fit a hatchback seat in a saloon body and it works rather well.

20180809-06 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr