Austin-Rover

Cavalier running gear (to oversimplify things) and the Family II engine in these so mechanical parts shouldn't be too bad. It probably wont take much to wake it up! Trim and body panels will be your problem...

I thought a low of 16mpg from my Volvo 960 was bad, but reading some of these replies...

I've had five Montegos since 2003 (currently without one). They were mostly 1600s. One 1300 and one MG 2.0. Countless miles in them over the years. The earlier ones I found to be much better that anything post D reg. Later cars were built out of tinfoil and rusted very badly. The earlier cars that survived into the noughties were generally pretty good. That 1600 S Series was an excellent engine (oil leaks aside), and the 1300 A Series isn't as bad as you think (It's not much bigger than a Maestro after all - same bloody car!) Daily use does take its toll though, even with washing inside the arches and inside the door bottoms every single wash! I'd have an 84/85 car again tomorrow, simply for the purity of design. The 'Rover' era ones are quite anonymous!

The 'they should have badged it as something else' argument is quite possibly the biggest point of discussion about the CR... and it's a point where my own views are that they were right to put a Rover badge on it. Why? Well, for starters, the name Cityrover is pretty clever. They invented the Land Rover, after all! You'll also note that the word 'Rover' is not present on the car at all whatsoever. Yes, there are Viking badges, but they are the logo only. ...and how many people refer to it as the 'Rover Cityrover'? No one. The car may have flopped, but the branding didn't. Yes, overpriced. Yes, poor quality interior fixtures and fittings. But; it was well screwed together. They looked good with an excellent quality paint finish. They have bags of room inside, and there's that class-leading performance! 😄 I'm fond of mine. I like it for what it is as much as what it isn't. I also love how people even now get so wound up by its mere existence.

The drying out continues; I've run a strip of tape along the top of the rear window and - as a temporary measure - seem to have stopped water entering the cabin there. It's a window-out job ultimately. No leaks apparent from any of the sunroof components. Since the last update, it became apparent that to speed things up, the front seats were going to have to come out, along with the carpet and foam pads underneath. Saturated foam pads are HEAVY! This car'll be even quicker when it's dried out! 😀 In other developments, I've started cleaning up the removed interior plastic parts ready for reassembly. Take a look at this grab handle to give you an idea of just how gross the inside of the car is!

I had a Montego 1.3 back when I started driving in the early noughties. The engine had hit a nice sweet spot just before 'fucked' whereby it was eager and willing but got through oil at a rate of knots. I remember in slip road drag races with my friend's Montego 1.6 it was as quick to 50mph. Cruising was all about maintaining momentum. Incidentally, while I reminisce; the Montego 1.3 got a different washer bottle on the earliest examples. It was the Ital/miniMetro style where a small plastic bottle slotted over a metal bracket on the bulkhead. If you took a speedbump too fast, the bottle would lift off the bracket, landing on the gearbox and jamming the linkages. A few times I had to coast to the side of the road, pop the bonnet and put it back. Soon on my way again!

...the later 420 Turbo also lost the front fog lamps. Miserable buggers! Re; the leaky T Series thing. This is quite bad, and one of the reasons it'll be going to the garage sooner rather than later. I have an 820 with a 'normal' rate of leakage that doesn't make a mess, really.

Its exactly as it should be. There's two versions of the GSi Turbo, this being the earlier one with the 'lightning' seat fabric with grey leather. It's the T Series engine.

In the 'end of year tat accounts' thread, I made mention of a 420GSi arriving on the scene (quite unexpectedly I might add). So with nothing much else happening this new year's afternoon, I'll make an introduction... Anoraks will note the fog lamps indicate this is a Turbo, and the Coventry registration means that it was also a Rover Group Company Vehicles car when new (27th August 1993). I do wonder if anyone ever actually ordered one of these at their Rover dealer, or did all 300 of them have a year with Rover, helping to make the price a bit more down to earth for the first proper owner? 😄 That aside, the first 'proper' owner was Barry - who lives in Eltham - and he took the car on in July 1994, pootling about with it right up until November 2019. Impressive! (Barry has replaced his 420 with a brand new Astra GTC). He wanted a good home for his Rover after all those years, and through various channels we were put in touch. Now, I wasn't really after another car, but some things you really can't pass up. It did mean moving on my Daewoo Espero (happily, now back on the road with its new owner!). A charitable donation was made for the car, and a day out to London planned, which went without a hitch. The drive home was exciting; you can drive it sedately and exactly how you would expect an old Rover to drive - in full-on 'grandad' mode - and it is a comfortable and relaxed thing. Put your foot on the accelerator though - in any gear, it doesn't matter, the response is the same - you are thrown forward with surprising speed. Crazy stuff! The next week or so saw the car get some regular use to allow us to figure out just what we'd bought. The plus points are that it's quite possibly the only surviving unmolested 420 Turbo, it's all complete with everything working and it comes with twenty five years worth of bills and paperwork. The downsides are that despite Barry's admirable and generous spending on it over the years, it's not really been 'looked after' (if that makes sense). It's hardly been washed, the inside is a health hazard, and all the muck in the back arches means it'll require a date with the welder in the next year. Still, it has an MoT until August 2020 and is in fine mechanical form. So, what next? The first job made itself known quite quickly; It had spent all its life being parked on a steep driveway, pointing up hill. It now lives on a flat driveway in a part of the world that is nearly always raining, thus it's now soaked inside. Actually with the amount of water in the rear seat base and under the carpets, it has been leaking for some considerable time. It has just become more obvious now. So out came the headlining and in went the dehumidifier! It's taken a few days to clear the condensation from the roof panel, and thankfully the weather has been dry. I've taken the opportunity to cut some new gaskets for the rear lamp units, so I've eliminated one known water ingress point. Things are dry enough inside the car now to pinpoint the exact points where the water is coming in the next time we get some rain. Sunroof is an obvious suspect, and also the top of the rear screen due to the corrosion there. There's also a lot of silicone sealant around the top of the front screen, which is unsightly but must be doing something to help currently. So the current state of play; I've got some black tape stuck across the top of the rear screen to try and keep the worst of the rain out. The dehumidifier is still doing it's thing, filling up every second day! I await further rain so I can investigate the sunroof some more. Either the seal against the roof panel or the drain tubes, I reckon. Medium term plans are to clean up the interior and get some mechanical work done such as cam belt, water pump and a general service. Hopefully we can keep the worst of the weather out and be able to enjoy taking it to a few shows when the spring and summer arrive. There's an Astra in bits in the garage at the moment, so there's now some impetus to get that project completed so that the 420 can take its place later this year. In many ways the fact that it has come with such a long MoT takes the pressure off a bit, and I don't feel that I've just added an unusable wreck to the fleet. It'll be nice to show it off in its 'as found' state!

Easy enough to sort. 6mm thick neoprene and a sharp pair of scissors. You shouldn't need to use any mastic or sealant.

Just done this very job myself on my 820! Sadly, I had to follow it up with running a dehumidifier inside the car for two weeks... but it is watertight and dry now!

He liked it. He's also a bit weird! 😃

Gone in 2019; The Duster was changed for a lovely new Logan, the Espero is now back on the road with a new owner from on here, the trusty little Corsa was written off back in May and the Vectra has been sold to a freind. New to the fleet; Aforementioned Logan for the daily commute. A Discovery to replace the Vectra for caravanning duties and a completely unmolested 420GSi Turbo - a real find!

Press and hold in until the little marker light on the switch comes on.

Mine catches and crunches the gears changing down from 4th to 3rd. Remedied by pausing in neutral before engaging 3rd, or doubling the clutch. You'll be putting a new clutch in it to cure that problem, and even then it still won't be great. Do your gear linkages make a squeaky rattle when driving too?