mercedade

YES Having more 800 botherers can only be a good thing.

Holy shit, the patience of a saint. Two of the best threads running here, and both of them involve levels of misery and setbackery that I'm not sure I could handle even on my best days. Gold stars, man. Gold stars.

My first thought when watching the video was "is that going to stop?", which brought me on to my second thought, which was that if the jumps in revs weren't so definitively stepped, I'd be wondering if my diesel van was suddenly drinking all the oil in my sump and about to embark on a death-spiral of runaway. And then I saw how blue the smoke looked in the video. So are you sure it's not eating oil? Obviously that does nothing to explain the stepping behaviour, which definitely sounds electrically controlled, but in case that's food for thought.

Weird one, that wasn't it? It seemed like he talked himself into believing he was some kind of AS AntiChrist with people ready to burn him to the ground when really, most people just seemed to largely enjoy his posts and wholehearted commitment to shiteing. Hope he's doing better away from forums for a bit.

I've loved this thread, and that's a cracking conclusion - proper shite-ing.

Nell Lane in Chorlton?

Ace write-up Vulg - big fan of the work going into this.

Good grief, you did your bit and then some. Plenty of people make the noise, there are far fewer who know the words. Be pleased you gave it a serious go and had some fun along the way. The SD1 looks a little peach - a gold Rover with a cream beige interior? That's the dream. And I know, cos I've got one.

100% this, man.

We're all friends here - if it's gone, I reckon it's still a job well done. You had your fun with it, and it's not like any other bugger was really going to take it on. And I'm just curious! My 820 passed its MOT at the weekend - only a dozen or so clonks and bangs to track down now...

Bloody love this car. You've stolen my track day dreams.

HHHHHNNNNNGGGGGG After coughing up £morethanenough to get the electronic ignition switch sorted on the CLK - which to be fair, has worked perfectly ever since so at least it was the thing that was needed - I wanted to get the driving sorted out. A couple of weeks ago saw me changing the track rod ends as there was a fair bit of play - it was whilst doing that job I realised that the inner ones were also shagged. On the CLK it's a full drag-link with integrated tie rods - managed to find a QH branded setup for sub £70, which worked out well for me, and changed it the following week. It came with outer rod ends as well, but no bother - just kept the new ones from the previous weeks as spares. It wasn't the nicest job in the world, especially trying to undo the nut on the balljoint that connects the link to the steering arm at a rate of one ratchet click per turn thanks to virtually no access, but it went well enough. Got it all tracked up, driving beautifully - nice, precise steering. Dead pleased. Cut to two nights ago, leaving a local go-karting place after a bloody great time. Somehow, I managed to misjudge pulling out into the road and ended up hitting the kerb opposite whilst on half lock with the near-side front wheel. Hard. HHHHHHHHNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGG Ripped off the lower front bumper, severing all fog light connections in the process, snapped off the undertray fixings, snapped off some of the other bits of plastic aero-stuff underneath, shredded the wheel arch liner on the opposite side front wheel and, worst of all, made the steering feel like it's skipping when on full and near-full lock. If I'm lucky, I might have gotten away with only mangling a couple of balljoints - the car actually doesn't pull/shake/wobble when driving straight - but I've no idea just how many other things I may have bent. I cannot believe how stupid I feel for having hit the kerb in the first place, nor how irritated I am at what a dick it is going to be to sort it all out. Fucking cars.

/nerd mode There were two iterations of a 2.5 V6 engine in the 800s. The first one was in the Mk1 and it was an early version of the Honda engine which didn't become a 2.7 litre until the late 80s. They continued to use the 2.7 Honda engine until 1996 when they started using the 2.5 litre KV6, an engine which ended up in a few Rover cars including the 75 and 45 (plus their MG counterparts) but also in a couple of random Kia cars when they were given (bought?) the license to manufacture it. /nerd mode

Fantastic write-up as always, this is the kind of therapeutically immersive work I wholeheartedly support