Rover 100 Knightsbridge (1996)

[catsinthewelder]

Fair play to you for sorting that lot out,  plenty of cars worth ten times as much wouldn't get that level of attention.  Hope she gets on with it.

[RichardMoss]

She is a dyed in the wool Metro fanatic but the insurance on a mk1 MG1300 (her dream car!) is too steep.  Hopefully the low mileage and (now) solid body will do the business for a few years.

[Cavcraft]

That's great work, hats off to you.

 

£1,300 is damned good going for the insurance by the way, my lads quotes were all more than double that unless he got one of those boxes fitted, which he did in the end.

[RobT]

Good little cars these. SWMBO who is also a Metro fan had a 114 auto and we used to drive it all over the country, was surprisingly comfy on long trips , London to Penzance being a particularly memorable trip. Borked CVT gearbox at 58,000 made me scrap it, didn't have the money to fix it at the time.

 

All those rot spots look familiar!

[RichardMoss]

Some more up to date pictures:
Floors after repair, including distant shot of the alloy wheels that will be fitted once they've been repainted silver:



Suspension needs a tidy up

Interior and boot



Exterior



repaired arch

[RichardMoss]

Flew through the MOT today - very impressive emissions results, apparently. I think this could well be a good'un

[brickwall]

Win!

[RichardMoss]

Hannah has been using the car since passing her test and loves it.  She's still getting used to the lack of PAS after her modern, driving school car - but she certainly appreciates the amazing visibility compared to the Fiesta and 208 that she learned on.  She's been away on holiday in France with a friend for a few weeks, so I got to drive it (and work on it) while she was away.  I have done quite a bit of work on this during my couple of weeks holiday in the UK (but sadly I'm now back in the Middle East):

It's a great car to drive - perky through the gears, subjectively as a fast as a my old MG metro due to the better gearing from the 5 speed box.  The combination of the K series engine and the 5 speed box makes it much more refined than A-series powered cars, too.  It's a real hoot on country roads and civilised enough to make 300 miles on the motorway a manageable day's driving.

As for the jobs done, I "reconditioned" 4 alloy wheels and repainted them in "steel wheels" (rather than very shiny silver) - a colour which meets with the owner/driver's approval.  The wheels had been very badly painted with black aerosol (including the plastic centre caps and had quite a few areas of corrosion.  I removed the corrosion with a rotary wire brush, sanded off the black paint, etch primed, filler primed and resprayed all four.  The centre caps were cleaned up with cutting paste and then the badges carefully masked before spraying to match the wheels.  They look great and the slightly wider offset gives the car a completely different "stance".  I fitted new wheel nuts, including locking nuts, so hopefully she won't lose the wheels!





The whole car was covered in small scratches from where it had been under a tarpaulin before we bought it - I spent a whole day tidying them up with cutting paste and then polishing the paintwork (Colourmagic) and plastic (black trim polish).  It looks great now.  The cutting paste I used was from Wilko and cost about £2.25 for a tube and worked really well, and their stockinette polish cloth was great value for money, too.. You can see how well it came out in this shot that shows the reversing sensors I fitted.  The reversing sensor were about £10 on ebay and were the pre-coloured ones but weren't quite a perfect match.  So, I painted the surrounds on them with Halfords Tahiti blue paint (a really good colour match):


Then I resealed the leaking screen seals by injecting black silicon sealant under both lips of the outside of the seal (glass and bodywork). I put loads in and left it a couple of days to cure before trimming off the excess (using a knife on the glass side and a sharpened wooden cooking spatula on the bodywork side).  Total success   Likewise the sunroof where water was coming in through the bolts attaching the handle to the glass - I removed them and resealed with the black silicon.

It's old enough to not have had a high level brake light fitted when new so I got one from ebay for a fiver and fitted that, running the wiring under the inner lip of the rear screen seals and then through the C-pillar to the rear light.  Neat, tidy and enhanced safety.


The rusty areas of the scuttle were cut out and new sections welded in after being cut from a NOS genuine scuttle panel.  The rusty section included the VIN stamping so I stamped the number into the new panel before welding it in.  It was sealed and painted with Halfords aerosol and looks pretty good.



A few bits of the engine bay hardware also got treated to a tidy up with Granville metal paint, which was also used to paint the suspension and steering.


All superficial rust on the bodywork underneath was treated with Kurust and then the Granville paint and all box sections were given a thorough coating with rust proofing cavity wax.  The hydragas displacers and all pipework etc got similar treatment before the whole underside was hit with Schutz/waxoyl underseal.  The suspension was all wire brushed and painted with the Granville black paint.




Lots of other little jobs were done (replacing a broken air vent, fitting additional power sockets for satnav etc) and seeing as non-one uses cassette tapes any more (well, certainly no 17 year old girls!), I modified the cassette storage box shown in this photo - snipping out the dividers and laying it flat to act as an oddment storage box) - but I forgot to get an "after" photo for those jobs.


Hopefully it's all set up for 12 months of non-eventful motoring for Hannah. 

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Hey man, you've done some great work there, very thorough. 11/10!!

[r.welfare]

That looks fantastic. I spent my formative driving years in one of these (thanks Mum for not demanding to use it more often; after all, it was her car) in the mid 90s. The 1.1 is a peach and it certainly drove well. That rubber mat on the passenger side of the dashboard used to piss me right off though, it was always slipping off during 'spirited cornering'.

[AnthonyG]

Nice to see one of these getting the treatment, and that is a lovely colour. 

 

May I suggest a Disklok or similar to keep the local ne'do'wells away? You wouldn't want it nicked, joyridden and crashed after all that effort. 

[saucedoctor]

Great work sir. R6 FTW.

[twosmoke300]

Naa , no disclock. Period shitty laserline alarm is what you need *

[Partridge]

My mate had one of those a couple of years ago. It was a right little goer but the rear subrame went, she loved it and called it "Gnome". It was sold on to a girl who'd just passed her test a month before its MoT, got nicked and was never seen again.

[Guest Lord Sward]

Top marks Dickie, well done.  A lovely little car.

[RichardMoss]

May I suggest a Disklok or similar to keep the local ne'do'wells away? You wouldn't want it nicked, joyridden and crashed after all that effort.

Thanks for the reminder - I had planned that but forgot until now.

[Guest Lord Sward]

We used to fit Barrier Locks to them when they were current on account of precious little available space to house such contraptions within the confines of the car.