Reginald Nutsack's K-series Kapers - ROVER 623 MOT GUFF

[Simon M]

Yep, spot on...

 

A lot of Rovers seem to be on AX or AV plates - we had a couple of big MG Rover dealers, Edmondson's in Ipswich and Ames Rover in Bury St. Edmunds - and I think Kerridges of Needham Market were a big player too.

 

 

My 45 is an AV-plater, and originally came from Edmondson - I only really started noticing the 45 when I moved to Ipswich, five years ago the place was full of them.  I see a couple of AV-plated 75s around Hampshire these days, and I wonder if they're ex-Edmondson too.

[Craig the Princess]

I think Mr Bol's last 75 had 16" Unions.

 

 

Unions on a Rover you say?

[Brodders]

Yes meteors and serpents are what everyone wants. I have a set of serpents in my garage. I sold them and the person paid but then has not come on the club in about 2 years. I sent the mods a message and they tries contacting to no avail. Strange as I got paid the money

 

Do the serpents cause a significant decline in ride quality? I saw a set that were for sale that were very tempting, but am worried that it will ruin the ride quality (after seeing the replies on the "Stupid Question Amnesty" thread, I am verging towards keeping the Crowns, but I thought it would be an ideal time to ask our resident 75 expert). 

 

 

Very nicely done too Mr B. It is unbelievable that you managed to get a top of the range luxury saloon for less than a sofa from DFS.

 

I can't do anything but doff my hat to you as you are definitely doing the Rover thing right with the top of the range 75, 623 & 45 V6. What sort of plans have you got in the pipeline for the latest acquisition?

[montytom]

Brodders the serpents while looking nice will make the ride noticeably choppier.

Tyres also will be more expensive being 225 45 18 rather than the 205 65 15 or 195 65 15 depending on age of your 75. The serpents do look lovely though I must admit I think a clean crown looks classy

[Ghosty]

I wonder how rare Old English White/cream leather is...

[montytom]

Ghosty very rare I would say normally you have light exterior and dark interior. But sometimes you get it like that.

I had a diesel tourer in moonstone green and that had sandstone leather

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Been up the garage tonight to have a look at this. To my surprise its a 2.0 not a 2.5!!!! FFS I thought I was getting the top of the range job

 

Ah well nowt I can do about it now. Its in nice condition so I'll just have to make a mental note to be more careful when buying shite while still in bed

[vulgalour]

Harmon kardon

 

Harmon kardon

I literally cannot read that how it's typed. I just can't. I blame fancy* VWs of the 70s.

[carlo]

If you're into the best ride quality you should love these.  I'm obsessive about it and they even impressed me, the only thing I've driven recently which betters a 405.

[oldcars]

Yes meteors and serpents are what everyone wants. I have a set of serpents in my garage. I sold them and the person paid but then has not come on the club in about 2 years. I sent the mods a message and they tries contacting to no avail. Strange as I got paid the money

It was me     

[cort16]

You should report yourself to trading standards for mis-describing goods to yourself.

[RobT]

Looking at the specs on Parkers, the 2.0 has 147bhp versus 174bhp for the 2.5, with a difference of 2 seconds in the 0-60.  How that translates to real world driving I dunno, but my 2.5 never felt like a ball of fire and strangely lacking in torque IMO.  But they do sound lovely, so respond well to a good thrashing!

 

As bedbound purchases go I reckon you've done well there for £200.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

I presume this power unit is 100% identical to that in the 45 V6?

[montytom]

The 75 v6 2.0 litre engine is actually smoother than the 2.5kv6 but it is obviously alot duller in the performance stakes and still uses similar amounts of fuel

[Skizzer]

Mine was a 2.0 V6 and I liked it. Decent torque; adequate power although higher up the rev band, where the really good noise lives; very smooth. A very fine 70mph cruiser.

 

Not a closet sports car by any stretch, but that's not a 75's character anyway.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Word up shitters

 

Been quite busy on the 623 lately but I'm not here to talk about that. Check out my 75!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aint she a beauty? It really is pretty much immaculate inside and out believe it or not. I can't wait to get it washed and polished and that.

 

Thats not to say its without problems though, I have found the following:

 

Only 1 key, on which the central locking buttons are bolloxed

rattly inlet manifold

couple of tyres not up to much

 

I picked up a set of smart 'Comet' rims for it tonight so I might lob them on when I fit a couple of new tyres as well.

 

For the inlet manifold, I have been thinking a lot about this problem. The issue is that the mechanism inside the manifold that operates the 6 x butterfly flap things wears out and falls apart, leaving the flaps to LITERALLY flap about in the breeze. There are a couple fo threads on the internet where folk have investigated it but no-one has come up with a decent fix for it though. New manifolds are £500 and there is only a finite number out there!!! These things are all gonna wear out sooner or later so its a problem.

 

So, I pulled the manifold off the engine for a proper look:

 

 

It was something of a war but I got it off eventually after only smashing a few fixings etc.

 

 

The manifold has a cover plate that is screwed AND plastic welded on. It defo not designed to come off. It took me about 2 hours to cut it off with a hacksaw blade and I still damaged it a bit. Heres the cover:

 

 

Here are the flaps, with little lever arms that have 8mm balls on the end

 

 

and this part (a sort of 'spine') is the source of all the problems.

 

 

It has integral socket things for operating the flaps, that wear out:

 

 

I have brought it home so I can measure it up properly. My idea is to design a new one that can take a standard industrial balljoint thing like these:

 

http://www.onlinebearings.co.uk/M6010-Nylon-Bodied-Lockable-Ball-Joint.html

 

Or these:

 

http://www.springfixlinkages.com/en/catalog/metric-linkages/ball-and-socket-joints/plastic-ball-and-socket-joints/r3520#

 

Obv I will pop out the metal bit and just use the socket. Well something like this anyway.

 

So I plan to buy some of these ball sockets and sketch up a suitable replacement spine that will take the standard ball joints. My mate who is red hot on the CAD will draw it up for me and produce a 3D digital file then I am gonna see how much it will cost to get a few made up in China on a 3D printer or whatever. Its made entirely of PA66 Nylon which I think is fairly easily 3D printable. If it works I will attempt to sell a few additional ones to energetic KV6 lickers who don't mind spending all fricking morning sawing away at their inlet manifold.

 

It might be a load of nonsense (e.g. if the cost to 3D print them is like £hundreds per part, I've never tried to buy such a service before) but it could be an interesting way of solving this problem on the KV6 as my scanning of ebay reveals a lot of rattly manifolds!!!!

 

Incidentally while I was removing the manifold I mashed the little fine stainless steel spring clip that holds the metal pez pipe into the fuel rail, pictured here:

 

 

Anyone know if you can buy these clips somewhere? I presume you must be able to as they are made from about 0.3mm thick stainless and pretty fragile.

 

 

[Dave_Q]

If you can't re-engineer the flaps is plan B to remove them?

 

BMW swirl flaps apparently make no noticeable difference if binned.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Well yeah you can just remove them but there are many heated debates on the Rover forums about what it does for your power delivery, economy etc, obv you can just knock em out but it has to be better to keep em working I'd have thought. Must have cost a lot to have the system there - the manifold has to have all this crap built into it plus two electro-mechanical servo unit things to drive em so there must be a worthwhile benefit to having it operational.

[Dave_Q]

I thought they were just for emissions to promote better mixing at low rpm / idle.

 

Obvs I'm not trying to say I know more than the combined engineering knowledge of Rover and/or BMW, but to me they're a restriction even when fully open and I really can't see that any change in fuel consumption or power would be anything other the psychological, ditching them may even improve top end power.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

they just give 2 effective lengths of inlet tract right? Presumably they give an optimised volumetric efficiency at one or two engine speeds, admittedly its probably a pretty marginal effect.

[Dave_Q]

I might have got the wrong end of the stick, if they do give 2 different inlet lengths then there will be an effect due to some physics bollocks about wavelengths.

 

 

I thought they were just swirl flaps ie one length of inlet with a flap partially blocking it at idle/low revs - these have little effect on anything and just make the mixture swirlier when closed.

 

Hard to tell which kind they are from the pictures.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

I don't think theyre just swirl flaps, I think they route air into the engine by one of two different paths of differing lengths - theres another solenoid elsewhere in the manifold which works in conjunction with the one driving this 'spine' to open and close the other route so i think the wavelength shizzle applies in this case

[Barry Cade]

Watching with interest Mr.B.

[garethj]

Be careful with a 3D printed part, the flexural strength of a 3D printed nylon is about 1/3 of an injection moulded part.  You need to check some data sheets to see how hot it can go too, especially if the injection moulded part is glass filled (which allows it to remain stiff at much higher temperatures).  Glass filled 3D printed parts are available but they don't have the long strands of an injected component so they're definitely not the same.

 

You might want to consider a design where the main backbone is metal to resist twisting better, and there are 3D printed arms coming off it which take the plastic balljoints?  Make the 3D printed parts much larger to give them comparable strength as long as you've got the space.  Don't want to teach you any egg-sucking, but a part's strength comes from its material and it's shape.  The material is what you're stuck with so make the geometry stiff enough (2nd moment of area) so the final stiffness result is the same as the injected part.

 

The cost of a 3D printed part comes from its volume and most places do it based on maximum xyz calculation, doesn't matter if it's hollowed out or if it's spindly because you're paying for the maximum volume as if it were a solid cube.  Doing the backbone as a standard metal extrusion you can hacksaw

to length will help here too.  You'll need to do the adapter bit on the end as a 3D print so it'll clip onto the motor or whatever.

 

The cheapest 3D print supplier is based in the UK: https://www.3dprint-uk.co.uk/ Choose the economy service to save money, it's about half the price of everywhere else but leadtime is 2 weeks instead of 3 days.

 

Shout if you need some help.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Thanks GarethJ, food for thought, I hadn't considered a metal spine with placca arms but I guess that would be much cheaper too in terms of the 3D printing cost.

 

I have ordered some ball joints so when they arrive I will have another look at it all.

[spartacus]

I might not be fully understanding how that fits to the car but I'd be thinking about a piece of metal bar with suitable dimensions then welding on the appropriate sized threaded sections to screw into the female thread on the end of the plastic socket.

[spartacus]

Or just get a piece of flat ally bar and drill it, then put the threaded rod through that and put a nyloc nut on either side, then you can bend the threaded sections to the required angle, screw on the sockets and hey presto, Rover fixo!

[Tickman]

Is the current spine plastic or alloy? I cannot tell from the pictures.

Is there any way you can 'just' refurbish the part you have and replace the sockets if that is the only weak point?

[spartacus]

Plastic from memory, it gets brittle from the constant heat cycling, the flaps get sticky, (ooer misses etc.) then the ends wear prematurely...

 

Then bollox buys the car.

[They_all_do_that_sir]

Just fit independent throttle bodies, with the stacks up through a hole in the bonnet. Would sound epic

 

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