Fucked Montegos on ARSEOnline

[oldcars]

 good god, if i am taking a photo of my motor i at least chuck some tyre dressing on, what a state 

[oman5]

Could be decent parts donors if you have a non-fucked monty though. And you didn't need any body panels, obviously.

[chaseracer]

Just off Condemned street, at the corner of Uneconomic and Parts Donor, 

 

Is that close to Dead, not far off Baled...?

[UmBongo]

Is there someone walking around in bare feet in the first photo??

 

If there is it's an escapee from Doctor Moreau's island...dog-man.

[oldcars]

Is that close to Dead, not far off Baled...?

Just across the bridge from Bailed 

[Sigmund Fraud]

£1200 for an immaculate* collection* of classic* British automobiles* ? Bargain* !

[chaseracer]

Just across the bridge from Bailed 

 

Brilliant! 

[Partridge]

Hopeless.

 

Bridge.

When the owner of an Maserati says that, you know its bad.

 

How much ca$hmoniezs are these worth in spares?

[John F]

34p and half a licked Twix.

[Partridge]

I'll suggest that on the original thread

[Taff]

that's a lot of rust, even the bridge would baulk at giving you dollarpounds for that.

 

is anything on them worth a few quid? There must be at least a small part of them made of unobtainiuim to justify the £400 sheets each.

 

Aren't the clocks valuable and the same as VW golf?

[Bren]

I always wanted a B/C reg montego turbo - most of them seemed to be EFi's.

 

I wonder how many early turbo's are left?

 

My dad got rid of his D reg VDP EFi because it was starting to rot - the rear suspension mountings were suffering badly - it went for £150 and that was around 1997.

 

You could'nt make one decent car out of all of those.

 

No doubt some breathy austin types will be wringing their hands and mopping their brows at the thought of saving them.

 

Let the earth have them.

[mercrocker]

Invent a banger class for them....that'll shift 'em

[Pete-M]

I worked for a 'Rover' dealership for a very short while back in 87/88.

 

Currie Motors - a nice business to do people with.

 

Montegos and Maestros were coming off the transporters with rot at the seams. Rover part galvanised the panels and then welded the shell together, destroying the galvanising in the process. If memory serves me right they injected foam into the roof pillars after the shell was welded which meant repairs could be highly toxic and rather flammable as well as full of wet foam.

[Partridge]

that's a lot of rust, even the bridge would baulk at giving you dollarpounds for that.

 

is anything on them worth a few quid? There must be at least a small part of them made of unobtainiuim to justify the £400 sheets each.

 

Aren't the clocks valuable and the same as VW golf?

Compost is always in demand.

[jakebullet]

At uni a mate a montego estate that look a bit like those. He kept leaving it down a side street while on the piss, and finding the steering lock broken the next day, but the car being no more than 10 yards further away on account of it being shit n not running well enough to steal. In the end he stopped replacing the steering lock, and just had wires with a crocodile clip hanging out. It still didn't get nicked.

[mercrocker]

Where I worked in the 80s was the bottom of the food chain, literally, in what was a gigantic produce company.  We had all kinds of orphaned company cars as pool motors, usual stuff like Corties and Cavs but oddballs like Mantas, Volvo 244s and 4 pot SD1s.   One of these was a povo spec Montego.   I often took this one out because it seemed to have the best stereo, but pretty soon it became my weapon of choice owing to the fact that it always had a full tank cos everybody else hated it. 

[Partridge]

 but pretty soon it became my weapon of choice owing to the fact that it always had a full tank cos everybody else hated it. 

Were they THAT bad?

[oman5]

I actually found them quite a decent drive back in the day. Even the 1.6L was quick enough for most situations and they handled well too, better seats and ride quality than the mk2 cavalier.

Less impressive was the guaranteed rot in a very short space of time and those stupid metric wheels they lobbed on.

[Des]

Electronic chokes on those Montys were a right pain in the cock back in the day, introducing that petulant ECU and stepper motor to an SU was more perverse than those German guys into having their scrotum inflated with a gallon of saline and stomped by a brass.

Only way those heaps will see a three figure sum is if they're described as OMFG BARNFINDZ no mot but will pass wiv arch gaffa no prob.  OMG Transit twinwheel rubber pop rivet bubble arches rallye 6R4 replica innit.

[Richard]

I can remember them being officially the most rust prone car on the market when they were new. Some stiff competition for that title in the mid 80s.

[Partridge]

If those pictures are anything to go for, they put even D For Doom Fords to shame.

 

 

NOW WE'RE MOTORING

[Richard]

I think it might have been just before the full horror of early Mk4 Escort rust became apparent.

[mercrocker]

Bubbly arches were appearing on Montys at an earlier age of car than the Mk4 Ecky death-watch.   Trouble with the Ford problem was that people weren't finding out until a catastrophic MOT failure, whereas Montego owners were snagging their little yellow dusters on rust scabs before their first test.   I always found them to be a decent drive and preferred our company one to the equivalent low-spec Mk2 Cavs but they seemed to suffer an image problem even back then.

[cort16]

I've never had one but I hear they're a pretty good steer.

[Pete-M]

Montegos were good for a year or two around 1990 when they got the full on Rover treatment with orange interior lighting and better trim.

 

Unfortunately they then went on to shit wheel bearings and CV joints on a regular basis until the shell rusted away around 1997.

 

Mk3 Cavalier killed them as did the 90 spec Sierra. They could both do mega motorway miles at 100 mph (standard rep speed in the early 90s) without going wrong (often), Montegos could do the speed but not without feeling very tired, very quickly. A 20k mile Montego felt baggy when a 20k mile Cav or Sierra still felt fresh. Usual Rover problem, the Montego looked good but was put together badly using cheap bits. Looked great when new with its nice shiny BRG paint and plush seats then as bits broke and/or fell off the Sierra / Cavalier became an object of desire to Montego drivers.

 

Avis had some Montegos when I first worked there, they couldn't take the pasting hire cars get so they were very scruffy very quickly indeed. Avis sent them back at 6 months / 8500 miles often with a list of broken / faulty / rusty bits to be sorted. Cavaliers would go back at 14000 miles looking like new, as would Sierras.

 

Rover 2/400s would stay until 14k and we're fine, so Rover were capable of screwing cars together reasonably well.

 

The Montego TD was am exception. They felt rough new and didn't seem to get much worse. The R19 diesel was rougher.

[RedSparrow]

The alloy wheels and the turbo engine and bits might be useful to someone, but the rest is frag feed.

 

I like how this has brought up people's Montego stories. I'm sure I read somewhere that there was a reason why the estates rotted faster, can't remember what it was though.

[warren t claim]

Montegos were good for a year or two around 1990 when they got the full on Rover treatment with orange interior lighting and better trim.

 

Unfortunately they then went on to shit wheel bearings and CV joints on a regular basis until the shell rusted away around 1997.

 

 

 

The Montego TD was am exception. They felt rough new and didn't seem to get much worse. The R19 diesel was rougher.

I used a very late, Ex British Aerospace Monty TD as a taxi and  knocked out three hub bearings in a year.

 

Everyone i knew who cabbed a Prima powered Montego suffered HGF and had to take the cylinder head over to machine shop for the obligatory skimming session. Utterly shite heaters and droopy headlinings were also par for the course.

[alf892]

I was a mechanic at an Austin Rover dealer 84 to 86 when these were current.

 

Interesting times as they were one of the first of the new fangled electronic cars and diagnostic kit was poor. Lots of 'repair by substitition' aka 'chuck bits at it till it goes'

 

Montys and Maestros also used to piss in water.......usually on the bulkhead somewhere but you had to have the dash out to fix properly so you could loose a lot of time when you only got o.2 of an hour to fix the actual leak.

 

Popular non start cause used to be plugs.....combination of shitty plugs and the fact they were set a bit large for the time.

 

Metros and Minis were still current too and I spent many a happy hour trying to stop the oil falling out of those....usually half moon seal which takes a couple of hours to do properly.

 

Oh.....and SD1s. usually in for lecky bits and headgaskets (2.3/2.6)

 

The bonus scheme made sure I only stayed a couple of years

[londonm]

A girlfriend of mine had a Montego Countryman estate, about 2001 or so. It was one of the last, but still a dismal dated drive. They carried on making Montegos and Maestros for the Spanish market, where they most likely took longer to dissolve. Some tit will probably buy one because it's 'rat look, innit!'. They can drive it like Fred Flintstone did.