Page 4: Return to the 'Max Power' era

[somewhatfoolish]

Short of removing the carb and lobbing it in the nearest skip, getting the thing a nice bath in an ultrasound jacuzzi wouldn't hurt.

[Alfamale]

I can recommend Tony at Classic Fuel Systems in Bradford if you are looking to invest in a carb rebuild. Done a couple for me and they come back set up and ready to go.

[tooSavvy]

Some 'old skool' carbie mechs advise the "3k Shirt stuffing' cure...

 

Run it warm, air cleaner off, up to 3k and stuff a cotton shirt over the inlet [keeping foot on] wait for it to near gag to a stop - remove shirt, keep foot on - allow engine to gargle back up to 3k + repeat again once.

 

Pulls pure fuel through the whole job....

[koala27]

Another vote here for a defective accelerator pump as suggested by red5 & others. Have a look in the carb to check if it's working:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YoD-usK4gU

[willswitchengage]

It's all change today.

6.5 years of ownership and the Corolla has gone. I think this car has been probably the best investment I have ever made in anything, ever. It just worked and went on and on and was cheap, fun and attracted the right attention. At times I thought it was boring, following more 'interesting' BXs and a Mk1 Justy, and it was lethargic to drive compared to the EFI Daihatsu we took on the Mongol Rally. 47 mpg! £650 for a one owner car with no rust. My told outlay including negative depreciation, fuel, tax, bills etc was £4000 - which equates to 18p per mile. Or smile. It sounds sentimental but I do get like that about these things, but anyway it's time to move on.

The sale was surprisingly smooth. Dickhead first bidder on ebay decided he didn't want the car so I second chance offered it to one of the 4,000 Irish people who had messaged me and/or bidded. Luckily I didn't have to 'export' it; it's being rehomed elsewhere in the UK as an interim and luckily only down the road to Oxford. Friendly Irishman (ginger) BACSd me the money, and came for a hassle free transcation. Only now let down by the DVLA whose service for some reason switches off at 7pm. Really?

So what did I buy? The collection thread begins here.

In last week's heatwave I packed my bag and set off for the ten mile bike ride to work. As the clock struck four, I then left for the 55 mile ride to my girlfriend's flat in North London. For those worrying if this is a COVID-safe anecdote, we both live on our own and Boris Johnson naturally allowed single homedwellers for a hanky panky visit with their 'support bubble'. This story also partially explains how daft it is me buying another car - I never use the bloody things. The following morning I rode the seven miles to Liverpool Street to catch a train.

My £6 service to Diss was helpfully cancelled so an hour later two trains' worth of passengers crammed into the following service. It looked like a lot of people were going for a bike ride in the sunny weather; there must have been twenty other cyclists trying to get on. This led to something of a kerfuffle between them, other passengers and the oddly numerous train staff as everybody squabbled to try and find some space. The train itself was a brand new Stadler Class 745. A somewhat unorthodox design for the UK, having a non-flat floor and Jacobs bogies, but extremely refined and well made. These have replaced the old MK3 coaches on mainline routes, and are a change for the good so far as I can see. 80s British engineering will be a wider theme in this post and I imagine thread.

The view outside Liverpool Street as I ate my breakfast. I always find this a pretty cool spectacle.

On the train. Sadly no front end photo. Fruity ladies on the left provided much visual satisfaction during the journey.

On the train, from the opposite direction. This is my appearance.

I had a ten mile ride from Diss to the seller's house; even omitting my helmet I arrived drenched in sweat, which is now immortalised in our exchanged cash and V5. I managed to somehow find the only cash machine in the country that distributes £50 notes, but luckily they were accepted! The V5 was a bit complicated as it was believed that the previous owner never bothered to send it off to the DVLA - so we did an online change of ownership and fingers crossed one of us will receive a new logbook in a few weeks.

So what did I buy? Here's the money shot.

And the potentially not-spent-money-very-wisely shot.

Bonus fly tipping too. This investment has potentially not helped my aspiration to move out of the ghetto.

The journey home began well, getting lost numerous times on Norfolk's lanes and discovering that this really was a step back into shit car territory. The brakes make that metallic grinding sound when turning around corners, but luckily this stopped towards the end of my journey. I forgot how awful turbo lag is on these, at the end of the day it'll be much less fun to drive than I hoped as you do need to really give in the beans to move! Managed to make it smoke to a small extent by really flooring it, would be ideal if this could be rectified but I imagine it would involve turning the metering down so much that it doesn't get any benefit from the boost at all. Luckily no smoking in 5th gear, where it sits nicely on the motorway if not still a bit sluggish. There's a small amount of steering wheel vibration at random speeds but not particularly noticeable. This may possibly be rectified by putting the proper front wheel back on, which is currently flat in the boot with a leaking valve. Brake judder when heavy braking at high speed, again could be a symptom of a variety of things. Stops well, though. Largely our Mongol Rally car had all of these issues too when bought but a bit of driving later and most of the cobwebs were blown off, so fingers crossed the same happens here. The temperature gauge stayed at the correct position throughout, even during the heatwave, which is a good sign. After filling up the fuel gauge barely moved either, again a good sign. I am challenging for 60mpg as I tend to drive quite sensibly, but I think that's optimistic considering the car's size and weight. My diesel BXs got 50-55ish and my old Fabia SDI 70. Idle seems high at a smidge under 1000, I know XUDs idle high anyway, although the owner's manual says it should be 800?! High idle may explain why it coasts like mad. The pump is a Lucas Cav, any advice here would be appreciated, please. Engine braking is largely non-existant which makes me think it may be over-fuelling. The internet says the accelerator rest-stop should not be adjusted, not sure what other screw can be played with here. I've already increased the throttle tension to remove about an inch of travel from the pedal before it moves. Both accelerator and clutch pedals are pretty heavy, this isn't a town car! I suspect an engine mount may be for renewal as there's a distinct impact sensation when the accelerator is instantaneously depressed/released, suggesting to me it may be rocking a bit too much in the engine bay. The ride is shit - fairly bouncy with a lot of travel in the suspension. The interior is ok, it looks superficially smart but with a detailed look you can see easily how many miles it's done, with a fair amount of steering wheel and seat wear. The airbag steering wheel does however look quite smart and the seats are pretty uncomfortable. All the buttons work as far as I can tell. It has a remote controlled immobiliser which I can will just be a nightmare in future when it inevitably stops working. As far as I can tell there's no way it can be disabled/removed but it really is a pain already! Unsurprisngly, the car did not come with its security code.

Overall build quality is nothing compared to the Japanese cars I've owned, but better than the several BXs. This does though have the same speedo wobble and the same engine/gearbox, which whilst durable don't feel the highest quality items.

I went home via Halfords to change the oil as the car has zero history. I don't think it'd been done for a while as the filter was a bitch to remove; luckily my old eBay claw-wrench managed to remove it, although can penetrate the filter and cause oil to jizz out everywhere. The coolant looks clean so I probably won't bother doing that for a while, not sure what precautionary servicing this could otherwise do with. I am looking forward to tomorrow's thunderstorms as this is oil change number 27 where I have not positioned the bucket correctly and left the car park looking like the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

It has been an expensive week on ebay buying other random parts and it's booked in for the water pump and timing belt as I am not manly enough to do it myself. Total outlay on this is already over a grand, consuming all the funds I made from the Corolla's sale. Maybe not the most intelligent purchase ever but we all voted for Brexit so I thought it's time to get used to our bright new British future.

[Rod/b]

Top notch collection thread for a top notxh old Rover.

Interesting to see that you ate your breakfast in the middle of the road outside Natwest in Bishopsgate. Fun fact - i once chundered outside that Pizza Express on Xmas Eve about 15 years ago. 

[Lacquer Peel]

Pleasing. It's in the nature of older diesels to let off a bit of clag. 

The Rover 218 diesels use a mirror image Honda PG1 gearbox not a PSA one. 

[willswitchengage]

AROnline suggests it was the a PSA box - but maybe just for the K series. https://www.aronline.co.uk/cars/rover/200-400/r8-development-story/

V5 arrived promptly today, a new design! That was released a long time ago.

I want this to have as many Honda parts as possible. 

[Yoss]

Impressive collection with 55 mile cycle ride. Next time you need breakfast, or any other meal, in the Liverpool Street area, somewhere around here... 

... is this. 

It's great, it really is open 24 hours a day seven days a week. We've turned up at 8am on a Sunday and had the place almost to ourselves so the service is excellent too. Never tried it at 3am but it will be open. It usually has a gaggle of policemen (yes, gaggle is the collective noun for policemen) outside as there is a police station two doors down, which is reassuring. 

[Lacquer Peel]

46 minutes ago, willswitchengage said:

AROnline suggests it was the a PSA box - but maybe just for the K series. https://www.aronline.co.uk/cars/rover/200-400/r8-development-story/

V5 arrived promptly today, a new design! That was released a long time ago.

I want this to have as many Honda parts as possible. 

Just for the K series aye. It would have made more sense to use a PSA box with a PSA engine. 

[willswitchengage]

Fucking hell now the injection pump appears to be leaking. There may be a lemon on the horizon here.

 

[davehedgehog31]

Merely sweating power. It'll be reet.

[willswitchengage]

The FCF appears to have the answer. Thanks for reminding me that I have bought some French engineering.

https://frenchcarforum.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=39927

[Rod/b]

16 hours ago, Yoss said:

Impressive collection with 55 mile cycle ride. Next time you need breakfast, or any other meal, in the Liverpool Street area, somewhere around here... 

... is this. 

It's great, it really is open 24 hours a day seven days a week. We've turned up at 8am on a Sunday and had the place almost to ourselves so the service is excellent too. Never tried it at 3am but it will be open. It usually has a gaggle of policemen (yes, gaggle is the collective noun for policemen) outside as there is a police station two doors down, which is reassuring. 

May possibly have nursed a cup of tea all night after missing my last train. Maybe more than once. It didn’t look that nice in the past though. 

[willswitchengage]

The world's most expensive timing belt has now been fitted. The car did have zero history had only really done MOT miles for about ten years. All the belts were largely now strands of wire so probably a good thing. I will probably go back to Japanese afterwards - the garage said the Hilux before mine was only an hour's job, as were my previous cars.

On a downside, literally everybody I've spoken to so far says my selling if the Toyota has been a daft move. Great. Even the garage owner although he did admit he is a member of the dark side - RR.

Still, it looks like I'm heading that way too with my first stickerbomb. Homage to where it was made.

[willswitchengage]

Idle now lowered so something more reasonable and vibratey.

I used the stop/idle adjustment screw:

62 there is the 'residual flow' / anti stall screw, no idea what that means - serves a similar function? The stop lever was pretty seized in position and required quite some barbarity to move. Still not sure what would happen if I adjusted the stop position.

Also still faffing with the cable tension. It's pretty much as tight as it'll go now; barely landing on its parking position. also noticed the exhaust has been painted. Gimmick to make it look new, or a genuine type of high-temperature underseal? Not sure if they corrode quick inwards or outwards.

[Mr Laurence]

I like that Birmingham Patagonia sticker - where did you get it? Where there any other place names they do?

[willswitchengage]

56 minutes ago, Mr Laurence said:

I like that Birmingham Patagonia sticker - where did you get it? Where there any other place names they do?

https://www.0121skyline.co.uk/

I got it free with a t-shirt. They're sold in a shop in Digbeth. I also pulled with that t-shirt... probably won't with the car though. I was walking through the park and some passer-by paused her phone call to ask me where I bought it.

[stuboy]

nice rover

 

well done

[willswitchengage]

Done about 700 miles in this now and I am definitely 'learning' about Rover's legendary built quality. Its first random part has now fallen off - although admittedly this was just a hubcap. This thing is also huge! parking it is noticeably more difficult than in the old car, although on the plus side it is absolutely enormous inside and is all very practically laid out. No real cubby holes or anything though annoyingly so carrying a drink while driving is trick and there's nowhere to hold my phone for when satnavving.

It took the other half and I up to Yorkshire for our narrowboating holiday - great fun and luckily the Rover's dynamic properties were far in excess of our hired boat with 47hp Isuzu engine. The Rover can be quick when the turbo comes online and makes a nice sound, The motorway and hilly northern A-roads were covered with ease. Annoyingly it is still smokey when you 'boot it' The smoke it pretty random - I kind of figured that if I don't use the final inch of the accelerator it doesn't smoke, but still gives the same power. However paying greater attention later I discovered that this was only the general case and it's still difficult to avoid. Annoyingly Google has very few answers to this - most forum answers are either how to increase power or avoid white/blue smoke; luckily things that this doesn't make. MPG is shit too but broadly as expected - 54 when driving sensibly; the same as my diesel BXs. again, my old TZD Turbo smoked a lot too. It's comfy to drive though and isn't leaking anything, and amazing all the electronic seem to work. Oddly though one of the only faults I was told about this car has failed to manifest itself so far - no water leaks detected despite a lot of heavy rain.

This has also been crashed already! We were in a car park in Ilkley queueing to escape and the dickhead in front randomly started reversing without looking and... crunch. The driver then waved and drove off. WTF? It was a shitty old Peugeot 308 and luckily there was no damage to the Rover. Pretty furious, I can see why owners of fancy cars are so terrified of leaving the house for incidents like this.

A particular highlight was pulling alongside this at the traffic lights... followed him for a few miles out of Oxford and got a thumbs up when he eventually changed direction. A real banger held together by duct tape.

[willswitchengage]

Engineering success! After another embarrassing commute of asphyxiating the local schoolchildren, black smoke issue has been solved. By 'another' this was the first time I'd used the car in over four weeks - I was impressed that it started on all cylinders on the first turn of a chilly morning.

Anyway, the XUD and Lucas DPC combo is pretty common and naturally there are plenty of online resources on how to tune them - particularly in 306s I've discovered. I just worked backwards to reduced the on-boost fuel metering. It's been an interesting lesson actually. The boost screw or whatever you want to call it has been retarded half a turn and there's now no smoke unless I give it full beans to 5000 rpm in first gear. A few childish laps of the block driving it like I stole it and I now have the emissions of a Prius. Result! I've probably lost a small amount of boost but this is a surprisingly powerful car in the first place so I'm not too fussed if that's the case.

In a Rover/Lucas configuration access to this mod is annoyingly difficult (massive cut to my finger to prove!) but in the image below the screw appears as the 'nipple' just about exposed beneath the vertically aligned pot. There's a security cap which can be fairly easily broken off for it to be exposed, and the pipe running to the right leads to the inlet manifold to provide boost pressure. The Unit is typically called something like a mainfold / boost pressure compensator I think.

This is the Bosch but the principle is the same and for some reason on a Lucas you dial the adjustor screw the opposite direction to achieve the same desired metering change.

[DoctorRetro]

You're very harsh on the poor thing, they're not that bad. You've been spoiled by Toyota ownership, haven't you? 

[clayts450]

Flame red FTW - nice looking motor, mister (sorry, just catching up after some time away from the forum)

Quote

there's nowhere to hold my phone for when satnavving

You can sometimes get away with propping up the phone on the shelf above the glovebox (maybe BluTac would help).

I tend to swear by these little monsters for phone holding in my fleet - clip onto the air vents, magnet inside case of phone (no need to stick permanently) - they don't go anywhere

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01JG7ZMIW

[willswitchengage]

It seems like every time I fix this another problem appears.

Boot water ingress - solved with desiccant packs.

Black smoke. ALL GONE! 100 mile trip yesterday and no schoolchildren asphyxiated at all.

New problem: Driver's door lock. At end of journey #2 I tried to put key in. Key wouldn't go in more than a few millimetres. Looks like the lock has tumbled itself whilst driving. This is very annoying as I now have to lock with the fob, which activates the anti-intruder system. Not sure if this will drain the battery but I am equally terrified that it will randomly set off the car alarm every five minutes. The biggest problem I have with this car overall is the stupid immobiliser and it has already started to fuck me over.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

In my experience these Lucas 5AS immobilisers are not as completely shit as you might expect. If all the door lock solenoids are working so that the thing does actually lock itself properly with the fob, then generally they seem to behave themselves I find. I dont think they are a heavy drain on the battery at all. Admittedly I've not had a diesel R8, which I suppose has a unique version of the 5AS.

If the very idea of it is really boiling your piss, I think this guy can modify it to deactivate the immobiliser function altogether for £cheaps

https://www.technozen-electronics.co.uk/mg-rover-5as-alarm-ecu-services/

 

[willswitchengage]

NEXT DRIVE, NEXT PROBLEM.

Engine always starts instantly, even after being sat for four weeks. However as the days get slightly colder these starts have got rougher - a bit of smoke and maybe not firing on all cylinders for a few seconds. Not the end of the world but could be improved. Glow plugs? I've never done a glow plug change before but I am imaging them to be like BIG SPARK PLUGS. Easy job on these? I have a couple of random spark plug sockets but no idea if they'd fit.

[Lacquer Peel]

3/4 are easy, the one behind the injection pump can be fiddly and on some XUDs there's a small coolant pipe in the way. I don't remember the exact size but you can use a long socket on most of them, and a spanner on the awkward one. They are much narrower than spark plugs. 

[willswitchengage]

The Hogwarts sorting hat has decided that this sleepy hollow in Berkshire is endemic with the Teenage Mutant Ninja COVID-19 so all weekend and life plans are cancelled. Luckily I have the love of my life still parked outside and it's a rare sunny day when I'm not at work so 'let's actually' fix the car' I thought.

By fix I mean address the stupid water leak that has left me driving through a porthole of condensation every time I use this thing and has destroyed many a towel that has been left soaking in the boot.

Anyway, luckily there are over 4000 threads for this on the various Rover forums that all point to the boot vents. Removed the bumper and the rear trim (which I have left off for RATLOOK) and clearly a previous owner has been aware of this issue and attempted to resolve it with toilet paper. I can confirm that this has not worked, and instead of doing it properly* and re-sealing the vents I have instead just drilled a few holes in the convenient trays within the boot pressing and voila, job solved. WIN. Now I just have nowhere to drive.

[willswitchengage]

Another commute, another problem. Never anything serious but always very annoying. The radio has reset itself and has '-C-' flashing. I think I can guess what this means! Are there internet available radio codes or I am screwed similar to how I don't have the security locking code either?

[BeEP]

23 minutes ago, willswitchengage said:

Another commute, another problem. Never anything serious but always very annoying. The radio has reset itself and has '-C-' flashing. I think I can guess what this means! Are there internet available radio codes or I am screwed similar to how I don't have the security locking code either?

I've used this thread on MoneySavingExpert twice to successfully get Rover radio codes for free:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/26827/car-radio-unlocking