Project Creatively Titled Rover 400 Thread

[Ghosty]

What type of ATF did you use Ghosty? Run of the mill Dexron III?

I use II D in Honda gearboxes.

[davehedgehog31]

I need to do my ATF, is drain plug easily accessed with the car flat or does it need jacked up?

[Ghosty]

I think you might need to jack the car up but it's still a really easy job.

 

Major improvement of the day:

 

IMG_20180603_165635491_HDR by max_burton, on Flickr

 

IMG_20180603_165643845 by max_burton, on Flickr

 

Bumper is now correctly positioned, some previous impact had knocked it off its mounting pegs at the sides. I also started to clean the car of tar spots/tree sap, though the whole car needs T-Cutting or clay barring.

 

I found the reason for the paltry horn: this early R8 has a horn at each corner of the front bumper (later cars only had a single horn unit on the n/s). The low tone horn on the nearside was full of water. Took that one off, and replaced it with the working high tone horn from the o/s, as the o/s has more clearance for the air horns. They went in no problem. Triple tone horn achieved

 

Tomorrow I'm renting a RugDoctor for the interior, and buying a can of Neutradol.

 

There was a small piece of nylon string on the parcel shelf, tried to pick it up and it tunred to powder from UV exposure. Clean that up tomorrow too.

[vulgalour]

Squaring up that bumper has made a surprising amount of improvement to the way it looks.

[Ghosty]

Having replaced the spark plugs with four-pole Bosch items and cleaned out the PCV, the car now runs perfectly and is idling well.

I think this might be the best-running D-Series we've had - it's definitely the fastest starting one I've seen. First crank, every time.

 

Squaring up that bumper has made a surprising amount of improvement to the way it looks.

 

It has! There's loads more still to go too, I'm excited to see how it goes, as there's serious potential.

[Ghosty]

'do not use on... velour'

 

OK then, something else.

[Ghosty]

The radio has stopped picking up FM, and a dip bulb has blown. Oh well, easy fixes.

 

Waiting on the postman now to do anything else on the car now, though I think I might be getting two more GSi wheeltrims in the post soon, and hopefully my radio and aerial wiring will arrive before long too.

[vulgalour]

Check the fuse in the back of the radio.  Mine didn't blow all at once, it sort of fizzled out, and the radio was a bit odd while it did it.  You do have to pull the radio out to access it, annoyingly, but I do remember it's an orange blade fuse. It's not blown since I replaced it back in 2015 or whenever and I've had no problems since so I reckon it was just an old rubbish fuse rather than anything more serious.

[Ghosty]

I know the one you mean - I'll check it. I'll be having the radio out when the aerial and my ISO wiring kit come, so probably just do it then. The radio is pretty old (Kenwood cassette, not the factory Philips) so it wouldn't surprise me if the fuse blew for being disturbed. I'm tempted to buy a load of C90s and leave it be, but I have paid Spotify and unlimited data, so an aux in is appealing. The headlight did the same thing (the connector was being dicky though, had a job getting the sidelight to work but the dip is dead): I had to take out both headlights to mess with the horns. HBOL says it's a bumper off job, but you don't need to with the headlight out, there's plenty of room.

[Ghosty]

Rimmers have 400 bootlids in, £25+vat. 

 

That's perfect, as the one I have has multiple dents in it, both on the top and the rear edge. You'd need an angle grinder to get anywhere near the inside to tap them out. That, or use a slide hammer, but that needs welding and paint, it's easier to just have a new lid sprayed.

 

At the same time I'll get a set of the beige mats they have on clearance for a tenner, close enough to the slate interior, and they've got a Rover badge on them.

[beko1987]

Max we could find a poundland and get a tape to aux adapter if you get it working!

[Guest Hooli]

Max we could find a poundland and get a tape to aux adapter if you get it working!

 

Has anyone ever had any luck with those? I've never had one that wasn't constantly triggering the auto reverse.

[Stanky]

Cheap ones I've had constantly triggered the auto reverse, an old, beige, expensive (£15 new in the late 90s) one I had worked well for me.

 

Get a Phillips or Kenwood one and it should work well. Or disable the auto-reverse mechanism.

[beko1987]

I had a cheap one in my xm and it was alright. Biggest issue I had was it picked up mega interference from my phone, had to put it on airplane mode to shut it up. I knew if I was getting a text or call as 5 seconds before it would just go nuts.

 

Sound quality was alright though (alright for a mid 90s tape player and mid 90s speakers)

[Guest Hooli]

Must have been my luck* then.

[davehedgehog31]

Rimmers have 400 bootlids in, £25+vat. 

 

That's perfect, as the one I have has multiple dents in it, both on the top and the rear edge. You'd need an angle grinder to get anywhere near the inside to tap them out. That, or use a slide hammer, but that needs welding and paint, it's easier to just have a new lid sprayed.

 

At the same time I'll get a set of the beige mats they have on clearance for a tenner, close enough to the slate interior, and they've got a Rover badge on them.

 

Mine are still nice and clean*

 

 

The 200/400 bit is a little velcro piece, I have the "400 Series" one, will give you it at Shitefest, the most minor and unnecessary spare imaginable. 

[MorrisItalSLX]

I have a $20 tape-to-aux that works a treat in my 2001 Pioneer tape deck.

[Ghosty]

Went to a body shop and asked what it'd cost to have a boot lid and the outside of two doors painted, and the guy said £400, and that's for providing the panels loose and fitting them myself. Is that a polite fuck off? It seems expensive.

[Schaefft]

Sounds about right to me, its always expensive. The problem with bringing separate panels is that he wont be able to blend the fresh paint in, you are basically at risk of getting a slightly wrong shade of white for your doors without being able to hide it.

[Ghosty]

He said the price includes blending.

[Schaefft]

So he just wants all the moldings masked off/removed from the doors? That shouldnt be a problem. Blending them in with the rest of the body would be a little strange without the doors being in place.

[Ghosty]

Yeah, I'd do that anyway as they've been rattle canned black.

 

He said if I wanted to fit the doors and bootlid myself then I could just bring the car back in for blending after they'd been fitted.

[vulgalour]

If your new doors are a reasonable match to the white on the car, he could use that to colour match the boot lid at least so blending in might not be required.  Just make sure everything is spotlessly clean first, otherwise he'll be colour matching dirty paint so it's going to be claybars and cutting compound time, which is actually always lots of fun on white cars.

[Ghosty]

I think the car needs claybarring anyway, as T-Cut isn't moving the tree sap...

 

Minor update today:

 

IMG_20180605_124518243 by max_burton, on Flickr

 

all the wheel trims match now.

[Ghosty]

I've now found that one of the headlight wiring connectors has gone dicky since I installed the horn. Not sure if it's bent or what, but I only have a sidelight on the driver's side, and if it goes over a bump it might go out. Can't be having that... 

 

Also, the new alternator belt is shrieking a lot, I'm not sure it's quite right, even though it seemed to fit. I'll have to look into that.

[Ghosty]

Sleuthing has found the right alternator belt. 

My local GSFs (both 10 miles away) apparently have them in stock but the website is broken and won't let me reserve one. I'll have to go in the day tomorrow.

[Guest Hooli]

No rush, it's hours till you leave for shitefest

[oldcars]

Price seems fair for paint, normally about £150 a panel.

[Ghosty]

Today, the bloody post didn't come again. Well, my aerial did. Tried to fit it, and found that the cable routing is just a bloody joke, and after multiple attempts to pull the cable through failed, I gave up. I've lobbed the aerial on as a dummy and I'll have to get a windscreen one or a DAB adapter or something.

Praying my wiring adapter comes before I leave for SF so I at least have CDs and Spotify.

[Ghosty]

Also, sorted the wiring connector on the headlamp by taking it off its mounting clip on the light and just leaving it hanging. When it was in the right place it was fouling on the air intake ducting and forcing the pins for the side and main beam enough out of the way to deny a connection.