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my £200 Rover 25


dieselnutjob

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I got this just before the Christmas break.

The owner is a young fellow that's a friend of my one of my daughters at 6th form college.

His story is that one of the fobs stopped working some time back, and the other was dropped down a drain and retrieved but then also stopped working.

However he had only one key and fob and it isn't clear in my mind which one it is.

His dad claims to have spent over two hours trying to make the EKA work, and I also had a go.

I then had a go at getting the car running the car myself by coding a spare 5AS into the engine ECU, which I successfully did but I stupidly forgot that the Pektron SCU in these also controls the starter motor and fuel pump.  I have a spare Pektron which I could have plumbed in just to try the car out but at that point the dad said he wanted it gone off of his drive as he had been offered £150 from a scrappy who would take it away for him.

The boy seemed to want a bit more than £150 so I offered him £200 if he would help me to tow it to my house and get it on my drive, so after his first go on the end of a tow rope that's what happened.

Here it is

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I wasn't too happy about this:-

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and I'm not too sure about this,

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it was difficult to tell in the dark if that's a bit emulsified or not.  The fellow swears that the car ran fine and that he drove it to Reading and back no problems.

Anyway today I started it up and ran it for 1/2 hour or so.  Fiddling about with the battery in the fob seems to have revived it.

The heater doesn't seem to get even warm, but the engine does, and the fan comes on occasionally.  It doesn't push all of the coolant out either.

I found the bleed screw in the coolant pipe above the gearbox and removed it, coolant came out.  I squeezed the top hose a bit.  I revved up the engine a bit.

But still no heater.

Also I tried all the gears (though didn't actually drive the car, no tax/MOT) and tried the biting point of the clutch.  It all seemed fine.

It has a damaged passenger door and I think that the front wing has seen some rattle can action but it's nothing too bad and I bet panels from these are dirt cheap.

If this car is good then it's useful for a couple of reasons:-

It's a 1.6 petrol and it is ULEZ compliant, I need to go into central London two or three times a week and next year when this goes out to the North Circular my current trick of parking in Regents park is finished.

Both my wife and me can use it as a spare because neither of our cars are spring chickens and I won't care too much if she knocks it.

My youngest might like to learn to drive this year and I have two others already with provisional licenses. Apparently Rover 25s are relatively not too bad for teenagers as they are off their normal radar (i.e. not a Corsa or other "cool" or "sick" car).

Tax and insure it now?

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I rang my insurance company (Admiral multicar) and they said £200 a year to insure it, but only £60 now because my multicar isn't due until the end of March.  This is without any no claims because it's in addition to the existing fleet.

I was looking at refund on road tax (if it does turn out to be too terminally knackered) and it says this:-

You won’t get a refund for:

any credit card fees
the 5% surcharge on some direct debit payments
the 10% surcharge on a single 6 month payment

So I guess that the cheapest way try the thing out is insure it,  buy a full years road tax (so no surcharges) and try it out?

It has a nearly half a tank of petrol in it and four good tyres on nice wheels ?   

 

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15 minutes ago, dieselnutjob said:

So I guess that the cheapest way try the thing out is insure it,  buy a full years road tax (so no surcharges) and try it out?

Yes, that's the cheapest way to tax it provided you have the funds.  Good to see a Rover 25 getting a second chance, and in a decent colour as well.

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The total lack of coolant in the expansion bottle would have me terrified if it was mine. They are not tolerant of lack of coolant. I wouldn't run it all until the problem is identified.  

Lack of heater is probably matrix bunged with mayonnaise and/or filled with air/exhaust gases. 

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The heater in mine started going a while ago, first on setting 1, then 2 and eventually no heat on any setting. Turned out to be the resistor that sits behind the glove box. 5 min job and cheap as chips. You can check to see if it's fubared first by simply removing it and looking to see if any of the ceramic is left or if the wires are still in tact. 

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the contents of the glove box are quite interesting

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this might have something to do with the radio?  it's a Sony radio and when you press either volume up or down on the steering wheel the volume goes down, and when you press next and previous channel on the steering wheel, the volume goes up and down.  So three down volumes and one up.

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parental advice?

and

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what, removed the glovebox to get to the Pektron unit??

 

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Well done on getting it running.

The oil does not look good, but the best thing to do is drop the oil out, new filter.

clean out and the expansion tank and keep it topped up.

Run it and monitor both.  Oil in the coolant is the most common on these.  Coolant in the oil less so, and both often points to HGF.  They can be 'soldiered on' for a long time if you are inclined to do so.

i put an elastomer gasket (BGA manufacture - considered to be very good) on a K Series in 2014, 50k miles ago, not used any coolant 'of significance' ever since.

I re-used the stretch bolts, just did HG, Inlet and Ex manifold gaskets.  Cost be about £30 to do the job (cambelt and waterpump had been done by me about 10k prior to that) 

i took off a MLS gasket that had completely rusted through, which also explained why the leaky water pump replacement of 10k previous did not 100% solve the coolant loss, it was the HG between water jacket and cylinder.  Yoof finished of the HG by caning it down the M4 at may elephants on a hot day after failing to keep the coolant topped up.

 

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The contents of the glovebox look like the under seat connections that control the SRS system.

there are two different types, yellow and blue.  One is early and the other late, but I can't remember which way around.

i 'happened across' a nice set of half leather Monaco stsyle seats when down the scrappy, so I them and changed the seats in ours.  It was at that point I came across the different colour connectors.  I just chopped the connects off and used chocky blocks.  The connectors are a known trouble spot causing the SRS light to display on the dash.

if you look under your front seats a, you may well find the connector she have been chopped out.

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6 minutes ago, barmatt said:

That's exactly what it will do if the resistor is knackered. 

I am not understanding.  I thought that a blower motor resistor would regulate the speed of the blower fan, and that the temperature of the air would be regulated by the temperature of the coolant in the heater matrix radiator thing.

My problem is the temperature of the air (and by proxy, the temperature of the heater matrix, and by proxy by proxy, the temperature of the coolant in the matrix) not the speed of the blower motor.

Please educate me. 

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1 minute ago, dieselnutjob said:

no worries.  I have no flipping clue what's wrong with it either yet

Pull the heater control knob off and try to turn the metal spline with some pliers, on both of mine the knob became loose just spinning on the splines so not opening or closing the heater valve.

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21 minutes ago, dieselnutjob said:

how hard is a HG change on these?

Relatively simple. 

worth noting that the K series has wet liners, it is imperative you don't rotate the engine with the head off as it will cause the liners to lift. 

A nice Victor reinz Composite gasket should see her good. 

New Head bolts are needed too, 

timing belt aswell. 

 

might aswell do the waterpump to 

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6 minutes ago, Dan302 said:

Pull the heater control knob off and try to turn the metal spline with some pliers, on both of mine the knob became loose just spinning on the splines so not opening or closing the heater valve.

two things

1. I just pulled the knob pretty hard and I doesn't feel like it's going to come off

2. The knob only turns from 8 o'clock (cold) to 4 o'clock (hot) and hits a solid stop at both ends.  If the knob splines had gone wouldn't it just spin and spin and not hit the end stops?

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The heater controls are shite in these as Dan302 said, also the knobs tend to become brittle inside and crumble rendering them useless.

They're currently selling for between £10-£20 each on ebay.  Similar age Honda knobs sell for about £2 and are exactly the same. ;) 

 

 

Gratuitous pic of the Gti that will be up for sale soonish...

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*Edited to say, It sounds like your knobs are fine (fnar).

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55 minutes ago, Cooper1 said:

Relatively simple. 

worth noting that the K series has wet liners, it is imperative you don't rotate the engine with the head off as it will cause the liners to lift. 

A nice Victor reinz Composite gasket should see her good. 

New Head bolts are needed too, 

timing belt aswell. 

 

might aswell do the waterpump to 

Theoretically, and to be correct, stretch bolts should be replaced.  They will 'run again' although it is a bit nerve racking as you pull each of them down.  Going the tips down by a few mm to reduce the risk of them bottoming out.  I've done two K Series HG's and re-used the stretch bolts on both occasions.  

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5 minutes ago, Isaac Hunt said:

Theoretically, and to be correct, stretch bolts should be replaced.  They will 'run again' although it is a bit nerve racking as you pull each of them down.  Going the tips down by a few mm to reduce the risk of them bottoming out.  I've done two K Series HG's and re-used the stretch bolts on both occasions.  

Yes but they're "stretch bolts" for a reason ;) 

The K series is a bugger in regards to HG so it is best to give it the best chance possible ;) 

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1 hour ago, dieselnutjob said:

 

two things

1. I just pulled the knob pretty hard and I doesn't feel like it's going to come off

2. The knob only turns from 8 o'clock (cold) to 4 o'clock (hot) and hits a solid stop at both ends.  If the knob splines had gone wouldn't it just spin and spin and not hit the end stops?

Glad your knob is ok ?

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