Rover 800s - Fleet update

[Austin-Rover]

I've owned this Rover 820 for a while now, but it's been off the road for a couple of years. 

It's been trailered back from my storage unit last weekend ready to be recomissioned for a holiday/road trip this year driving to the middle of Norway and back. No pressure to perform, then! 

It's been squeezed in to the garage this afternoon to give the job a coat of looking at and come up with a plan to hopefully get it up and running as quickly as possible and pressed in to daily use for a few weeks before hitting the road proper for the holiday. 

It fits in... but if you want to get in the pit, then it needs pushing out a little! 

So far the job looks like a couple of tyres, a new expansion tank, an oil leak to investigate, and a back box. Other things are likely to be a strip down of the brakes, a bit of Waxoyl sprayed about, and a scab on the nearside sill to sort. Nice to do stuff would be to repair the starting to rust scuttle under the windscreen wipers and recover the headlining. We'll see! 

 

 

[HMC]

Love it! Looks to be a very early mk2, and with -hp on the plate makes me wonder if there’s any early factory / demonstrator history? Nice!

[Austin-Rover]

  On 20/02/2022 at 19:39, HMC said:

Love it! Looks to be a very early mk2, and with -hp on the plate makes me wonder if there’s any early factory / demonstrator history? Nice!

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Yes, it does have some Rover history. It's very early in the production run for the R17, and one of a handful built in North Works at Cowley before it was flattened and they took production over the other side of the road. It's the only surviving 1991 R17 I've ever been able to find. 

Other stuff from the same registration series is this Police demonstrator; 

 

[stuboy]

hopefully be a fun time to norway

[lisbon_road]

Thanks for sharing.  These were a great car.  My parents had a K reg 820 which I really liked, with grey leather interior and later a P reg with cream interior which just never seemed to go as well to me.  Yours looks very good and is now a rare car.  Norway is a wonderful country and look forward to hearing about the trip. 

[Macscrooge]

Epic!  Best of luck with the trip. 

[Marina door handles]

Nice to see another 800 on here!  

[MJK 24]

The facelift was such a good looking car.

[Austin-Rover]

A day off today, so time to make a start. First off was to find out why the spare wheel well had water in it. Now, I'd replaced the light cluster gaskets a couple of years ago, and removing the copious amounts of boot carpet showed that the area around the inside of the clusters was dry. Hmmm... attention moves to the boot lid and I spot a tiny bit of water just behind the carpeted boot lid trim. My money is on the gaskets for the fog/reverse light clusters on the boot lid. Time to investigate; 

So much carpeting, and so many crappy plastic clips! 

A couple of 8mm nuts hold these little light clusters in. Once removed there's two very squashed rubber gaskets and evidence that the nearside one had been letting water passed. Time to cut some new gaskets with some neoprene;

Old (left) and new (fitted);

Both light clusters with new gaskets ready to fit;

Sadly I'm not going to know if they've worked until the car next comes out of the garage. However, the ones for the main clusters seem to be okay, and fresh foamy stuff should form a better seal than the squashed thirty year old originals! 

Some new parts came in the post today, too. Any 800 owner will now be familiar with degraded coolant expansion tanks, where they develop hairline cracks before giving up completely. 

This one is on its way...

One of the accepted repairs is a Volvo tank. This will need a bracket fashioning to hold it in place, but otherwise is a straight swap!

More next weekend hopefully!

 

[Dick Cheeseburger]

I was going to comment that the J plate must be a private registration as the car is clearly much newer than that. I can't believe the first of the facelifts were available thirty years ago! 

Interesting about the expansion tank deterioration being a known thing. Sounds like the same issue with BMW E46 and Z4 expansion tanks which go exactly the same way. The big difference is the fixings on my Z4 were a flippin' mare to remove! 

Do you follow Chris Pollitt? He's fitted a custom stainless tank on his 800. 

[Austin-Rover]

  On 21/02/2022 at 19:53, Dick Longbridge said:

I was going to comment that the J plate must be a private registration as the car is clearly much newer than that. I can't believe the first of the facelifts were available thirty years ago! 

Interesting about the expansion tank deterioration being a known thing. Sounds like the same issue with BMW E46 and Z4 expansion tanks which go exactly the same way. The big difference is the fixings on my Z4 were a flippin' mare to remove! 

Do you follow Chris Pollitt? He's fitted a custom stainless tank on his 800. 

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I've seen the stainless tanks they look good, but I think I'd prefer to see the coolant level easier in a plastic tank. 

[iainrcz]

My plan after owning a 420 was to buy an 800 of some sort. 

Bought a 406 instead!

[motorpunk]

  On 20/02/2022 at 19:47, Austin-Rover said:

Yes, it does have some Rover history. It's very early in the production run for the R17, and one of a handful built in North Works at Cowley before it was flattened and they took production over the other side of the road. It's the only surviving 1991 R17 I've ever been able to find. 

Other stuff from the same registration series is this Police demonstrator; 

 

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That’s sexy. 

[Austin-Rover]

Work progresses; from the mundane (an oil change) to the smelly - Waxoyl everywhere! Worth doing, I suppose - seeing as there's no scabby bits on the underside. 

Now as Rover 800 electric problems have been a theme in other threads in recent days, not to feel left out I should report one of my own! For a long time now, the speedo has been working less and less often (the bonus is I don't rack up much mileage!). When it was last on the road, it had a new transducer in the gearbox which did nothing to resolve the issue. Simple logic says the fault must be at the other end, at the instrument pack. I had planned on trying to find a replacement instrument pack... but that is easier said than done!

Above is the back of two instrument packs. The left hand one with the blue printed circuit is from my car, the one on the right is also from a J reg car and less than twelve months separates the two instrument packs on their date stamp. Someone saw fit to change the printed circuit within the first five minutes of production and of course the ones with the lighter green coloured circuit don't work in my car. Rover 800 instruments are pretty hard to find, and my hope remains that one of the right type will eventually come up for sale. The interim plan is a GPS speedo from Amazon! 

Still, I think myself lucky as an 800 owner. I have manual rear windows, a manual sunroof and no airbags so I have avoided a lot of heartache already! 

 

[RoadworkUK]

  On 21/02/2022 at 19:53, Dick Longbridge said:

Do you follow Chris Pollitt? He's fitted a custom stainless tank on his 800. 

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He very kindly invited me to put an order in, too.

I was not disappointed:

[Austin-Rover]

To speed things up, I packed the 820 off to my local MGRover specialist with a list of jobs and an instruction to give me a ring when it was done. The result being I've got the car back with a fresh MoT, and (amongst other stuff) the old, fragile expantion tank replaced by the lovely new Volvo one mounted on a custom made bracket. Rather a neat job it is too. 

The non-functioning speedo has been diagnosed as the speedo head rather than the circuit board on the back of the cluster. The second hand one I bought will be disassembled just out of interest so I can see how it's put together and if replacement is feasable. 

In other news, the 800 is back in the garage to tidy some bits of bodywork. Thankfully there's no rot, just some flaky paint on the rear arches and the nearside sill. It all cleaned up with no holes apparent.

The same can not be said for the scuttle panel under the wipers. The scuttle will have to be a patch-up job as they're practically extinct. 

 

 

[Austin-Rover]

So there's been plenty happening since the last update. Those bits of rust on the bodywork have been expertly* repaired with an aerosol or two of Caribbean Blue by myself. The first part of the bank holiday weekend was to extract the car from the garage and attack it with the machine polisher and various lotions and potions from Autoglym and Meguiars. 

The engine bay also had a tidy up, which might be a little excessive! 

The rusty scuttle panel from the post above is also repaired. A glassfibre kit allowed me to patch the holes from behind, and a skim of filler on the visible side before a couple of coats of satin black to finish. A brush of Waxoyl to the back (hence the gloves!) before it was screwed back in place. 
Originally there was a contoured foam backing to this panel to stop the metal sitting against the glass of the windscreen. This had long since perished, and a solution was required. A not very pretty one was found, and I'm hopeful its not too noticeable. It is a length of small diameter washer tubing slit open and pushed over the end of the panel. It does a good job of stopping the scuttle hitting the glass. 

To the interior! 
Now, the headlining was sagging a little - but I've seen a LOT worse on Austin Rover tat from this era. I'd re-covered the headlining on a Discovery 2 not so long ago and there was just enough material left to do an 800 saloon... 

If anyone else here is familiar with Austin Rover headlinings, you'll know that the perished orange foam gets everywhere once disturbed. It's sticky horrible stuff too. We had the headlining job turned round and back in the car in about three hours (I've done a few over the years!) and it is much improved. 

Next stop; the rest of the interior with the Vax wet and dry...

And done! A couple of tyres are booked in for Friday this week, and daily use beckons. Enjoy some very beige pictures of the finished article;

 

 

[stuboy]

800's where everywhere then disappeared in a flash..

[Austin-Rover]

Back from the holibibs to Sweden and Norway the other day, and the Rover performed faultlessly. I think we topped the oil up once and the water a couple of times. Nothing fell off, either! Norway in particular is fabulous and I would highly recommend going if you can.  On our way home, we found the terminal velocity of a Rover 820 on the autobahn in Germany - 206km/h! Here's some pix; 

 

[Carl1981]

I remember the 800 being a huge car in its day! looking at it next to that monstrosity Tesla it’s positively compact 😂

[stuboy]

lovely beasty

[Lacquer Peel]

Looks like a great trip in a class car. Nice to see a fairly boggo 800 getting some attention. 

[Austin-Rover]

So with one Rover 820 'done', I guess it is time for the next one, and what a shed it is too! 

This one had been languishing on the owners club Facebook page for a couple of months, with the hard-to-interact-with seller complaining that no one wants to buy it (try answering your messages then?). To cut a long story short, the seller's self-imposed 'the scrap man is coming for it Saturday afternoon' dead line had been and gone, over a week later the thread was bumped back to the top of the page and I'm on my way to Blackpool with £500. There's no tyre kicking or haggling at those prices, so it quickly finds its way back to Huddersfield. 

 

It drives really very well and has MOT until March 2023, but looks completely awful and the interior is a health hazard. The plan is to clean it up a bit this week for an hour or so each day after work and get it in the garage over the pit by the weekend for a proper going over. Hopefully there's no nasties hiding underneath and we can crack on with tidying it up...

Here's the current state of play; 

 

[stuboy]

800 look fab in BRG

[Schaefft]

Great to see these cars saved, and the sellers inability fortunately resulted in a bargain it seems!

[montytom]

Lovely looks like a good project. 

[Austin-Rover]

It's in the garage, and the findings are good! There's a huge power steering fluid leak, and several large oil leaks (T-Series, TADTS) and a split boot to sort. 

But otherwise, its nice a solid underneath, a little cleaning up and then a coating of Waxoyl should see it right. There's still a bit of crustyness on the outer face of once sill, but I can safely say there's nothing pressing to sort underneath. 

 

 

[Austin-Rover]

The very oily bits. It's made quite a mess on the driveway! 

 

[SH1TE]

check vapour trap to map sensor on ecu as it saves expensive repair.

O ring leaks oil at 100k on head gasket.

We used to fix these for monster milage.

200k plus easy.

BRG 

Nice

Early Vitesse was tickford

[lisbon_road]

Looks good.  Thanks for sharing pictures of Norway trip.

Would appreciate knowing what you stick the headlining material on with, and any tips like do you stretch it as you put it on.

I've three sagging headlinings to fix sadly!