RFU rescues a Rover 620ti! Back on the road - 1000 mile report!

[RoverFolkUs]

7 minutes ago, fatharris said:

1 hour ago, RoverFolkUs said:

Silly mileometer moment: 

(118620)
Unfortunately the alarm/central locking has shit the bed
The remote fob has stopped working, and now it sets the alarm off every time I unlock the driver's door.. it's a right game getting it to disarm, I'm hoping it's just a dead battery in the fob
I'm dreading it's something more than the battery in the fob though, sometimes the central locking operates from the key in the driver's door but sometimes it doesn't 
Joy!

Had this twice, and a reseat of the battery brought it back to life

Ah cheers, if that's sorts it I'll be happy as Larry! I'll do it when at home though to avoid getting stranded if it goes totally senile 😅

[RoverFolkUs]

Alarm foibles sorted, the remote fob was previously taking a couple of attempts before locking/unlocking, and then it stopped working altogether the other day, followed by the alarm going off every time I unlocked the driver's door with the key. 

I disconnected the battery as suggested by @fatharris and thought I might as well check the batteries in the key fob while I'm at it. They were a little low at 5.9v (2x CR2016 fitted) so I put a pair of fresh ones in which were about 6.5v. 

After reconnecting the battery, the fob now works on the first press of button to lock/unlock and no more alarm chaos. Nice easy fix! 

I was in the mood for some tinkering so did a smoke test to check for any air leaks in the intake system as I suspected there may be something as it seemed to be a little bit hesitant at times and I had only ever seen the boost guage get up to around 10psi. Turns out it had a huge boost leak from the flange between the turbo and the dump valve! 

Took the dump valve off to inspect

I found the sealing ring had gone flat so it wasn't able to maintain full boost pressure! 

I made a slightly crude paper gasket for the low pressure (induction) side, and reassembled it with some RTV and a new o-ring for the high pressure side. It looks messy, but:

It's functional! It now holds enough pressure before the smoke starts to escape via the dump valve itself which is fine. 

Went for a quick test run and I'd say there's a significant improvement, boost now reaches 14psi if I boot it, the air leak noise I heard under acceleration has gone and it now seems a lot more responsive and builds up boost nice and quickly from a lower RPM than before. It now starts to pull from around 2100-2200rpm whereas before I was noticing a bit of hesitancy before it started to boost around the 2600-2700rpm mark. 

Another free fix, and it's made a vast improvement to the car

[fatharris]

Ah decent, I only ever had 11psi max out of it!

[Gentil79]

Great work rescuing this one. Sounded really good when i saw it at Torque Moto in the 8th of March. Keep going!

[RoverFolkUs]

Well, somehow it looks like I've managed to put 1000 miles on this already! Although it will be having a bit of a break soon towards the end of this month. 

I actually gave it the first proper wash (albeit slightly half-arsed) in my ownership 😂 - that photo definitely flatters it. I do need to rectify my poor paint job to the rear arches but the rest of the paint is full of contaminants and it looks like someone has gone over the whole car with a brillo pad at some point so it's quite low down on my priorities! 

It hasn't skipped a beat at all, and it's very good at eating the miles up. Having rectified the seized shock absorber situation, allowing the suspension to actually travel 😅 it's a bit of a boat on the back roads (of which there are plenty in Sussex) but it's still nice enough on whichever road you take it on. Managed a very pleasant 2 hour trip the other week with plenty of traffic jams and I didn't feel any aches at all once I'd arrived, compared to the Focus where I probably would have. 

Economy is decent, I'm averaging 300-350 miles per tank by the looks of it, around the 25-30mpg mark combined. Not the best but not the worst either. I was barely knocking on the door of 32mpg from the Focus which is only  a 1.6 N/A petrol

As I say, it's been a very reliable 1000 miles but there have been a couple of quirks:

- It intermittently has a mind of it's own and will idle at 2000-2200rpm from cold, or 1600rpm when warm. Restarting the engine usually cures it 🤷‍♂️ doesn't change the way it drives at all when it decides to do it. Someone mentioned a throttle stepper motor reset which might be worthwhile? 

- Just the once, the clutch felt very strange. It went really heavy and felt like a spring, losing it's graduality, with it eventually biting right at the end of its travel. I could be getting this wrong, but I seem to recall @fatharris describing something similar before replacing the clutch? It only took about half an hour of driving before returning to normal and it's been fine ever since, now biting about 2/3 of the way and being positively light exactly as I'd expect it to be. I can only assume it may have got a bit warm but I certainly wasn't ragging it. I'll probably just end up keeping an eye on this, but I'm writing it down just to keep a diary of it!

All in all, I've definitely gelled with the car and it's the perfect replacement for the MG and the Focus by combining the interesting,fun and practical natures. I think it's proved itself to be reliable enough that I'll consider letting the Focus go now because that's been parked up unused for about 6 months now which seems a bit of a waste! 

[fatharris]

Yeah, you're right, it happened when we were stop/starting in traffic when fully loaded, fully cured as soon as we got some airflow through the engine bay. This only occured when trying to leave Silverstone on race day so an eternity of slipping the clutch etc to get up a hill, one car length at a time!

Never happened again and I changed the clutch shortly after, but I did keep a shorting link for the engine cooling fans switch which I never had to use, but deemed a necessary emergency solution - seem to recall it's a brown plug with two wires at the top of the engine, front drivers side 😅 may still be in the coin tray next to the ignition switch! Assumed that would have been helpful if it had ever occured again.

I do still very much miss it 🤣