Roverjoyed. ABS woes resolved, MOT? Completed it mate (Rover 800 content)

[RoadworkUK]

1 hour ago, Spottedlaurel said:

By coincidence just yesterday I was thinking about a trip to Frinton, maybe when I have some holiday when I should have been going away. The rest of the family will love it.

All evidence points towards everybody in East Anglia having the same thought yesterday; the place was absolutely mobbed. Were it not for space on my parents' drive, I'd have struggled to park at all.

[RoadworkUK]

Hello.

Autoshite's resident underachiever here. In 2020 I really did very little driving in wonderful old rammle. Up until lockdown occured I had been letting  the train take the strain and trying not to think of the kind of exotica I could have bought for the seven bloody grand that my Mistley to Twickenham season ticket cost me.

Lockdown put paid to much in the way of motoring adventure, too... when it did briefly ease up around August it was my wife's 306 that did the Cornwall holiday run — essentially as a validatory celebration of overcoming a particularly gruesome MOT fail that would no doubt have been curtains for the car if we weren't utter lunatics.

Here it is, being near a tent.

Factor in that I'm lucky enough to run a modern for work and the Rover barely got an opportunity to come out and play. Last time I posted about it was July last year. Three months later it was back in the garage and there it lay, undisturbed, until this morning.

Now then.

Those of you familiar with my other car may recollect that I was recently all jubilant about having resolved its long-term coolant loss issues. I was... until very suddenly I wasn't. Having fixed the known "big" leak, all was well for a while until, one day, the coolant warning came on again and the level was mysteriously low. The only ill I could find beneath the car was a dribble beneath the water pump, and one that didn't seem anything like severe enough to account for such a rapid loss of coolant.

I began to have dark fears of head gasket issues — something that would, in all probability, spell the end for the car. But nothing was certain. Hey ho, I thought, for now I'll just keep topping up the coolant when it needed it, and wait until the inevitable. And anyway, my 40th birthday is just around the corner, and I really fancy having the Rover running by means of "celebration".

Including the garage, there's parking for three at RoadworkUK Towers, and with my being "between" moderns for a month or so, the opportunity came to have parking AND garage space for a while — in other words, being briefly down to two cars, I can have one on the drive and a nice empty garage to pull the nose into for tinkering. Also, with the Audi's cambelt being due I needed it somewhere I could pull it all to bits and leave parts hither and thither, and that's not something my own poxy single garage enables.

It was time, then, to swap the Audi and the Rover. Rather than putting it away filthy — it was carrying its own weight in Saharan dust — I gave it a good old wash and brush up.

Today, then, I set off in the Audi to Frinton-on-sea, some twelve miles distant, where the Rover lives in my Nan's garage.

Quick deviation here; for those at the back, my Rover used to belong to my grandfather.

When I was in college, age 19, he gave me his Mk1A 820e Fastback when he upgraded to a Mk2B 825Si. Here's me standing between the two. Little did I know at that point that the 825Si would be mine ten or so years later. He passed away in 2013, and with him having given up driving a few years earlier, I've now actually owned the car for longer than he did.

So, I went to Frinton, had a socially-distanced cup of tea with my Nan, into whose care bubble I legitimately fit, and went to the garage.

I then did what I always do, because I'm strange — hum Pink Floyd's Welcome To The Machine while the electric garage door folded out of the way.

Having removed the battery back in October, I brought it with me having charged it the day before. It's a good policy because, if the car refuses to start, at least I can rule out lack of electricity as a deciding factor.

I needn't have worried.

I didn't check the oil before starting it up; I reasoned that the absence of a big puddle beneath the car must point to it all being in the sump. The coolant level looked pukka, too, so all was good. It settled immediately to a disgustingly healthy tickover, so I gave it a couple of exploratory — and frankly gratuitous — blips from under the bonnet.

Learning from previous experience, I had brought my tyre inflator with me, so I took the O/S/F tyre back up to 29PSI from the 12PSI it had lazily dropped to since October. The other three were fine. I didn't check the spare. I did, though, check that my TDK D90 recording of Marillion's Misplaced Childhood was in the stereo where I left it. It was.

It was after swapping the two cars around that I realised how fortunate my timing had been. There was an impressive dot dot dot dot dot trail of coolant drops transcribing the route that I had reversed the Audi into the garage – and a sizeable lake of the stuff in the road where it had been idling for a while. So, it turns out that the slow, steady drip from the coolant pump when the engine is turned off becomes a gushing torrent when it's running. That, ladies and gentlemen, is where my coolant is going. 

Handily, Nan's garage is my go-to venue for in-depth spannering, being as it is a lovely wide double with a carpeted floor and plenty of space for tools and bits of car to be scattered. That'll be a job for the summer, then. For now, the Audi can sit for a few months and think about what it's done.

So then I drove the Rover home. And that's where it now is.

So here's the bit where I get a bit gushing and silly.

You know, the feeling I get when I drive this machine is one of transcendental calmness. In the Audi, which is just six months newer, I alway feel like I'm working with a very precise machine. It's ruthlessly efficient and immensely capable. It doesn't feel a million miles removed from its modern equivalent. The Rover, meanwhile, is an entirely organic, analogue driving experience. It feels more like sailing a substantial yacht, measuring the resistance through the tiller to tack or corner efficiently. It doesn't goad you on to drive it harder like the Audi does — or like today's sticky-tyred moderns do. Instead, it responds to your whims with grace, and perhaps a "steady on, old boy" sqeal of protest from the tyres if you pitch it into a bend with vigour.

I love it with every fibre of my being.

Cheers.

[Angrydicky]

That Rover is a thing of much beauty. Long may it continue to waft you around!

[RoadworkUK]

Six years ago, Nicola — she with the Bermuda Blue 306 — married me, and we took the Rover down to Glastonbury for our honeymoon.

Last week, on thursday, I turned 40, and our sixth anniversary is coming around at the beginning of May. So, we thought, what better place to mark my becoming very old indeed than back to the exact same cottage we spent our honeymoon at... and which better car to go in than the Rover? Because the more things change, the more they stay the same.

So, in a nutshell, that's what happened.

It's good timing, really; right now the Audi's broken and I'm between work cars, so it was either the Rover or the 306 and the decision made itself.

The journey didn't begin very promisingly, to be perfectly honest. As is prudent, I had checked the fluid levels the afternoon before our early Monday departure. Oil and hydraulics were bang on, but coolant looked like it could stand to be topped up a little. So I did. Not long after departure, though, when parked outside McDonalds just off the A12 outside Colchester for the obligatory "hit the road breakfast black coffee and hash browns", I noticed a small, but growing, lake of coolant by the front wheel. Not the best sight before a 250 mile journey.

I popped the bonnet and observed that the coolant bottle was having a little wee; a turquoise jet was was springing forth from the crack in the coolant bottle — a crack that has "always been there", but has "always been alright". I did what seemed like a good idea at the time and cracked the cap off to depressurise the system, and the jet, which had been pissing at a rate somewhere between trickle and spurt, ceased immediately. Most importantly, though, the coolant level appeared to be almost exactly where it was before I topped it up.

So I mopped any underbonnet spillage up with armfuls of McDonalds serviettes, and we pressed on. Next stop was my Aunt's place in Bucks, so it would be fast roads most of the way towards Great Missenden. I kept an eye on the temperature gauge all the way, but it never moved.

On arrival, I couldn't help but think it fitted in beautifully between her Range Rover Sport and my uncle's Jag XF. She's quite fond of the Rover, and was glad to see it; it had previously been her dad's — my grandfather's— after all.

We exchanged Christmas presents (that had been the reason for our popping by) and the journey westward recommenced, my having checked the coolant level again. It hadn't moved.

So, A404, M25, M3, M25, A303, A361, the miles ticked by and pretty soon we were there.

Aside from the earlier drama, which rather tainted our hash browns, it had behaved perfectly. I suppose a black mark can be issued inasmuch as the air conditioning is currently not blowing cold (evidently needs a regas m8), but everything else was bob on.

The car had Tuesday off; we walked into Glastonbury, via the Tor (upon which a potentially expensive disaster unfolded; somehow I allowed my 10-20mm DSLR lens to get away from me, and it tumbled and leapt its way to the foot of the hill, losing its lens cap but — remarkably — surviving the ordeal), having deliberately left the car out of the picture in case (because) we ended up drinking hefty quantities of really good local real ale.

Wednesday, we drove it a bit, but not much.

Thursday, though, was The Big Day; I was turning 40 and bloody well wanted to have some fun while doing so. And that meant doing some proper driving. A nice route was set up, making full advantage of the Mendips that I had at my disposal, and that included Cheddar Gorge, which until then I had managed never to drive through.

Must say, Cheddar Gorge, with minimal traffic, the windows open and a KV6 kept in second and third gear, is very enjoyable indeed.

Here I am in the process of very much enjoying it.

The sentimental git in me was very much enjoying that I was spending my 40th driving the car that my Grandad was driving when he was 80, but that's beside the point.

It was a good day, anyway.

Friday, though, was home time. We began the day with a trip to Weston Super-Mare, which was a lot more pleasant than we expected, somehow, and then it was time for a long motorway session. M5, M4, M25, A12, A120, home.

And, you know, the 825 is absolutely bloody spectacular on motorways.

'Scuse the fact that I'm in the middle lane, I was overtaking, honest. And my wife tool the pic. It illustrates the points I want to make, though.

Firstly, the driving position. It just puts you 100% at ease. You're not reclined, you're not bolt-upright; it's just favourite-armchair comfy.

In fact, if you overlook the factor of ride height, it's actually very reminiscent of being behind the wheel of a P38 Range Rover. Right down to the wheel angle, the windscreen pillar rake and the fact that the window / cowl line is so low compared to current cars. The 800 has a huge amount of glass area. It lets loads of light in and is the very definition of "light and airy" inside, despite the fact that the packaging is actually rather meagre with space. I certainly wouldn't want to be any taller.

What completes the 825 as a motorway weapon, though, is how much "whoosh" it has. The KV6 has a real split personality. Because of its revvy nature, pootling around in the lower gears, it feels sluggish and underpowered, and that's exacerbated by the manual gearbox of this particular car. I tend not to take it above 2K in the lower two gears, and the gearchange and clutch action are rather ponderous. Basically, in any mode other than exaggeratedly cautious or "maximum attack brutal", changing between the bottom three gears has you pogoing and giving passengers whiplash. However, the absence of torque at low revs is made up for by incredible flexibility from 2K and up. From about 30mph and up, you can just leave it in fifth and treat it as an automatic.

And that's absolutely magical on the motorway. Cruising at an indicated 77mph, if you encounter a pocket of slower obstacles ahead, with somebody rapidly bearing down in the next lane and a brief-ish gap between that car and the next, putting your toe down brings a really nifty surge of power, enough to gain a couple of dozen extra mph to have you safely past and back down to your previous cruise with very little effort indeed. Moreso than my Audi, this thing absolutely devours motorways.

And because of that, we arrived home before we even knew it.

Effortlessly, the Rover had hauled us and our holiday crap on a 600 mile round trip with no more thought or preparation than you'd lavish on a car a tenth its age.

Far from being a relic / novelty item to satisfy an eternal curiosity, it's bloody effective at being a car.

 

 

[Skizzer]

What a great write-up and a lovely story — thank you.

I’m wanting a KV6 Rover 800 now: maybe a coupe though. Hmm.

[RoadworkUK]

9 minutes ago, Skizzer said:

What a great write-up and a lovely story — thank you.

I’m wanting a KV6 Rover 800 now: maybe a coupe though. Hmm.

Thanks. And Do it.

The one thing the 800 Fastback has always felt like it badly lacks is torsional rigidity. Mid-corner bumps have the rear-view mirror wobbling like that of a Saab 900 cabrio, and the Mk2's overenthusiastic damping (required, I suppose, to tame the rather flaccid spring rates) make for a bit of a hot mess in corners. A shame, really, because it actually grips and holds the road quite well, once you learn to live with the lean like you might in a Riva Aquarama.

I'd imagine the Coupe would be a lot tidier in that regard. And they're so handsome. Yet, somehow, I couldn't let this one go in favour of a Coupe.

[RoadworkUK]

So, on the basis that I rarely have anything very interesting to say, I might as well go through every little thing I do with this in excruciating detail.

My Rover has developed an issue where pressing the 'up' button on the driver's door won't make the window go up. Nor would it make the front passenger window go up, nor those in the rear doors. I could, though, make them go up using the 'lazy locking' feature by holding the key in the door lock – handy, because none of my key fobs work. 

Rovers.

Anyway. My workaround had been to tend not to use the windows. A shame, when it's so tempting to listen to the exhaust in built-up areas. However, on Saturday, in the rain, having momentarily forgotten the prevailing issue and welcoming a downpour into my lap, I realised that something needed to be done.

When I got back, I was struck by a wizard wheeze. On the basis that the misbehaviour seemed to be intermittent, I wondered if it might be one of those strange randomnesses that seemed to come and go whenever the battery is disconnected. So I disconnected the battery.

Nope. No dice. Same refusal for any windows to go up, but now joined by a beep, beep, beep, because the windows all needed to be reinitialised.

At this point the car was on my drive, with the promise of further rain, and all four windows down due to my experimenting. So I went to use the lazy locking... and found that I couldn't.... because the windows needed reinitialising.

And I couldn't reinitialise them, because they wouldn't go up. Actually, the front left would. But the driver's window wouldn't, and nor would the rears. And now, adding an extra dimension of ballache, the rear door switches weren't responding, either. 

Some of you might see where this is going...

So, the first place anybody looks when window operation weirdness befalls an 800 is the driver's door switchpack. And, with the driver-side mirror oddly refusing to move up and down a few weeks go, that's probably where I should have looked first, too. But no, not me. I wanted to look for something far more complicated. With the rear windows failing to play ball, even on the doors themselves, it seemed more like an ECU issue. 

So I went under the steering column. The HBOL speaks of a module under there that later 800s have in order to simplify the wiring loom, but mine is evidently not late enough to benefit from that – there ain't nuffin' there but fuse boxes. Which leads us to the window / sunroof control ECU – which the HBOL is oddly quiet about – under the passenger seat. I couldn't see any easy access to it without removing the seat. I'm probably wrong about that. 

Anyway. Like a total tool, I resorted to wiggling the one connector I could access and banging the ECU feebly with the palm of my hand.

Neither, of course, made a blind bit of difference.

So, to the switchpack, then. I wasn't entirely sure how to remove it; I figured that I was doomed to dismantle the door panel in what would no doubt be a flashback to doing the same thing in order to replace the interior door handle on my first 800.

The Internet came up trumps, though, with this excellent and very handy post.

So I grabbed the same tools that I use for dismembering laptop computers and gently prised the switchpack out of the the door.

A cursory glance at its underside revealed no nasties, so in the spirit of investigation I squeezed the multiplug into the switchpack with extra effort... and lo and behold, full operation. All windows up and downing as they should be.

For the time being, then, I would leave the switchpack as shown above. Loose but tidy so I can squeeze the plug as necessary. I also reinitialised the windows to re-enable lazy locking. The non-operation of the rear window switches would be something to investigate later on...

...until this morning, when I suddenly thought to flick the switch that isolates the rear window switches to prevent kids playing with them.

TL-DR version: I'm a dolt and my car deserves better.

[RoadworkUK]

Drove this again the other day. It's totally fucking wonderful.

That's all. Thanks for reading.

[Angrydicky]

What a thing of beauty this Rover is!

Have a look at https://www.remotefobcentre.com/ They repaired the central locking fob for my 600 back in November. Same day turnaround and bloody good service, it cost just under £30 including next day signed for post.  Still working well, unfortunately I only have the one fob for it. Mine is the two-button Valeo type one which is a bit more unusual, but he can do those and the more common Lucas one. Thoroughly recommended.

[mercedade]

Great work.

It's a brave man who risks the cooling capacity on a KV6 800 though.

Please, please get that header tank sorted. Either a Volvo or Audi one will do it - don't bother with a 2nd hand or NOS one. They all go the same way eventually, and the newer ones tend to be the worst (they changed plastic compound through the later revisions).

[RoadworkUK]

1 hour ago, mercedade said:

Great work.

Please, please get that header tank sorted. 

Thank you.  Yes, it's my intention to see if I can use the old one from my A4, once I've cleaned it up, and I know I need to do that sooner rather than later...

2 hours ago, Angrydicky said:

What a thing of beauty this Rover is!

Have a look at https://www.remotefobcentre.com/  Thoroughly recommended.

Excellent! Yes, that seems an extremely good idea. I'm moving house within the next couple of months, and will have a (slightly) bigger garage, so all these long-term niggles can finally be sorted out. Cheers.

[RoadworkUK]

A landmark of sorts. Just in case I forget to record 88888 when it happens.

[RoadworkUK]

My wife and I are currently in the process of being 'conveyanced'; essentially an open invitation for a solicitor to take as much time as they want and charge us as much as they like to supply us with something we've already paid for.

So, with all this money sloshing around, I figured I'd direct some of it towards the Rover.

TL:DR, it's now booked in with these people (http://www.mg-rovermobilemechanics.com) to have all the belts replaced and a general mechanical birthday. Because I want it to last forever and ever and I don't mind paying for it. (well, I do, but because I've spent a negative amount on depreciation during my life so far, it doesn't hurt so much). And it's not going in until November, so I have time to save up.

[RoadworkUK]

 

Still bugger all to report on the conveyancing front, but the Rover passed its MOT yesterday.

My pre-MOT prep was risible and consisted of checking the bulbs and unblocking the washer jets yet again, and making sure the tyres weren't bereft of tread. Turns out that I could have checked a bit harder – I got advisories on all four tyres being close to the cords on the inside, and they ended up changing the brake light bulb (which I, er, forgot to check) and my rear indicator bulbs weren't orange enough.

Also the rear plate is delaminating, so I really will have to put my hand in my pocket for a pair of nice Lancaster-branded reproductions. 

So, it's all go for the cambelt job next month. Also, I have a stainless steel coolant tank on order.

It is okay to still be this excited about a Rover 800 after all these years, isn't it?

[grogee]

Lovely old auntie Rover. A colleague of mine told me that within Rover powertrain circles the KV6 was referred to as 'the torqueless wonder'. Which backs up what you said earlier on your post. 

It is the reason why they eventually gave up and suckled the Honda teat for the 2.7 V6, but not before they'd spaffed a load of money developing the 2.5.

I've read some horror stories about costs of cam belt on KV6 but that might be nonsense so I hope your bill is manageable. I'm sure it is dwarfed by whatever legal bill you are facing anyway - CONveyancing.

All that said I do love the 800, it ticks all my grandad boxes - wood and leather, whiff of retired WW2 flying ace. I love that yours has a family connection which always makes the bond stronger.

Years ago I worked in a garage, one customer brought in a Spitfire (not the plane) which needed loads of work and was a bit past it. Proprietor says to me: "it's not worth fixing. But the lady's husband died of asbestosis, and the car was his."

Some things are worth more than money.

[mercedade]

17 hours ago, grogee said:

 

It is the reason why they eventually gave up and suckled the Honda teat for the 2.7 V6, but not before they'd spaffed a load of money developing the 2.5.

 

/nerd mode

There were two iterations of a 2.5 V6 engine in the 800s. The first one was in the Mk1 and it was an early version of the Honda engine which didn't become a 2.7 litre until the late 80s.

They continued to use the 2.7 Honda engine until 1996 when they started using the 2.5 litre KV6, an engine which ended up in a few Rover cars including the 75 and 45 (plus their MG counterparts) but also in a couple of random Kia cars when they were given (bought?) the license to manufacture it.

/nerd mode

[RoadworkUK]

17 hours ago, grogee said:

Some things are worth more than money.

So true! Although there is some evidence that 800 values are beginning to rise above the worth of mixed metals...

You're mostly right on the engine front, except the KV6 was the one that came after the Honda 2.7 went away. That was a fantastic engine, but the earlier Honda 2.5 was way too peaky for a "luxury" car. Rover's own KV6 is actually a brilliant engine at heart, being very light and efficient, but is let down by terrible ancillary design and a need for fairly fastidious maintenance, which most of them never received. Inevitably.

This one will be with me until one of us dies.

 

[RoadworkUK]

Hello everybody.

As above, chaos ensues at Roadwork towers; we're STILL adrift on a stormy conveyancing sea, but we're surely getting closer to abandoning this place in favour of exciting new premises. Thus the garage has become a nomansland between the two properties; it being packed full of cardboard boxes, it's out of comission for sticking cars in. It was time to stash the Rover away for winter anyway. But before then, it was time to give the old barge a bit of grossly overdue attention.

As reported earlier this year, I took the Rover down to Glastonbury in april to lend a bit of joy to seeing my 40th birthday in. As it happens, it certainly eased the pain. However, on the way down, the seeping from the coolant tank was a background niggle. As was the fact that the cambelts for each cylinder bank were almost 24 years old (I changed the main belt soon after I got the car, but chickened out altogether when it came to the relay belts, which are WAY more complicated to deal with even with the correct (and awesomely expensive) locking tools.

So I returned from Glastonbury a much older man, and one resolved to get those things sorted once and for all. But, this time, not by myself. When I did the main belt, I was still living at my parents' place, where the garage is big and the workshop amply rather more amply equipped than mine. Nowadays, though, I'm a bit weller off and quite liked the idea of paying A Man (or similar) to do the job. Yeah, it would cost ££££££, but they'd do it properly and all that. Maybe even give me a warranty. You never know.

The Man I eventually decided on was Mg Rover Mobile Mechanics, albeit not in their mobile capacity. In fact, I had to get the car up to Derby, which is a fair way from North Essex. Still, be nice to make a trip. Bit of 800 motorway action.

The 800 loves motorways.

So a November booking was made and penciled into my packed (not really) diary. I paced up and down non stop for the intevening months and eventually it was d-day. Or b-day. Or bidet. I pointed the car North and it absorbed the A14 and a fair chunk of the M1 like a hungry motherfucker.

Entertainingly, I later found that I had been papped on the way there, presumably by somebody utterly gobsmacked to see an 825Si  mobile under its own power without a self-generated nimbus cloud following behind it.

After the Dire Straits mix tape that my dad made me when I was seven had done two full rotations, front and back, I arrived in Derby and parked up at this place, which had a reassuring scattering of MGFs to mark it as friendly territory.

It felt very strange parking up 200 miles away from home and walking away from the car, uncertain when I would next see it . I was honestly struck by a kind of separation as I strolled to Derby station. A hundred bloody quid's worth of return train ticket was procured and I rolled home in the Class 222 that I now own outright. Actually I only plan to use it again for the trip back to Derby, after which I'll probably roffle it on.

Meanwhile, one @ThePollitt had got in touch earlier in the year and genned me up that he was planning on getting an alloy header tank for his exceedingly naughty Vitesse. Did I want to double his order, perhaps get a bit of "economy of scale" or somesuch? Do popes bear shit in the Vatican? I played it cool, said something along the lines of "yes, that's not a bad idea, go on then", whereas I was actually thinking "fuck me that's the coolest idea ever. Actual tig-welded aluminium under my bonnet. I can pop my bonnet at car shows and be the fricken' GOAT".

Yes please. A few months later, it arrived.

Frankly I didn't know weather to plumb it in or wear it on a chain around my neck. It immediately joined the list of "cool things I own" pretty close to the top.  It was £250 or something, and that's Some Money, but, hey, nothing but the best for the Rover, eh?

The Rover had originally been intended to stay in Derby on a Saturday to Saturday basis, but inevitably one of the parts ordered in (water pump) turned out to be for a later KV6. That meant it got to chill out in the Midlands for another week. On the thursday prior to collection (C-day?), I recieved notification that they'd found a leak in the coolant header tank.

"Aha!" thought I. They've found the little crack that I've know about for all these years, and the solution is sitting in a cardboard box in my hallway. Thus I told them not to worry about it, but they very kindly offered to fit the tank prior to my return trip if I brought it up with me. So I did.

That's it on the left, looking frankly pornographic. OOF, splurge etc.

So that was that. MG Rover Mobile Mechanics had been excellent to deal with and I left in high spirits. A nice leisurely whang back south, with the KV6 Very, Very on song.

It was a quite revolting day, weather-wise, though, and when I paused the journey in Ipswich, rain was pelting all with furious vengance.

Ipswich, you say? What possible reason could a sane gentleman have to visit Ipswich?

That's the reason. A few months ago my trusty 200-piece Halfords Professional socket set got lost / was stolen / disappeared from my garage under suspicious circumstances, leaving a big hole in my existence. Naturally, I took advantage of the sale that comes and goes every couple of months to buy a replacement — which is actually a bit better than the previous kit, with more useful bits and bobs that there were before. Every home should have one.

Next day I took the Rover to Frinton and Nan's garage, where it would live for Winter, or certainly until we move into the new house.

The nice garage man had put all the old bits in a cardboard box in the boot so I could inspect them to satisfy my morbid curiosity as to what a pair of 24 year-old KV6 relay belts looked like. Would they be frayed to within an inch of their lives, hanging on by a thread and ready to go twang with catestrophic consequences?

Frankly, nope. In all honesty they looked factory fresh. They could doubtless gone on for years and years without causing any trouble at all. Still, after all that time they've had a decent innings. The main belt was just as tidy, still bearing the Tippex timing marks from when I fitted it 10 years ago.

What's more, in considerable contrast to the hideousness that is what an Audi A4 coolant pump looks like after a mere six years, the Rover's looks and feels like it's almost brand new, save for the corrosion on the main securing bolt. EDIT: thinking about it, I actually replaced this with the main belt, so it's only a decade old. But still, infinitely nicer than the Audi's, which looked like it had been in the Marianas Trench for a hundred years.

The Audi had previously been resident in the garage, but was started and evicted:

It's going to be stationed on the drive, while the Rover gets to slumber inside.

And there you have it. Next year, I'll have a decent garage of my own, and the niggling little bits of bodywork that I need to tackle (you can just about see the bit of grot on the trailing edge of the rear wheelarch, and there's a bit more on one of the door corners) are on the list. But I'm now happy that it's 100% bang on mechanically. And having seen how well those belts have lasted, I feel rather happier that they're really not anything to worry about going forwards.

Plus, I've got a really, really sexy coolant tank.

Ta for reading. Happy Christmas.

[Noel Tidybeard]

25 minutes ago, RoadworkUK said:

The Audi had previously been resident in the garage, but was started and evicted:

 

quite right too!

[stuboy]

whats the bhp on the 825?

[RoadworkUK]

1 hour ago, stuboy said:

whats the bhp on the 825?

Rover reckons 175. Sounds about right; it's pretty swift by late 90s luxobarg standards, particular in manual form (this might actually be the last manual KV6 800 extant — the manual gearbox / clutch setup seems a bit of an afterthought and isn't terribly good).

A decent modern turbodiesel would dust it, though.

[dome]

That 825 is lovely. Am I right in saying they made a MK1 825 Si too?

[RoadworkUK]

7 hours ago, dome said:

That 825 is lovely. Am I right in saying they made a MK1 825 Si too?

Cheers!

Well, there was certainly an 825i, using the 2.5 Honda V6 before the 2.7 came along, but I don't think there was an 825Si. I've packed all my brochures away for the move, but I think the range ran 820e, 820Se, 820i, 820Si, 825i, Sterling.

[RoadworkUK]

My Rover 825Si still exists.

First bit of news is that we've finally moved home, and there's now space for THE ENTIRE FLEET to coexist in one place. Garage needs all its innard spitting out, but then the Rover will go in there, the Audi in front of it and my varying work daily in front of that — and the 306 in front of that. And space for a 'guest' in the bay at the start of the drive.

Rover somehow suits a block-paved drive outside a 1979  house rather well.

Having taken the 306 to the Festival of the Unexceptional last year, it was the Rover's turn in 2022, and with every possibility of vast crowds forming around what would understandably be the very star of the show, and no doubt the absolute highlight of every onlooker's lives so far, I thought it should have a wash.

Excitingly, I've recently acquired a snow foam nozzle for my olde Karcher, and I've been snowfoaming everything in sight with gay abandon. So I pointed it at the Rover.

After much delicate scrubbing it looked... well...

...... more or less exactly the same.

So, I thought, time to break out the big guns. I used a clay bar. And then I polished it.

And then I waxed it.

So carried away was I that I even had a go at cleaning the engine a bit.

Then I realised how much fun that wasn't, and stopped.

Next job on the agenda was to make the stereo a bit more listenable. Upthread are my exploits vis-a-vis replacing the rear speakers, and now it was time for the fronts. 

And this time, rather than using drivers purloined from a pair of old Mission floor-standing hifi speakers, I actually got some that were designed for use in a car. 13.5cm FLI items, as endorsed by one @ThePollittoccasionally of this parish.

Out with the old:

In with the new:

Nobody need ever know.

End result? Pretty bloody good, to be honest.

Fitting was ever so slightly a pain in the arse, thanks to the new drivers having to be nibbled a bit to fit into the plastic frame thing that holds them at an angle, but they went in in the end. I elected not to bother with the supplied crossovers and tweeters, prefering to trust that the originals would do the job alreet, and they seem to thus far.

So that's good. Next I went to some tyre people for another nice pair of Falkens and some alignment to see if I can get them to not wear out rather too quickly on the inner edges.

I also requested an A/C regas, and they tried, but alas the Rover failed a Leak Test. Apparently pumping poisonous gas into something that it'll immediately leak out of is disapproved of these days. So I suspect I'll need to pay somebody some money to make it not fucked any more.

Dash lighting still works, though:

Anyway. FoTU was attended; I parked between a very nice (albeit gently shonky) Mk3 Granada and a near-mint Mk2 Astra GTE, where it was largely ignored. Instead, everybody who recognised me excitedly asked whether I was up in the 306.

Was a pleasure to show @Skizzeraround, though, and anybody else who chanced upon it, a big shaaaat ahhhht to you, too.

After that, it wafted me the 120 miles back to Mistley comfortably and relatively economically, like a car. Which it is.

[Split_Pin]

Glad to see this is still alive and well. You must have personally owned this for what, 15 years now?

I don't know anything about speakers, but the door cards look sumptuous. I don't know why they didn't fit leather doorcards to 75s, even the top models got alcantara which always goes flaccid after 20 years.

[Skizzer]

36 minutes ago, RoadworkUK said:

My Rover 825Si still exists.

First bit of news is that we've finally moved home, and there's now space for THE ENTIRE FLEET to coexist in one place. Garage needs all its innard spitting out, but then the Rover will go in there, the Audi in front of it and my varying work daily in front of that — and the 306 in front of that. And space for a 'guest' in the bay at the start of the drive.

Rover somehow suits a block-paved drive outside a 1979  house rather well.

Having taken the 306 to the Festival of the Unexceptional last year, it was the Rover's turn in 2022, and with every possibility of vast crowds forming around what would understandably be the very star of the show, and no doubt the absolute highlight of every onlooker's lives so far, I thought it should have a wash.

Excitingly, I've recently acquired a snow foam nozzle for my olde Karcher, and I've been snowfoaming everything in sight with gay abandon. So I pointed it at the Rover.

After much delicate scrubbing it looked... well...

...... more or less exactly the same.

So, I thought, time to break out the big guns. I used a clay bar. And then I polished it.

And then I waxed it.

So carried away was I that I even had a go at cleaning the engine a bit.

Then I realised how much fun that wasn't, and stopped.

Next job on the agenda was to make the stereo a bit more listenable. Upthread are my exploits vis-a-vis replacing the rear speakers, and now it was time for the fronts. 

And this time, rather than using drivers purloined from a pair of old Mission floor-standing hifi speakers, I actually got some that were designed for use in a car. 13.5cm FLI items, as endorsed by one @ThePollittoccasionally of this parish.

Out with the old:

In with the new:

Nobody need ever know.

End result? Pretty bloody good, to be honest.

Fitting was ever so slightly a pain in the arse, thanks to the new drivers having to be nibbled a bit to fit into the plastic frame thing that holds them at an angle, but they went in in the end. I elected not to bother with the supplied crossovers and tweeters, prefering to trust that the originals would do the job alreet, and they seem to thus far.

So that's good. Next I went to some tyre people for another nice pair of Falkens and some alignment to see if I can get them to not wear out rather too quickly on the inner edges.

I also requested an A/C regas, and they tried, but alas the Rover failed a Leak Test. Apparently pumping poisonous gas into something that it'll immediately leak out of is disapproved of these days. So I suspect I'll need to pay somebody some money to make it not fucked any more.

Dash lighting still works, though:

Anyway. FoTU was attended; I parked between a very nice (albeit gently shonky) Mk3 Granada and a near-mint Mk2 Astra GTE, where it was largely ignored. Instead, everybody who recognised me excitedly asked whether I was up in the 306.

Was a pleasure to show @Skizzeraround, though, and anybody else who chanced upon it, a big shaaaat ahhhht to you, too.

After that, it wafted me the 120 miles back to Mistley comfortably and relatively economically, like a car. Which it is.

Can confirm that the Rover looks, smells and indeed tastes DELICIOUS.

Great to meet you and Mrs RoadworkUK in person!

[RoadworkUK]

7 hours ago, Split_Pin said:

Glad to see this is still alive and well. You must have personally owned this for what, 15 years now?

Cheers! A little over 12 years, which, now I come to think of it, is pretty much exactly as long as my grandad owned it before me. How funny.

7 hours ago, Skizzer said:

Great to meet you and Mrs RoadworkUK in person!

Likewise. In the flesh you're not interrupted by adverts every five minutes!

[Lacquer Peel]

It brought a Touch of Class to FOTU it must be said. 

[Lacquer Peel]

I had to overtake that Granada on the way out, they were going at about 30MPH and there was an incident at the boulangerie to attend to. 

[RoadworkUK]

Since we moved into the current RoadworkUK towers, the Rover has been cocooned in a garage that it barely fitted into. 

2024, I thought, would be the year that I actually use it as a car again, and shower it with expenditure in a crusade to make it THE BEST ROVER 825Si MANUAL FASTBACK IN BRITAIN.

It's a closely fought contest, of course. 

My first outlay concerned number plates.

The originals have been an MOT advisory for a few years now. They're all delaminating and terrible after the 26 years or so that they've been on the car.

They are, though, original, and I was loathe to get rid of them.

Happily, there are outfits out there who can recreate original dealership plates. DMB was the most famous, but their plate operations, it seems, are no longer a thing. There are loads of others out there, though. I just needed to take a chance on one of them.

So I did. There's a guy out there called Matt Dickins, who exists on Facebook. I hit him up to see what he could do. Sent him a pic of the plate and a close-up of the logo to see what would happen.

What happened was this:

Neat, eh?

I think they look brilliant. Made an enormous difference to the overall look of the car. Well happy for the £35.50, delivered. Highly reccomended.

So encouraged was I with the conversion already, that I actually got the car out of the garage.

I haven't yet fitted the front plate (the one on there went on a few years ago during an MOT when the original was just waaay too shitty for Her Majesty's motoring inspectorate to tolerate.

So. MOT time.

I did the usual lights and levels checks, and took it for a run around the block to test general running... and had immediate concern. It wasn't stopping terribly well. The brakes were noisy, as I expected them to be after sitting in a garage for more than a year, but they were decidedly lacking in bite.

Nevertheless. I dropped the car off at the pleasingly rural MOT shack, where it was by far the most interesting car in attendance, and awaited the sombre phone call.

It came at 13:15.

A fail. Needed a new CV boot, and there was insufficient effort from the rear nearside service brake. And the screen washers weren't working. At all (sheepish confession – I might actually have already known that when I dropped the car off, having only thought to test them en route).

Those, I thought, I would be an easy fix. Turns out they weren't quite the cinch I was expecting. I have a coil of wire I use for unblocking washer lines, and I gave them untold prodding, heading right in as far as the pump itself. Finally, a revolting stink came with the first signs of fluid actually being spat out.

Yes, Elsie and George the Bonnet Owls were restored to their emotional old selves. Welcome back.

Brakes wise, I knew the discs and pads were relatively new when the car was last in regular use, which meant a problem elsewhere. Sticking caliper, maybe? That was my best guess. 

These days, I have to pick and choose the jobs I do on cars. I've recently done the head gasket on my wife's 306 (... I should probably update my 306 thread on that), and finally replaced the cam cover gasket on the A4, and I'm now rather under pressure to spend some time on the house rather than the cars. This meant paying money for "A proper man" to look at it.

The proper man, though, had bad news.

He did the CV boot, that was marvellous. The brakes, though, less so.

He had found no issues with the brake calipers etc.  After some prodding things, he declared the problem to be ABS related.

This, everybody, is where I might invoke the Autoshite hivemind.

When the Proper Man looked at things, he found that the ABS unit wasn't supplying fluid on one of the rear channels.

That's the only diagnosis I have. I don't really know how to fault-check it further than that.

I can't imagine that the fault is coming from upstream of the ABS unit (a control unit would surely cause the entire system to fail, not just one corner), and that makes me think that the unit is at fault.

Encouragingly, looking up the part number "0 265 026 093" brought up a number of ABS component specialists. On the page that came up for ACTRONICS, there was this:

"No brake pressure at one of the wheels" sounds awfully like it.

So, that's it, then. I need (I think) to get this ABS unit reconditioned (££) or replaced (£££££). 

Has anybody had to do this before? Any recommendations? I'm between Colchester and Ipswich, so if anybody knows a tame business who enjoys this kind of work, hit me up!

Ta very much.