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

[RoadworkUK]

Now possibly – fingers crossed – sorted with a used ABS pump from a breaker via a Facebook 800 club. Cheers all.

[RoadworkUK]

If you don't mind indulging me, I'm going to let out a massive YESSS of delight.

I had been cacking my kecks about the possibility that my used ABS pump might not have solved the issue, leading to the probability of big money being spent OR the car never seeing the road again.

At one point last week, I woke up at 2AM, sleepless with worry. I would be quite literally heartbroken if the 800 was permanently immobilised.

So. The replacement pump arrived, looking rather scruffier, inevitably, than the original:

Nevertheless, I gave it a bit of a scrub, deplumbed the old and swapped the slightly newer (the part number was oddly ammended on the replacement unit, with the final three digits mechanically scratched out and a different set oddly dot-matrixed in their place. I've a feeling that it was from a later-registered car and may be a revised part). Improved would be nice.

Fitting was a little fiddly for somebody like me who has bananas for fingers, but it was done with surprisingly little dribblage of fluid. I probably dribbled a lot more than the brake pipes, to be honest.

So, fitted, battery reconnected, car started... and absolutely no pedal feel whatsoever. BUT – the brakes were at least working. The car WOULD stop, if you pushed the pedal right down, if not with any urgency.

My optimistic thought was that replacing the ABS unit would quite obviously need a system bleed afterwards, and I know that I'd not changed the brake fluid during my time with the car. And I'm not entirely sure if it was ever done during my grandfather's time with it. A transfusion was probably due, then.

I HATE working with brakes. Don't mind changing disks and pads, but I'm not keen on fluid changes / bleeding etc. So it was at this point that I enlisted the help of Professional People.

The garage around the corner from me are known old rammle sympathists. Cracking bunch of lads, albeit that work in their own time. I took the Rover around on a "whenever you can fit it in" basis. Also figured they might as well MOT it, being that the free re-test I'd have got from the garage that originally MOTd it in May was well and truly lapsed. Anyway. A fortnight later, I got a call along the lines of "all done mate."

So, I now have a working, MOT'd 825 Si on my driveway, with quite the best brake feel it's ever had (still not amazing... because Rover 800). 

Front tyres and a wiper blade were also required for MOT, but that brought my total spend – including the used ABS pump – to £300. A sum that I'm not at all unhappy with for the sheer delight of having a road legal 825 Si again.

So much so that I treated it to a windscreen shade to further help delay the onset of dash lift, which the law dictates will eventually afflict every single 800.  NOT ON MY WATCH.

Cheers all. 

[R Lutz]

KV6 had the worst of the brake pedal feel of all 800s. 

[Matty]

Excellent!