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

[RichardMoss]

 

 

 

 

The exhaust is blowing around the flexi-joint,

It's what they do, sir.

[inconsistant]

Roadwork, I've just read this whole great thread from the start, and that's one handsome car you've got there. The Rover 800 will have it's day, and yours looks to be a beauty. I prefer the look of the early ones, less fussy etc but there's something about the colour/spoiler/wheels combo on yours that looks very nice indeed. I can't help thinking that if you're getting 35mpg you're not driving it properly though.

[RoadworkUK]

Cheers, mate! I must say I'm not surprised my Grandfather fell in love with it when he saw it on that Lancaster Rover Forecourt back in '99....

 

 I can't help thinking that if you're getting 35mpg you're not driving it properly though.

 

I think you're probably right, my usual driving sees me faster than the dawdlers but more relaxed than Mr Bloodpressure in his financed Audi Q3 but as soon as the car finds itself cooped up in town its appetite does increase somewhat!

[RoadworkUK]

Is this years road grit extra salty or what?

 

I gave the Rover a much needed BGW (bloody good wash) today, from the top down and then extra-thoroughly on the chassis area. While I was carrying out my general body inspections and lite crevice-probing my fingers got saltier than if I had gone on a major league Kettle-Chip bender.

 

It's a hateful idea that the stuff is there catalysing the om-nom-nomming of my delicious ironwork. The sun needs to get its hat on tout de suite.

 

Anyway. Some maintenance has occurred on the silver dream racer. For a little while now the power steering system has been a bit tricklesome of fluid with consequent cavitation of pump and 'orrible noises. I've been topping the fluid up regularly but I figured a permanent fix was required.

 

To be truthful I took the cowards way out and employed my tame workshop to tackle it. While they were at it I asked them to look at the blow on my exhaust which was becoming deafening.

 

Sounded the absolute bollocks to be honest.

 

Power steering leak ended up fixed by replacing some clamp or jubilee clip or something, to be honest all the PAS gubbins is hidden away beyond the wit of man unless you have a nice lift or a pit, the sort of job I could have probably fixed in ten minutes if I had access, but it needed mending RIGHT NOW.

 

My exhaust, it transpires, is all full of holes, but I have every suspicion it's the original so I'm not suprised. Holes have been temporarily patched with stuff until such a time as I spend coins with Powerflow or somebody. Best still, tame mechanic refused to invoice me so he accepted payment of 36 cans of Fosters.

 

Recommendations, please, for trusted purveyors of stainless-steel exhaust systems in the Colchester / Ipswich area?

 

To close: Glamour Shots.

 

 

Now I know there isn't any massive expenditure immediately incoming, I can spend out on getting the Audi back on the road so the 825 can get some lovin' later in the year.

[oldcars]

The salt is bad. Yes we need gritted roads but the gritter has gone past twice today, its 6 deg today and not meant to go below 4!

 

Hate the winter, really goes for the old cars 

[danthecapriman]

Yes, I hate winter too. Round here there's so much salt on the roads you have a real job trying to make out the white road markings, the roads are white all over! Absolutely overkill in this country and climate.

In fact there's so much of it around sometimes it blows around in the wind, like sand on one of those desert highways!

I usually don't use my cars through the winter months because of it.

 

Your Rover looks lovely btw!

[dollywobbler]

I cleaned the XM on Tuesday. It's absolutely bloody filthy again today. I've only used it twice! There's so much grit on the road I'm tempted to scrape some up for our driveway.

[mat_the_cat]

I know what you mean about the roads - round here there are places where it has built up so much off the driving line, that if you do take a different line through a corner, you're liable to skid on the grit! Worry about the potential of legal action if someone hits a spot of ice?

[RoadworkUK]

A long while ago you may remember I made a start on my Other car, the Boring German one. This weekend, as a few rays of milky sunshine penetrated the stratus, I thought I'd have a go at making proper inroads.

 

 

I'd spent a bunch of dollars at ECP, actually receiving a pretty handsome deal. The list of what I intended to accomplish over the weekend is thus:

• Replace Cambelt: due six months ago, last changed 2008. By me.
• Investigate / cure horrible sludgy mayonnaise scenario.
• Perform annual service (might as well while it's in bits).

 

Last time we saw the car it looked pretty much like this. That is to say, pretty awful. I had set about pulling off all kinds of black plastic bits which were in the way.

 

I drained the coolant, a process which made feel pretty queasy as that 'orrible yellow puss oozed out. There was lots of it. Bleaurgh. So I also removed the expansion tank and all the pipes and wires and nonsense that leads from it.

 

I've got a new radiator, so that'll be going on, the old one has received liberal doses of Radweld and is going green in several places. IN THE BIN WITH IT.

 

 

This was where I stopped last time around, feeling a bit demoralised and all because of three little sodding bolts. It's the PAS pump pulley and Mr Haynes says it "can be locked by passing a metal pin (such as a drill bit) through the hole in the pulley".

 

THERE'S NO SUCH THING. If there ever was a hole in the pulley it has magically sealed itself. So, all manner of tomfoolery occured in fruitless persuit of holding the pulley still enough to undo the three bolts. Eventually an impact driver and a deafening war-cry combined and the bolts shifted. Hooray.

 

The PAS belt, which is tiny, is cracked and perished to buggery and is among the growing list of items I have forgotten to buy replacements for.

 

 

With that finally off I could continue with the demolition. First off, alternator. Then PAS pump, then water pump. I had replaced the water pump before. It failed spectacularly within 48 hrs of me driving the car home from Sweden. They're notoriously prone to failure thanks to a hopeless plastic impeller.

 

The replacement (now six years old) has a metal impeller, and is still pumping coolant around the system well enough. I just thought it would be rather jolly to put a shiny new one on along with the lovely new cambelt.

 

Hilariously, on removing the pump I found it to be somewhat fucked.

 

 

New one on left, old one on right. It's borked in two, fun ways. Firstly it's all stiff and grindy and wobbly when you turn it, secondly it's rather alarmingly corroded. IN THE BIN WITH IT. I'm very glad I made the decision to spend out on a new one. I'll put a new thermostat in while I'm at it; another item on the list of things I forgot.

 

How thorough of me.

[RoadworkUK]

So, with the alternator and all that out of the way:

 

 

Next thing to have a look at. This is the Oil Cooler / Heat Exchanger thingy that I'M DESPARATELY HOPING is the cause of all my hot-dog mustard build up issues. Whatever, I don't like the the look of it so IN THE BIN WITH IT.

 

I was a bit puzzled by how this thing actually attached, but found eventually that it's secured by flat a 24mm nut under hardly any torque. A bit of twisting action and it was free. It's got one hose in, one hose out and they're held in place by stupid use-once spring clips, and, guess what, I have no replacements.

 

The coolant hoses look a bit suspect to me, they're all bulgy and deformed at the input / output and, frankly I don't trust them. Looks like I'll need to make a trip to an Audi parts department as ECP don't stock these, nor the silly retaining clip things.

 

For the time being it's been left dangling hopelessly in the air while I do bits I CAN do.

 

 

CAMBELT TIME! The upper timing belt cover comes off through the manipulation of mere spring-clips. Childsplay. Smashing. The Lower timing belt cover is almost a piece of piss, but for Mr Haynes and his cruel sense of humour. There are no less than four totally different fixings, 12mm bolt, 10mm bolt, 6mm hex and, just to keep you guessing, 5mm hex.

 

The latter was a bastard as I genuinely thought It was a 6 and I'd knackered it up because my torx bit wouldn't turn it. I was about to roll up into a ball and cry when it occurred to me to try a 5mm. Shit me did it take some torque, but it came free and I could say OH HAI! to the cambelt.

 

I used my [tried 'n tested mark-it-up and count the teeth technique, having first set things to TDC just to be safe. I couldn't remember whether the there was a way of, or even a need to, lock the flywheel. I couldn't see any mention in the bit of Haynes that I was looking at, so I figured it wouldn't matter.

 

 

The cambelt kit I bought comprises an idler pulley, a tensioner pulley and a belt, but you have to reuse the tensioner piston. I must admit I wasn't expecting this because last time I changed the piston as well, but hey-ho.

 

So I slackened off the pulley bolt and with the assistance of a second pair of hands got ready to compress the piston (as stated by Mr Haynes) and insert a 2mm locking pin to put it "on safety" so to speak.

 

The springs in these pistons have enough energy in them to put man on the moon, so compressing them is a bitch. Furthermore trying to insert the pin is a proper fanny because the piston rotates while it's compressed. We were getting properly fed up with it and then BANG.

 

 

This was the last thing we expected really, so for that reason we should probably have assumed it would happen. Basically, in following the gospel of Mr Haynes we were exerting so much torque on the tensioner it physically sheared. The bit that the piston acts upon simply snapped straight off, taking a chunk of the piston housing off with it. Bloody glad it hadn't entered my person. IN THE BIN WITH IT.

 

 

And check this out: The force we had been using was SO MASSIVE that it actually broke the bearing. Look at the crack in the blurry image above. Shit! Looking at the bit that sheared off shows the casting (or forging) to have had a very crystaline structure to the core metal, who knows if this would have actually failed of its own accord if it was given a chance.

 

So, Game Over. For now, anyway. Need a new tensioner piston to finish the Cambelt, need a new thermostat to finish the water pump and need new hoses to finish the oil cooler.

 

Stay tuned for further exciting developments!

[purplebargeken]

Hat off to you. That is one scary looking mass of engineering. 

[Lacquer Peel]

What's going on there, are the components from a decent brand? I'm trying to look for a 'cheap' timing belt kit for my V70 TDi, I'll buy the best I can afford.

[twosmoke300]

Those tensioners are a hydraulic damper and have to be compressed really slowly . You will be surprised how little force you need to apply to push it back . It's like a really stiff shock on a soft ish spring if that makes sense . I usually take them off and compress them in a vice too.

Wait til you do one of those on a rhd golf or a3 . Great fun . Not

[Asimo]

That VAG can make a timing belt change so difficult is almost beyond belief, that is a Citroen GS's worth of dismantling you have done there.

In the '70s Audi 80, a cambelt change was an hour or so. No wonder we hate moderns. Hope your labours result in a pus-free engine.

[320touring]

If that were I I'd sack tbe whole lot off tae fuck!

 

Well done on persevering

[twosmoke300]

The older a4 cambelt isn't a bad job tbh . If you are just doing the belt then you can slide the front panel forward on long bolts . I use modified k series head bolts . You can leave most of the pipes etc connected that way .

[RoadworkUK]

Did more bollocks on this today, albeit not the bollocks I was hoping to do.

 

You remember I couldn't proceed until a new cambelt tensioner was acquired, so I took the kit that ECP had served me (which came sans tensioner) and "exchanged it" for one that did. Got the kit back home, opened it up and found that IT WAS THE SAME. Looked at the paperwork and found that they'd given me the exact same part number as before. ERROR GOTO 10

 

So as to not have totally wasted my Sunday I set about replacing the "oil cooler" thingoh. It has two coolant hoses connected, one of which was recognised by the Audi parts department as £18 worth, the other of which is apparently made from strontium plated myrrh and costs ONE BILLION DOLLARS. So I bought the £18 one and figured I'd move heaven and Earth to re-use the old one.

 

After much high-decibel gruntage and the removal of literally all the skin off my fingers, the cooler and its hoses were free. And by Christ were they hanging.

 

 

This is my great white hope vis-a-vis oil getting into my coolant. If this hideous, oil-leaky, gunky old oil-cooler has corroded this badly at the coolant input, it follows that it could corrode internally leading to oil ejaculating where it really shouldn't. If I put the new cooler on and the gungy mayonnaise nonsense doesn't abate, I shall be most upset and will be writing angry letters to my MP in short order.

 

 

Bits of corrosion, limescale, catarrh and sputum were stuck in this hose, too, but the hose itself (this was the one which no parts department in the land actually recognised the existence of) seems pretty much intact and will be reused until it teaches me the error of my ways.

 

I flushed it out, it made a satisfying crunching noise as all the encrustment separated from the walls, and the resultant debris will probably earn the mobile plumber a decent drink when she calls him to unblock her utility room sink.

 

Next I removed the radiator:

 

 

Yeah, that's fucked. New one certainly in order and now ready to be fitted but I'll leave it until the last possible moment lest I bollocks it up.

 

Hopefully I can finish the cambelt on Tuesday evening ready for the great rebuild to commence.

 

I'm spending so much money on this bastard it had better be grateful....

 

 

[purplebargeken]

That is one bloody grunged up piece of Audiness. Bloody hell that is disgusting.

[dieselassist]

them VAG oil/coolant exhanger'oil warmer upper via the engines coolant, are the devils work; they seem to fail randomly - they are something like €175 to €230 from the stealers here; they are still fitted to the more recent mk5 Tdi golfs... a poor design which first appeared in audi 80 1.6s n mk2 golfs n jetta td's.... that said ive bought an engine or two advertised as OMG'HGF oil in de 'spansion tank'for parts only!!" for pennies due to brainless mechanics here not knowing these units can cause oil into the coolant sympthom when they fail, and condem the engine as having experienced HGF...

 

the hoses in n out of them do fail; usually as them spring clips have been fitted arseways - the one from the water pump which t's off into two, can split - VAG's later version of this has a bit of hard plastic inside the rubber hose t join, n is the one to fit - the non reinforced ones al;ways split....

[twosmoke300]

Take the old piston off ( two bolts ) and pop it in the vice and SLOWLY compress it so you can pop the pin in . As I said before it's not a strong spring just a strong damper . A 2mm pin wouldn't hold it if it was that strong . They are a faf to set the tension on tho as you need to slip a 4 or 7 mm pin in between the pluger and pad depending on engine code .

[danthecapriman]

Nice work so far, loads of rancid gunge in that. I hope you can remember where all the screws go...!

[RoadworkUK]

Take the old piston off ( two bolts ) and pop it in the vice and SLOWLY compress it so you can pop the pin in . As I said before it's not a strong spring just a strong damper . A 2mm pin wouldn't hold it if it was that strong . They are a faf to set the tension on tho as you need to slip a 4 or 7 mm pin in between the pluger and pad depending on engine code .

 

Too late for that, I'm afraid. Tried to follow the HBOL mantra and it went all BOING and TWANG and CRACK while we were compressing the piston (i know the original Audi tensioner might not be the strongest in the world, but this replacement Continental one was total frigging granite) with a fuck off great breaker bar. Basically the torque was too much for the tensioner pulley which cracked and sheared and generally shat itself, causing the piston casing to crack into the bargain.

 

New one required m8. Gr17.

[twosmoke300]

Deffo shouldn't need a breaker bar , think I used a normal Allen key last time .

[RoadworkUK]

Deffo shouldn't need a breaker bar , think I used a normal Allen key last time .

 

Tried allen key first, then Torx bit on a normal t-bar, then an extension, then a "gentle nudge" with the breaker bar. It just kind of escalated. I had the USAF on the line to come in with nukes as a next step.

[John F]

I had the USAF on the line to come in with nukes as a next step.

 

They would have bombed the Rover and then occupied your Audi upon hearing that there was oil in there.

[RoadworkUK]

Yes, that's right weak pun fans, I got married last weekend. To a woman.

 

With the Audi now back on the road (but on probation, I'll come to that later) the Rover has been reduced to light duties, but not before perfming Sterling (fnah) service over the last week.

 

 

This is A Car Full Of Wedding. Our day was split into two parts, the ceremony and the reception at two different venues. This here luggage compartment contains EVERYTHING we needed to stage our wedding, aside from furniture. Suits, table settings, rental glasses, champagne, wine, home brew, it all went in the back of the Rover in one big greedy gulp.

 

So that was nice, and a lovely day was had. I got all wed up and everything. Smashing.

 

Next day:

 

 

Everything had to be emptied out of the venues again, so once more the colossal arse end of the 800 was called into action, it just sucked everything in and consolidated it into Rover fat which I liposuctioned back out later in the day, clearing its arteries in order to accommodate everything we needed to take on our honeymoon in Glastonbury.

 

So we hit the road, passing this on the way...

 

 

....and arriving here 225 miles and a KFC later.

 

 

That's Glastonbury Tor in the background.

 

Once we had arrived we basically abandoned the car to sit there and did everything by foot, 'cos we've got feet, and the Mendips are too ludicrously pretty not to walk through.

 

Four days later it was time to leave. The car looked like this:

 

 

A sinister development had developed. THE RIGHT HAND REAR TYRE HAD GONE DOWN A BIT. Such a situation would probably constitute a logical write-off if it were assessed by those hostile to 800s, but rather than simply binning the car then and there I pumped it up and drove it home.

 

It was quite warm that day, so the A/C was set to 20 degrees. I plodded along at 85%tile speed, overtaking where necessary but watching those with outrageous velocity fetishes bomb past. I didn't care. 80 and a bit was fine and we had BBC 6 and a well stocked CD changer to listen to.

 

I worked the fuel consumption out when I got home. Brim-to brim; 450 miles covered and 57.59 litres burned makes 35.5 mpg overall. That's fucking brilliant for a huge 18 year old car with a 2.5 litre engine.

 

So a pat on the back for the Rover today, and a demonstration as to how fuss-free and useful old, worthless cars can be if they're allowed to be.

 

BUT THERE'S MORE!

 

On opening our bounteous assortment of wedding gifts, I was delighted to unwrap this:

 

 

And Nicola was even more elated when I continued through the pile of vouchers, photo-frames and other appreciated, well received yet fairly mainstream gift items and unwrapped these:

 

 

...which I will cherish forever, even if they'll never, ever be used. Unless Nicola starts rebuilding an FB in secret...

[John F]

I'm not generally into the non- 'Land' types of Rover, but these big sporty hatchbacks do look pretty good.

[RoadworkUK]

I'm not generally into the non- 'Land' types of Rover, but these big sporty hatchbacks do look pretty good.

 

Sporty?!? That's fantastic! I shall tell her indoors that I own a "Sporty" car and am therefore a go-getter.

 

Failed MOT by the way. Two CV joint gaiters.

 

I shall pay a man to do them and that'll be that for another year.

[brickwall]

Pay? You got an inheritance coming we don't know about Mr Scatter Cash

[Lord Sterling]

Well done and congratulations on the wedding. I too will be wed to a woman soon and then I shall bring her back here at some point.

 

We must do a KV6 800 FACE-OFF at some point, though it might end up with our cars being rather British about it.