Rover 200 & 400 Owners Club

Dear all, i am about to shamelessly copy and paste my project thread from retrorides, since it involves a green 420 gsi i bought with front end damage.

I think the previous owner Simon B was on this here forum so some of you will recognise the car. Ive stuck a few things on facebook, but thought i would copy it here too.

James


We begin the copy and paste fest...


I really suck at not buying cars. To be fair this one isn't really my fault. All I intended to do was buy a gearbox with LSD in it for my bubble project, but when I turned up I sort of ended up buying this.

Its a 1995 420 gsi tourer. I remember trying to get my Dad to buy one as a replacement for the family Montego estate, but he said it was too small. Probably right in hindsight. Still cool though.

This car was a much loved car that was pretty well known. It was slightly modified with 16" Cosmos alloys (similar to BRM), lowered 60 mm, Roversport bumpers, big brake conversion and mk1 bonnet and grille. Here it is with previous owner Simon in a magazine article. Photo was taken at Pride of Longbridge.



Unfortunately a foreign taxi driver got a roundabout a bit wrong causing the car ahead of Simon to emergency stop. Being a modern SUV thing, it stopped fast, whereas the Rover didn't and ended up a bit bent. However luckily the Rover was so low it under-ran the rear of the SUV and the damage is all at a high level and confined to just the bonnet, slam panel, bonnet latch and headlights. Better news is that there was no damage to the SUV and the damage to the Rover is unrecorded.

Simon was going to break it up. He removed and sold the sport bumpers, and it now wears the original suspension rather than lowered. I got to keep the cosmos alloys, mid level custom tailgate spoiler and Simon gave me a spare mk2 bonnet and front bumper and headlights.

Here it is in all its glory.





Interior is excellent apart form a bit of side bolster wear. Being a GSI it has Recaro style seats with half leather.



This is the damage



Chassis rails are perfect. Just the slam panel moving back has tweaked the panels either side of the rad rearwards at the top.





Already started pulling it out by hand



Had a spare radiator already that came with the bubble. Just need to fit the rad fan and sensors.

Had a very productive day.

Simon, the previous owner has supplied me with all the parts needed to fix it! That includes a chopped section from the front of a donor car.

I spent the day pulling out the remainder of the rearward crushing, and then picking the slam panel off the donor car and the bent one off my car and then checking the alignment.



Had to unbolt the top and front of the front wings to get to some of the spot welds. Not difficult though.



Then with the old slam panel off i could do the final shaping of the support mounts.



Balanced the new slam panel on and put the wings back in place.



Simon gave/lent me a standard mk2 bonnet (no 2.0 gsi bulge) so i trial fitted that to make sure the new slam panel worked with the bonnet latch. All works fine. So now i just need to prep the panel and weld it on.



Also check out the history file. Proper old school wallet think with labelled front. Then inside pretty much every MOT, loads of handwritten invoices and service notes. Fantastic!

Watching

RoverRevival wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2020 7:29 pm

Watching

"Forum says no" It now one let me post anymore, think maybe it thinks im flooding it with spam??

5 min between posts

RoverRevival wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2020 7:36 pm 5 min between posts

Ahh i did wonder. Seems to like plain text but not links to pictures or video?

Just post a link, it will probably be blocked code from the other site or advertising links ect that jumla blocks.

Nice to see you here James. I’ve watched the sd1 police car on Matt’s YouTube

Cthomas wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2020 10:11 pm Nice to see you here James. I’ve watched the sd1 police car on Matt’s YouTube

Yes that was a result. He also did a road test of this car.