[burtonm]

Top seller indeed - I was fortunate enough to be buying the car from someone I'm acquainted with on another forum, and as an added bonus he lived within a mile of my aunt and uncle so I got to see them too!

[Johnny 216GSi]

Got it home and found the dizzy cap scratched up on the inside, and the ignitor module to have been replaced previously. Couldn't tell if the coil had or not but it was working.

Scratched up? I wonder... if the ignitor has been replaced and the person who did it didn't mount back the splash guard or tighten the rotor arm correctly. That would make a mess inside the dizzy cap if it came off or the splash guard got spun round by the arm. If it's a round disc-type rotor arm, they come with a cap-head screw and it's difficult to get them tight with such a small allen key. I buy the lucas traditional-style rotor arm and they come with a screw which you can tighten with a decent-size philips screwdriver.

[burtonm]

The ignitor did look to have been replaced: I was told the coil had been done ~ 2 years ago, not sure if it had though as it was a Tec part, which would be OE. The ignitor was Unipart and very clean - and the seller mentioned it had a mangled screw head...

There wasn't a reason for the rotor arm to have been off, but it looked as if someone with little mechanical sympathy had done the jobs on the dizzy, as the cap had cracked from overtightening a screw, as well as a screw being missing from the bracket holding the ignitor in place.
They were smart enough to make a timing mark on the mounting bracket though...

[burtonm]

Looking past the relays for a while, I've been getting busy with other stuff.



I changed the ATF, and nicked the good Bosch spark plugs from the GSi.



I changed the front pads:







and in the process, found the ends of the front wheelarch lips to be nonexistent. Took the mudguards off to find handfuls of wet mud behind them, the mudguards falling apart and in need of bodging to reattach. On both sides the mounting point for the middle screw on the mudguards had rotted away, and the top screw hole in both guards is also broken.
I can't imagine they'll be easy parts to find...



The wheel centres were painted:





Rimmers have new ones for £3 but eh, not really worth it.



The shifter doesn't go into P, so I began to investigate that.







The issue seems to be at the gearbox end, as messing with the shifter end didn't yield any improvement.



I think the paint is going to respond well to a cleanup, a very quick effort with some Meguiar's Ultimate Compound and very little pressure made a really quite noticeable difference:







Finally...







NOT AGAIN

[Johnny 216GSi]

The front (and rear) mudguards all suffer the same problem - they have a metal core sheet that just rusts away. Penny washers, potentially sprayed or otherwise coated in black or a colour to match the trim, are the way to go. You can't buy the original screws but they're standard self tappers. They're No. 8 (4.2mm diameter) or No. 10 (4.8mm diameter). I seem to recall the rears use 8's and the fronts use 10's but please check. Wood screws with a flanged Philips head do the same thing. You can buy a rather nice plastic nut-sert replacement for the 3 square holes in each wing from Rimmer Bros, and they're not expensive.

The mud flaps always have gunk behind them. There's an old thread of mine where I'm trying to get the front bumper off and I empty a nice pile of what essentially looks like a high-quality compost, from behind the O/S mud flap. I've done the N/S since and got a similar pile of muck. It doesn't usually result in corrosion having set in on the lower wheel arches, body or sills - which is amazing.

Anyway, you look happy enough in the photo

If the box isn't going into park, that's only the ratchet/pawl or output shaft key mech. on the box. Not sure what that would take to overhaul, however - having never been inside an auto box and certainly not a D16 auto box.

Can't believe how unlucky you're being with the radio wiring looms... who'd cut into one? I'd always just buy an adapter cable and leave the loom untouched. I know the early R8s didn't have ISO blocks fitted so that's perhaps why. Still, it's only essentially 3 wires and 8 speaker wires if you know what you're doing...

[burtonm]

Yep, I'll most likely be fixing the mudflaps with penny washers. I have the rears too, they just aren't fitted for some reason. I'm not short of screws, either.

I also neglected to mention that I swapped the electric mirrors between GSi and GTi. It turns out the spare passenger electric mirror I had didn't work properly, the glass is at a funny angle making it useless. Could be as simple as it being mounted off kilter but it's easier just to swap them over for the time being. Also, the interior cover for the power plug was missing, making a lot of wind noise - again I just borrowed one from the GSi. Slight pain to fit as typically the door card was ever so slightly warped, but it's on well enough and will hopefully quieten the cabin a bit (a previous owner had just gaffer taped over the join on the outside of the door to solve this). If it doesn't work for some reason I'll put a sliver of silicone sealant in there or something.
The driver's mirror glass was held in place with big blobs of some sort of epoxy putty, and was set to a fairly reasonable position, albeit for someone a fair bit shorter than myself (I'm 6'). It sort-of worked but couldn't be adjusted at all and I needed to duck to see out of it, again this isn't ideal so another swap occurred. It made me realise how good the rear view mirror is though, and that the car's blind spots aren't that big.

When I bought the GSi, the boot was lined with a big, thick piece of blue deep pile carpet (a rug perhaps?), cut precisely to fit the boot. Really quite a nice boot liner for what it was - I also had a blue leather bag made from offcuts at my dad's old work, containing some essential sundries - the bag just happened to be blue, I've had it for years, think it used to be used as a laptop bag. Having opened the boot of the GTi and found that Rover didn't bother colour coding the boot lining on Prussian Blue interiors, instead having the same brownish grey material as Mink and Flint interiors - as well as a nice condition load space, I moved over the blue carpet, seeing as it'd be a perfect fit. It suits the car pretty well - as does the blue leather bag!
The GSi also looks a bit better without the slightly discordant blue carpet in the boot - seems it's found its home.
May the colour coding continue...

Park selection issue is an interesting one and the gearbox is the next port of call for that - well, the outside of it at least.
I've noticed that the further towards P you push the lever, through R and slightly beyond (where the lever refuses to travel any further), the more resistance you encounter - and when you do the lever sticks and needs a firm pull to free itself, often ending up in D3 or 2 in the process. Careful...

As for the radio, no ISO block eh? Explains a lot. At least with the GSi I got a radio with my proprietary multiplug - a Kenwood tape player. It's not too bad so I've kept it as a spare. My old SLi had its original radio, and ISO blocks - that was an M plate car, though.
The aerial lead is an odd one, too, different to the one on the GSi, and not something I've seen before. No trouble there though as it was a standard aerial plug, it just needed an adapter, which I had a couple of knocking about.
I've ordered a Kenwood CD player off eBay for it, as it's a unit I'm familiar with and have used before, shouldn't look too bad, has the all-important aux in, and isn't made by Sony - as much as I like the CDX-GT24 for sound quality and ease of use at a budget price, I fancied a change, and something that doesn't do that beeping thing all Sony radios seem to do when you turn the engine off.

More work to do tomorrow and this week, such as continuing with researching main relays and waiting to see if I end up with any more of them (offers are starting to come out of the woodwork on Facebook and the like - also someone had the novel idea of chopping a multiplug off a Civic/HH-R to fit the NOS relay and splicing it in?!), the park selection issue, changing the rear brake pads, brake bleeding, perhaps a tappet adjustment/timing check, power steering fluid, and maybe some rust treatment, cutting and polishing if it's dry. Later in the week I'll be chopping the multiplug off the radio harness (unless by some miracle it's off a recent-ish Kenwood), wiring in some ISO blocks and installing a radio - I've no clue if the speakers work...
I've got my eye on a wood fascia for the heater panel, too - it's an easy part to fit, and might look quite nice in there with the dark blue dash...

[Johnny 216GSi]

Yep, I'll most likely be fixing the mudflaps with penny washers. I have the rears too, they just aren't fitted for some reason. I'm not short of screws, either.

Often wondered if I could make some oval pieces the same size as the oval cut-outs in the mudguards, but with tapered sides on fairly thick material - 2-3mm or more. These might then push in to the holes and not "pull through." With a hole in the centre of each one to take new screws, this might be a really neat repair - but I haven't done it yet.

The driver's mirror glass was held in place with big blobs of some sort of epoxy putty

Also wonder if the manual and electric mirrors are essentially the same, just that the gimbal inside the casing is driven by electric motors or the physical arm that's extended to inside the car. I therefore wonder if it's possible to chop and change parts between pretty much all types of mirror to get one that works. Having tried to fully disassemble one, I find I'm still always defeated by the heavy duty spring holding the mirror to the mounting trim. Haven't found a method of getting that spring off successfully, let alone trying to reattach one.

Having opened the boot of the GTi and found that Rover didn't bother colour coding the boot lining on Prussian Blue interiors, instead having the same brownish grey material as Mink and Flint interiors - as well as a nice condition load space, I moved over the blue carpet, seeing as it'd be a perfect fit. It suits the car pretty well - as does the blue leather bag!

You're not far off with the boot liner. Look at phase 2 (single colour body) hatchbacks from late 1994 onwards and you'll find they have the spare wheel cover board sandwiched between the scratchy grey/brown liner carpet and a layer of Jute sound proofing about 1/2" thick. For all everyone says the phase 2 cars were costed down versions of the earlier cars with fripperies removed, Rover did decide the car's noise/refinement would benefit from a sound proofing boot liner. My phase 2 SLi has this but my phase 1 GSi doesn't.

Park selection issue is an interesting one and the gearbox is the next port of call for that - well, the outside of it at least.

You might be able to pick the brains of a local auto box specialist. Garage repairs aren't cheap, however and most places knowing they would charge £750+ will tell you they don't want to take the work on. Whilst the manual box has shorter gears on GTi models compared to standard Gsi and SLi manual boxes, I expect the auto box is common across all R8s from '89 to '95 giving you a wider choice of finding a replacement if needs be.

As for the radio, no ISO block eh? Explains a lot.

Before your time I think, but there wasn't really a "standard" for radios before ISO. I seem to remember they used the 2-pin DIN plugs/sockets for the speakers like you used to find on 1970s record players (!!!) and the rest were spades or screw terminals.

...and something that doesn't do that beeping thing all Sony radios seem to do when you turn the engine off.

Both of my Sony head units do that, and I've absolutely no idea why. I had in mind they were doing something like remembering RDS traffic announcements for later recall when the car was started again, but I've found nothing in the handbooks about it...

perhaps a tappet adjustment/timing check, power steering fluid, and maybe some rust treatment...

The Haynes manual is what you need. Has all the clearances and timing angles, etc. Remember for timing there's a plug somewhere close to the injector resistor pack that has to be opened and the two pins shorted, to stop the ECU making timing adjustments to the ignition itself. Then you can use a strobe light off No. 1 cylinder (I think??) provided you can see the timing marks on the pulley/belt and reference marks on the cambelt cover. Try getting some wax or oil into the rear arches (there are plugs on the front side of each rear arch just above the sills) and then also taking off the chromed runner/tread plates and plastic underneath on all 4 doors. This reveals holes on top and along the inside edge of the upper sills (a plastic container for the front/rear cabling run and the fuel release level casing need to be removed). The ones on the inside edges are covered in tell-tale black adhesive patches. There's also a front sill fill hole on each side of the car when you take off the plastic trim underneath the chromed front tread plates - look for a bung essentially to the right of your right foot when you're on the accelerator peddle, and a corresponding bung on the left-hand side.

I've no clue if the speakers work...

Most will have perished by now. The paper cones tend to rot out even though the coil still works and you'll probably get some sound out of them. You can remove the speakers from their mounts and fit any 6.5" types. The rears are 5.25" on the hatchback but larger on the saloon - 6.5" or 8" (not sure), but again, anything aftermarket should fit.

I've got my eye on a wood fascia for the heater panel, too - it's an easy part to fit, and might look quite nice in there with the dark blue dash...

I've got one but I've never managed to free the original black one from the control unit. I can take the knobs off and unhook it in a few places around the edges but mine still doesn't want to come off. Ho hum...

[crepello]

Often wondered if I could make some oval pieces the same size as the oval cut-outs in the mudguards, but with tapered sides on fairly thick material - 2-3mm or more. These might then push in to the holes and not "pull through." With a hole in the centre of each one to take new screws, this might be a really neat repair - but I haven't done it yet.

Ideal project for somebody with a FDM 3-d printer and ABS filament!

[burtonm]

Well, bugger.

The GTi was parked on the street last night: the handbrake gave way and as the car was in neutral due to being unable to select P, rolled down the hill into a neighbour's work truck.

Thankfully the neighbour was a director of his company and the truck has minimal damage, and he's willing to forego dealing with insurance. I'm massively relieved.

The upshot of this I need quite a lot of body parts though. The car is still running and the frame is mostly ok.

I need:

grey front bumper, preferably with red trim
passenger bumper mount
bonnet (no grille)
short indicator hockey sticks and grille thingy
passenger headlight
passenger indicator
2x short indicator front wing

I think I have a few leads on FB but still need quite a few parts, bumper and bonnet in particular.

[lemix1924]

I HAVE ALL THE PARTS YOU NEED, GENUINE NEW OLD STOCK!!!

grey front bumper, preferably with red trim
passenger bumper mount
bonnet (no grille)
short indicator hockey sticks and grille thingy
passenger headlight
passenger indicator
2x short indicator front wing
bonnet support strut.

Send me a pm to quote best prices for genuine parts!

Regards,
Th. isaakidis
Lemix
EL051733416