Rover 200 & 400 Owners Club

It's been decided after asking around that we're sticking to blue and a 12 month change schedule. The car was run on blue when I got it, the black label on the expansion bottle supposedly dictates blue and it saves me the chore of trying to completely get all the blue out before a switch to pink.

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A little more Rover fettling was done today, not a huge amount because I wasn't blessed with much free time. This morning Bradford Auto Spares got a call so I could order a pre-facelift bonnet release mechanism from them for £25 delivered, then it was off to the unit to get on with some other jobs there. While waiting for paint to cure I decided not to be deservedly idle but to fettle again.

Decided to remove the rear panel off the boot, this is attached with 5 nuts from the back, two screws from the front and a further two screws through the number plate. The original dealer plate this car still sports is actually fitted off centre, which does annoy me, and one of the screws had to have the head drilled off. Other than that it was easy to remove the lot and get it cleaned up.


Inspected the boot lid and found it nicely free of any rust at all, just your typical dirt and moss.


The number plate light lenses need to come off to be cleaned, they're quite dirty inside. I was in no mood to do that today so it can wait for another time. The moss on the return lip came off easily enough.


There were two reasons for removing this panel. The first was to get it realigned properly because it didn't line up with the lights. That was quite important for the second bit, which was to give the thin red tape a go. I'm satisfied about this, it splits the big block of black up just enough. A nice twin exhaust pipe box or even a trim on the existing pipe once it's been shortened would make the back end just how I want it.




I still had some time and I probably should have just chilled out a bit. Instead, I carefully wet sanded the lacquer peel back on the top of driver's door. I had found a can of Rover Flame Red in my stash which I didn't realise I still had and this came in handy for where the paint was very thin.


Fresh coat of lacquer on top and when I next get chance I'll flat and polish that back to make it an invisible repair. The door handle will be done off the car, as will the bit of lacquer peel just under it. It's a fairly quick job really, and quite nice to eliminate one of the uglier bits I see every day on the car.


With everything done that I had time for I moved the car out of the way and heard a horrible noise. Turns out I reversed over the drill. Still works so we've just bandaged it up and continue to use it.

Vulgalour wrote:It's been decided after asking around that we're sticking to blue and a 12 month change schedule. The car was run on blue when I got it, the black label on the expansion bottle supposedly dictates blue and it saves me the chore of trying to completely get all the blue out before a switch to pink.

Just for the record, what was the consensus, blue versus pink on Rovers?

Pink to fill and forget, blue if you don't mind flushing annually. I'm going to stick with blue in this instance, I don't mind an annual service flush, it's cheap and it saves me worrying about contamination between the two types.

Vulgalour wrote: @Paul: I'm actually up in Thornaby, Teesside so not really that close to Bradford at all. I don't mind travelling for parts, I've been all over the place to get stuff for the Princess, I even went to Brooklands from Derbyshire to collect a set of seats for it.

Nice one - I'm after an SEi interior for mine and will travel too - well you do if you love your cars don't you?

Bradford Autospares isn't in the most saloubrious part of Bradford. It's not all like that (just most of it)

I didn't mind the area so much, it was the driving. You have to have about four pairs of eyes to see the person that's trying to cut you up on the left and right, the person in front of you emergency stopping and keep up enough pace to stop the person behind you getting into your back seat. It's just ridiculous. The road planning leaves a lot to be desired too. I was glad to get out of the place and have no plans to return.

I'm not sure if the breaker BAS have got in is the interior you want, but be warned it absolutely stinks. Previous owner was a heavy smoker most likely. When I went it still had door cards, seats and carpet but some pieces had been taken already.

This is the listing for it: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/331520737737

Acquired a set of three common not-Rover alloys for £1 recently, just trying to organise collection. Tried a donor wheel with the same important dimensions so I know they'll fit no bother, just no idea if they'll look any good so keeping it to myself for now.

Today, it was determined I'd get started on sorting out the clutch. Mike foolishly offered to help and my brother appeared too so we had a good pool of knowledge and tools and whatnot to get it done. Shouldn't be too much of a bother really, access to the gearbox and everything looked fairly good and I had all the parts I should need so we cracked on with it, optimistic we'd be all done before the sun went down. I mean really, how hard can it be?

Before we get into that, I had been doing some work on the front wing Joe supplied. I wasn't going to take it as I thought the one on the car was much the same, but after spending a bit of time with the dolly kit and flapwheel I think it's worth doing up and swapping onto the car. Both wings have this sort of warty rust bubbles.


Liberal application of the flapwheel makes short work of it. The steel is in reasonable condition. There are other methods to clean up rust but I'm going with one that has always worked for me and lasted for a long time. Clean everything back where you find the rust until you've got shiny metal. Some areas are trickier than others. You'll need to go a bit further than this, but this is how it starts. Be sure to chase the rust spiders back because otherwise they'll just emerge again when you repaint.


There's a small hole in the return lip. I will probably give this a quick blob of welding to fix it properly. However, Rover fitted a rubber U channel trim to the lip that would hide this well. I'm not sure if the trim is supposed to prevent or cause rust.


Some areas cleaned back to shiny metal and discoloured blackness where the rust was.


After everything was cleaned up, including the dent I dressed out on the top of the wing, it was all treated with Jenolite brand rust converter and left until tomorrow when I hope to have time to clean this up and get some fresh paint on.




A couple of days ago I made a start cleaning the engine bay but didn't have much patience for the job so let it be at this. Tidier, but not as good as I want it to be yet.


So, onto the clutch job then. First up was to remove the battery and air filter again. Then the starter motor came off which in hindsight probably wasn't necessary.


Gearbox is pretty oily and grimy, it looks like it has had a spill or come back through the vent or something in the past and never been cleaned up. It's all fairly old oil.


With the car up on stands, Mike and I set to removing things like the front partial undertray and disconnecting the gear selector rods and all that stuff. It should have been a simple matter to disconnect the lower arms. The inner bolts (two each side) were almost impossible to shift but did eventually relent. The castle nuts on the lower balljoints, however, were a different matter entirely. Now, it is possible we didn't need to disturb these and could have done the job leaving them in place. Unfortunately by the time we realised this we had also discovered both nuts, split pins and bolt threads were just collections of rust and attempts to remove any of these items just made matters worse. We wasted a lot of time on this part of the job.


Unfortunately we had to resort to cutting through the threads and removing the arms. Since you can't just get the ball joint and have it pressed into old arms, a new pair had to be ordered which won't arrive until Monday now. Really disappointing but at least there's the reassurance of nice new parts going on.


While the passenger side hub came off nice and easily when we got to removing the driveshafts, the driver's side needed a little help. The wheel nuts this side were also done up so tight the rattle gun struggled to shift them.


One driveshaft out and another derp moment - it was one of those days - when we realised neither of us had remembered to drain the gearbox oil. There's supposed to be two litres in there, at best 1.5 litres came out and it had a distinctly burnt smell and look to it.


With the driveshafts out we found the passenger side one was nibbled and leaking and the driver's side one was deformed so we'll have to get a pair of those ordered, it was by now too late in the day to place an order for them so it has to be done tomorrow. Yet more expense that I hadn't expected. Removing the gearbox was a chore too, finding all the bolts wasn't too bad but then getting access to some of them was annoying, like this one. You couldn't put the ratchet directly on the socket because it was too close to the casing and you couldn't use a spanner or similar because the bolts had been overtightened, just like pretty much every bolt we'd encountered.


Eventually we got the old clutch out. There was quite a bit of meat still left on it and it all looked fairly new apart from the release bearing which looked quite old and was a different manufacturer to the rest of the clutch. The friction plate had also been installed the wrong way around. This may explain the issues I was having. There was also signs of hot spots. I had been expecting a paper thin clutch with shiny rivets, not this.


We were quite puzzled by this to be fair, it looks like someone had taken the time to change the clutch in the car but had done it wrong which in turn had led to the symptoms of a dead clutch. While my brother and I cleaned as much of the oil as we could off the gearbox - I like to clean things when I get them off the car, helps me see where I've been and makes things look nicer - Mike quietly got on and reinstalled the clutch.



Then we called it quits. We'd spent way too long on this, mainly because we were fighting bolts that were on so tight they were bending the breaker bar and we were all pretty fed up with it. Tomorrow I'll be going in with Mike to get the gearbox back on and do any other small jobs I can find (and there's still plenty of those) just to make sure the car's time inside the unit isn't wasted. I'll go in again on Monday to fit the new parts, providing they arrive and are correct.

welcome to classic car ownership.

Work out how long the book says the job will take, double it (at leased) and buy all replacement bolt, you're probably gonna need them

As an alternative, if the ball joint castle nut looks too tricky (although it would likely keep bugging you until you sorted it), disconnecting the anti-roll bar link as well as the radius rod and the inner end from the subframe, will achieve the same thing, and allow the lower arm to pivot out of the way.

Did you find it possible to disengage the outer ends of the driveshafts without splitting the track rod ends from the knuckle?

I'd be interested in chapter and verse on getting the gearbox back in safely. We've missed the opportunity as far as getting it out goes.
I'm hoping my 214 survives long enough to need this job doing, and more immediately, I have to get a driveshaft out, with minimum fuss/maximum finesse. Unfortunately, I'm solo.

BTW, Halfords Flame Red looked a very good match on mine - for about 18 months. Then it went brick orange. I had much better results with a custom mix from a chap somewhere in the Lancashire area istr. Found him via a recommendation for Sparkle Silver. Probably here: http://www.auto-paint.co.uk/carpaint/

Didn't really document things going together because we just got on with it and it didn't take that long. Taking the driveshafts out was actually really easy once the lower arms were disconnected, everything moved out of the way and made life surprisingly easy. Putting the gearbox back on was quite easy too, just a case of jiggling it about until it went on.

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Unlike yesterday, today was a good day to work on the Rover. Gearbox went back on with minimal hassle and most things plumbed in easily. The clutch pedal now has some spring to it where before it offered nothing at all. Perhaps that has resolved the issue and I've escaped any sort of gearbox malady. Gearbox oil and antifreeze were also acquired for when we get to that point. Gearbox looks far better and was much nicer to move around without its crust of oil.


The only bit left to connect is this stupid little rubber clip for the speedo cable. Anyone got any tips on this one for us? It doesn't seem to want to go back where it came from.


My brother found the sticker machine.






Flange I'll tolerate, but not boot badges. Still, he chased out and welded up that little hole on the wing. I'll get this dressed back and tidied for paint.


He also welded up the bonnet holes, which was nice of him.


They dressed back really well. White grille is only there temporary, we kept picking it up and moving it so thought it best to just stick it to the front of the car so it didn't get broken.




We had enough time to get two goes over with the stopper filler before home time. It needs more work, but not a vast quantity. If it weren't such a visible panel I wouldn't bother making it more presentable than it is because there'd be no need.



Then the important task of temporarily fitting the new wheels had to happen. These are the three alloys with tyres and centre caps that cost me £1. I took the old centre cap badges off, which gives a clue as to what they're from.


A quick clean up and a rear door badge applied with a bit of masking tape shows what I want to do with them. They work surprisingly well.


I'm after two more (so I have a spare) and I need to decide what colour I want them because the silver isn't cutting it for me.



So that's that. Not a bad day really. Tomorrow the last few parts arrive to get the car back on the ground and driving again which I'm looking forward to.

This job is dragging on so much now, it's pretty frustrating. The parts order came in but it turned out the driveshaft oil seals couldn't be got so I ended up going to Rimmer Bros so I could get them delivered next day just to get this job over and done with. So we're still not back on our wheels yet and I still can't try out the new clutch to find out if it's that or the gearbox or both that were actually at fault.

Anyway, we got on with what we could. Mike has been trying to get the remains of the lower ball joints out of the hubs and it's been such a nuisance that we're taking the struts off to resolve it on the bench. Another of those things that should have been super quick and has just dragged on because the usual methods just aren't working. Instead, we got the new outer CV gaiters fitted, something that was made much easier by using the cone and the bench vice.




While Mike was doing that and some other jobs I got on with the bodywork side of things, namely trimming the grille to fit. I'd also left the replacement bonnet latch soaking in some thinners to clean it up. The original latch has a wired connection, we're not sure what that's for yet as we've not tested it but we're expecting it's for the alarm or to illuminate a bonnet open light on the dash, much like the boot has. The new latch doesn't have this wiring. Trimming the grille was pretty easy thanks to the bench grinder.


Did some more work to the bonnet edge and after this shot I put on the primer which for some reason reacted and just peeled off. I wasn't best pleased about this because it managed to react with everything on the metal and undid a lot of work.


So I cleaned it all back to bare metal and started again. Fresh primer so I can find where to fill.


I slapped a lot of filler on and took nearly all of it off again getting back to a smooth panel.


Then put some more primer on, top coat and lacquer. End result is reasonable if not perfect and will want polishing and whatnot to finish off properly. It will do for now.


The white trimmed grille was tidied up, primed, painted and lacquered. It needs a polish much like the bonnet does but is perfectly respectable now.


The old bonnet latch has a black plastic trim on it but when fitted to the new one it fouls the grille. I left it off, no harm done. Front of the car is much better, just needs a bonnet badge to finish it off properly.