[RoverRevival]

I don't like it

[Vulgalour]

[Vulgalour]

Paul's okay though. He can stay. We like Paul. :P

[Vulgalour]

Arrived at the unit a little early than planned today which meant I had some time to do some fettling before the windscreen fitters arrived. They got delayed by an hour so that gave me even more time to fettle, which was fantastic. When they arrived the only seat fitting left to do were the seat base captive bolts, which were quickly done once they'd left. Everything was then given a splash of primer and red-ish paint to keep it all protected. I'm not mega fussed about a beautiful finish on this because it's all covered up and I'd rather it be strong than pretty.

20180810-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

As it happens, lining up the seat back dowels onto the bodyshell was really easy. The four captive nuts for the seat back bracket also got painted, but my upside-down welding is so shamefully ugly I've been forced to censor it.

20180810-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

I explored the full extent of the rot in the rear arch and it really isnt' too bad. I noticed a bit of a bubble in the textured stone chip on the sill and found it had holed. I'm now undecided as to whether to replace the outer arch in one piece, or two pieces, since there's a substantial piece between the rust holes that's actually perfectly solid.

20180810-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

Finally, I didn't get my windscreen fitted today. A windscreen for a Rover 400 was supplied, just the wrong 400, so a correct one has had to be ordered. I've had this issue with other parts on this car, 1994 is the last year before the new shape came out so parts for this car are often listed as parts for that instead. One of the fitters had been having one of those weeks, so this was just another one of those things for him. Fortunately, I'm not in a mega rush to get the screen done, time is on my side for once, though it is slightly annoying that the earlier screen is more expensive. No big deal, it very much needs replacing either way, you can just about make out some of the less bad scratching in this photograph.

20180810-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

May not do any more on this over the weekend. Next job is to clean up and underseal the boot floor, and replace the outer rear arch. Once those and the associated painting is done, I can re-install the interior.

[RoverRevival]

Did this get censored

They do make repair panels for these for about £35ea +vat

[Vulgalour]

It did. Special feature on my camera. I already have the repair panel I need, bought it ages ago and I'm only now at the point to do the repair. Luckily the little trim piece came off intact since they seem to be gone on a lot of cars and are tricky to source now.

[Vulgalour]

Got busy with the angle grinder today while waiting for the windscreen fitters to arrive. I decided to chop both the grot and the good metal between the grot out so I could replace the lot in one piece a bit easier. It also meant I could find out if anything was hiding. I was impressed at how solid everything was. The rust at the bottom looks to have been caused where the inner arch (a bit of a mud trap) had rotted through and allowed moisture into the sill. The bit further up the arch started where the arch trim plugs in so I will probably not drill new holes for the trim here and instead chop the legs off the trim and glue it on.

20180815-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

I'm not used to the pile of metal cut out to address rust being quite this small.

20180815-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

After quite a lot of trimming and checking, over and over, I got the repair panel as close a fit as I could and just before I was due to tack it in place, the windscreen fitters arrived.

20180815-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

Removing the old screen was quite a battle, bonded screens do seem to require an awful lot of effort to remove. In seemingly next to no time they'd got the old screen out, the surroun cleaned and the new one in. Instructions are to leave the car alone for 24-72 hours, the longer the better, so the sealant can set properly. Happiily, there was no sign of water ingress when the old screen was removed and no rust problems. The new screen really does highlight just how bad the old one was, even with the marks from fitting it, the new screen is easier to see through than the old screen was at its cleanest.

20180815-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

I'm going to leave welding the arch up until next week as it means jacking the car up for access, something of a no-no until the screen sealant has cured. That's fine, I'm not in a rush, and everything is now lined up ready to go for the next phase which is mostly just putting things together at this point.

[Vulgalour]

When I got the Rover, you may remember it had a couple of blobby bits on one rear arch. Perfectly normal for an R8, they all rust here. Three years seems like a lot longer ago than it really is.

20150721-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

I acquired the panel to fix this quite some time ago and have only now really had both motivation and time to get it done. Not a terrible job, as it happens, and certainly less stressful with the cabin stripped since I'm in no fear of accidentally damaging any nice interior pieces. Both blobs on the arch were fibreglass and it had genuinely stopped things getting any worse even though it didn't look the finest repair in the world. The cause of both of these rust problems are easily resolved, the top blob is down to a design flaw where the legs of the plastic trim trap water where it goes through the outer arch and touches the inner, simply glueing the trim on would prevent this (and is my intention). The lower blob is caused by the inner arches not getting hosed out, dirt and moisture then gets trapped in the inner arches, slowly rots through and allows moisture into the sill, rotting it from the inside. It's a credit to Rover/Honda that these problems take a good twenty years to get to a point where they need repairing, the quality of the metal and the factory protection on these cars seems surprisingly good. At least they do with this car. Anyway, first job to fix this was to cut out the modest amount of rust, as documented last update, and tidy up the inner arch. I had one tiny patch to let in at the bottom which took all of ten minutes to do and then the whole lot was cleaned up and doused in weld-through primer.

20180818-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

I checked the fitment on the replacement panel quite a lot since this is a complicated shape and I didn't want to have to try and remake it or order a new panel. Everything appears to line up quite well. Since the eye is drawn to the trim line and the sill-to-door panel gap, those were the areas I focused on most for fit and then massaged the panel where required to get it to fit the best with the other points. It wasn't actually that bad to do, but setting the clamps to hold it without things moving proved quite tricky since there weren't a lot of points you could really hold it in place, especially since I wasn't joddling edges on this repair.

20180818-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

Tack, tack, tack. Wait for it to cool. Repeat. Gently tweak where things shifted a little on the door shut part of the arch, tack, tack, tack... this took a while. The metal is thinner than I've been working with so it gets hot really fast compared to what I'm used to. The welder seems to be having a bit of an issue keeping its settings too, the wire speed seemed to wander a little and the power level didn't seem very constant. It has bad days sometimes. That said, it was nice to not be chasing holes like I was on the Princess, the steel is a much better quality and much more predictable, even with a welder that's playing up a bit.

20180818-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

About an hour and a half later, I'd got the whole piece in, puddle welded to the sill rail and inner arch, and got busy with the flapwheel. I was very happy that there were no spots I needed to go back over and could see it just needs a little bit of filler before putting the paint down. Only trouble was, I couldn't find the filler and it was too late to go buy some. On getting home I of course found my filler, and Mike told me where the spare stuff was, so that can be tomorrow's job.

20180818-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

I finished off by giving everything a splash of primer so I can see where I need to apply the filler for the final stage. Once this is all in proper paint I can get the interior back in and then get the petrol tank back on. After that it's MoT time, which it should sail straight through.

20180818-05 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

[Rover dave]

That looks not too bad .

[Vulgalour]

Cheers, I'm moderately satisfied with it.

----

I have been jolly busy today and the Rover looks almost like a proper car again. Very first job was to put the all-important shiny 1994 1p back under the underlay. Now, I don't want to say I'm a superstitious sort, but later on 20p fell out of one of the seats.

20180819-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr


Bodywork was not going well today. I had problems with the filler curing far too fast and the paint curing far too slow, so that side of things was rather frustrating. It's weatherproof and tidy, which is what matters, but it's certainly not the standard I'm capable of. I'll redo this after I've moved house, I'm not stressing about it now.

20180819-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr


With the bodywork sorted and the paint eventually dry, I could refit the carpet which was surprisingly easy to do, and the bolt in the back seat which was also very easy to do. All of the boot trims and things have been reinstated too. I do need to trim down the moulded boot trims so they fit the new seat opening, I can't use hatchback ones because the boot on the hatchback is shorter so they don't fit. Rear seat was tested, and it's all functional, and being a 60/40 split-fold will no doubt be handy in the future. The plastic trims that go over the rear arches to the sides of the rear seat need trimming in a couple of spots to clear the parcel shelf and I may need to make a small slice in the bottom to pull the seatbelt through since the seatbelt lower bolts are stuck pretty fast and I don't want to force those since I haven't got spare relevant bolts, nor a tap and die set of the relevant size. Much safer and easier to trim a bit of plastic nobody will ever see.

20180819-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr


The carpet edges clip onto a pressing on the sill edge with some plastic edging that's part of the carpet. Over the top go the Rover sill trims, and because of the screw placement the fancy higher spec chrome trims are handed left and right. The rear trims are a plain plastic and look the same at a quick glance but they too are handed with a locating peg on the back that sits in a hole in the sill.

20180819-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr


The centre console trim just slots into place and is held by four self tapping screws, two each side.

20180819-05 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



The arm rest console is slightly more tricky since that's held down with four bolts you have to remove before sliding it into place, and then bolt it down, and then put the cubby insert back in. I reseated the handbrake trim too as that had come adrift at some point. Gearknob was screwed back on, boot/petrol flap release levers reinstated and the foot rest was bolted back down. All of this helped the carpet sit much more flat.

20180819-06 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr


20180819-07 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr


I removed all of the wooden trim from my old door cards and the trim across the top of the dashboard so I can strip off the old cloudy varnish and refurbish them. This is a job I'm not in a rush to do because they can all be slotted back into place after I've fitted the doorcards, etc. very easily.

20180819-08 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr


20180819-09 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr


Then on to the tricky job, which was the front seats. When I got the seats I knew one seatbelt pre-tensioner was missing which wasn't a problem as I had a spare on my existing seats. It's a purely mechanical system on these and there's a little tab that you use to deactivate them, surprisingly, the one on the new passenger seat hadn't been deactivated. Anyway, this is the two driver's seats, my worn out velour one on the left and the nicely worn half-leather one on the right. I needed to undo a torx headed bolt that holds the seatbelt thing on, and a 17mm regular bolt that holds the pre-tensioner tube on.

20180819-10 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr


20180819-11 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr


They put up a bit of a fight to remove, as you might expect of safety equipment, but once off it was a simple matter of bolting them up super tight on the relevant seat and job jobbed ready to keep me in my seat in a crash.

20180819-12 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr


With that sorted, I could get both seats in the car. These seats are an absolute doddle to fit even though they're incredibly heavy for their size.

20180819-13 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr


20180819-14 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr


Then it was time to go home because I was very hungry, so I'll likely finish this job off tomorrow since there's not a great deal left to do now.