Rover 200 & 400 Owners Club

I have passed my 216 Gti to a fellow enthusiast locally who intends to bring it back to original spec over a period of time.

I ended up having the ALB system removed from the car as it proved impossible locally to find the tool for bleeding it. (there is a thread on here about way back!)

Unfortunately I did not keep the actual ALB unit or the servo (mine was replaced by a non ALB servo) so I am wondering if a) does anyone have a car with this system that they are breaking or b) whether anyone knows if it interchangeable with a Honda Civic unit and so might be obtained from one of those.

Final question! Does anyone know what year ALB/ABS became standard on the 200/400 series? I am pretty certain that on the 1991 version it was optional.

Starting from where you are, maybe conversion to Bosch ABS would provide greater longevity?
This doesn't share the characteristic failure of complex components that are a feature of the Honda ALB system.

There is a fundamental flaw with the Honda ALB system in that it does not have a start-up self-check that spins the pump to check if it is still operating correctly. Instead it relies on a pressure signal from the high-pressure accumulator to confirm that all is ok.

This accumulator is very good at retaining pressure (Honda designed it after all!) and therefore the pump only has to run very occasionally to top it up or after an 'ABS intervention' which are hopefully few and far between.

Therefore the pump rarely runs and unfortunately this has the effect of the motor-to-impeller bearing seizing up and when the pump is eventually run it snaps the shaft...

The only way to counteract this is the regularly encourage the pump to run by invoking ABS safely. And unless you do this with a known good pump you may just encourage your old one to break!

Most other ABS system has a self-check routine which avoids this error state.

Honda being Honda decided that they would design their own 'ALB' system and produced ALB and ALB2 from the mid-eighties. By the early 90s they'd realised that there was no commercial or technological advantage to having a unique system and did what everybody else did and bought a system from a Tier 1 supplier.

So I'd advise the current owner to leave it as non-ALB.

The suggestion to retrofit Bosch ABS is interesting and would possibly be a first. Modulator installation is difficult as the Honda D16 engine sits where the Bosch ABS modulator sits on all the Rover- (and Peugeot-) engine cars. Also you would have to change all the wheel speed sensors and reluctor rings as they have a different number of teeth. And that's before you get to the wiring...

I do have wiring diagrams if anyone is brave enough to attempt this. I also have a Honda ALB bleed tool available to borrow but it's not found many takers this year.

That's really interesting John. It is certainly on advice from people here (possibly yourself, it was some time ago) that I reverted it to non ALB. It has been pointed out to me that maybe I should have told the insurance company though! I have to say I found it stopped pretty well on the standard set-up. I will forward this link to the new owner who I believe you know anyway.

I don't see why the Bosch wouldn't work but that would certainly be experimental I think.

wellsm wrote: ↑Sat Sep 01, 2018 10:43 pm That's really interesting John. It is certainly on advice from people here (possibly yourself, it was some time ago) that I reverted it to non ALB. It has been pointed out to me that maybe I should have told the insurance company though! I have to say I found it stopped pretty well on the standard set-up. I will forward this link to the new owner who I believe you know anyway.

I don't see why the Bosch wouldn't work but that would certainly be experimental I think.

Thank you- It's good to keep knowledge in circulation

There are also some signal-processing stuff that would need to be thought about as I can remember if the vehicle speed input is calculated from wheelspeeds or gearbox output on Bosch ABS 2E systems. I have a book to look at though....

Finding the correct modulator would be fun as therenweren't that many fitted back in the early 90s.