[Cheeves]

Was wondering if someone could enlighten this American on some Rover Lingo? I have a 1993 416 Gsi, 4 dr, 1.6L, 16v, think its a honda engine.

I see many posts talking about certain model of rovers, like plates and J-reg, v-reg, n-reg, etc....I would think that it has something to do with the engine but who knows, knew rover owner.

How can I tell what engine I have, read a post that said all pre '95 1.6L were honda, other posts said it depended on which side of the car the dizzy cap is on. Well, my driverside is the left side, which traditional UK would be the passengerside, which would say I had a rover engine. See where I could get confused?

Thanks,

CHeeves

[chugger]

Hello there.

Yes, as it's a UK hosted site, assume driver's side is the right-hand side of the dashboard as you sit in the vehicle. It's all about Napoleon you know, 'you lot' inherited his idea that you must ride your horses on the 'wrong' side of the road

Regarding the 'registration plate', that to US and Canada would be 'licence plate'. The letter scheme is to designate the first year of registration for use on the road. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_number_plates. So the statement 'N-reg' would be 'Year identifier N' - in this case Aug '95 to – July '96.

cheers

[Smithy]

Hi, Welcome the club forums.

All Rover 416 Saloons Mk1 would have had the honda engine.

[Cheeves]

So stating the "?" reg is just another way of saying what year it is?

[woodsy_mv6]

So stating the "?" reg is just another way of saying what year it is?

Yes.

The latest plates (Sept '01 - ....) also denote location

[chugger]

All UK plates have denoted place of issue since 1903.

The three letters together denote the issuing authority letter code, e.g.
my Alfa is N860 CMM: where N states it was sold new in 1996, and CMM belonged to Middlesex. So I have an outer-London car. The number 860 is just due to it being the 860'th off the the sheet. In recent decades, low numbers were held back by the Government department to sell to rich folks

Of course, if a vanity plate is put on the car, or a car is imported later in life, this screws up.

In some other European countries, currently France for example, you get a plate from the region. If you sell the car out of that region it will get get a new plate, like the US and Canada. In Switzerland you keep the plate for life (as far as I understand), so if that Merc cuts you up on the Autobahn, you can look up his home address and pop round to have a word

[The R8 Man]

Sometimes the reg letter of a car can be a little misleading to how old it really is, my short indicator SPi (single point injection) GSi is on an L plate, but it was registered late for a short indicator model, the later Multipoint injection (MPi) 1400k's were already being registered when mine was first registered. From various date stamps on many of its original plastic parts indicates the car was built sometime in June-July 1992, about a year before it was registered.....

[IrishRover]

Wow, great to know that there are some 216 or 416 Rovers in the USA!
It seems that Rover did not export their cars with the SOHC Honda engine, so I guess you will have a twincam Honda engine, known in Europe (and Japan I think) as the D16A9 but as far as I know, it is known as the ZC engine in the USA. It would have been fitted to some Integras, Civics and CRXs around the late '80s and early '90s.