Rover 200 & 400 Owners Club

Did more engine prep this weekend. Fitted the alloy 620Ti sump instead of teh 800 pressed steel sump. The alloy one is better for lower cars, and my steel sump was a bit bashed and rusty.

Then did the core plugs. Need'nt have bothered as they were totally fine.

Fitted new oil pump gasket. Used a genuine land rover one, as the paper one that came in my gasket kit was a bit weak. Also fitted new oil seals front and rear and cam seals at the front and new blanking plugs at the rear.

New Klinger 4 layer metal head gasket, new head bolts and generally bolted stuff back together.

Fitted a stainless exhaust manifold stud kit. 4 threads were ok after i ran a tap into them. One had already been helicoiled. Plenty of copper slip used to keep them from corroding fingers crossed.

ALso fitted my stainless coolant pipes. Originals rot out. Stainless much better but extremely hard to find now. Even a second hand set will be around £200!!!! ALso have lower one, just not fitted yet.

Photos below plus some bonus shots of the Police car! I had to move it to make space. God thats a fine machine.





















Refurbished and flow checked injectors





Removing old cam seals with drill and self tapper screw





Thread chasing the manifold holes



Stud and nut kit



Stainless coolant pipes added. Not cheap and extremely hard to find!!!!!!!!



Bonus photos

This project is kicking me in the balls. Keep buying stuff and none of it fits. Stuff like turbo fittings where stuff is either m12 x 1.25 instead of 7/16" UNF etc etc etc.

Got the engine loaded up, transported to mine and then fitted the gearbox.

Wait that sounded awfully easy eh? Well it wasnt. My nice shiny new lightened flywheel turned out to be for a normally aspirated t16, so my turbo clutch wouldnt fit. So i just reused the original. I'm not actually that fussed. I had a lightened flywheel in a bmw in the past. Didnt make much difference and actually it wasnt balanced very well and just gave a nasty vibration at about 2700 rpm.

Fitted new seals to teh gearbox, and cleaned it up, but thats about all really. It is a genuine turbo box with a torsen-A LSD. I have a brand new Torsen-B, but i thought id wait and see how this box is before i bother stripping it.

I was supplied a load of bolts for the box from a very knowledgeable chap and most were spot on. It was just a bit of a puzzle getting them all in the right place along with the various engine mounts and bracketry. Surprisingly complicated!







Ive fitted a T28 turbo from my Nissan S14 rather than the standard T25. To get it to fit you have to rotate the compressor housing, which meant you need to remount the actuator. Then it becomes a pain. I got fed up and decided to buy a Forge actuator. It hasnt arrived yet. Hence no photo.

Looking good James. Both this and the sd1

Pressed out the old wheel bearings from the front hub units and replaced with new ones. Handy having a massive press at work. What is less handy is failing to understand how the bearings work and no supporting the new one on refitting it so that i buggered it up. Mega fail. Had to buy a new one. All done now though.





Also finally got my poly front arb mounts for the larger 25 mm antiroll bar.

Still tinkering away with this thing. Ive sent loads of parts off to be blasted and then powder coated in satin black, so it has been most satisfying bolting new looking parts back into the car. Ive also sourced a brand spanking new header/expansion tank. Everything is being mounted with shiny stainless fasteners and loads of copper slip so it shouldnt all corrode together. Fingers crossed.







I had originally intended to fit the original Rover 800 inlet, which just says "Injection" on the top. However ive now picked up a "TURBO" inlet from a 220 turbo, so ive fitted that. It went off to be blasted and then when i got it back i etch primered it, satin black, then sanded through the paint to expose the bare alloy. Looks so much better.

Before



Painted black



Fitted



Then i painted up the original Rover engine steady links. I'm using Vibra Tech engine mounts, and according to their website you can do away with these original links as the new tough ones are more than up to the job. However there is a large engine mount fixture on the inner wing and it just looks a bit funny with nothing fitted to it, so i have fitted the links and an alloy adapter too.





Then i turned my attention to the turbo actuator. I had an original from the T25, with an adjustable rod, however the hole in the end of the rod eyelet was a bit too big for the T28. The original T28 actuator is non adjustable and massive and with a big stupid bracket. So i rang Grant at GB enterprises and he said use the Forge aftermarket one for the Nissan 200sx, so thats what i did.



I had to rotate the compressor housing relative to the turbo core, so that the 200sx turbo would actually with the compressor outlet pointing in the right direction. The mountings for the actuator are on the front of the compressor housing, so basically it would no longer bolt up and work. So i had to make a new bracket.

Space is extremely tight, to get the actuator in a position so it didnt hit the block or turbo and yet the actuator rod would still have a straight action on the wastegate arm.

Some rather nifty cardboard engineering followed.



Some fabrication



Some additional braces and then paint







Turbo in and mounted and downpipe attached. It is all an extremely tight fit. You cant bolt the downpipe to the turbo with the turbo on the manifold. You actually have to demount the turbo first, bolt it to teh downpipe and then thread the whole lot into teh engine bay. A real pain, but it works.







And a video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrmeYjlDd4E

Middle of this week i took two pairs of old driveshafts and two new outer end CV joints and swapped them all around until i had the best combination and with the correct ABS rings for my car. Was a bit of a fiddle, especially fitting the speacial metal clips to hold teh gaiters in place. Gave them a coat of enamel black.

Two pairs. One pair from an old 220, the other i think from an MG ZR diesel.



New CV joint





Painted and ready to fit



Fitted my shiny brand new original headlights. These are the posh ones with the electric motors for headlight level adjustment woooooooo.





Thats when i made a bit of a bad discovery. The leading edge of the offside front wing was bent Looked like it was dropped but it didnt show until the headlight was fitted.





It has quite a distinctive kink in it, but you cant see it unless the headlight is pressed against it.

I thought id have a go at fixing this and although i don't have a photo, ive pretty much massaged it into the correct place just from manipulation by hand and a few taps with a light hammer and a cloth.

Started mocking up the front with the radiator. Alloy rad is same size as standard 220 turbo. The original intercooler would have sat in the frame just above it. However i will be using that void to take the intercooler pipe work through to a larger front mount intercooler.





Ages a go i bought an intercooler and pipe work off an MG ZR. But it has an extremely long pipe work arrangement, and if i wanted to fit this i would have to hack up my bumper, which i don't want to do.





So instead i got on ebay and trawled through 100's of listings until i found an intercooler that i think will fit inside the front bumper, require minimal pipe work length, so less lag and generally neater.

The best option looked to be one for a new Toyota GT86, as it is a top feed type rather than end to end. I made a cardboard template just to check that it will work. Looks promising. Ill meed to find some even thinner cooling fans though, or invent some kind of duct or something. No room on the engine bay side to mount a fan there.

New intercooler arrived. Cardboard templating worked very well. I think it will fit fine with some slight modifications to the radiator mounts and brackets. Still not worked out quite what to do with the fan situation.









In other news i have been trying to find a match for the headlining fabric. I ordered 3 samples but none of them was quite right :(



Middle one is the best but still a bit too beige

Well i finally got around to tackling the headlining. Most of my motivation came from wanting the old headliner board out of my way. Its big, bulky and easy to bend and damage.



I ordered 6 fabric samples from Martrim and eventually settled on the oatmeal colour. It was real hard trying to match as they all seemed to look different in different lighting conditions.



Then i prepared the board. This involved peeling off the old fabric and then scraping off all the dregs of the old foam and glue with a wire brush. I then hoovered it and gave it a gentle wipe with panel wipe to get the dust off.







Then i set up operation central, a large packing box covered with black plastic that the new fabric was wrapped in.



Also bought 2 cans of the spray adhesive and that was a good idea as i had just a little bit left over.



I'm not going to go into detail here about how i did the glueing, as its all documented in detail in the videos below.

But basically great success! So i stuck it back in the car. Very happy with end results.







I also fitted the rear seats. If anyone ever sees or finds or knows of rover 200 seats in this fabric, please let me know, even if you find them several years after i post this! Its called Norse two tone grey and it was only in the early 218is and 200vi models.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vxnEqtgcsc

Finally sorted my drain line from the turbo to the sump. This should have been a five minute job, where i simply bolt in the original stainless steel corrugated pipe. However, annoyingly, the pipe wouldnt fit my new turbo. The car originally had a t25 turbo. Ive fitted the larger t28. T28 turbos come in several different versions. Mine is annoying and has a different size spacing of the threads for the drain port than the standard t25 and most t28's. I had tried to open up the bolt holes in the flange but that still didnt work.

So i ordered a t28 small drain port flange from Italy (weird). Then i cut up the old lower flange and welded a bit of curved pipe onto it. Then linked the two with 18 mm id oil hose, all covered by a heat reflective sock. I also had to trim a spot welded flange off the front engine mount so it wouldnt rub or chaffe on the hose, and then i welded it back together again. All installed now and fits great. What a ball ache.

Little type drain flange on left, larger original on the right.



All the parts laid out ready



Assembled



Fitted



Some of this is covered in this video. The final install will be in video part 23.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAz6M5_3Q04&t=4s

Had a couple of hours so i played around with the radiator and intercooling mountings again. The car originally would have two fans ahead of the radiator and a little intercooler above the radiator. I'm fitting the larger intercooler ahead of the radiator and there is no room for the fans in front, so I'm squeezing them in between the rad and the engine. Not easy as there is a coolant pipe and even worse is the turbo and down pipe. SO what ive done is actually move the radiator very slightly forward and then there is just enough room to get 2 9" pull fans in there. Ill have to make a little alloy heat shield by the turbo and downpipe or maybe buy a heat jacket for it, but slowly I'm winning.





In other news i bough the world coolest van. Sadly it doesn't have a v8 in it.... yet!