Rover 200 & 400 Owners Club

RobsonRoverRepair wrote: ↑Sat Apr 23, 2022 5:31 pm Hope everyone had a great day. I left a goodie on as many 200s 400s on the club stand as when I was passing through, hope you all enjoy them.

Indeed. And sorry I missed you again on the field after failing you in the pub on Friday evening...glad we had that chat anyway in front of Q gate on Friday !

Some more local coverage here - https://bromsgrovestandard.co.uk/news/i ... e-returns/

And some drone footage here - https://www.facebook.com/steve.purton.9 ... 417879324/

Think that was the biggest rally I've been to. So many cars it was impossible to see them all. Congratulations to the Club and the POL organiser, Gemma Cartwright, for such a successful event. I found everything went very smoothly. Great to meet so many enthusiasts, most of whom I had not seen before as we live in Scotland. Met several other Rover 200 nuts to share stories plus my old friends Lindsay with his 418 and Keith with his 75. Met Adam who has a white 214 which we discovered is slightly older than my car produced in mid-Feb 1990. His must be January. And finally meeting John Batchelor and Jeremy Howson face to face, whom I've emailed with numerous times. Super day, and it stayed dry. I spotted a number of Rover 200/400 in other parts of the field and also an interesting early car out on Lowhill Lane. Did anyone else spot that? It was a maroon 216 GSi with stone beige leather interior. Had reg something like G733 OTG. It was in VG condition. I wonder if anyone knows whose that is?

We had a good journey down from Scotland on Friday, staying the night in Lichfield, then on to POL the following morning. The 214 was going well. We returned home via Nottingham to see an exhibition and look round the area. That was where the trouble started. From POL we went on the M42/A42. I'd noticed a bit more mechanical noise and when we got to Nottingham we noticed a nasty clunking sound each time we took off. It was getting worse. How were we going to get home over 300 miles away? I'd done plenty of work on the car before we left so thought I'd covered everything. I'd had some problems with the alternator, last replaced eight years ago. So I put a brand new one on. When we got to the Nottingham hotel we did some tests. I was worried it was a problem in the gearbox or transmission. No, it was the alternator again. The main bearing was obviously on the way out. I did think there was a very slight noise from the bearing when I fitted it but it spun smoothly. Now it sounded like a bag of hammers. Sunday morning we drove to the city centre, and the intermittent noise was now continuous and attracting attention. I had to go to a multi-storey carpark and take off the alternator belt. Peace, but no battery charging. I did have a battery charger, so we bought a couple of new batteries from Halfords, and charged all three in the hotel room ready for Monday morning. Found we can do about 100 miles on a battery if you keep everything else switched off. We stopped to see friends in York and use their car to charge the battery again. Further north, the juice ran out near Penrith on the A66. The first new Halfords battery I put on was duff, wouldn't even turn the engine. The other one was good, but now we didn't have enough to get all the way home. So another stop at relatives in the Borders to do another charge. A rather fraught journey but we did get home. Tried to avoid the radiator fan coming on as it takes a lot of current.

The rest of the Rover went superbly with its Longbridge engineering. Very smooth at 70-75 mph. It was the new stuff that let us down. I kept a note of the fuel used, starting with the tank full and then finding out how much to fill it when we got home. The total round trip was 767 miles, and the Rover used 74.55 litres or 16.4 gallons of super-unleaded. That's an overall consumption of 46.8 mpg. Not bad for a 32 year-old car.

Hugh

It was good to finally meet you Hugh. We appreciate the effort you make to get "down south" and so I am pleased you finally experienced a "proper" POL after the rained off version you attended previously. I am sorry to hear of the troubles you had getting home but your ingenuity and a bit if help from your friends got you home. Well done!

g259fsg wrote: ↑Tue Apr 26, 2022 3:53 pm Think that was the biggest rally I've been to. So many cars it was impossible to see them all.

They recon around 2000 altogether!

Well this has slightly taken the silver lining of what was an awesome day.

https://youtu.be/O3j6hpgTKzM

Those who remember the crazy Easter bunny in the pink combats!!

Cheers mate. Alas it can't be changed now mate.