RE: Shed of the Week

[gep]

yawwwn at the rover sarcasm

I've had a few rovers, never had any major issues with them. My bubble did 50,000 in a few years slogging round the m25/north circ/hanger lane, all i replaced was the alternator and that was bosch(i think).

[dan1300r]

yep these cars really are garbage. Only any good for the 100 mile a year grandad. Try to work them and they just constantly crap themselves one way or another. They may have been good as a tea pot cos they can boil water quite well..

[FlashGT4]

my dad had a manual one of these it was a great car, the grip was quite good, very sloppy ride, very reliable had done well over 120k and only fault was a broken abs sensor and a few back boxes, very comfy car

[gpow]

Owned a 800si - was known as 'The Land Barge', 2 litre automatic struggled to achieve any speed of any significance, always leaked oil, heater was rubbish yet somehow there was something about it, the steering wheel was very comfortable

[stigcv8]

gpow said:

Owned a 800si - was known as 'The Land Barge', 2 litre automatic struggled to achieve any speed of any significance, always leaked oil, heater was rubbish yet somehow there was something about it, the steering wheel was very comfortable

did you know that rover spend half the cars budget on designing a steering wheel that was round

[scoobiewrx]

I had an 1991 820Si, it had the 150bhp Honda Engine. Manual 5spd and it went really well. I kept it for 4 years as it never went wrong, i serviced it regularly and it gave me excellent service in return. I remeber tanking back from North Wales, 5up and luggage doing 125mph on an empty M54, absolutely brilliant. Nice comfy ride, very good on wide high speed bends and at the time it looked the biz.

[Timberwolf]

stigcv8 said:

Did you know that rover spend half the cars budget on designing a steering wheel that was round

Yeah, but think about what happened the last time the corporation that would eventually become Rover tried to save that money by not designing a round steering wheel. That (the Allegro) worked great, didn't it?

Recent Autocar had a £100 one of these thrashed across the continent and back, it had some interesting (partly user-inflicted) electrical maladies on the way and topped out at about 90mph fully loaded, but seemed to do fine otherwise.

Depends if you want to spend the first few minutes of your drive to work figuring out what the window switch is going to be controlling today, I suppose...

[austinpowers]

Nowt wrong with a good Rover, i unlike other's who have commented have actually owned a few, they handle and go ok (the vitesse).

Managed a 9.17 BTG in my standard power, but with uprated suspension of the 'Ring, so no they're not crap.

Narrow minded idiot's spring to mind

[hugoagogo]

stigcv8 said:

gpow said:

Owned a 800si - was known as 'The Land Barge', 2 litre automatic struggled to achieve any speed of any significance, always leaked oil, heater was rubbish yet somehow there was something about it, the steering wheel was very comfortable

did you know that rover spend half the cars budget on designing a steering wheel that was round

sounds about right, about 50 quid for designing a steering wheel

[kieran2006]

I like Rover's, have one, but if your gonna get an 800 you might as well push the peverbial boat out and go for the turbo to drag it along. A vitesse with upped boost, sports springs and some brake would be quite a handy motor for the money I reckon!

[davy9449]

I feel this poor chap aint gonna have much luck selling this on here now! I think as a comfy runabout they are probably Ok, but I agree with further up, a 620 with the Honda mechs are much better. Quite quick too I seem to recall...

[GRynners]

How many of the 827 V6 Vitesse model did they do? My uncle had one on an 'F or 'G and he maintains to this day it was the best car he's had - I have fond memories of it tanking around North Wales too. All the Vitesse models I seem to have seen since are the 2.0 Turbos.

[stigcv8]

austinpowers said:

Narrow minded idiot's spring to mind

pretty much sums up rover owners nicely

[apache]

stigcv8 said:

austinpowers said:

Narrow minded idiot's spring to mind

pretty much sums up rover owners nicely

do you have a stupid opinion of other types of car owner?

[stigcv8]

apache said:

stigcv8 said:

austinpowers said:

Narrow minded idiot's spring to mind

pretty much sums up rover owners nicely

do you have a stupid opinion of other types of car owner?

It pretty much starts with rover and ends with volvo

[skodaku]

austinpowers said:

Nowt wrong with a good Rover, i unlike other's who have commented have actually owned a few, they handle and go ok (the vitesse).

Managed a 9.17 BTG in my standard power, but with uprated suspension of the 'Ring, so no they're not crap.

Narrow minded idiot's spring to mind

Amen. Mainly usual crowd of "It's a Rover/British it must be crap". Have three friends who drive 800-series; 2 x 820's and a Vitesse. Granted his first Vitesse went on fire within 5 miles of picking it up new. (must have been pretty exciting), but it was replaced pdq and none of them have ever given anything but the usual very minor troubles and all now have big mileages. Great ride, acres of space but not for badge snobs or knuckleheads. BMW, Merc et al are not exactly perfect either, methinks. Used to know a Met Police lady who drove these things and thought they were great, (although one, it seems, did like to lock you out if you left the engine running and slammed driver's door. But I thought that was illegal - at least for mere mortals - anyway).

[andymadmak]

scoobiewrx said:

I had an 1991 820Si, it had the 150bhp Honda Engine. Manual 5spd and it went really well. I kept it for 4 years as it never went wrong, i serviced it regularly and it gave me excellent service in return. I remeber tanking back from North Wales, 5up and luggage doing 125mph on an empty M54, absolutely brilliant. Nice comfy ride, very good on wide high speed bends and at the time it looked the biz.

Actually, the only 800 series car fitted with the Honda engine was the original 825/827 - which was a Honda V6.(later replaced by the rover KV6) The deisels were Italian VM units. All the 2.0litre petrol cars were Rover engined, with either O, M or T series engines. This shed of the week will be a T series engine car.
They do not suffer from typical head gasket problems (ie, blown and a big cloud of steam) , - what tends to happen is that the oil passageway to the head, which passes close to the RH face of the block weaps a bit to the outside if ther wrong grade oil is used. Use the right grade oil, change it to service schedules and the gasket should be fine. Even if it does weap its cosmetic more than anything else - it doesn't stop the engine.
I ran 2 800 vitesses from new, both 2.0 litre turbos, the second one, a 1995 car was a 200hp turbo sport. I did 100k + miles in each without problems. My old sport was sold to my neighbor who took it to 150k miles (that was several years ago) and its now still doing service as a minicab in Chesterfield!
Speak as you find, mine were great. Of course, there will always be sheep that speak like they think it will make them sound cool and slag off something they've no first hand experience of, but then that would make them rather silly wouldn't it? I've got a 2001 MG ZTT 190 now. totaly brilliant and nearly 84k miles trouble free - oo err hang on it must be awful really cos

a) its a MG Rover
b) I had to change a brake lamp bulb last week (shock horror, the second one since I bought the car)



Andy

[andymadmak]

Timberwolf said:

[Recent Autocar had a £100 one of these thrashed across the continent and back, it had some interesting (partly user-inflicted) electrical maladies

For that read 100% user inflicted.. he wired his charger (wrongly) into the interior light, blowing a fuse. Hardly the cars fault!

Andy

[calibrax]

The T series did not have head gasket problems leading to overheating... that was the K series.

And the price for this one is way too much - you can pick up a decent Vitesse now for less than £800!

[cptsideways]

I had a 2.5TD one ages back, nice drive from a mechanical point of view but everything else was diabolical on the build front. Faults that I can remember & it was only 80k miles old when I got rid of it...

Door handles snapping off in the frost due to the door seals getting stuck if they were left wet (rain) from the night before.
Airflow control buttons on dash breaking & getting stuck in the dash
Suspect dashboard wiring loom causing all sorts of issues
Dodgy earthing in the engine bay
Alternators self destructing & shorting the battery
Drive belt tension bearing failing at 100+ mph on the Autobahn
The most uncomfortanle seats & lumbar support system EVER
Bits of trim edges that would cut your hands when moving the seats
Lots of electrical issues from door opening connections
Bracket that holds the brake light switch breaking * no brake lights!!

Quite honestly one of the worst cars I have ever owned from a reliabilty point of view, sadly these things don't rust much - how did they manage that