Rover 75 Tourer, 115 auto

[Robson Rover Repair]

The car had gotten into a bad state thanks to some damage in my work (tesco car park!) but is now on the road to recovery. Picked up a damaged ZT-T bumper as my original one had been ripped off and ruined in a drive off.



Thought id do a proper update on my car, im sure some people have spied my interior swap and custom vinyled panels but ive included them here also.

Before...



During....



After.... (thank god!)























New steering wheel and air bag on route, anyways got the car tidied up again and changed the unions to 15 inch conne SE wheels along with some serious maintenance work, servicing and other parts!













Remap next week @mad tuning which I cant wait on, car has just had a complete service, new springs, bearings and all sorts. 180k mile car and she still drives like one with 1/5 of the milage.

[Longbridge Loony]

Wow! LOVE your custom dash etc. Is it a wrap? If so that's a very neat job-well done!! IMO the interior always looks better all black. Beige seems to date the car quickly. But of course its all a matter of taste!

[Brabus]

Cars looking great Colin what a change.

[Robson Rover Repair]

Thanks mate, want it sitting decent @ the Classic Rover days

[Robson Rover Repair]

Originally Posted by Longbridge Loony

Wow! LOVE your custom dash etc. Is it a wrap? If so that's a very neat job-well done!! IMO the interior always looks better all black. Beige seems to date the car quickly. But of course its all a matter of taste!

Sorry for slow reply.

Yes its just a vinyl that I ordered off ebay and wrapped onto the panels, with the wood grain I was really fussy about it all matching lol.

[Robson Rover Repair]

The adventures continue....


As some of you know my last 6 weeks have been what I would call emotional and can be summed up with "Rover hell" basically.... along with the royal mail issues and my own personal stress level and starting a new job as a driver for tesco.



4 months ago I scrapped my wifes second Ka (the second scrapped ka btw dung buckets) and replaced it with a lovely and spotless Rover 25 diesel which needed nothing bar waterpump giving up after 110k leaving her stranded and a nice 4am phone call to me....... thanks to @mad aka Mark Sterling who is the man to turn to for L series expertise locally and got her back on the road!







And then the phone call we all dread about a partner driving. She crashed her car, lost it coming off a junction, span one way, corrected, then span another with over correction, hits a kerb, cause car to lift and hit armco front side on without even sliding accross the grass and spinning around slamming rear into it. Big smash, Ka would have been massive injuries IMO.









Two old ladies confirmed she wasnt speeding thankfully. ****** close to rolling badly, short version, car was wrecked, rear beam was bent about 2 inches off not to mention body damage which the photos dont reveal as much along with the fact I wouldnt have been happy repairing it for her to drive after a smash that it took incase it had another....





Not my shed so excuse the blur!



So the search began to get her another car, I knew it would be another 25 diesel so got the car home and decided to keep it for parts incase..... and we pick up a lovely little Rover 25 diesel for £450! Car was solid with some rare OEM semi winged cloth seats also and I suspect stiffer shocks and springs but not lower. Half the price of the gold one with the same millage, win! Needed usual 25 silly bits, damage to door cards, trim broke, silly things that I could swap over easily enough so we bought her came home and the work began.......






...all was good and a full MOT inspection showed the need for two tyres and a backbox but otherwise she was MOT ready. Or so I thought....... bang went the turbo, and the old one was removed from the old car and fitted (again by Mark!) and she was ready to go, up she goes to MOT and fails on a ball joint and oil in engine bay from turbo blowing....... so back to Mark for some help doing the work for next test.


A ball joint that was stiffer than a porn stars nipples. A ball joint that took two hours of hammering the **** outta it for it to even separate with a seperator, no movement at all. And then she pops, even removed it was still decent! Well we got her sorted and we threw one of marks custom MAFless remaps on her also, nice and mild to improve MPG.


Off she goes, passes MOT and then 37 miles later. Bang turbo number two goes, well to be honest it was my bad money situation throwing a second hand turbo onto a car that just blew a turbo........ This is where it got fun as money was invested on mot and tax by this stage so it had to be repaired.



Onto the ramps, a long fortnight of engine work, rebuilding and taking bits off led us to the decision of just ripping the engine out and refitting the one from the crashed one whilst fitting a new oil pump as it had a water pump done on it just before the crash along with a new turbo, full service, pipes washed through, belts, engine flush, hell ive no idea if theres anything we didnt change to be honest or service in some shape.



So its now going thank heavens, after 4 weeks of hell fixing and rebuilding thank you so much to Mark for all his help, and a LOT of patience with me working on the car........ to say I learned a lot would be an understatement! Man knows his 25/zr's along with his 45/zs's and cant recommend him enough to anyone!


The car now runs great, the MAFless remap is super, car is so smooth to drive you can put your foot down at 50 in 5th and it will pull in the same way the car needed to drop a car before.


Again, if you have a L series diesel engine and want a remap, speak to @mad for all your needs!



So now I can return to my 75 tourer again which has been neglected massively again! Hadnt even been vacuumed since January, with a few bits on way now. And she was amazing in the snow yet again, but snow tyres and snow mode auto box will do that, even pulling out a beached Defender 90 out of a snow drift LAWL.










So after all the snow I gave her a clean and wash, with the lowering suspension now settled in the car is nice IMO and still giving that rover comfort that cant be beaten in a daily this side of air suspension!



















Sadly this was just after a wash and quick waxing with snap seal / greased lightning and it covers a lot of the marks!

[Robson Rover Repair]

Double post edit

[carlpenn]

Sorry to see the 25 wrecked, but at least the 'important part' walked away

P.S You duplicated you post

[Robson Rover Repair]

All my updates of the car now

I changed my interior from smokestone grey to ash grey trim from a mg zt, along with a custom vinyl wrap on the interior panels....





And the end result was pretty good but ive had a few things I needed to follow through with, and at a later date my good friend Micheal swapped my steering wheel (not a fan of airbags messing with!) over to one I had dyed with stubies dye, along with a matching airbag.

Sadly it wasnt on long when my wife accidentially scraped her engagement ring against the wheel and tore a massive split down through the dye, which caused the dye to lift off more and more.

I had planned to redye another wheel when I spied on ebay a nice mk2 contemporary steering wheel, stripped bare for £14! So I stripped another spare zt wheel I had, rebuilt it and fitted it today!



Which I am very happy with as I managed to get a BMW e39 gear knob which was wood, so I stripped i down also and vinyl wrapped it, reassembled it and wolla......



And now shes finished, wolla!!!!









The various shading of ash grey and black look fantastic in the car and makes for a wonderful place just to sit and relax.

Total cost of my complete interior overall?

£14 for the new wheel
£38 for the zt bits and panels (actually that was the cost of the whole car lol)
£12 for stubbies dye
£0.99 for the BMW gear knob



IMO best of both worlds, my goal to create a mk1 contemporary interior and I feel that the job is well done!

Cleaned up the engine bay today. And you can see my 100mm air intake connected up to a v6 air intake shannon pipe funnel now.







And washed and polished her also quickly.

[Brabus]

Looking good Colin.Where's the big wheels