There is a light that never goes out
With an MoT drawing close I decided to show the Rover Tomcat a bit of love. To help with the always iffy emissions I gave it a mini service, changing the oil, filter and spark plugs and adding fuel system and oil cleaner additives all to have it running smoothly on the day.
Also, to try and have the tester more kindly disposed towards the car, and because it had been bothering me for as long as I’ve had the car, decided to repaint the sunburnt black strip of roof between the windscreen and T-Top glass.
Using masking tape to hold back the rubbers, I rubbed it back to a smooth , but not metal, finish before priming, sanding, top coating, sanding and finally lacquering the strip. It’s only a small area, but makes a big difference and I was very happy with the result.
On the day of the MoT it seemed my efforts had been in vain as although the 220 sailed through on most points with no advisories, it crashed and burned on the exhaust, blasting past the 0.5 per cent limit with nearly 10 per cent on the nasty gases. As it’s an older ECU-controlled car, being just a tyre and exhaust place the MoT station didn’t have any thing that could plug into the Rover three-pin OBD port, so a bit of guesswork ensued. First
they changed the Lambda sensor, which didn’t solve the problem. Then I Googled other 220 running issues and some had suffered with O2 sensors on the intake manifold. As that’s a very cheap sensor we tried that. Again, no joy.
And then the ABS light came on, so I took the car home while I went away to think about what to do.
Then a stroke of luck. I’d known mechanic Trevor Cowell of TJ Motors for a while but handn’t thought of him as his garage is some way from home, but while photographing one of his cars told him about my problems. “I can fix that,” he said confidently, so as soon as I was able dropped the Rover off with him in Westerham.
I got a call from him a day later. “I looked at it this morning,” he said. I expected the worst. “It’s fixed, and the ABS light has gone out so it’s passed its MoT.”
The problem, like all the best ones had just been a damaged plug on a temperature sensor barely hanging on, so it constantly ran rich thinking it was cold starting and pushing up the emissions. A new plug had cost pennies and taken just minutes to fix.
Unfortunately before I could collect it, the ABS light had come on again and was on and off intermittently. Trevor asked what I’d like to do. It now had an MoT for a year but the problem would still be there next time, so I asked him to check it out as electronics are a dark art to me.
After checking the wheel sensors, one showed a fault so was replaced, but the fault persisted so they delved into the ABS control box and by spinning the wheels while checking voltage and resistance, identified a fault with the ECU. This is a problem as these are no longer available new, but luckily Trevor managed to find a used part for £35. The replacement module was separated from the valve block to save having to bleed the brakes, fitted and worked fine, with the light going out and staying out.
On the way home the car ran better than it had in a long time, partly thanks to being serviced but mostly as it finally had its electronic choke pushed in! Safe for another year I can get on with tidying it some more.
Spinning the wheels while checking voltage and resistance indentified a problem with the ABS control module