Star of a 45
As regular readers may have noted, I favour older cars over new ones. There are three reasons for this: the first is that I’m quite nostalgic, the second is that I don’t like to spend too much money on a car when I don’t have to, and the third is that I can maintain them myself.
The only downside to this is that older cars have a way of getting under your skin and, as soon as the clocks go back for winter, you worry about using them on salted roads, which have a nasty habit of eating away at their ageing metal. As such, I only use my favourite cars during the summer months and traditionally buy myself an old shed to see me through the winter.
For the last couple of years, however, I haven’t had to do that. Despite it only costing £150, my current ‘winter car’ is a 2003 Rover 45 1.6 Club that has just celebrated its second Christmas chez Cheetham. I bought it in 2017 as an MOT failure, due to a major leak from the power steering system, which was enough to scare the previous owner from fixing it. Having priced up a new rack, the leak turned out to be a broken circlip on the bottom of the power steering fluid reservoir that cost less than a quid to put right.
Since then, EA03 HVT has covered 6000 miles in the vilest of weather conditions without putting a single foot wrong. I’m sure it has helped that I have had it up on ramps and coated the entire underside in bitumen-based underseal, but I have to say that the car has been a real hero. So rather than get rid, I parked it in a yard on SORN all summer, in readiness for another winter’s solid service.
Fan assist
In October, I got it out of the yard and drove it straight to the MOT station, where it did its usual party trick of passing. I did pick up an advisory for a slight blow from the front exhaust flexi-pipe, which I’ll add to my job list
to be sorted as and when. However, I’m sorry to report that my erstwhile faultless stalwart did then let me down. Having passed the MOT, the heater fan completely packed up – for a winter car, that’s a pretty serious issue.
I know most of the common faults on these old Rovers, so I ordered a replacement fan resistor pack from ebay and was confident that 10 minutes with a screwdriver would have everything back to normal – a diagnosis that was supported when I removed the old resistor to find it completely blackened and burnt out. Imagine my surprise, when I fitted the new one to be greeted by… nothing. I checked the fuse, which appeared to be fine, and swapped it with another for good measure. No dice.
At this stage, I decided to remove the fan blower motor to see if it had packed up. This is an easy job on a Rover 45, albeit a bit fiddly as you need to use an offset screwdriver to reach the rearmost fixings. When I withdrew the old unit, the problem was obvious. Clearly, condensation had built up in the cabin and the spindle on the blower motor had rusted solid, which must have blown the resistor pack in turn.
Luckily, I have a few cars that are there simply for spares. A rotten 1999 Rover 416 yielded a suitable replacement motor, which appeared to spin freely and had the same wiring plugs. I set about fitting it, confident that I’d have a heater back in the winter wheels. Imagine my surprise when there was no change.
Blown fusible link
According to the car’s handbook, there was only one fuse for the blower motor, but the schematic diagram on the underside of the secondary fusebox lid (the one under the bonnet) told me differently. And there was the culprit: a 30-amp push-type fusible link was burnt out in two places, most likely as a failsafe from when I first tried to use the seized motor. Back to my spares car I went and, one pink fusible link later, normal service was resumed.
Which leaves me with a conundrum: with a working heater, cosy velour heated seats and a mere 66,000 miles on the clock, my 45 saloon has been such a dependable and faithful friend for the past two years that it deserves better, really. So this winter will be its last before it joins the fleet of cars I want to keep. Watch this space in 12 months’ time to see what I’ll be smoking around in next winter!