£1000 Challenge
Tomcat racks up the miles, befriending a Ferrari Daytona as it does
Rover 216 Coupé
THE STORY SO FAR Miles driven 383 Total mileage 99,954 What’s gone wrong Idle still erratic despite our best efforts
CHRIS HOPE Still in shock at having discovered that the Reliant Robin, absent for most of the year, was indeed real and not a mere myth, the Rover faced a long drive just a few days on from our £1k Challenge cars’ first meeting. The destination this time was Castle Combe in Wiltshire for the Autumn Classic event.
Long-distance work has never been an issue for the Tomcat; it covered 1000 miles in three days to get editor David Simister, production editor Mike Le Caplain and me to this year’s Le Mans Classic and back. Wind noise from its glass roof panels can become a bit tiresome at motorway speeds, but you generally get used to it after half an hour or so with the radio on. They are watertight, however – which was something of a relief when the weather spoiled itself as I retreated back to it after an enjoyable day spent watching Austin-Healeys going sideways.
A highlight of the event was seeing a 1972 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 ‘Daytona’ race car (one of just five built) being put through its paces on a demo lap of the 1.85mile circuit, then spotting the same 4.4-litre V12 beastie wuffling its way through the sleepy villages of Yatton Keynell and Tiddleywink. Quite obviously, it was making its way towards Chippenham, just as I was, and I’m proud to say that the Rover Tomcat successfully completed an overtaking manoeuvre on this competition-tune Ferrari – driven at Le Mans by Derek Bell, no less – on a British dual carriageway (the A350 to be precise). Was the Ferrari driver even aware of my intention to drive past him in order to bag these tenuous blagging rights? Almost certainly not!
Upon returning to Peterborough, the Rover found itself with a rare period of downtime, which provided me with the long-overdue opportunity to do some further tinkering under the bonnet in the hopes of smoothing out its persistently erratic idle. The Honda D- Series idles at 1500rpm from cold, then momentarily holds at an ideal 900rpm once warmed through, before the revs fall away and it swings and jerks between 500rpm and 700rpm.
There have been numerous attempts to cure this issue, and the latest one was to replace both the fuel relay and the distributor igniter. Replacing the relay was a fairly straightforward job – once I found it, that is. I had assumed that it would be positioned close to the fuses hidden behind a panel under the steering wheel but, after much searching, I eventually discovered that it’s actually at the base of the centre console and accessed from the passenger footwell.
The next job involved getting at the innards of the distributor, which I knew – from having previously replaced the rotor arm and coil pack – was a bit of a faff, owing to the close proximity of the battery, air filter box and various coolant hoses. With the cap removed, the igniter can be seen below the coil pack, held in place by a pair of bolts. Removing these together with four electrical connections allow it to be pulled free so that the replacement can be be fitted. It’s a fiddly but reasonably straightforward job.
With the distributor reassembled, I took the Rover for a drive and discovered that my hour or so of maintenance had had absolutely no discernible effect on its idle. It’s becoming increasingly clear, now that the components that most commonly fail have all been replaced, that I’m going to have to investigate the vacuum hoses.
In the meantime, given that the Tomcat is still running despite its poor idling, it will continue to be pressed into regular service.