Rover 2000 TC
John starts the process of righting the Rover’s assorted wrongs
Ithink I’ve struck a seam of gold in this, my third Rover P6. Some of it is fool’s gold, but most of it is real. It has no rust, nor has any part of it ever had any apart from a small section of a sill’s underside, neatly welded by the previous owner, who used to run a bodyshop.
He did a lot of work on the Rover, which he’d bought as a project in order to save it from a banger-racing death. It got a panels-off respray, a new clutch and radiator, new carburettor floats and needle valves, an overhauled braking system, three new tyres (fronts plus spare), and whatever else was needed to render it roadworthy once again. A new battery, too.
Here was the basis of a very pleasing 2000 TC, but on the short drive home it was clearly lacking any sign of the sporting zeal a TC should have. Investigation of the two SU HS8S immediately uncovered an obvious fault: the front throttle wasn’t moving until the rear one was one-third open.
Resetting the linkage to fix that improved things a lot, but not enough. So, I took the carbs apart, found worn jets and needles and, on the front carb, a missing cold start return spring. All else appeared in order, so I reassembled the carbs with new parts as needed from Burlen Fuel Systems.
I also fitted an Aldon Ignitor ignition kit and a new red rotor arm, and attached a set of Magnecor plug leads to new spark plugs of the correct grade. Fueland sparks-wise, all was now in good shape.
With the carbs adjusted for balance and mixture, the Rover indeed felt keener, so I took it Goodwood for the Revival meeting.
Better, in parts
On the way I could enjoy the quieter progress I had achieved by previously fixing a clonk in the steering (a loose column UJ bolt), stopping a bonnet rattle (adjustment and new rubber buffers) and eliminating an annoying rattle from the washer-bottle bracket. Adjusting the steering box had sharpened the steering, too, which was now smooth, light and free of play. What was rather less quiet was the exhaust note. TCS are supposed to have a bit of a rorty edge but this was ridiculous. It seemed the internals of the two silencers had rotted away during those static years in the lock-up, so I ordered a new complete Double-s system in stainless steel from everhelpful Rover parts supplier Wins International.
This incorporates three silencers, as used in later P6s. It fitted beautifully and it sounds just right: quieter than a 2000 TC was when new but still emitting a sophisticated burble.
Now I was really getting
somewhere. I had already fitted the used-butgood front headrests, plus new coolant hoses and copies of the correct Triplex Speedblade wipers, that had arrived in another package from Wins. Next I crawled back underneath the P6’s pristine base unit where I overhauled the leaking De Dion suspension tube with new bellows and internal seals, reinstated a missing rear bump stop and sprayed a lot of Dynax cavity wax and underbody protection inside the four wings and elsewhere.
This done, it was time to show the Rover off to a gathering of friends at Caffeine & Machine near Stratford-on-avon (well worth a visit). On the way it rained copiously. As I accelerated round a roundabout, I found myself correcting an enormous powerslide as the rear wheels’ ageing Uniroyals abandoned all grip duties. It happened again as I entered the M40.
Why was this happening? The tyres had plenty of tread, and they looked perfectly fine, but the tread had gone hard and plasticky. This is what happens to tyres as they age, so I needed some new ones pronto before I slithered into something. I wasn’t very keen on the recently fitted Hifly tyres on the front, either; they looked wrong (too narrow and a modern tread pattern), they were quite noisy, and they were doing nothing for the steering’s crispness.
Rubber revival
PC alumnus Ben Field and his Vintage Tyres company at Beaulieu came to the rescue with a set of Vredestein Sprint Classics. In the Beaulieu tyre bay, we discovered that the old Uniroyals dated back to 1997 or even 1987, so they were well past their allotted span. No wonder they were grip-less.
I knew time-expired tyres were bad news, but those lurid tailslides had confirmed just how bad. The drive home from Beaulieu revealed a Rover transformed, the grip confident on dry roads and wet, the ride quiet and supple, the steering sharpened significantly. The Sprint Classics look the period part, too.
Full speed ahead for the Rover, then? Err, no. On that drive the performance became ever feebler, embarrassingly so if a hill was involved, and the fuel consumption was becoming dipsomanic. Clearly there was something more deeply amiss inside the engine, as a compression test later confirmed. Now it’s in pieces and a rebuild beckons. It seems like I’ve found that seam of fool’s gold.
‘The old Uniroyal tyres dated back to 1997 – no wonder they were grip-less’