£1000 Challenge
The Tomcat gets its purr back after Chris overhauls its ailing ignition system, restoring a smooth idle
Rover 216 Coupé
THE STORY SO FAR Miles driven 97,832 Total mileage 600 What’s Nothing! gonee wrong Even the idle’s been sorted out
CHRIS HOPE For some time now I’ve been mentioning the Rover has been suffering from a rough idle. It’s been most notable while waiting on a slip road for the lights to turn green; after cruising at motorway speeds, the revs would dip as low as 500rpm before jumping back to 1000rpm again, threatening to stall, but never actually doing so.
As the Rover has been called into action several times over the past few weeks, there’s not been an opportunity to do something about it, but with the Le Mans Classic over and a successful mission to retrieve a Land Rover from Orpington in Bromley complete, there was at last time to address the problem.
I’d previously enquired with John Batchelor, chairman of the Rover 200 & 400 Owners’ Club – someone who’s helped previously to keep our Tomcat on the road – as to what the cause could be. He suggested checking to see if the ECU had registered any faults. Being a MkII R8 model, our Rover is fitted with an PGM-FI unit that relays codes via a flashing LED, rather than via an OBD port. Located in the passenger-side footwell, the carpets need to be peeled back to reveal a covering plate, beneath which is the ECU. Said panel has a viewing hole, but there was no flashing LED to be seen. To make sure it wasn’t just a weak light, I removed the plate, but there was still nothing to be seen.
With no faults registered, John next suggested that the most likely culprits would be the ignition leads and the rotor arm.
The rotor arm is shared with the Honda Civic MkIII, as well as the same manufacturer’s Concerto (the R8’s twin) and easily sorted via online parts suppliers. The HT leads came via Powerspark Ignition Ltd (01527 889453, simonbbc.com – a big thank you to Joe Briley). John also said that as the coil pack is a known weakness of our Tomcat’s Honda D16 engine, it’d be prudent to replace that at the same time – again, an online auction site came to the rescue.
The distributor is easily accessed (far more so than on my Triumph TR7), because it’s fitted adjacent to the cylinder head: access to one bolt is obscured by the battery, but it’s otherwise simple to access its innards. The coil pack sits above rotating shaft, held in place by four screws. After much head scratching, I realised access to the pair at the back was achieved by prising out a gasket between the cap and the distributor body. Removing the coil pack afforded access to the screw holding the rotor arm in place; this was renewed, followed by the replacement coil pack. For once, I remembered to take photos of the positions of the leads on the distributor, so they were a quick swap too.
The car started up immediately and there were no hesitations on the short drive out to the village nearest CCW Towers. The acid test though would be parking up and seeing if it’d be any happier idling. To much relief, it was – otherwise the next step would’ve been to check the myriad of vacuum hoses for air leaks, and the thought of that gave me a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
The following day after servicing our car’s ignition system, it was used for a drive down to Dorking in Surrey – a journey it performed faultlessly. Prior to this it’d been a couple of weeks since I’d driven L513 JBU, but I was convinced that the work I’d done had improved its performance. Aside from idling smoothly, the throttle response has improved and the 16-valve engine seems to pull more strongly, but I’d like a second opinion to be sure.
So I’ve entrusted L513 JBU to editor David for a few days. With the Robin still off the road, I suspect that he’ll appreciate the keys...