MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
It turns out that the catastrophe hinted at by the Rover’s warning light was a false alarm, so there was nothing to stop it from meeting a fellow Longship…
Last time, I was left fearing the worst. I’d managed to successfully degunk the Rover’s idle control valve – which, after weeks of fault-finding, turned out to emphatically be the source of its uneven idle – but the red check engine warning light illuminating during a short drive following my efforts came as a crushing blow.
Hoping that I’d simply been over-zealous in my liberal use of brake cleaner on the IDV (and inept in properly drying off said decontaminant before refitting the cleaned component), I started the Rover a few days later and was delighted to see that the warning light had gone out. After driving on various dual-carriageway ring roads around Peterborough, eyes darting constantly between the road and the instrument binnacle, it was a huge relief to return to the office car park without the warning having once again blinked into life.
Confident that tripping the warning light had been a mere oneoff, I handed the Rover over to staff writer, Charlie Calderwood, for a few days now that his Peugeot 205 GT has gone off with its new owner to pastures new (more on which in the New Year).
Charlie reported during a morning catch-up that it had driven faultlessly on his drive home the previous evening, but that the warning light had come on again in queuing traffic a few hundred yards from CCW Towers. However, he shared my view that if it had cleared once, it would clear again.
Happily, the light has not tripped again during over 300 miles of driving between Cambridge and Peterborough on motorway blats and soul-crushing A14 crawls, so I’m staking my reputation on it being gone for good. Fingers crossed…
TRENDSETTER
As already mentioned, I really was expecting this week’s update to be a tale of woe and had set aside what I thought would be sufficient space to explain how I’d set about resolving whatever problem the engine warning light might be alluding to.
Given that it wasn’t quite the nightmarish scenario that I had envisaged, however, I wasn’t sure how I was going to fill the rest of this page – until I discovered that senior contributor, Richard Gunn, has bought himself an similar R8 Rover. Assuming that my purchase ten months ago had finally inspired someone to follow suit, I had to find out how his car compared to mine, so we arranged an impromptu (and very exclusive) R8 owners meeting.
Although Richard’s car shares its 16-valve Honda D- Series engine and year of manufacture with L513 JBU, that’s where the similarities end; his being a five-door hatch fitted with an automatic gearbox.
The fact that he snapped up his Rover for a fraction of the price that I paid for the Tomcat also goes some way to explaining why, with its heavily lacquer-peeled bonnet, sunbleached plastic bumpers and panels in varying shades of red (and pink), it almost makes the £1k Challenge car look cosmetically sound.
Of course, JVH boasts qualities that JBU doesn’t. For starters, Richard’s Rover has a working electric sunroof, but perhaps even more surprising is the fact that his car’s digital clock actually displays the correct time in full. JVH’s interior is in surprisingly good nick, too (especially considering the paltry sum Richard paid for the car), with unworn seat bolsters, imitation wood inserts in the dashboard and door cards that haven’t cracked, plus a headlining that hasn’t sagged.
It’s always interesting to see how essentially the same cars can differ as a result of 25 years of very different ownership. Richard’s 216 SLi has covered around 35,000 fewer miles than the Tomcat, but both serve to demonstrate how hardy these Rovers can be – and just how much value for money they can offer.
I’m sure Richard will introduce his Rover in full soon; there’ll be a update in Living With Classics very soon.