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KwS's Rover 220 Tomcat


kws

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My mate had one of these when we were at uni. Was wickedly fast.
His dad was an awesome engineer, and built him a custom close ratio gearbox by sourcing all different flavours of honda that had boxes with these internals (IIRC Legends, Integras and Accords among others) just to get the biggest varieties of ratiors, then chose the best ones to put in the final box. I think he pulled down 13 different boxes. Was REALLY quick after that.

However, the britishness finally caught up with him and he had a short in the engine loom and it burnt the whole engine bay out. Car ended up at pickapart. :( If only people had known the effort that went into the gearbox. He should have kept at least that!

As always, love your build/fix ups. Looking forward to the next installment.

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Cool!!! I think this is the same type of Rover I had spotted in blenheim a few months ago and popped up on oldschool spotted? They look really neat- I like the pumped out front arches. Those seats are lush- quite similar in style to the Momo branded recaros I had taken from a Alfa GTV for my Viva. Super comfy!

Going by all those leaks I am presuming Rover got the Nissan k11 team to design the seals etc ....

Going to watch this with interest- I like your threads.

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1 minute ago, yoeddynz said:

Going by all those leaks I am presuming Rover got the Nissan k11 team to design the seals etc ....

Since it is essentially a EF Honda chassis then I assume it is the built in tail light seal leak feature that all EF's seem to have.

 

Always liked these, look forward to your detailed process of bring it back to its former glory

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2 minutes ago, DB8-TypeR said:

Since it is essentially a EF Honda chassis then I assume it is the built in tail light seal leak feature that all EF's seem to have.

Correct, I'll bet on the usual Honda tail light leak, and then Rover adding the boot vents and T-Tops to the mix (both of which are also notorious leak sources). Nothing too major, especially now the boot floor has a hole drilled in it :lol:

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48 minutes ago, Cozza said:

Wow, I can't believe one of these is still around. Genuinely lusted after these in my late teens. Yeah, I was a special child.

A child with great taste though!

There are a handful of the Honda powered ones around (theres even one local on TM that I tried to buy before this but the seller was a dick) but the turbo ones are really thin on the ground, especially with most of the paint still intact!

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I really hope your day job rewards you well for your trouble shooting and documentation skills?

Applying a basic but definitive process to a new problem set and proving the underlying fault is surprisingly rare not to mention looping back to prove the proposed solution returned the desired result.

I enjoy reading such posts, keep it up!

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1 minute ago, yoeddynz said:

Ditto that man. What a cool result with it only being the vac hose as the main issue. That tuning/diagnostic program looks pretty damn snazy. Is that only for Rovers or it is made to suit other cars with a similar ecu/engine management?

MEMSFCR is an awesome piece of software, and once downloaded runs within a browser tab. I havent even touched the edges of what else that software can do yet.

It should work on most Rover/Land Rover with the MEMS ECU, but this particular one is more targeted towards the older MEMS 1.6 that the Tomcat and late model Classic Mini with injection have.

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Rover had to limit the torque output because the Honda gearbox wasn't strong enough, it was only designed for the 2.7 V6 iirc.

One of my wife's uncles was involved with setting up L.E. Perie in NZ during the 1970s, they manufactured LEP lights on the upper floor of the family auto electrical business in Frankton, Hamilton.

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Unfortunately they also chose to use plastic caged bearings in the gearbox, which do not tolerate abuse or lack of lubrication. British leak + plastic cage bearings = disaster. 

You can strip the box and replace them all with steel case bearings, which helps a lot, but shite its a lot of work.

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