Wiper mechanism failure - driving in the pouring rain I suddenly had both
of the wipers stop completely, and a dragging sound from the wiper mechanism. When I finally made it home (including reaching out of the window to move the wipers by hand !) I found the arm from the motor to the centre spigot had fallen off and was dragging along the bottom of the compartment. Pushing this back on was too easy, and it just fell off again as it was too badly worn. With some replacement parts from a local scrapyard I replaced the whole arm with the damaged joint (you can't buy the joint alone from Unipart, and the mechanism has to be totally replaced with a new type which costs over 130 pounds.) This is still fully operational after 5K miles and plenty of rain (this is England afterall !)
Well, the inevitable finally happened - the other joint fell off the wiper mechanism. I lost the
drivers side wiper totally, and after a quick inspection I decided that the badly designed mechanism
had to be completely replaced. With the full set of spare I had from the scrapyard parts I set about
replacing the plastic joints with nice, strong nuts and bolts with lots of grease and washers. The two
ball parts of the mechanism were easy to remove as the centre one can be hammered out, and the drivers side
can be sawn off and drilled out. I then removed the plastic socket pieces from the ends of the arms and used
15mm tube to extend the linkage arms to their original length. This tube fits just over the existing rods
and can be drilled and bolted to hold it in place, then hammering the tube flat makes it easy to drill out
the holes in the correct place. I reckon this should last a hell of a lot longer than the old plastic mechanism.
Clutch disengage problems - After about 4000 miles of ownership I started to
notice that I couldn't engage first gear when starting the car from cold. After
about a week of starting the car already in second gear I decided that the problem must
be somewhere in the hydraulic system as the problem was alleviated after the car had
warmed up. I replaced all of the hydraulic fluid (including the brake system as they
share the same resevoir) and the problem seemed to be fixed. However it came back
after about another week of normal driving, and that was when I noticed that the clutch
pedal was not travelling as far as normal. It seems that the pedal mechanism has
a tendency to stick partially down, and as it is hydraulic this reduces the effectiveness
of the clutch. Flicking the pedal back up with your foot makes it work all of the time. One
day I will get around to looking at the pedal mechanism fault ...
Well, thanks to Peter Cohen for helping with this one. There is an adjuster on
the top of the pedal which can be used to take up pedal free play. Once I turned
this a few times (lying upside down with my feet out of the sunroof) the play was gone
and the clutch operates normally. Thanks Peter.
Boot Courtesy Lights - The boot courtesy lights never worked from when I bought the car.
I checked the wiring diagrams and found the wire colours, and in the boot managed to find
the wires after taking most of the LH linings out (the ABS computer lives under there too).
Most of the wires go into a strage green connector which has other connections internally,
about three different sets I think. I was suspicous of this so I took it apart, and found
the supply was not being passed through here properly. A bit of fiddling and I then had a
live feed to the lights, but no earth. Shorting with a wire made the lights come on, and a
quick question to the 800 pages brought back the response from Dave that the switch is in the
boot lock. I removed this (quite easy on the Fastback) and found the earthing switch is a simple
piece of bent metal which the cam on the lock plate touches as the boot is unlocked. Cleaning
and bending this made it work nicely. When re-assembling it I noticed that I could have cleaned
and bent the metal contact without removing the lock from the car. D'oh!
Windscreen washer motor failure - the rear screen wash never worked when I bought the car, and the headlight washers were inoperative also. I never really bothered with either of them, but when the windscreen washers failed I found the pump was dead so I had to remove the tank. That's not too bad a job, just takes a bit of time. If you can raise the car on axle stands and take the right wheel off then you should be able to remove the tank in a couple of hours. The hardest part is the connector to the fluid level sensor, but this is quite straight forward from under the wheel arch when the tank has been lowered slightly. The Haynes book does not make it clear what pumps there are, and where they should be, and to make matters worse one of the holes in my tank had been blocked up by a previous owner. There should be a pump for each of the systems, making 3 for a fastback. I didn't have enough replacement pumps, so I put the broken pump into the rear washer hole and then placed an old inline pump I had lying around in the pipe where it was accessible under the bonnet. Thanks to Andy MacFadyen for this suggestion, and I'd recommend it to anyone who has only one pump fail. As an aside, I have since disabled the headlight washers as they use up the water too quickly. I was filling the tank about once a week during normal to/from work 30 mile round trips in the winter.
Heater controls - I can't believe I did this, but one freezing morning I slid the heater control both to the right and pulled both levers completely off. Whoops. After taking it apart I was even more surpised because the part which protrudes from the dash is only about 1 inch long, and mounts over a metal slider mechanism within the dash. Some replacements were easily sourced from a local scrapyard and while the dash was off (just 7 screws) I took the time to replace the fresh air light, which seems to have failed on every old 800. This requires soldering a bulb into the bottom part of the connector block, which can be removed easily to allow access to the bulb.
Rear wiper blade change - On the fastback with a spoiler fitted, the wiper blade seems difficult to change because it still parks itself even when you turn off the ignition. Careful fiddling should enable you to get the blade off however, and I found the new blade was easier to fit because of more space around the plastic fitting.
Noisy tappets - Like all Honda V6's I seem to have the classic tappet rattle. Behaviour is consistent with general descriptions caused by poor supply of oil to the tappets. I have changed and flushed oil several times, and if anything it is getting slightly worse, which I think may be the thinner 10w/40 oil I am now using. It always goes off with a few revs though and doesn't seem to cause any performance problem. I will worry about this later ...
Fast tickover - Just fixed this one, so read on. The problem first manifested itself as a speeded up tickover, about 1400rpm. I was getting no fault light on the ECU and the tickover light was not flashing either. After about another week the tickover increased slightly further, then one morning after braking hard to avoid a lorry which pulled out on me I noticed the ECU light on the dash showing. Checking the ECU showed a 14 flash code, which seems to be agreed to be a failure in the electrical side of the Electronic Idle Control Valve (EICV, although the Haynes book calls in the EACV for air, which I suppose is how it works). I've cleared the water lines to this valve, which seems to have made little difference. My suspicion next was that the EICV was sticking, or full of crud. Either that or the throttle pot was dirty or badly adjusted. I stripped this whole area and cleaned it, and although the problem persisted I at least discovered how most of these components are supposed to work. The problem was still there, and I replaced the EICV with one from a local scrapyard. Symptoms were exactly the same so I looked to the electrical side of other components, and was fortunate enough that Anton Robinson sent me a couple of pages from the electrical guide explaining the fault diagnosis procedure as well as the full specs for the ECU sensors. One of the guides suggestions is to reset the ECU by pulling fuse 'S' from the bonnet fuse box for 30s or more. This resets the ECU and removes the fail light, it also clears the ECU from its 'failsafe' mode which it enters when it thinks a sensor is broken. This restored my car to its normal operation, and the likely cause of all the problems was a dirty connection to the original idle valve. A sensible approach to any ECU problems seems to be to check the connection at the indicated sensor, then reset the ECU. If the problem persists then check the sensor itself out.
Check this page for full details of all engine sensors.
Fuel Tank Repair
I noticed that my petrol tank was leaking. I had been
smelling it for a few days and noticed a small puddle when
getting back
into my car when leaving work. I removed the rear left wheel to get a
better look and it appears that the three pipes going
somewhere from the
tank just behind the suspension strut are badly corroded.
Dropped the tank off the car and sorted the pipes out. The
metal pipes which run over the tank serve several purposes. There are 3
small ones which are all breathers and overflows (one runs up to a
one-way valve on top of the tank and back again), and a larger diameter
one which is the fuel return from the main fuel rail. This one runs back
to the pump on top of the tank. The whole pipe assembly comprising these
four pipes is fixed together as one part, and is almost certainly a very
expensive part to replace. However it was quite a trivial task to cut
the pipes near the top of the tank (no corrosion at all there) and
replace them with i) 8mm copper pipe for the fuel return, and ii)
flexible fuel hose for the breathers. Cable tying all of these in place
securely, and re-using the clamps from the previous arrangement and it
was all fixed.
A few notes about tank removal, should anyone else be daft enough to try
it :)
Firstly ignore most of the instructions in the Haynes book, you do _not_
have to remove either the rear seat (certainly not in the fastback) or
the exhaust rear section and heat shield. In fact the exhaust heat
shield is a big help in supporting one side of the tank when you raise
it back up, and it is fairly trivial to tip the tank down more on the
left side to allow you to clear the heat shield when removing it. Next
the support straps, these hook into a hole at the front and have bolts
with hooks on the end into the cross-member at the back. These bolts
sheared off after about 5 turns each, so I made replacements from 2
bolts and a 90 degree bracket for each side. In addition to these straps
the tank has a little hook which locates with a bracket at the front
centre of the tank, this helps align the tank as well as support the
front better.
Anyway, I half filled the tank and it had stopped smelling and
dripping and was holding the pressure again (at least it hisses when you
remove the filler cap, which it had stopped doing).
Frost sensor (icelert) - Thanks to everyone from the Rover mailing list who gave input about the frost sensor (Icelert). The sensor itself lives under the left hand headlight, which you have to remove to access the sensor. I tested the circuit with a potentiometer and discovered that the light comes on as the resistance increases beyond 16.5K ohms. I visited Maplins and bought a 4k7 thermistor for 69 pence to replace the faulty sensor and wired this in series with a 10K potentiometer to enable me to fine tune the resistance at 0(ish) degrees C.
Fixing a sticky speedo -
Approximate procedure as follows :
Time - about 2 hours Tools required - posidrive screwdriver, dumpy posidrive, 19mm, 13mm, 4.5mm, 5mm sockets