Tinny Rattling sound under the gearlever

The car came with this really annoying rattling under the gearlever that could be stopped if you pressed the lever to one side or the other.

People on the MGRover forum suggested that it might be a rattling heatshield but once the car was up on stands and the front plastic under-tray removed, it was easy to determine the cause.

The PG1 Gearbox has two linkages selecting the gears. The rattling was caused by the one that pushes the gearbox selector in and out. It's a sort of universal joint that sits higher in the car than the other linkage and there was too much play in the first part of it which meant that the selector shaft (between the gear lever and the joint) could rattle up and down.

I cut and opened up a stainless washer and then tapped it into the gap between the selector shaft and the metal pressing that retains it. This appears to have cured it for now but if it happens again I'll take a look in the parts manual because it may be that there's a rubber bush here that needs to be replaced.

Tyre-sizes

The car's speedo rather drastically over-reads which suggests to me that it has the wrong size tyres on it.

The wheels are 16" 6-spoke Minilite-style alloys and they came with 205 45 R16 Champiro tyres on them. Luckily (as it turned out) the tyres are all pretty shot so replacement with 4 new 205 50 R16s will probably cure this problem.

Repairing the Radio Aerial

When we bought the car, a shorter radio aerial was attached to its screw-terminal mount on the roof via electrical tape. It's a fairly common that these whip aerials get mangled by car washes or snapped off by vandals.

The previous owner was kind enough to leave the car's original aerial shaft in the back of the car and once the broken part of the terminal was unscrewed from it, it was re-usable.

I sourced the roof-mounted terminal from a scrap car and removal / re-fit involves the following:

• Remove the interior light diffuser from the fitting in the headliner by getting your fingernails behind it and flexing it forward
• Remove the bulb holder by undoing two TORX screws
• Prize the silver metal cover from the plug at centre of the underneath of the aerial mount. It's a bit fiddly but you can probably get a thin screwdriver under it where the wire enters
• Undo the 8mm nut which secures the plug to the mount
• Undo the three other 8mm nuts
• The Mount can now be removed upwards and may be stuck to the roof. You may need to get a fingernail or two under it to prize it free.

Re-fitting it pretty much the reverse...

Installing a CD Player

This car came with a Phillips-derived R770 radio cassette unit. Whilst it was working OK, we decided that we needed a CD Player at the very least. We decided that we'd like to keep the car looking as original as possible so we decided to source an original-fit CD Player that was the other option when the car was new.

This unit is made by Blaupunkt and has a BMW-type connector on the back of it. The hope was that we would be able to keep the steering wheel controls working but as you'll see later, this wasn't to be.

I sourced the CD Player from my local scrapper and bought an ISO->BMW convertor lead from InCarExpress who are based in Cambridge. The part number was PC3211.

Once I had the parts to hand, I found out that the space for the stereo in the dash is an extremely tight fit. The Philips unit came out with a bit of a struggle, and there was no way that the new unit AND the adaptor loom was going to fit back there. The solution is to remove the glovebox and hack-saw off the back left corner of the dash moulding and then you can plug the loom into the adaptor outside of the radio slot, in the space next to the glove box. Don't forget to tidy up or tape the sharp edges that you create with the saw though.

The Blaupunkt CD Player doesn't need any cradle or cage to fit it into position (so if you're doing this job on your own car, remove the one that the R770 used), just screw the two allen-bolts down to secure it.

The only other problem I had was that these units are security-coded but with the serial number you can obtain the code online (for a fee) or if you're a bit IT-savvy you can download a code generator via Bit Torrent.

The CD player looks like it was there from day one, and it sounds a lot better than the R770, too. The only thing is that my steering wheel controls no longer work - I guess there's something different about the connections or how the buttons work between the Blaupunkt and Philips radios.

Welcome

Welcome to my new Blog about the Rover 45 2.0TD Impression S that my partner and I bought in March 2011. This car came to us with two previous owners and nearly 70k miles on the clock. It also had the following faults which will be covered in following posts:

ABS triggering on slow braking
Radio Aerial broken off
Noisy tyres / bearing at the rear
Metallic Rattling under the gearlever somewhere
Radio / Cassette (OK - not a fault but a CD player is a requirement at the very least!)
Dislodged Air-intake hose
Air-con doesn't blow cold.

I'm aiming to catalogue all the repairs and modifications that I've undertaken in the hope of helping others with the same issues.

I'll leave you for now with a few pictures of the car as it was advertised.