poor old Rover.... (Diesel non-starter)
 

Help please!
I bought my 75 Classic CDT a couple of years back - it was first registered Dec 2000 on X reg. It had 50K miles on the clock and I picked it up in mint condition for £4K cash. I have to say I have been really pleased with it - it has never had any problem; regularly serviced every 10K miles and a new battery recently, it's now covered 120K miles and still runs like a dream...

BUT....a couple of weeks ago I noticed that it would cut out on round-a-bouts then restart again on the straight! Weird but I ignored it (fool..!). The other day during heavy rain I started it and drove a few miles when it cut out entirely. I looked around the car and noticed the passenger footwell was soaking so I looked in the fuse are and noticed water dripping through from the dash area. The AA came, couldn't fix it, and had to drag me off the motorway.
I now realise after discovering this forum that there is a weak spot with the Plenum drains which clog up and somehow water then enters the EMS. If only I'd known about this beforehand! Because the dealer SMC in High Wycombe advises that a replacement EMS is required at aprox £1K all in! They're aving a larf surely? But no, I discover that I can't simply "aquire" one of these second hand, but a new one has to be bought and coded.
Then I discovered Best of British Rover Spares on ebay & based in Birmingham and they say they if I can get the car to them (god knows how) they will do the job for some £800.
The maths on this appears to make an otherwise perfect running car only good for the scrap heap; I know you shouldn't get emotionally attached to a car but this hurts!

So, if you're still with me on this, my first question is, is there another alternative or do I have to accept the scrapping option?

If I do have to just write my beloved Rover off, I would certainly go for another...my next dilemmas/questions therefore are:
1. Diesel or Petrol (I do about 20K miles pa and sit at about 90mph on the motorway) ?
2. I realise from sifting through the forums that I must avoid the 1.8, but if petrol, then 2.0 or 2.5 ?
It appears that petrol are cheaper to buy than diesel - I see these at aprox £3.5K-£4k with 35K miles which still seems an awful lot of car for the price. I don't really mind if saloon or estate, and although my present is manual I would go auto happily.
3. What about servicing costs and likely failures/faults with either variant (cam belt vs chain etc etc)?

Any help and advice would be really appreciated as I fully intend to stay within the Rover clan, but just can't make an informed decision about what to do!

Thanks,
James

Welcome along....get your ECU out and send it to the ECUDoctor, he has a good success rate of rescuing drowned ECU's

As David says try ECU Doctor they are very Good and successful most of the time.
The Plenums is an area that must be kept an eye on and there is several Threads on this on here
plus a Spyhole Mod to make things easier to check.
Sorry to hear of your Problems.
Welcome to the Club.

This looks great and certainly worth a try before the scrapping option. Now I just need to work out how to get my car from SMC in High Wycombe to Gloucestershire - get the missus to tow me in her 4x4 cross country at the weekend me thinks yuk!

As said above really. Where abouts in the country are you as there may be members local to you who could help out but unfortunately it does sound like you need the ECU Doctor on this one.

If you do resort to needing a new car then plenty of choice out there but let's see if we can fix this one up first, eh? ;) :) Oh, and welcome to the club ;)

I believe you can post the ECU to them. Best give them a phone call and see what they say. :)

Are you not with a motoring organization AA, RAC etc ?

As Simon says, you post the ECU off to them, they don't need the whole car.

Thanks Greeners. Long story, but AA man initially took me & car to their approved Nationwide depot 10PM at night! Turned out next day that they didn't employ an auto electrician. So I blagged them to take it to SMC High Wycombe which they eventually did. So I can't really expect them now to bring it all the way back to me at home! Also I can't start getting SMC to post off the ECU to a third party really...! No, now I know what I have learned through this Forum I really just want to get the car back home & then go through the process of sending it off etc and hoping it can be repaired.
Another thing though, the guy at SMC said even if they were to replace the ECU it could be that the water/soaking has taken out other electrics also (he mentioned injectors and other things) which sounded like an open cheque-book to me; but perhaps they just wanted me to take their preferred option of trading it in against one on their forecourt though!:lol: