New Tourer Owner with rescued car!

[Tourist]

Hello all,

You may have seen some of my posts on the MG-Rover forum a little while ago so apologies if this is repetitious, but I wanted to say hello here and post a few pictures of my new Tourer.

Having owned a lot of MG / Rover products (Maestros, Montegos, 214i, MGB GT, Rover 45) I have been hankering after a 75 for some time and the need for a larger car than our 45 Saloon gave me the excuse to start looking for the right car. Finding a Diesel Tourer with low mileage for a reasonable price turned out to be a difficult task and after quite a lot of searching, I happened upon this:



That's the good side - here's the other side:





It looked easily repairable and with only 66k on the clock and a near-perfect MoT history I thought it worth the asking price of just over £1k, especially since it seemed to come with most of the parts needed to repair it - a wing, washer bottle and front indicator, and a full tank of diesel.

My other half and I nipped up to Wigan by train from Cambridge station late last month to pick the car up and drive it home, pausing only to check it was actually roadworthy and also gaffer-tape the front bumper and wing together. I also taxed it and moved my insurance over, rendering my trusty Rover 45 redundant but making our 200 mile journey home legal.

The car was overall in good condition, and drove very nicely. One bonus was that it came with a Rover tow bar albeit without the removable hitch. Once home, I set about dismantling the front end to see if repairing it was as simple as it looked.



It mostly was - except that the accident had damaged the headlight on that side and also bent the slam panel, which was a problem because the headlight mounts to it and would thus be out of alignment. The front bumper had also clearly been off in the past and whoever did it managed to lose all the fixings. I made a list of what I needed and made a trip to a local scrapper to avail myself of the parts I needed, including as luck would have it a facelift bumper in the right colour. I chose an earlier car to donate slam panel which also gave me the double horn set up including wiring.

It's all new back together as Rover intended, except that I still need to collect and fit a wing in the correct colour. I've also given it a full service including a replacement pollen filter and rodding through of the plenum drains, and fitted the DAB radio that was in my 45.



The final jobs I'd like to do are to fit a leather interior when I can eventually find one (I've looked at three so far but every one of them as had damaged rear seats) and also fix a couple of blemishes which will include replacing the rear bumper when I can find a good condition replacement with parking sensors. It will also get a complete clean inside when I've got the seats out - I've already removed the rear seat cover and washed it in the washing machine as it was pretty filthy so now I know about hog rings and how to apply them!

The final bit of good news is that I contacted the previous owner and yesterday received the spare key in the post. That'll save a bit of cash!

Cheers for now,

Simon.

[RogerHeinz57]

A good result, and well done for the rescue.
BTW - parts sourcing could be quite easy as your probably not too far from holland314 (Tom) He is a brilliant guy helpful and not greedy in his parts prices.

Enjoy your car !

[suffolk boy]

if you need a engine cover i have one you can have for nowt

[lady zed]

Well done you!!! Always good to see a 'rescue', looks like a great car, enjoy it

[Ravinder]

Good work.

[Scaramanga]

Nice car, glad to see you rescue it.

These are great cars, I'm sure you wont regret it

Keep us posted on the repair progress.

[Fifer]

It's good to see another rescued from the scrap yard. She looks like a very nice car too.

I hope she gives you many years of pleasant driving.

Fifer

[marinabrian]

Here is something that may interest you

LINK

Brian

Then again perhaps not ..........

[Tourist]

Thanks everyone for your replies - this really is a friendly place to hang out :-) glad you like the car as much as I do.

Cheers also to Brian for the link to the eBay wing - I'd seen it but the paintwork isn't quite up to scratch, but I did buy another one which looks to be a lot better.

A forum member is very kindly picking it up for me from the Midlands and bringing it down to Cambridge via the Pony Express. Very kind of him indeed and it means that within a week or so I shall have a car that's all one colour again.

While fitting the wing I'll also replace the wheel arch liner on the driver's side, along with all the fixings and also Waxoyl the whole front of the car to keep it nice and rust-free. It'll also give me the chance to re-mount the driver's side headlight a little higher (by about 5mm max) which will sort out the panel gaps on that corner, particularly the bonnet shut line.

Also, handily Groupon had a promotion for a £32 aircon service at ATS so that's another little job I'll get done.

I'll post some more pics once it's all the same colour and has had a bit of a wash and polish...

[mininuts]

Welcome to the club

You've got a lovely car there, well done for saving it