MY TARGA PANELS LEAK, WHERE IS THE WATER GETTING IN?
Are you fed up of getting wet seats and carpet? Well it is quite common that over time the seals on your roof panels will perish and start to let water in.
To fix this just remove your targa panels from the car. You will need a TorxTM bit set and a tube of clear silcone sealent .
Remove the handles and the hooks (two of) then re-assemble using your sealent on the surface of the glass on the top to seal them back into place. Be very very carefull when you tighten the bolts as the panels might shatter if you over do it!!!
Once they are tight, run a bead of sealent around the edge of the each holder/handle etc then remove the excess with a wet sponge or finger etc and leave a while to dry.
Also another things to note is that the middle bar does have a correct way round. Make sure you clean the rubber seals weekly and inspect them for damage as they may need replacing.
MY WINDOWS WHISTLE, HOW DO I STOP IT?
Heres a 14 step guide how to fix this :
You will need some glass alignment blocks which you can get from any (ex-)Rover dealership.
1. Release the 3 studs securing the glass door seal to the door and remove the seal
2. Raise the window glass fully
3. Remove the door card and trim
4. Remove the plastic sheet from the door
5. Remove the 2 lower nuts from the door that hold the windows cassette in place
6. Turn alignment studs using a 4 mm allen key (bolts you’ve just undone) fully clockwise
7. Slacken the 5 upper mounting bolts
8. Fit the 3 glass alignment block to the glass on the corners .
9. Close the doors and attach some suction lifters to the glass .
10. With the help of a friend, lift the glass so that the blocks are inligh with the edge of the seal (top of the frame) then get your assistant to tighten up the two top bolt to 25Nm
11. With assiatance, press on the top edge of the glass so that the side seal face of the seal blocks touch the seal channel then turn the allighment bolts using your 4 mm allen key untill the flanges just contact the door innner panel
12. Fit the nuts back to these studs whilst hoilding the allen key in place to make sure it doesnt turn. Tighten again to 25Nm
13. Tighten the remianing upper bolts to 25Nm
14. Open the door, remove the alignment blocks and refit all your door panels/trim etc and the glass seal to the door with the studs etc.
You should now have perfectly alligned window glass that now shouldnt whistle.
HOW DO I FIT AN MGF REAR VIEW MIRROR?
Please see this link for a very good quide, by Mr Pinney, on how to improve the interior lighting in the front of a coupe:
http://forum.rover-coupe.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t;=10238
I’VE GOT LIMP WIND DEFLECTORS, HOW DO I FIX THIS?
How to get the spingy back in your deflectors:
1. All you need to do is unclip the deflectors. Behind the two you’ll find two torsion wires, each bent at right angles downwards and then outwards at the tip.
2. Using cutters, snip the torsion wire before the first bend, then use pliers to re-bend the wires shorter than they were, in the same orientation – Keep the cut off end as a guide and only do ONE SIDE at a time!
3. Then use a tiny drill or hot wire to make a new hole further along the deflector
(hold the deflector in place to mark the new position of the torsion wire).
4. Now, take the targa panels out, stick the newly bent wire in the newly made hole in the deflector.
5. Flip the deflectors over (away from you) to put torsion on the wire and clip the deflector into place. Hey presto, springy deflectors!
MY HEATERS DONT WORK ON ALL THE SETTINGS, HOW DO I FIX THIS?
Whats happened is the resistor pack which controls the fan speeds has failed. This is a simple fix.
Tools required:
-Stubby posidrive screwdriver
-Soldering iron and solder is ideal but not required
Ok, lets get going…
First thing is to remove your glovebox. Stick your head under the passenger side footwell, where the glove box is you will see two screws holding the box in place remove these. Now slowly lower the glove box, there is a gas strut in there which gives you a smooth opening movement which just comes off with one screw.
With the glove box removed, straight in front of you there will be the heater etc. On top of that is a plug that goes in on the top of the heater, unplug that and remove the two screws which hold the connector in place. You should now be able to remove the resistor pack.
Once you’ve done this it will be quite apparant whats broken! Now you can solder it back together. Alternatively, using a small pair or pliers, just wrap the metal wire around each other and crush them together.
All that remains is to refit the lot and you should have the all the heater postions back working.
WHAT IS A FDH MODEL?
An ‘FDH’ is a batch of about 300 turbo models that were built in 1995 and exported from the UK, destined for the Japanese Domestic Market. For one reason or another, the cars returned to the UK and were converted back to UK spec. The cars were first registered as new in September 1998 with the first registered owner being Rover themselves. Due to UK registration rules, the cars were unavailable for resale for 6 months and at that point they were then made available to Rover staff members.
The reason they have become commonly known as FDH models is they were registered almost consecutively and are all ‘N’ registered and the last three letters are ‘FDH’. They came in four colour/trim versions:
Tahiti Blue with Ash Grey leather and red piping
Tahiti Blue with Stone Beige leather and black piping
Nightfire Red with Stone Beige leather and black piping
Charcoal with Stone Beige leather and black piping
They all had full leather interiors, air conditioning and did not come supplied with a stereo due to the removal of the japanese radio. The also came with a flare holder in the passenger foot well which is a requirement in Japan, although a lot of the cars have had these removed by previous owners when they have been sold on.
A popular misconception is that these are special/limited edition models; they’re not. They are sought after purely because they came with all the UK optonal extras fitted and typically have lower mileages than equivalent 1995 turbos because they were stood up for 3 years before being sold.
HOW DO I REMOVE THE ROOF PANELS?
To remove the glass roof panels simply pull the latches at the back of the glass forwards and push them up, to tilt the glass. As you lift the latch up you can see behind the handle that the latch connects to the roof via a lock with a red tab. Push the red tab and you will be able to remove the latch from the lock. Now you can lift the back of the glass up and pull the whole glass away from the body of the car. With both sections removed, the centre bar also comes out by pushing the two red spring connectors at the front of the bar and lifting the centre bar out. All three sections fit in individual compartments in the roof glass bag which was supplied from new by Rover. The bag can then be put in the boot and will connect to the click connector tab on the driver’s side of the boot (offside).
When fitting the glass back in, ensure all components are locked in place and secure before driving off.