Heater Resistor Repaired

After a rather uneventful day at work, I was almost done with my commute when I noticed that the heater I had set to stage 1 wasn't actually doing anything. I initially thought it might be a dodgy heater unit.

After a little investigation, it appeared that my heater resistors had gone (apparently very common in Rovers), thankfully this is a piece of cake to fix. Went on ebay and ordered a REZPAX repair kit for about £7. For anyone that has this problem, they have an instructional .pdf that might be of some use. Check out the link below.


How to fix MG ZR / Rover 25 heater resistors


To get at the heater resistor pack the glove box had to come out, so that was the first job. Then out with the resistor pack. This is what I was greeted with. It's not very clear in the second one, but you can just make out that the nearest resistor is split two coils from the left end.



Next I snipped off the old resistors and broke out the new set. (I forgot to take a picture of the new set not attached so I nabbed REZPAX image, my kit looked identical to the picture). Then just soldered them on. Refitted it and jobs a good'en, all settings work fine. Another plus is the resistors look a little better in quality too, so shouldn't go again.




Door Card Clips Replaced

Over the winter a couple of clips broke that hold the door card to the door frame. Apparently this is a common thing with Rovers, so I ordered a few off of ebay.

Got 10 for something like £2.50 posted, cheap as chips.






First job, get the door card off. If you want to know how I did that, take a look at my door card removal guide here - Door Cards - Removal and Refitting

After fetching the door card off, I noticed that one clip (the broken one) was still stuck in the door. You could also see that almost all of the clips were a different type. As I had bought 10, I decided to swap them all out for some new ones. Compared to the ones that were on it, the new ones looked a lot meatier too. After swapping them all out, I just put the door card back on and all is well. Holds nice and tight against the door.


Broken Clip



Mixed Old Clips



New Clips


75000 Mile Service

Service time, long over due as a result of mother nature.

Pretty big one this time, decided to refresh a few elements.

The full list of what's been done;

  • New radiator
  • Coolant flush and replaced with O.A.T + water (1:1 mix)
  • Oil changed for Mobile Super 2000
  • Oil filter changed for a new HOF213 halfords part
  • Wynn's Hydraulic valve lifter treatment added.



First up was to change the radiator over. I picked up a brand new one off of ebay dirt cheap, under £30. So all hoses off and out came the old one. Which on inspection after removal, was considerably worse than I thought it was. As you can see from the pictures below it was pretty corroded, with blue tinge's all over, probably coolant.

Here are some pictures of the old one and the shiny new one. (Excuse the state of my car in the picture of the radiator fitted)






Whilst the radiator was off, I took the chance to flush the coolant system. Since I had bought it, it had the wrong type of coolant in it (unbeknownst to me). So out came the hose and flushing began. All signs were good as only clear water came out, no mayo/hgf signs. Then with the radiator fitted, the new O.A.T coolant was added. The bleed screw was a bit of a bugger to locate, for your (and my) information a picture of it is below.




All changed the engine runs slightly quieter, as always with a service, and stays at the right temperature. So all-in-all a successful service. 

For the price of a new one, I'd definitely recommend changing your radiator, judging by mine yours could end up being quite a lot worse than you thought.

OMP Strut Brace

I've been after a strut brace for some time now, to add a bit of rigidity to the front end, finally got round to it and picked one up second hand.

I bought an OMP strut brace, which some eagle eyed readers will notice is mounted the wrong* way up, however the way I have it means it doesn't rub on anything in the engine bay. The correct* way up would have resulted in quite substantial rubbing on the coolant reservoir, to the extent it simply didn't fit.

The paintwork isn't great, but that's not a problem because I'm planning to respray it Solar Red during the summer.

As for the handling gains it brings, I would definitely encourage people to fit one. I noticed quite a good increase in grip and overall body roll reduction. It gets the much coveted two thumbs up award from me.

Here's some pictures of it fitted (please excuse the dirty engine bay,...and the high coolant level, I had just flushed the coolant so it hadn't settled yet).