First car for g/f :- Rover 200

LordVader

LordVader

LordVader

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Joined
19 Oct 2002
Posts
804
Location
Leicester
Been looking around for a while now for the missus first car.

Having seen aload of naff KA's, fiestas etc etc i have always quite liked the rover 200's.

Shes approved the looks lol.

Went to look at one today from the trader seems in good nick :-

ROVER 200 1.4i 5 Door
Price: £895
Features:
76,000 miles
Manual
Blue
Petrol
Hatchback
1396 cc
Full Description:

Glossary of Terms

Hatchback, 11/1997, R reg. Tahiti Blue, power steering, airbags, alarm, stereo, electric windows, 76,000 miles, service history, April 2009 MOT. £895.

Anything i should look out for. I know its got the newer 16v Engine in it (not the v8 K-series)
 
v8 K-Series? lol :D

Check for the usual things. Pay special attention to the condition (and quantity of) coolant. See whether the head gasket has been changed or not and make sure that you check the oil and under the oil filler cap for any signs of head gasket failure
 
Hence why it's worth while making sure that there are no signs of it failing before you buy it

You could consider a warranty in case it fails

If you let the engine warm up before revving it hard and keep a very close eye on the coolant levels (check them weekly) then hopefully you should reduce the likelyhood of it failing
 
I paid about £240 for a year's warranty on my 2002 ZR with Warranty Direct

When I came to claim they were OK. A little slow in paying and I had to pay the garage then claim it back. They only paid for the headgasket and labour too - they didn't pay for the cambelt, coolant, oil or anything else and their maximum labour rate wasn't great
 
Hi Mate,

Bought a Rover 200 in Tahiti Blue (and with the 1.4 16v) for my girlfriend a few months back for £380 (bargain with 12months mot). Car is generally solid enough, rear wiper squirter has stopped working and thats it. Had no HG issues on hers either, and thats put 80K on now, I think the K-series issues arent so bad with the 1.4 because thats how it was originally designed. They bored the 1.4 to make the 1.6 which suffers worse!

Don't expect lightning performance, but its not to bad for getting around A-B. Good resource is http://forums.mg-rover.org
 
My friend had a rover 200 a couple of weeks ago, he decided to get rid of it as he had a problem every week (for 3 weeks running) on the third week of problems it was HGF, it was on 74k miles

He could never really explain what was wrong with it the first two times but the third time it was HGF..


edit: I don't want to scare you they aren't all bad just watch out for HGF!
 
must hate her if youre getting her a rover?

for a few hundred quid, the most unkillable car you can get is an old golf. £900 would have almost bought you my old mk2 with tons of spec and that car was prestine, it would outlast a rover about 50 times over
 
GRRRRRRRRRRr i hate looking for cars, finally find one kinda like and now put off it again :(

The cap to the anti-freeze was missing as well, although did say he topped it up the other day and just forgot to put it back on (he trying to find it now)
 
ajgoodfellow said:
I wouldn't drive it without the cap on! That's a sure fire way to loose coolant and low coolant usually leads to HGF
Click to expand...

Either that or its already got HGF and hes taken the cap of so the system doesn't pressurise and dump the coolant into the oil. Especially if he just did an oil + coolant change before you came to look at it.
 
Just ran a national search on autotrader, yep loads turned up. :) I was doing a local search <60 miles from postcode.

Most of them seem to have had a lot of work done, with recent part changes. Quite worrying. Not after one myself though.

What does ONO mean btw?
 
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