Work in progress: 620ti Of Doom!

Been in loads of 'real' cars you cheeky git :D

You have agw_01 to thank for my endless T series turbo based threads... it was his mental machine that prompted me to get the Ti in the first place! :cool:
 
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Just a bit of an update, car is back on the road and has been running as my daily for the last couple of weeks.

Things I've done since getting it back:

- Oil and filter change
At the moment it's running on cheap oil to move some of the rubbish that's accumulated from the short runs it's had. Will be changed for Miller's at the end of the month.

- Spark plugs
Running on Kia plugs... £4 a set and they're the Rover recommended OEM ones too :D
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- Water leak
When I had the car last time, it was slowly losing coolant but was never enough to be an issue - about 100ml a week or thereabouts.
These were the cause (from a member of MG-Rover.org):
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In the picture, note the blanks which aren't sealing properly. The diesel variant of the Rover 600 uses 2 temperature sensors in the radiator, and instead of making 2 different radiators, one with the sensors for the diesel and one without for the Ti, as Rover originally did, 3rd party manfacturers fit blanks to the ones sold for the Ti.

These were leaking badly, so I got the sensors from a 600 diesel radiator and fitted them, leaving them disconnected.
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- Car wanders, and doesn't handle well on fast corners.
Yes it's a boat, but steps can be taken to rectify as when new they handled pretty well for a barge.

I give you, front anti-roll bar links!
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Swapped these, the originals were well and truly knackered. Improved things to no end! :D

- Front tyres worn, and cracked due to age.
Swapped out the knackered Pirelli P6000s for some pretty good Nexen CP641s, seem to grip well and keep the power down.

- OEM exhaust corroded, and not particularly attractive.
Picked up a full Mongoose catback system from someone breaking their 600 for the princely sum of £50. Bargain! Set about fitting it:
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Sorted.
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- Gash Lockwood dials
These were fitted by the previous owner, byebye you go!
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...Better
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The only other issue I had (and I got £50 off for this...) was that it would idle horribly, constantly hunting. I noticed the TPS wiring was loose... the metal retaining pin was missing! 50p later all sorted.

Got to say, for what is supposedly a naff car by a company that doesn't know how to make cars they've done pretty well... ;)

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All going well, for now! :)
 
Good effort Mat. You seem to be heading in the right direction.

Car is looking (and sounding :D) good.

Just do me a favour... I'm not going to harp on at you about 1st gear (hell, I've killed 2 standard boxes) but please make sure you give it 15 minutes before giving it beans.
 
Must say I do like these, they're pretty unassuming!

How easy is it to get more power out of them? What are the risks?

And are you FINALLY getting rid of the bloody diesel? :p
 
I'll answer that one. Mat will probably come in and tell you how much weaker the later engines are compared to the earlier ones when in reality, they're both as bad as each other :p

They're pretty robust if you keep the boost sensible. The T series (unlike the previous M series) was built on a budget. They came out of the factory producing 197bhp @ 11.7psi and that's pretty much all that Rover spec'd them to.

There have been cases of people running 14psi for months and having no issues whereas other people have been known to hole pistons or kill the ring lands at 13psi.

Strap a bigger turbo on, change the exhaust and fit a decent FMIC and you should gain around 40-50bhp without increasing the boost. None of this remap rubbish :p

After that, you can do some headwork and perhaps look into aftermarket management. The standard ECU runs very rich, so leaning this out a little bit should unlock a few horsepower. With good mapping, a good spec and a healthy engine, you should see around 270bhp without having to increase the boost.

To get past this point, you generally have to make the move to forged internals.
 
Good points Andy :)

I wait to give it beef, but my logic for my 'fast' use of first gear is that I'm not on a boost controller yet, so the BMV should save my differential bearings :p

The diesel is being taken off the road as of the 25th May, the water leak from the cracked head is getting sorted amongst other things.

I've been plodding round in this all morning doing errands in slow traffic, and to be honest I don't care if it only does 25mpg, it's damn good to drive, has a nice roomy cabin and I have no idea why I sold it. Think it's here to stay, IMO these are pretty under-rated. :)

We're not talking anything like BMW quality, but for 700 quid I like :D
 
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