Anthon W - Rover 218 Coupe VVC

Anthon · **Postat:** 2008-06-18, 10:55

Yup, ive had another new car, pick it up next week.

Bit about it

1998 'S' Rover 218 Coupe with the Elise VVC engine
143bhp as standard
17" Alloys
Half Leather cream interior
Pioneer CD Headunit
60k miles
MOT till Jan 2009
No Tax.
Magnex Cat back system,
Tahiti Blue paint
T-Bar Roof

Grand Total of £600

well, thats lying, Ive part exxed one of my bikes for it, he gets the bike, i get the car AND cash :D

Heres a few photos of how it currently stands

PLANS

Install my Kenwood Motorised Screen & Boston Audio Component set

JL Audio 10" Sub to go in

Rear tinted windows

Sort out the small rust patches all over the car

Full Cream leather interior

lowering!!! it desperatly needs it - maybe coilovers for full adjustment to get it REAL low!

BMC Carbon enclosed induction kit

Remap (maybe an ITSFUN chip)

different wheels - maybe some wide as 15s or 16s to give it ace handling

like so 8x16" COmpomotive

Front upper strut brace (had one on my last rover - makes one hell of a difference)

Rear lower brace - tightens it up and keeps my boot free for the baby stuff!

And thats about i

ah! apart from my zatzy.com plate surrounds (and it needs new plates in decent nick) and a zatzy.com window sticker

Should be able to get it looking real nice and clean!

Bodywork like so

Smooth and clean!

Picking the car up next friday so that weekend will be spent detailing the interior and exterior, when new photos will appear!

Johnathan · **Postat:** 2008-06-18, 17:48

Looks nice that matey, loverly colour and your ideas sound good.

One thing though, IIRC a local elise specialist near my old house makes a lot of money taking those engines out of the elise and fitting rover ones because they are so prone to blowing up.

Their 'pile' of old elise engines were difficult to even give away.

Very nice looking motor though!

//J

Anthon · **Postat:** 2008-06-18, 18:14

Elise and VVC coupe/cabriolet

same engine mate,

alghouth some of the elise lumps (early only as later ones were toyotas) were not VVC, but standard K series 1800cc as used in the freelander.

Alghtouh you can get a conversion kit for the early elise to put a 1.8T 225 vag lump in, so im gussing with a little work, that there rover could have a audi S3 lump!

Johnathan · **Postat:** 2008-06-19, 12:35

Citat:

Ursprungligen postat av Anthon W

alghouth some of the elise lumps (early only as later ones were toyotas) were not VVC, but standard K series 1800cc as used in the freelander.

Yeah this is correct and what I meant. I did not say K series as I thought I had that denomination wrong, but it was in fact the earlier K series engines from R'Over' that they were fitting in place of the VVC engines in the Elise. Like I say this was a service they were offering aftermarket.

I also found out they were selling the elise engines off afterwards at 50quid a shot, so not quite struggling to give them away.

You could always bang the (god I probably get this letter wrong too), 'M' series engine in? This is the rover 620 ti engine, 2.0 turbo? 200hp :-)

anyways looks nice, will deffinately suit those COMP's

Anthon · **Postat:** 2008-06-19, 13:29

M series was the turbo from the Maestro and montegos tubbys

the T16 was the rover 200/400/600 and 800 2.0 turbo thats loosely based around the K-series. with 128lbft torque and 143bhp with a 6900rpm limit on the rovers and 7200 on the elise!

Therse a lad somewhere who has turbo'd the VVC though, with 330bhp (ish) so that is possbile, althogh i think supercharging is out of the question as there are two cambelts (one for the engine and one for the VVC system)

You can get the VVC power up quite alot with a few mods

Stainless manifold, de-cat and larger bore exhaust, enclosed induction with cold feed, ported and polished head, re-map, overbore, englarged and gas-flowed throttle body, chip, higher spec longer lift and duration cams and lowering the compression would see nearing 200bhp

although peoples with the T16 turbos are now aiming the 400bhp mark, but struggling with reliability. but i would imagine if the TT lump was an option, then a reliable 375bhp would be possible, with mappable boost settings obviously.

So i dunno, i may research all that as a 1.8 T rover coupe would be pretty special, especially with some nice bodymods, and those lush rims.

Maybe when the headgasket goes pop on this i'll look into this (as they all go pop eventually!)

They are K series, but a slightly different code - 18K4K is the code for the VVC

The thing is with VVC, its a variable valve control, as opposed to a cam control, but it is better for fuel comspumption, as more torque seems to be produced from the rover lumps than honda V-tecs meaning your not revving the shit out of it all the time

http://www.autozine.org/technical_sc...gine/vvt_4.htm

They used this lump in the following!

Elise 111
Caterham
MGF
MGTF
200 BRM
Coupe VVC

Unfortunatly ive found out theres no ItsFun chip for this engine, so my options are Emerald in the UK who do a piggy back map ecu, with usb function (waste of time for a street car) or superchips and the like.

Ive still to find out if they used a diff in the coupe though as the 200Vi BRM had a Torsen diff, which would obviosuly be nice!

EDIT!!!

In the later MG Z cars they did a 1.8 turbo, which was more reliable than the early T16 2.0 turbo, the 1.8 develops 160bhp after 2002, so maybe one of those may be an option at some point, and far cheaper and easier than the Audi lump!

Johnathan · **Postat:** 2008-06-19, 14:54

hmm well you obviously know a lot more about the whole Rover thing than I do and it seems you have some real good options there. I do agree with the headgaskets thing though, its only really a matter of time.

IIRC (again) they have liners in the block and really long head bolts? The MG Z engine sounds a great idea though, 160hp is a good start for a fwd car, 200hk is getting on towards wheels spin all the time. I remember the 620ti being a really hard car to get around corners at speed because it just wanted to go straight when it was on boost.

I always wanted a tubby version of what you are getting though, they look the business.

Anthon · **Postat:** 2008-06-20, 09:44

Yeh, the heads use nearly 300mm stretcher bolts, with is stupid, and the water pockets in the block are far to close to the liners,

its not a good design, although when they do work, they work very well. my 1600 estate had 115bhp and didnt hang around, the 1.8 N/A had 120bhp and even the 1.4 16v Metro GTi had 110bhp

they do another VVC engine in one of the MG range, - same engine as mine, 160bhp. So basically it has a different ecu and map on it, might be worth going after one of those first

i think 170bhp on a standard N/A lump is as far as i'd want to go though, so its quick, but handles nicely.

My mates 270bhp Focus RS is rediculous doesnt put the pwoer down even with the lsd, and suffers (as all focus') with terrible lift off oversteer.

My other mates mk2 Golf VR6 is now 3.0 bored out, and will have around 210bhp, but even that gets a bit understeery sometimes with all the weight over the front

Johnathan · **Postat:** 2008-06-20, 15:09

Yeah thats right, its nice having the power... If you can use it, its almost a waste otherwise.

170hp seems a fair level especially as it can't really weight too much can it? It should also not be too hard to hit if you're starting off with 160 either (as in the different management you mentioned).

..... Those graphics were posted yesterday btw!

Anthon · **Postat:** 2008-06-20, 17:33

Yeh, gonna start trying to track down the 160 management

gonna try and get hold of a set of the standard 15" wheels for now as i dont lke the tractor look it has currently

and gonna try and get a standard exhaust system instead of the brand new magnex, want it quiet for the time being for my child!

Citat:

Ursprungligen postat av Johnathan

..... Those graphics were posted yesterday btw!

Nice one

Anthon · **Postat:** 2008-06-29, 12:52

Right, so ive got the car, and its pretty dirty. Well, acutally its disguisting. Theres rust patches, scratches, corrosion.

I'll let the many photos do the talking.

A resprayed boot spoiler, flaking paint, bubbles. terrible.

The front half of the centre leather shows a quick clean. Most of the interior looks like this now!

The general state of the wheels, refurb coming very soon.

Ive taken out the Pioneer CD player, and stuck it in my wifes car. Put the Kenwood TV into mine, - wirings all a mess. Full stripdown of complete interior coming next sunday.

Bonus - JBL mids in the door, I will be re-locating these to the rear parcel shelf, to make way for my boston audio components, so the sound should be pretty mint when its sorted. Theres loads of amp cabling throughout the car, so i will tidy all that up, and get my JL Audio sub in.

But theres a growing list of bits that need sorting.

Tracking and wheel-balacing way off.
Wheels need refurb.
Fog lights dont work
Needs new rear cluster - ones cracked and been filled with clear silicon
Needs new sparkplugs
New stainless (supplied) downpipe needs fitting.
Brakes need re-bleeding

and so on. so it may take a while, but this car will get finished!

Johnathan · **Postat:** 2008-06-29, 17:01

Looks like you got a wee bit of work on there matey, nothing you can't handle
I'm sure!! Looking forward to seeing it develop!

Anthon · **Postat:** 2008-06-30, 16:10

Good News - wheels dont need balancing, had a look and the weights are on there

bad news - nearside front is dented from the back - causing tyre bulge -

new wheels needed!

Anthon · **Postat:** 2008-06-30, 19:39

Its amazing to think you can pop out for milk, and come back with new rims., also the tyres were worse than i thought, with 3 of them through to the thread!!!

unfortunatly the last wheel seems to have been put on using an airgun, and i just cant get the bolts out, resulting in braking ALL 3 of my socket wrenches, at least the rims look good!

Coming next, install and zatzy liscence plate surrounds

Johnathan · **Postat:** 2008-06-30, 21:55

Those look ace, Team Dynamics, Pro Race 1.2? (at least they look like anyways!)

You going to lower it at all then? I know it makes for life more tedious, but it would look great!!

I decided to put a sub back in the car now after listening to you getting going with this one.. lol

Anthon · **Postat:** 2008-06-30, 22:03

lmao, yup, your bang on mate - pro-race 1.2

15" of course to optimise handling (and make the brakes look a bit bigger!!!)

i will lower it at some point. just not sure when yet.

gonna be taking off the ar-bars, calipers and brake disc dust plates, and re-painting over the weekend also - ARB and calipers in red, brake disc dust plates in black.

towards the middle of the month im gonna paint the rocker cover also, not sure what colour yet

but i do have three more projects on the way

finshing the garden before baby pops out

the baby thats due to pop out

and the ongoing bandit