AndyW

It can go anywhere between the radiator and the water pump, although the closer to the pump the better to minimise the amount of water in the warm-up loop. My car had a U hose from the water pump to a long alloy pipe coming from the bottom front of the radiator. The U hose had a wear mark from rubbing on the exhaust manifold, so I replaced it with two 90 bends and put the Tee piece between them.

Afraid I can’t make this weekend. Maybe next time.

I think I used 17mm ID hose for the pipe work as that fitted nicely onto the metal water rail, and also goes nicely over a 15mm copper plumbing tee for the joint under the bottle. I also replaced all my previous mish-mash of different sized hoses to the top and bottom of the rad with 32mm silicon hoses and alloy pipes. Avoids having to use reducers to match everything up.

Hi Dean, It looks like we've all done it in a similar way. I couldn't find a T piece with the right size of spout, so I used a 32/32/25 mm alloy tee (from ASH). I inserted this in the bottom hose before the waterpump. On the 25mm outlet I put a 25>19 mm silicon hose reducer, which connects to some 17mm heater hose with a plastic joiner. This goes to a T piece under the expansion bottle with a short length up to the bottle, and another length round to the end of the water rail by the distributor. As my water rail was in good condition I left it on, as it also holds the dipstick tube. Andy

Hi Peter, many thanks for the offer, but I'll defer that one for now. Since I cleaned up the front calipers and sliders, and replaced the seized rear drum cylinders, the overall braking balance is vastly improved, and I'm not seeing the front lockup now. So maybe I've fixed it. I'll drive it for a bit and see how it feels before I get into checking disc runout.

Solved the issue with the lack of wear on the rear brake shoes. 3 of the 4 pistons were seized in the cylinders so I had no rear braking effort at all! Surprised to find that my local motor factor had some Sierra drum brake cylinders on the shelf, so a quick replacement and that’s fixed. Now to get back to investigating the front disc lockup.

Have to admit that I found the shoe adjuster on that wheel looked to have jammed. The ratchet teeth on the cam were filled with something like paint (not rust) which was stopping it moving. Cleaned it up and it now moves ok, so maybe I’ve rectified that issue. All four wheels have their own brake pipe from the master cylinder, so the locking wheel isn’t shared. Is there an easy way to check disc run out as I don’t have a gauge? I can check the thickness at various places round the rim, although the discs and pads have only done 6k miles so shouldn’t really be worn.

I’ve now fully stripped and checked over my brakes - removed and cleaned the front callipers and pads, removed rear drums and shoes, cleaned and reset the adjuster mechanisms, put copper grease on all contact points, and changed the brake fluid and bled the system. The discs and drums were not rusty or scored, the pads and shoes were all in good condition with plenty of material left, and all the brake cylinder seals looked good with no leaks, although I didn’t check that the cylinders were free to move. All the brake pipes, unions and rubber hoses also looked good. A test drive afterwards showed there was little or no improvement to my original issue. The left front brake still locks under medium-heavy braking. Oddly the brake shoes on the right rear had hardly any wear at all as they still had sanding marks on the surfaces presumably from when the last owner fitted them. So it looks as if the right rear brake has not been working much (or at all?). Would this have any affect on the diagonally opposite front brake? Any other ideas I can check?.

Hi Ivan, Al will correct me if I'm wrong but I think he's still running the standard RH cooling system with the heater return pipe over the engine to the top centre radiator connection. He hasn't yet got round to changing to my redesign.

You need to have a feed from the bottom of the expansion bottle back into the cooling system. That allows the system to refill when it cools. The small diameter pipes off the side of the bottle are really only there to bleed air out the system.

Sounds about right Dean. I've got an 88 degree water thermostat and the engine generally runs around 82 - 92 when warmed up. I've got my fan thermostat set to kick in at about 92, which it only does when stationary or in slow traffic.

This is how I re-plumbed my coolant system.

You are correct that the 3 pipes off the thermostat housing are for top hose to rad, metal rail over exhaust to feed the heater and expansion bottle (your 3rd photo), and the small hose is for expansion and air bleed back to the expansion bottle (your 1st photo). In the original plumbing for my Superspec, the heater return pipe was tee'd from the bottom of the expansion bottle, and went back across the top of the engine to the top of the radiator. I did away with this pipe and instead plumbed the return into the bottom hose near the waterpump. This means you are not circulating the whole of the cold radiator during engine warmup. My car now warms up in less than half the time. You need to have 2 circuits in the cooling system, which are switched by the thermostat: - main loop, large capacity, large bore hoses, from top of engine and thermostat through the radiator and back into the water pump. This is for main engine cooling. - secondary loop, small capacity, small bore hoses, also from top of engine and thermostat and returning back into the water pump. This is for quick engine warmup when the thermostat is closed, and also feeds the heater. If you don't have a heater (I don't) you should connect the heater feed and return hoses to make a small loop back into the bottom hose to bypass the radiator and give you quicker engine warmup. In the photo of the blue Rover engine it looks like they have changed the radiator and also done away with the expansion bottle. The top tank on the radiator allows for expansion, and the rad cap looks to have an overflow hose either to a catch bottle or venting to the ground. I guess that's another way of doing it, but I'd still prefer to have a proper expansion bottle for the pressurised coolant system. Also they seem to have plumbed the heater return into the air bleed on top of the thermostat housing. That doesn't look right to me - it should feed back into the waterpump intake.

When I rewired my Superspec last year I built a fuse and relay board from an ABS sheet - actually the base cut from a large rectangular paint bucket! I looked at mounting it on the inside of the passenger footwell either on the back of the firewall or on the side of the scuttle, but decided access would be too difficult. In the end I put it under the bonnet lengthways next to the coolant bottle and battery on the nearside of the engine bay, and fixed to the firewall and battery tray. No cover on mine but the two led fuse holders have clip on clear covers for protection.

I've got 2 RH brochures that indicate the first batch of Superspec kits (2003-2004) were sold as rolling chassis with Rover engine, gearbox, diff, floor pan, suspension, steering and wheels all fitted. Later they were also offered as separate unbuilt chassis and with a choice of engines. If you look at your engine number on the block under the rear exhaust port, you can work out it's approximate age and which Rover car the engine would have been made for. See post... https://www.rhocar.org/index.php?/forums/topic/24891-rover-engine-codes/&do=findComment&comment=377578