Newsletter of the Rover Saloon Touring Club of America

Labor day weekend 100th Anniversary Event

We mustered a fine turnout of Rovers, Land Rovers and Range Rovers for Rover’s 100th year of car production (Rover bicycle production preceded 1904 by several years. There were 13 Rover vehicles present, of which 9 were the saloons noted in our club name. Two Land Rovers were present in the form of projects that host Stephen Beer is working on. Land Rovers figure prominently in more than half of the century of Rover history, and the cars probably would not have survived as long without concurrent Land Rover production. Dermot Harvey also pointed out that it was very appropriate to have both early and late model Range Rovers present as David Bache was the lead designer of the Range Rover and Rover cars including the late P4, P5, P6 and SD1 models.

I think there was something for everyone at this low-key event. As people arrived we enjoyed Jo Manwell’s propah English afternoon tea with sandwiches and scones with Devonshire clotted cream and jam and discovered that the cream had come from very near Dermot’s home town in England. There was pletty of catching up with old Rover friends to do, meeting new RSTCA people, setting up tents for those camping over night, organizing the “arial” photo – thanks to one of Stephen’s Land Rovers that we used as a photographer’s perch, swapping Rover parts and tools, swimming, etc. It was a treat to see and talk about so many different Rovers, and, between Stephen’s other cars and several visits from his car-guy friends, were also Jaguars, an MG, a Caterham, Ferrari Dino and an Alfa Romeo Giulia to see.

Many of us piled into four of the Rovers for a drive of the local back roads following part of a rally that Stephen had laid out last year. At a stop along the way we swapped drivers and passengers among the cars so that everyone could try out a different Rover experience. I know that in our P4 one rider renewed old memories of driving P4s years ago and a first-time driver caught the P4 bug.

After the tour we enjoyed a barbecue and in the evening many of us sat around a campfire before camping or heading home. Many thanks to our hosts Stephen and Christine Beer and their extended family for hosting us at their home in the hills of the Hudson Valley near Red Hook, NY and thanks to everyone for bringing food and drink. Stephen may have summed up the event best: “It was a great hang.”

Rover 3 litre Tech: Gear Levers and Rear Spring Mounts

Steve Hall had an entertaining experience with his P5 that led to a project to restore the operation of the gear shift linkage. His daughter Jesse drove the car back from a local cruise night that they had been to and suddenly the gear lever came away from the floor in her hand!

Not wanting to discourage his daughter’s enthusiasm for Roving, Steve completely rebuilt the linkage using a new-old-stock gear lever and a new spherical seat from a collection of P5 parts bought from an old Rover service shop and. Unfortunately the ball on the bottom end of the new (40-year old) gear lever crumbled on the trip to the Red Hook, NY RSTCA event and then the linkage had a lot of slop in it again. He has now had a machinist turn down one of the levers and make a ball to pin and weld to the bottom end of the lever. He’ll keep us posted as to how this solution works out. It may be that a softer material for the bottom ball will be needed to minimize vibration in the gear lever.

The good news is that the P5 Mark II and III gear lever pivots in the same spherical seat that the P6 gear lever uses, so this part is readily available from Rover parts sources.

Another P5 upgrade that Steve told me about is replacing the rubber bushings on the rear spring mounts with Land Rover Series II engine mounts. The bushings on my P5 had broken away from their mountings, so I have this modification a try. I bought Land Rover mounts from Rovers North for about $10 apiece including nyloc nuts. I used a razor blade scraper to shave the remaining rubber off the triangular mounts that attach to the rear ends of the springs, then drilled the mounts to accept the stud on the Land Rover mount. It’s a little tricky to tighten down the two nuts inside the triangular mount, but it can be done by gripping an engine mount in a vise and allowing the triangular mount base to turn along with the nut and wrench. The Land Rover mounts are a little thicker than the original bushings, so the bushing assemblies don’t slide as far into the mounting slots on the body of the car, but they can be knocked in further after the car has been driven and the mounts settle into place.

P6 Carpet Tidbit

Here is an interesting item from the latest “Driving Force”, Magazine of the Rover P6 Drivers’ Club:

“The other day Mark Gray met by chance a lady who worked for the Rover at Solihull. She worked in the carpet department and was employed from the early sixties for 15 years, on P6 carpets. She told me that all the staff who worked cutting, shaping and stitching the carpets to fit our P6’s had to initial the back of the finished items.

This lady used the initials SB until 1967 when she got married and became ‘SQ’. Now this is where you come into the equation, because what we would like you all to do is to check the underside of your P6’s carpets for the initials and lets see if anyone has ‘SB’ or ‘SQ’, because we would like to reunite this lady with some of her work. Please contact Mark on the Club phone number or 07833 348030 or roverP6man@p6club.com if you find the initials of this lady on your carpets. Your editor is off it check his now!”

Well, she may not get to see her work in a US P6, but it might be fun to let Mark know if you find her initials.

Rover in the News

Here is a stranger-than-fiction article that Steve Hall came across on the on-line edition of his hometown newspaper in England, the “Borehamwood and Elstree Times” of October 8, 2004:

Deer Dragged for 20 miles and Survives

A baby deer is this week recovering after it was dragged more than 20 miles trapped inside the grill of a car. The fully grown Muntjac deer was discovered in Borehamwood last Wednesday, following the two-hour drive from Amersham. The driver - who has asked not to be named - was travelling to work at the Sainsbury's distribution centre in Elstree Way, when he heard a thumping sound at the front of his maroon-coloured Rover car.

He this week claimed to have thought he had hit a stone, and carried on driving. He arrived in Borehamwood at 6am and went into work as usual, apparently unaware that he had struck the two-year-old deer which was still trapped in the front grill of his car. It was not until two hours later that Borehamwood Fire Station received a call from a stunned co-worker who spotted the four-legged animal hanging out of the front of his colleague's Rover.

Sub-officer and incident commander, Bob Williams, said: "We couldn't believe our eyes when we arrived on the scene. We are called out to hundreds of animal-related incidents a week, but we have never seen anything quite like this before." Cautious of sending the already frightened deer into a further state of shock, the RSPCA was called to help with the two-hour rescue which involved fire officers unbolting part of the body work of the car in an attempt to free the animal.

RSPCA Animal Collection Officer Katie Smith said: "The animal was clearly very distressed from the ordeal, which could easily have killed her. "Her back legs were entirely wrapped around the engine, and I was completely baffled as to how she managed to become wedged in so tightly." She added: "We will be forever wondering how she got into the engine. "The driver must have thought he hit a pretty big stone." Following the rescue, amazingly the deer was treated for superficial scratches, before being released back into the wild at Trent Park in Potters Bar the very same day."