Rover800.Info

Thank you gentlemen, your thoughts are appreciated.

My Mondeo does indeed have the smart charging system. But it only works when the car is in regular use. I now only use it one week out of two, for two or three local runs.

It really has been hard to choose between the two cars. I had to spend around £200 to sort the Mondeo problems. Its now a good car but I live in a very hilly area and the Rover being manual gives me a better fuel consumption. The Mondeo averages around 30 locally and the Rover never seems to do less than 35. On a run, The Rover can manage 50 and the Mondeo 42. This is acceptable for an auto. Petrol is not a great expense when one only drives 3000 miles a year. Mondeo insurance costs my twice what I pay for the Rover.

I guess the reason I will keep the Rover is that it is worthless to anyone else and it has been a part of my life for 15 years and has never stranded me anywhere. Last year, I made a real effort to catch up with the maintenance so it is now mechanically excellent. I have complete confidence in it.

What others see as against the Mondeo I see as strengths. It has done 169k miles so it has had a long running in period. The engine and gearbox are perfect. I am the tenth owner in 15 years so the car may not have suited many people, although the last owner kept it three years. My experience has been that a new owner will spend out to service a car and rectify any defects.

So it has been a very hard choice for me to make and I may regret selling the Mondeo.. But hard choices come around once in a while and I cant duck the decision. If I had two parking spaces, I would be happy to keep both cars. If the car does not sell this month, then I will keep it till the MoT is due in March and then take things from there.

First really cold morning of the year here and I had to go out early this morning. Got a yellow warning light glowing on the dash by the engine temperature gauge. Turns out the car is equipped with a sensor for outside temperatures. Yellow is frost warning and if the temperature falls below freezing, the light turns Red. First car I have ever owned that has this feature, it is very handy as a reminder to be wary of black ice.

It's annoying when it changes temp while out and it beeps at you. Mine beeps at that many things it made me think something serious had happened to start with.

That's quite a common feature on cars these days Nick, i still tend to look at the outside temperature on the Rover to see what it is, any lower than 4C and there's a fair chance of black ice as that can form from about 3C downwards so i'm told.

That said it's a bit like the fuel gauge and light. You get used to seeing the gauge in a low place so familiarity breeds contempt almost and you tend to ignore it until the "Feed Me! Feed me NOW!" light starts burning its way into your retinas. I suppose the same could easily happen with the outside temperature display, you've seen it's -4C but carry on regardless, a warning light to alert you of increased danger could be a good idea! Maybe i'll have a play and see what i can rig on the Rover............

I put my Mondeo on Ebay last week and it sold for a very reasonable price. The buyer lives almost 300 miles away and with the weather the way it is, collection may take a week due travel. Woke up this morning to 2 inches of snow and more is on the way, that's quite unusual for Devon. Even my wheelie bin lid has frozen shut.

Once I had sorted out the niggles, the Mondeo turned out to be a decent car and with regards to build quality, I thought it was very good. Even with 169 thousand miles on the engine, it was quiet, responsive, used no oil or water, and did not overheat or leak oil like the Exxon Valdez. It was a very comfortable motorway cruiser. In a way, I shall miss it but it did teach me to evaluate my Rover once again, to value it properly and appreciate what I already had.

Well done on the sale Nick! Hope you made a profit (even if it was only pennies!) on it too.

It's that "grass isn't always greener" thing isn't it? I've sometimes thought of "jumping ship" and getting a newer Euro-blob like i expect most of us have at some point but always decided the "devil i know" is the better option. You've just proved the point in what seems to be an unbiased way.

Thank you Dave, I had been trying to shift it for 6 months, then a friend told me to put it on Ebay at £100 start. It got a bid straight away. The MoT is up on the 14th and when I added things up, the cost of the new test+road Tax+Insurance, I was looking at £600 and I would only do maybe 1000 miles in it in the coming year. So a no brainer that!

I cant see the buyer collecting it until next week as we have blizzard conditions here this morning in Devon. Up country, things must be very much worse. The high winds blow snow of the fields in Devon, onto lower lying roads so they get blocked easily. And the Council are cutting back on road clearance so as to have the cash to put into their Pension pots. Cynical? Me?

Cynical? Nah! Just saying it as it is i reckon Nick!

As i understand it, the councils are only obliged to grit main roads and bus routes - in other words if you live off the beaten track you're snookered! It's a case of "We're alright Jack, case-hardened excrement for the rest of you!"
I've errrrrrr.............. toned that down for the sake of politeness but i'm sure you'll work it out!

Just finished dinner tonight and there was a ding/dong on the doorbell. Two guys from Manchester to collect the Mondeo. Money changes hands, paperwork is signed. While one of them drinks a coffee, the other is outside shoveling the snow so the car can be shifted off the drive. He was a real grafter, no stranger to work. Handshakes all round and off they go.

At one time, it looked to me that I might show a hefty loss on that car. As things turned out, I broke
even and got back what I had spent on it. Strange how things turn out. I can now also claim back 5 months road tax..

I scratched my itch to try a Mondeo estate. Would I have another Mondeo? Yes, I think that they are much under appreciated cars. Much as the 800 series got a bad reputation because of dash lift and other easily corrected faults. So ends my Mondeo saga,

At least they waited for you to finish dinner Nick!

Surprised they made it there through all the weather but glad for your sake they did. You got your drive cleared for free into the bargain too!

If you get a good Mondeo, especially the Mk3, they can be very good cars. Get a bad one and they are truly awful. Not usually irretrievable but will cost far in excess of what the car is worth to bring a bad one back to a good standard. I suppose you could say that about almost any car really, That said, if you can buy it cheap enough and get whatever bits are needed at a sensible price and do much of the work yourself you can rescue most cars and they're still under their average value but it can be a very fine line!

At least you've scratched that Mondeo Estate shaped itch now!