A friend of mine and me bought a 1995 Mk3 Cabriolet a few weeks ago, whothout even knowing this car was famous !
Famous because it had been posted on AROnline a few years ago when it was found in Germany being almost 20 years old bot had only 58 km on the clock! (36 miles). The story can be found here: http://www.aronline.co.uk/blogs/news/ne ... d-germany/
The owner we bought it from had to go through some loops in order to get a registration on the car. When he first brought it in for registration they declared it as being a "new" car, so it had to apply to all the 2014 laws of emissions and crash safety and so on.
I'll explain how they got it registered later..
Now, the car is in Holland, and despite it being an almost new car (former owner has done aroune 1200 miles in it) there are quite a few things that need to be done before it can be used. At first we obviously want to replace the timing belt, since that's only done around 1200 miels, but it IS 22 years old now!
The rear brakes apparently tend to lock up after a short trip, since it's not yet registered in Holland we haven't been able to drive it for longer than up and down the street. To be save we will have a look at the rear brakes and probably replace both wheel cylinders.
Some optical work needs doing too.. Tha car has been stored under a car port for several years, which hasn't really approved the look of the paintwork. Since this friend of mine is very good with a polishing machine I'm pretty convinced it will be shiny again soon!
Biggest job to do is to replace the roof, since being stored under a carport hasn't helped keeping the roof in a good shape, so it has several rips and holes at the moment. We already ordered a new mohair roof for it and hope to fit that within the next few weeks.
Since the car came with the 4 million pages official Rover workshop manual (in German!), that won't be too difficult to sort out hopefully..
Under the hood there's a lot of things and pieces that have started to rust from standing outside. Small things like the upper radiator brackets, the plate under the servo and the bracket holding the battery have become brown from surface rust, so these things will be replaced or refurbished soon..
I'll try to keep posting pics of the car and hope to meet some of you at an event somewhere in the UK!
