Jones

Rover owners are savage. They don't realise none of the Rover cars built after the P5 were actually rovers at all. Most of them came from Hondas, and even the Rover 75, the car that saved the company, was just a BMW. Yeah the engine died on the red one and the original build wasn't worth saving. Too much rust. I drive a Mk4 Golf GTI now, but wouldn't mind an Aerodeck with a ZS facelift front end :) Aerodecks aren't easy to come by these days though. Bottom picture is my ZS 180 infront of a stock Rover 45 (Same car)

Well this is a blast from the past. Yeah the first iteration of the "Rover Civic" was full complete, both interior and exterior was completely converted. The second iteration was never complete and was reverted back to Rover. As with most of my cars, both ended up in the scrap.

I love how everybody on Civic5 is like , and the guys over at RoverTech are like lol

Conversion is complete. Just need some arch flares, spacers, a spoiler, lip kit, new tyres on my Lenzo RS5's and some paint.

Alright so I decided I would video log the entire process as best I could this time around, and so far I have 3 videos up. Check them all out here in this playlist:

I'll be doing satin white, with gold wheels and blue accents (Callipers, interior trim, engine hoses etc.)

Project has sadly come to an end. With a broken gearbox and PAS pump, as well some bad rusting on the rear roof lining, I decided to strip the entire car and start over with a fresh Rover 400. Only this time I have bought an SLDi which is a top of the range model (Minus the leather interior to make it a GSDi), which means electric windows, mirrors, air conditioning etc. etc. It's also the intercooled model, so a standard 105bhp as opposed to the 84bhp from the non-intercooled model. It also means it's electronic injected so I'll have to buy a chip-tuning box to release some ponies. They have the potential of getting up to 150bhp with the tuning box and a few mods. Unfortunately these engines weren't remappable until the Rover 45 models, but the chip tuning box will give a 20-25bhp increase as well as 20% torque increase so just as good. I have a few new ideas to put into the car so stay tuned.

Thanks. Just need to find myself a set of fog lights, parts for the Honda MB seem to be hard to come by.

Time for paint! So I've got all the interior done besides the door cards. I've fixed as much as the drivers side wing as I possibly could with the little talent I have with body fillter. I've fitted a VTI-S splitter on the front. Unfortunately I was unable to source a rear lip or side skirts but when I re-colour the car I'll try and get them before I paint it. For now, I think it looks pretty good anyway. I still need to fit the lowering springs and exhaust back box so it does look like it's on stilts right now. I went for matte black full dip base (Similar to Plasti Dip), with a Midnight Blue Pearl top coat, finishing off with a gloss coat. Unluckily, I did get runs in the gloss, and my poor masking skills did present a few hiccups on some of the edges, but it's a learning process and I will improve on these next time I come to paint it again. The Process Here is the car prior to paint. Setting up the gazebo as my DIY spray booth. Car all cleaned and first coat of matte black base. Second coat on and starting to look good. Third coat of matte black. Final coat and ready to dry over night. Time to start on the pearl coats. Midnight blue pearl mixed in to 50:50 matte clear and glossifier. Dust coat already covering the black. First wet coat applied. Second wet coat. Final coats applied and looking awesome. I took off the tail lights and did a few coats of PlastiDip Smoke before applying the gloss. The smoke dries as a matte finish the same as normal dip, and I wanted to go over them with gloss also. Gloss applied to car, and left to dry over night. Jap2Jap Monthly Meet at Botany Bay, showing off my work. Before & After Thanks for viewing! Few more updates to come on exhaust, springs and any other mods I do.

No Dave, the wings are different at the front due to the headlights being a different shape. Yeah it is quite funny to see the swaps. All of the interior has now been swapped over also. The hardest part was swapped the window regulators over as the Rover doesn't have the wiring for electric windows. The front dash was actually not that hard to do, despite it looking very intimidating. And, being that the donor car had a broken centre console, i had to plasti dip it to match. All that's left to do for the interior now is finish drilling holes in the door cards for the window winders. I've put the seats back in already and all the trim has also been refitted.

Headlights now wired up and working. I've just driven it off the driveway so we'll see how it goes

It wasn't originally my intention to do this project I had an Impreza I was doing up. Sure I could buy a VTI, or even a VTI-S, but I wanted to do something completely different. Plus, I like my turbo diesel, 250-300 miles per tank, It's pretty quick with the tuning I'm doing, and it's only done 87k

There was some bad rusted on the rear of the roof which has now been fixed. It's not a professional looking job but it works, and it's protected now. Rear ends have been swapped over finally, luckily the tail lights were exactly the same set up. Swapped over the lock mechanism, and the trim is also exactly the same fitting so that worked well also. I have finished the front end. It wasn't an easy task, but considering I decided not to swap over the slam panels, it turned out ok. If I was to ever do this project again (God knows why), I would definitely swap the slam panels over. So, here we have the whole front end stripped down. Next up, we needed to modify the slam panel. The centre had to be cut away to allow the bonnet to close fully. Now we have the bonnet fitted. The sides of the slam panel had to be trimmed away in order for the headlights to fit under. We now have the front end completed. A few mishaps happened during the assembly of the front end. Firstly, I snapped a bolt at the bottom of the drivers side wing, not a major issue but the door now catches on the wing. There might be just enough thread to fit a nut onto it, and hopefully solve that issue. While grinding a rounded torx bolt off the bottom of the radiator to fit the intercooler, I cut into the radiator, so a replacement radiator has been purchased. I won't be able to drive the car until I've changed it. It also comes with an intercooler, so now I have one spare which is always handy I guess. Tomorrows job will involve replacing the drivers side doors, and that will be the exterior completed. I also need to rewire the headlights as the loom is different on the Civic. Once I get hold of a Haynes manual I'll be able to know which wires to join to which.

I need the wiring diagram for headlights from a haynes manual. If anybody can take a picture/scan it for me that would be great.

Interior has now been stripped and will be going into the Rover tomorrow. Seats need a good clean though.

Yeah the slam panels look ever so slightly different. The bumper support bar looks like it bolts off so hopefully it will be a straight swap without changing slam panels over. I wasn't able to get my hands on a VTI-S front splitter. So I got a different one which doesn't look as mean but it's ok. I'm just trying to find a rear bumper splitter lip now. Let the fun begin lol

I think the hardest part of this build will be the front slam panel. If the headlights and bonnet aren't compatible, it's going to be a big job to remove and weld back into place.

When I had my Impreza, I did a pretty intense Nexus 7 install. It would be a waste not to be able to use it again. I was wondering if there are any double-din centre consoles out there I can buy?

Rover 400 The Civic Conversion Project I was working on my Impreza, when I decided I was going to get a cheap run-around while I took it off the road to do some work on it. I bought a Rover 400 for £200. I knew nothing about the cars, and had no idea it was even a turbo (As it wasn't listed as one on eBay). It was far too slow to be a turbo, but when I tried to insure it, they insisted it was a turbo model. After some inspection of the engine, I realised it was in fact a turbo, and I was then very interested in getting a bit more power and torque from the engine. I looked at some pictures of modified Rover 400's and they actually look half decent. It was then, I wanted to upgrade some of the body work, such as the facelift MG ZS rear end which has a flush boot lid. Somehow, I discovered that the Rover 400 shared exactly the same chassis as the Honda Civic MB 5 door, and that's when I decided to do a full exterior conversion. When I was able to get my hands on a rolling shell, I figured I'd also swap over the interior. The Rover 400 has a grey and wood effect interior, which is a bit too "grandad-esque" for my liking. As you can see from the image, the interior is exactly the same. Rover 400 Interior: Honda Civic MB Interior: Of course, it wouldn't be right to have an 86bhp car that looked fast, so I'll also be doing some engine tuning. Being that this is a mechanical injection mode, digital tuning such as tuning boxes and remapping is not possible. So I will be upping the fuel intake, fitting an intercooler, and fitting a new model turbo charger. The engine already has SDi injectors capable of increased fueling. I'm probably looking at increasing the power to around 130-150, with tons more torque. I'm picking up the Civic shell on Saturday, so stay tuned for updates.