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Rover 400 - The Civic Conversion Project


Jones
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9 hours ago, burbleboy said:

I misread and thought you were just changing Honda interior into Rover. Full parts swop? WTF?

 

Buy a VTI instead?

 


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

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3 hours ago, Jones said:


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

 

Fair doos mate ;) 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Huge amount of work done there mate, fair play to you. Is that the original rover front wings still fitted? I always thought they were a different shape around the headlight/ indicator? Bummer about the radiator but these things always happen. Funny seeing the swapped over parts going onto the civic too, means you now have a Ronda and a Hover on your drive! Lol

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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.

 

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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.

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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.

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Setting up the gazebo as my DIY spray booth.

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Car all cleaned and first coat of matte black base.

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Second coat on and starting to look good.

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Third coat of matte black.

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Final coat and ready to dry over night.

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Time to start on the pearl coats. Midnight blue pearl mixed in to 50:50 matte clear and glossifier.

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Dust coat already covering the black.

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First wet coat applied.

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Second wet coat.

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Final coats applied and looking awesome.

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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.
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Jap2Jap Monthly Meet at Botany Bay, showing off my work.

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Before & After

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Thanks for viewing!

 

Few more updates to come on exhaust, springs and any other mods I do.

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