RIP Rover 218 SD Turbo (1995 N reg)

This post might not interest some of you as it has no relation to my normal blog posts, but this car was my first car and at the time, despite it being an old car, I had felt like it was my most prized possession. It’s was such an important part of my first years of being a driver that I felt the need to make this post.
It may have been almost worthless in monetary value, but to me it was priceless. The almost 6 years I had this car is no where near as long enough as I wanted to have it for. As much as I don’t want to accept that it is as good as dead, I guess I can accept the fact that for the £300 I paid for it, I have had more than my money’s worth out of it.
I’ve always known I’ve been attached to this car, but it was not until it was time to let go that I have really realised the full extent to which I was attached to this car. I never thought I would be sad enough to be so attached to what in reality is just a materialistic object lol.
Despite it’s age and the water leak that had gotten worse as of late,  it has always run well and has been completely reliable. In the entire time I have had it this was its first time to break down.

Time of death: approximately 5:30pm GMT 11/01/2012 while I was on my way home from work (exactly 4 days after buying 2 brand new tyres for the front wheels as my MOT was supposed to be on 14/01/2012)

Place of death:
I ended up at the white circle on the image and was blocking the turn on the right. I didn’t have enough momentum left to get past the turn. It was quite awkward seeing all the angry people trying to get past. Cars could squeeze into the turn, but not the bus that stopped behind me for a while before realising that he had no choice but to go an alternate route. After what seemed like a lifetime, two very nice people stopped and gave me a little push past the turn so at least that wasn’t blocked. Then suddenly I saw one of the managers from my workplace come running over. It was quite relieving to see a familiar face lol. He decided that it would be best to get me onto the pavement out of the busy rush hour traffic, so as soon as there was a gap they pushed me across my lane, across the bus lane and up the pavement. He waited with me until my dad arrived.

Cause of death:
So eventually that night the car got towed back to my home. I didn’t find out the extent of the damage until my uncle came this morning to take the thing apart. I was so desperate to just know how bad it was for the rest of the week after it happened. Unfortunately I found out today that it was a lot worse than any of us had expected.
My dad assumed that it was the cam belt that had snapped. However after looking at the damage, my uncle feels it was more likely that something down in the engine had gone causing everything to jam up (that’s the brief non mechanic lingo version of the story lol as I don’t know enough about the subject to repeat what he said correctly). Due to this the cam shaft could not spin around as it should do and the force of it being stopped in motion caused it to break in two places. There wasn’t much point taking the rest of the engine apart to see what other damage is inside as basically the engine is ruined anyway, and therefore the cost of repair is worth more than buying a new car.

Gutted……