Rover owners: Synergy....No Thanks.....

I was called to a non starting Rover 75 diesel on Friday.

The chap has owned the car for over five years and was quite distraught at being told "he'd be better off scrapping the car", despite having three separate garages "diagnose" the problem all it seems was lost.

Anyway, I duly T4'd his car and quickly got to the bottom of the problem, pre delivery fuel pressure too low for starting.

The customer had the day previously fitted a new UBP but this had not cured the issue, the original pump was fitted, and the low pressure problem persisted.

Following a conversation with Big Russ, the decision was made to renew the fuel filter, which after priming the fuel supply resulted in a successful start.

Now the fun started, Canbus communication to the IPK was defective, due to a fault within the ECM, so this was replaced with a service exchange unit, all faults cleared and the heathcheck began.

MAF readings were off the scale in terms of reading high, and the inlet air temperature was showing -5 degrees C.

The high pressure fuel rail readings were very erratic, and the fuel pressure regulator was drawing excessive current, so acoustic cover removed and the connections to the HP rail sensor checked.

So what did I find? the car was fitted with a Synergy unit, and the HP sensor wiring was making poor contact, due to the pins in the connector having been stretched, resulting in the poor running characteristics.

So as I had replaced the ECM, and the original tune was NNW001521, i.e. 116PS, the decision was made to upgrade the car with the 160 diesel tune.

One test drive later, and the owner of the car came back with a beaming smile, "You've given me a new car, it has never performed so smoothly and with that sort of power in all of the time I've owned it"

Now that in itself may have been enough for five hours of "fettling" but here is the icing on the cake.

When asked about the removed Synergy unit, the chap replied "Chuck it in the bin" I was a little surprised and said "you could sell it on Ebay?"

His reply was simple "you can have it if you want it, or in the bin it's going"

That was that dilemma answered then.

So here comes the crunch, the provenance of this particular car, a 116 Classic SE in Midnight Blue with a body coloured grille, TOC walnut dash upgrade, and aftermarket front fog lights, here are the pictures..........