May have to break/scrap my gf's 45

Warning, rambling post, summary is as follows: bought Rover 45 late 2013, gf got ill and it sat in a garage much longer than intended, starter motor has died (I think), not viable for me to put it back on the road. Don't really want to scrap it but what else to do?





Had a frustrating weekend with a Rover 45 and thought I'd share with the forum. Background is that we bought this rather nice 02 plate Wedgwood Blue Rover 45 from a member on here for my gf or when she was about to start learning to drive, we drove it back from near Chester and put it in my gran's garage for what we thought would be a few months. Unfortunately my gf became ill and is not able to drive, not sure if she will ever be able to, and what with one thing and another the car has sat there since approx Nov 2013 as I haven't had the time and energy to sort it out until now.



Got there yesterday and first impressions weren't too bad - no damp or mould in the car, one tyre flat, others have held at least some pressure and no cracks in the sidewalls. Brakes rusted/seized of course, worry about that later says I. Battery can't be removed for charging (I did disconnect it before "hibernation" to try and save it but didn't expect it to be there so long so thought I'd charge it and see what happens) - it has an 075 battery instead of 063 and because it's larger it's sort of wedged in. I popped my charger on it overnight and it's holding charge today, good stuff.



But...will it start? Will it heck. Yesterday I put it down to the battery being flat or dead, I have a portable jump pack but it possibly doesn't have enough umph to fire the car up, can't jump it off another car as numpty here parked it nose in and there's no room. Today, with a freshly charged battery, I get the fuel pump priming (which I didn't get yesterday) but then just a rapid clicking sound, it doesn't even try to cough and fire up. Read it might be a bad earth, earth connections look good, tried jumping it from my uncle's Land Rover with a hefty set of jump leads, no dice. Eventually made a nasty grinding noise which sounds to me like the starter motor's had it. Not sure why that would've up and died sitting in a dry garage but there we go. Freed off the brakes by towing it backwards a little with the Landy, they're grinding when you rock the car back and forth but that's fairly standard I suppose, they may or may not clean up with some use.



Now, my quandary is, what to do with the car. I set aside a small amount of money to get it back on the road to use myself, but adding up what it may need rapidly blows that budget - new starter motor for sure, maybe new calipers (my ZS' calipers seized after about 4 months of inactivity), new discs/pads if they're beyond a cleanup, a new tyre or two or maybe a set depending what they're like, plus the standard stuff such as fluid & filter changes, and that's before putting it through an MOT.



This is mainly due to me not storing the car properly, so it's my own fault, to be honest I never expected what has happened to have had such a huge impact hence the Rover either not crossing my mind or me not having the time to sort it out. I'm thinking at the minute to swap any "better" bits into my mum's 45 (seats, steering wheel, one or two other bits) and then put it on here or the bay for spares/repairs, only other alternative is to scrap it. A great shame as it drove wonderfully on the journey home and had just had some work carried out before we bought it, but I don't have the time or money to get this back on the road.



Any thoughts on the best way to tackle this? Local scrappy is offering £108 to collect it, £123 if I leave the alloys on. I've storage space to break for spares but it's not really convenient to do so due to aforementioned lack of time and my mechanical skills aren't top notch, plus I'd still have to dispose of the shell etc in the end.

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