car part

[chris99]

I owne a rover. And it need a new fan belt but no one sells them now. can anyone help me.

[SteveD]

Find a local breaker's yard and give them a ring (tell them the car's model and year of manufacture).

[Impret-Sir]

Im sorry, I dont mean to insult you, but are you really sure that no-one sells a fan belt for a Rover? I would have thought that places like Halfords would, at the very least, have plenty in still in stock, even if they were not getting any new stock in. there are so many Rover cars on the road, and the engines were used in lots of other cars too, I just cant believe that companies like Unipart do not make bits like fan belts any more. Have you tried doing a Google search for somthing like "Rover car parts", or similar?

[Impret-Sir]

for example, try here:- www.247spares.co.uk/rover-parts/

[Tim Baxter]

Rover spares were sold off to Caterpillar (literally as in bulldozer).  (just another few bob in somebody who no longer runs Rover's pocket) They have millions of tons of spares because they were stocked up in the belief (?) that Rover would not be shortly deceased.

Rover petrol engines are mainly now BMW

For my sins I recently purchased a new Rover and have been assured that spares (through Caterpillar) will be no problem. 

[KebabMeister]

Rover petrol engines are most definitely not BMW engines.  BMW may have owned Rover at one time but they still used Rover engines.

Any good car spares shop should stock the basic of things such as fan (alternator) belts, brake pads, oil filter, maybe fuel filters, spart plugs, etc.  (basically the service items).

Depending what model your Rover is, some parts are often shared with other makes too, so there should be spares available.

Also, any former Rover garage would still have stock in their parts department.  I would have thought they'd keep the stock and carry on servicing Rovers since they are still the Rover specialists, albeit not a franchise anymore.  I'll try and give my old work colleagues a ring at the Rover garages I used to work at and see what the score is.

Incidently, the K Series engine (used in most smaller engined Rovers) was also used in Caterhams (and older Lotus Elise?) so they should have parts available too.

[v64paul]

is'nt it the case that all vehicle manufacturers have to guarantee the availability of components for their product? ERF before the germans got involved used to distribute parts for bedford trucks. this was not a money spinner as apart from a few horse boxes and the m.o.d. no-one operated them anyway...

i think the term is end of life, i presume the licence to manufacture parts is awarded to a third party thus ensuring availabilty.

[KebabMeister]

v64paul, very true, usually a car manufacturer has to guarantee parts for normally ten years.  Whether it's a case of awarding a parts company, in this case Unipart, the full contract for ten years (and paid up front) or whether it's subsidised by Rover and paid annually.  If it's the latter, which it probably is, then Unipart may not have enough money to continue the specialist parts (especially because of Rover totally folding and meaning that they have to cut staff too).

Although to the extreme, remember what happened to Yugo cars - the war in Yugoslavia meant that factories and parts companies shut and therefore no parts were available.  Insurance went sky high and cars involved in minor accidents were written off because they were too costly to repair, or simply, unrepairable.

If there will be a parts shortage it will be interesting to see if the insurance group of all Rover cars go up.

[Tim Baxter]

According to the man Clarkson on Top Gear (can he possibly be wrong?) when they were revueing the future of unsold Rovers he said that there would be no servicing problems as the engines were BMW's.

Unipart do not anymore (and have not for a long time in the UK) hold the franchise for Rover spares.  The most recent spares supplier as stated earlier is Caterpillar.

[KebabMeister]

I stopped working with Rovers in 1996 so back then it was Unipart; haven't a clue who it is now until you said Caterpillar.

Well, I'm surprised Jeremy Clarkson said that because Rovers most certainly do not have BMW engines in them.  The BMW designed Rover 75 had 3 or 4 different Rover engine options, but none of them were BMW.  BMW garages wouldn't have Rover specialist tools/diagnostic equipment either, since only Rover franchised garages would have that.

The engines used by Rover are variations of the K-Series engine (K8/K16), 2.5 litre V6 (KV6), T-Series engine and the Rover diesel engine (again, forget it's name).

I did a search and found one reference of Rover using a BMW diesel engine, but it's unclear whether it was used and/or in which model car.  The Rover designed KV6 (basically a K Series engine) was being labelled as a BMW engine too (on a couple of websites), but only in Rovers (BMW didn't use it themselves, just as well because it wasn't reliable).  BMW engines were used in Land Rovers though.  Next time I talk to my mate in the UK I'll ask him, I'm very curious now.