Fitting a Heated Rear Windscreen

My heated rear window has never worked since I've had the car ........ since 1995. There were so many cracks in the heating element that no amount of silver "electric" paint would fix. I don't know why it was like that, but I've a suspicion that my Mum might have given the window a quick scrape on the inside to get rid of the frozen condensation!!! Nooooooo!

Anyway, a chap (Simon Owen) I met on the Rover Forum (best Rover Forum around!) was offering a free heated rear window along with the best part of half a gearbox. He was only 40 minutes drive away so I took up the offer (thanks Simon). The window was green and had been sitting in his back garden for over a year. I cleaned it up, brought the copper elements back to the right colour and connected a battery ......... it all worked, superb.

As I had plans to fit a boot mounted spare wheel (another blog entry!) I waited until then to fit it. It is so much easier with the boot lid off.

First thing to do is to remove the petrol cap so that we can remove the rear decker panel. By undoing the jubilee clip and wiggling the pipes will dislodge the sealant sticking the pipe to the rubber tube.

Remove the four screws that fasten the petrol cap to the decker panel and pull the petrol cap out.


Next, to remove the rear decker panel, remove the 3 bolts near the boot hinges - one at either side and one in the middle.
Then underneath the decker panel, on each side there is a nut and washer on a bolt that is attached to the decker panel. you can see it in this photo. remove these nuts/washers.
The decker panel should now lift off, it will be a little stiff and tight but it will wiggle free.

Remove the centre screen support and the nylon spacer underneath.
On each side there is a screen "jack" like this  photo. Remove the dum-dum covering the thread and nut and turn the nut to wind the jack down as far as it will go. Do the same for the other side.
There is now nothing left holding the screen in place, except whatever sealant was used when the screen was last fitted.
Open each rear passenger door, remove the seats and inner rear quarter panels and disconnect the heated rear screen wires. With one hand on the inside, and one on the outside of the screen, wiggle and push the screen in a downward movement to try to slide the window out.

You might find it useful to slide a blunt instrument underneath the
rubber seal around the stainless steel trim to free off the sealant
there.
Constant wiggling and pushing from alternate sides will eventually free the screen and rubber from its hold and it will come out.




Here is a photo of the old screen upside down. You can see on the bottom, a metal piece of angle, the same shape as the window, this needs to come off along with the rubber underneath so that it can be fitted to the new window. This (after 39 years) took some removing, and I think the rubber was glued to the glass in a spot each side - probably to help the fitters originally building the cars, so that it doesn't fall off when you hold the window the right way up!
Remove it, along with the sealing rubber from the top and sides and clean them up. Apply screen sealant and fit to the replacement window.

Insert the replacement screen by reversing the removal procedure - by sliding the window up into the aperture, make sure that the rubber seal goes inside the aperture with the rubber lip around the stainless steel trim.

Jack up the window gradually on each side to push the window firmly home. Periodically pull the window up into the aperture by hand (one hand inside the car, the other outside) to make sure that the window is being correctly seated and to check how much play is left to be taken up.
Continue to jack up the window until it is fully home. You should be able to see where it was before by the marks left on the stainless steel trim by the rubber seal and you can 'feel' the jack getting tighter. Don't over tighten, otherwise it could crack during use as the car will flex while driving.

Another view.......












Refit the rear decker panel and the petrol cap. Apply a gasket compound around the petrol pipe and connect the rubbers and do up the jubilee clips.
Refit the four screws holding the petrol cap to the decker panel - use a magnetic screwdriver, if you drop on of these down the pipe, it'll end up in your petrol tank!!




All Done!!

Fitting the Boot Mount Kit

Fitting the Boot Mount Kit
When it comes to fitting one of
these kits, there are those who say it can be done with the boot lid
still on the car, but I found that it was much easier to take the boot
off. Removing the boot on a P6 is very simple, however one thing that
is easier with it on the car is measuring! I didn't, and it would have
been easier if I had. Using a soft pencil, mark the centre line down
the boot, then measure a mark 314mm down from the top edge (nearest the
rear window), this is where we want the centre of the hole!

With the boot lid off and the hardboard removed, you can see the 'A' shape of the bones inside. The cross-bar of the 'A' needs to be removed to enable fitting of the spider brace.








The cross-bar is only made of aluminium and spot welded in place. Drill the spot welds out carefully, there is no need to drill al the way through, the spot welds will break off with a wiggle of the cross-bar.









Turn the boot lid over and drill a small pilot hole (I used a centre bit) at the mark previously made on the outside. Go carefully, using a centre punch will really only chip away the paint, so a very slow controlled drilling is required. Fortunately, the boot being made of aluminium, slow drilling will easily drill a hole.
Turn the boot lid over again and using a set of dividers set to the radius of the hole in the spider brace, scribe a circle using the hole as the centre of circle.




Position the spider brace in position using the scribed circle as a guide. Check for a good fit and because not all boot lids are the same, and the spider brace will likely be second hand, you might find as I did, that the bones of the boot lid might need some persuasion with a hammer and the spider brace bending a little in a vice.






When satisfied that the spider brace is about as good as you can get it, position sufficient shims between the spider brace and the boot lid to take up all free space and prevent the boot lid from denting when you tighten up the locking plate.
Hold the spider brace in place and mark the position of the first rivet. Drill a 5mm hole, then reposition the brace. If the drilled hole is not quite right, elongate the hole until correct, then insert a 5mm pop rivet.
On the opposite arm, drill the next hole and pop rivet. Now the spider brace is in it's final position.
Careful drilling these holes, it is easy to put too much pressure on the drill and when it goes through the  'bones' of the boot lid marking the inside of the outer skin causing a dent.

Next drill all eight of the holes around the large hole of the spider brace using the spider brace as the guide. After cleaning up the holes on the outside of the boot lid, position a spare shim on the outside and using a few screws tighten up spider brace. This will keep the brace nice and tight while the large hole is drilled and also preventing the drill slipping and marking the perfect boot lid!





I used a hole saw for this. The hole saw is really meant for wood, but I figured that it would make small work of an aluminium boot lid. It soon went through it. It made a bit of a poor finish, but the burrs were on the inside. My rotary tool made light work of cleaning up the burrs and making a perfect hole






And from underneath.....
At this point it is well worth re-fitting the hardboard cover to the inside of the boot lid. Then with a pencil, draw through the hole and trace the outline of the circle. This will enable you to operate the locking plate when fitted.







Now, remove the shim fitted to the outside as a guide and fit the locking plate and the stainless steel slotted plate on the outside. screw these up with #10 UNF countersunk screws and nyloc nuts.
That's the middle bit finished, and it holds the spider brace nicely in place too.
To finish off, drill and pop rivet the remaining holes in the spider brace one by one so that it is held firmly.





When finished, the boot mount badge slots into the stainless steel slotted plate and finishes the boot off really well for those times where you want the spare wheel in the boot. Otherwise, the rain would get in the boot!








Here is the hardboard boot lid liner with the hole cut that we previously marked out.
Cut this with a stanley knife, do it gradually and eventually it will cut all the way through. Don't try to cut all the way through in one go otherwise there is a tendency to apply too much pressure and cut too much.






Here with the boot lid liner in place, the locking plate can be accessed to ensure that the spare wheel or the badge cannot be stolen.










Next, the boot lid handle needs to be fitted. This is all described in the instructions and the measurements fr the holes needs to be made first, and then drilled on the face of the boot lid.
To be able to fit the handle, we need to make two large holes on the inside of the boot lid either side fo the lock. These holes need to be large enough to get a socket through to offer the bolts through the outer holes.
To avoid losing the bolt, put blu-tak in the socket, and put the head of the bolt into the blu-tak, then feed it through the large outer hole and through the small drilled hole and screw into the handle.

Here is the boot handle fitted (boot lid upside down).
Note that the boot handle is actually a P6 Series 1 door handle fitted upside down!










Here is a close up of the boot handle fitting. The large hole capable of accepting a socket, and inside the hole, you can see the head of the bolt that is fastening the boot handle on.









Finally, the boot prop needs to be fitted.
The best way to find the right place to fit both the bracket on the base unit, and the bracket on the boot lid, is to make a template. Using the measurements in the instructions, make a paper template. The boot lid bracket is positioned in relation to the hinge bolts, the base unit bracket is positioned in relation to the bolt attaching the rear top-link of the suspension - in the bottom left hand corner of the photo.
Correct positioning of these brackets enable the red prop rod to slide up and down the bracket as you open and close the lid.
The prop ensures that the spare wheel does not come into contact with the rear screen, and also locks the boot lid in the open position to prevent it landing on your head!

All finished.......... nearly













I only found this out when I'd finished. When I re-fitted the boot lid to the hinges, I let the boot lid 'hang' or flop against the hinges. As a result, it temporarily put stress on the outer skin cracking/chipping the paint.
When you put your boot lid back on the car, put it on with someone else to lend a hand, and keep them helping while you do the bolts up!
Now, I've got to wait until the warmer weather to sand it back and respray it :-(

What is the Boot Mount Spare (Continental Kit)

It was back in the Spring of 2009, I'd started getting fed up of the amount of free boot space the Rover didn't have. Sure, it was fine for days out where you just needed the cool box, deck chairs, table and a few other bits and pieces, but if we wanted to go away overnight then that was a different story. Generally, going away meant a suitcase (girls take loads of 'stuff'. I don't know what it is, or why we need it, but it's loads of 'stuff'), cool box, other bags of 'girls stuff', my tool bag and power station (jump starter, also good to power the cool box when parked up for a period of time!). The P6 has a very limited boot space as you can see from this picture.
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There are two solutions to this problem, either put the spare wheel on the floor of the boot, or put it externally on the boot lid.
Rover came up with some ingenious solutions for this, the first one, putting the wheel on the boot floor would be fine if your wheel was nice and clean so you didn't mind it coming into contact with your luggage, but what about after a wheel change.... To combat this, Rover came up with the false floor. Here you can see two photos, one showing the wheel and tool bag in the bottom of the boot, and the second with them covered up by a false boot floor.

Here you can see the false floor on the left, folded up, and the wheel , tools etc lying on the boot floor.












And here you can see the false floor laid out. It looks rather good, and it is. However, as can be seen with my power station in the boot, there is excellent width, but very little height. I can now fit a suitcase in, but no longer have the height to fit the cool box doh!!
It is a very neat, but also restricting solution.




The second type of fitment for the spare wheel, is to put it on the outside of the boot lid, thereby giving the whole width and height of the boot for luggage.
The boot mount kit consists of:

A "Spider" brace:

This brace is to replace the existing braces on the inside of the boot lid. The standard boot has two horizontal braces to give the panel strength, these need to be removed (by drilling out the spot welds) and this brace inserted in its place by using pop rivets.

This brace was a second hand (well, hardly going to find any new ones these days are you!) painted black and covered in surface rust. I took the angle grinder / flap disc to it and took it back to bare metal. Gave it a good coat of Jenolite to kill the rust, etch primed it, and then gave it a quick top coat in Almond (same colour as my P6). The colour really isn't that important as it is never seen, but I know it's there, so wanted to give it a top coat. I didn't spend alot of time on it, and it is cold outside (New Years Day 2010) so not good painting conditions, but it is the right colour, even if it doesn't gleam and shine. Damn sight better than a rusty black one!

You can see the middle of the brace has the hole for the fitting kit, and that the spare wheel therefore is actually fitted to the brace and not just the boot lid.


The boot fixing:

This part of the kit fits to the centre of the brace - you can see by the ring of holes in the brace, and matching the picture here. The top of the picture shows the stainless steel plate that is positioned on top of the boot lid. This has a bayonet fitting in the centre (looks oval in the photo) so that the spare wheel fitting is inserted and then twisted to lock. This plate is usually sealed by a sealant of some sort, I'm thinking of using the same stuff that is used to seal windscreens. On the right is a set of four shims (two thick, two thin) these are used as required to fit between the spider brace and the underside of the boot lid to take up any space. The black ring on the left is the locking mechanism. This contains the thread for the knurled wheel (below) to screw the wheel to the boot lid, and also contains a locking mechanism to prevent anyone stealing your spare wheel. This locking mechanism is fitted underneath the spider brace. All these items are screwed together using #10 UNF countersunk screws and nylock nuts.


The "Cup":

The cup is an often misplaced or forgotten item when searching for the boot mount kit. Many old P6's, if they don't have the spare on the boot, but do have the facility, have often 'lost' the Cup, or the people breaking the car for the sale of the parts, often don't understand the significance.
You can just make out on the underside, there is a bayonet fitting that will mate with the stainless steel plate in the above photo. This Cup attaches to the stainless steel plate on the top of the boot lid, and then the spare wheel sits on top of this Cup. Of course the stainless steel plate cannot take all the strain of the wheel, but then it's not yet fastened down. That's where the knurled wheel comes in.



The Knurled Wheel:

The knurled wheel consists of the knurled top and threaded bar, a metal plate, and a rubber 'washer' that holds the metal plate onto the threaded bar.
When the spare wheel is stowed upon the Cup, the knurled wheel is inserted down through the wheel, through the cup and into the black locking mechanism where it is screwed up tightly. then the spare wheel is properly secured against the spider brace.
The threaded bar has a slot cut into the end of the bar. This is the how the black locking mechanism works, It drops a metal bar into the slot thereby preventing the knurled wheel from being turning and hence being unscrewed.

The Boot Prop:

With the added extra weight of the spare wheel on the boot, the boot springs will no longer hold the boot open, so Rover provided the boot prop. It didn't matter what colour your P6 was, these are always red!
Yes, I've given this a respray as well. this red prop slots into the special bracket that is pop-riveted onto the boot lid. The small black plastic 'fork' shaped piece is a locking mechanism to prevent the red prop from coming out of the bracket and the weight of the boot and wheel landing on your head!
Also, with the extra weight, Rover provided a handle on the boot lid to give you something to lift the boot lid with. Sometimes these are listed on eBay as boot mount handles. Actually they are the same as Series 1 P6 door handles ... just mounted upside down!


The Boot Badge:

For those times where you just want the spare wheel in the boot, you can't just leave the boot lid exposed to the elements, there's a big hole in it! It has to be covered up. This is the Rover boot mount badge, it is rarer than rocking horse droppings and slots into the bayonet fitting on the stainless steel plate.
A good quality badge really looks the business.



When not in use - because the spare wheel is on the boot, the badge fits into the top of the knurled wheel like this.