Rover Sports Register Forum

I've been looking for pictures of the New Meteor Works, Helen Street, during Rovers ownership. I've only found a couple. Anyone got more?

Try asking Coventry Transport Museum, they have a lot of info and are very helpful.

Went there on Saturday. First time I've been since the revamp. Very impressed. Only a coupe of Rover cars though.

I know the museum has quite a large archive of info and yes one day I'll find time to have a look. Just seems to be a shortage of images online.

Albeit the Coventry Motor Museum may only have 2 Rovers on display, they have many more in the Reserve Collection,
which they tend to rotate in the Museum. The RSR Annual General Meeting is being held there this year, so we will be
able to see the changes that they have made.

Has anyone got any information of the production line and assembly techniques from Helen Street?

During the restoration of my 1939 10, it is apparent that there are oddities under the vehicle that could be best explained by assembly aids.

One such oddity is the use of a colour paint on the LH chassis rail (midway along, the full circumference) which matches the same colour applied underneath the body of the car on the rear seatbox and floorpan. It would appear to be a mid- or dark-green paint, which has faded back to pale green after 70 years. I cannot think why this colour would appear on a black car, where it exists on bare metal (no black paint underneath), except as an assembly-aid to ensure a 10 body came down onto a 10 chassis. Unless anyone knows different?

FOH 666 Chassis no. 0110073 is actually a 1939 built 1940 model. It is evident that 1940 model year cars were being built at Helen Street in June/July rather than August/September. We recovered a registration number for another 1940 model 10 on that basis.

By July 1939, the Company had been assigned an Armstrong-Siddeley Cheetah maintenance contract at Helen Street. My belief is (and Graham Robson - {The Rover Story} implies) that the Rover Company were starting war production at Helen Street in June/July 1939 (No 2 Shadow Factory at Lode Lane was being built then) and were most likely preparing jigs and fixtures for aircraft component production and dismantling car production equipment. If the most skilled workforce or substantial parts of it, were employed on that, it's not unreasonable to make the connection that assembly aids such as the paint you describe, would be required.

Mike

Thanks for that information Mike, it's fascinating to delve into these things. It might also explain why the gas-welding of the body components is so poor; unlike most of the constructional methods that Rover has used over the years, the assembly of the body panels is accurate (jigged) but the tacking together is lacking in true structural integrity. Hence in the specific case of this car, Lucy, the stressed joints from adjacent corrosion of the respective panels have cracked, or just peeled away from the panels, where gas welding has been employed. The contact welded joints are near-perfect, as you would expect form a process where the application is controlled better.