rover water pump?

You need a long breaker bar or a long handled torque wrench or similar. Put this on the crankshaft nut and wedge the end of bar/torque wrench whatever against a part of the chassis and hold. Have an assistant (who knows what they are doing and can understand and carry out clear and simple instruction) to give the starter the merest spin. ie: flick the key. That should give it enopough to break the nut loose.

IF YOU DON'T FEEL CONFIDENT ENOUGH TO DO THIS THEN DON'T DO IT.

Have you carried out this procedure, and do you still have all your fingers. There must be an easer way

I have indeed, and I was the one holding the torque wrench! I still have all five digits. Your only other option is to put it in gear and have someone stand on the brake pedal and use a long bar but unless you have a ramp I doubt you'd have the room for this.

the bottom crank bolts are always tight as hell, try the method suggested and if that doesn't work ask a local garage how much to whip it off then re-tighten to a normal amount for you.

On the still getting hot issue, if you haven't already make sure you change the thermostat, even if its fairly new it may have a layer of gunk on it from the gasket going. If you have the patience, overfill the cooling system run for around 30 seconds then leave overnight if possible to try to eliminate some of the air blockages that can happen, sounds strange but has been a last resort for me in the past. alternatively run a hose up a small water pipe (heater hose) and leave running with the coolant pressure cap for a while, again to try to remove air blockages. Do it in reverse flow and it will clean out a few things too.

If you can have a look inside the radiator (as much as possible) to see if maybe you have a build of gunky oily stuff that could be blocking the flow.

Of course it all could just be the water pump leaking and the waters getting low, but rovers are seldom that easy.

If you want confirmation of the success of this method - it's ok and I sitll have all of my fingers AND my two thumbs :-)

If you are still unsure, pop over to

Brian G

Thanks for the help on the crankshaft nut. I got it of by removing the inspection plate on the fly wheel, jammed in a piece of metal , this locked it up solid allowing me to remove the nut Mal