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T he Body Production Technologies The section of the article dealing with the production of the unorthodox base unit structure of this vehicle commences here. The press work of components for the metal structure is carried out by the press work facility to British Leyland, Pressed Steel Fisher, at whose Cowley Works, the base unit for the Rover 2000 is assembled. The base unit of the car is a load bearing, self supporting skeleton structure to which all skin panels and suspension units are bolted directly to spot faced, tapped or drilled bosses welded to the base unit. The whole assembly being designed to eliminate external joints and the necessity thereby for lead filling.There are 58 panel and suspension mounting bosses, each 3/4" in diameter and held to within 3/32" nominal position. Four additional bosses for jacking holes are used throughout for build operations. In all, some 300 pressings are involved. Due to the unorthodox design all welding fixtures are constructed to hold the workpieces much more firmly than is the case with more conventional monococque structures.
 
 The photographs above indicate these assembly and checking jigs of the base unit to the stage where it is transfered from Cowley to Solihull for completion of build and production assembly. The first picture indicates the mobile jig truck upon which the three main sub-assemblies are joined together, the rear, floor and front assemblies located in position to be welded together. Obviously, independent sub assemblies are spot welded together prior to this point but have been eliminated from this sequence as this procedure is very much common with those adopted in many other articles previously covered on this website. The front sub-assembly including the engine compartment and front suspension mountings, the radiator block bulkhead, the wheelarches, the dash and facia bulkhead and the lower half of the "A" Posts. The rear sub-assembly comprising the luggage compartment (housing the petrol tank and spare wheel) and carrying the Watts linkage rear ' suspension mounts, constitutes the rear seat safety bulkhead, boot floor and rear structure panel, rear wheel arches, side flitches and boot lid hinge carrying water draining inner tonneau. The floor unit including the transmission drive, tunnel, sills toe and rear heel boards, seat mounting brackets, etc.,
From this point, the base unit is conveyed from the Assembly Hall through a link tunnel to the Paint Shop where the
base unit goes through the following procedure:
pre-cleaned,
 Stage 2 is where the vehicle is built to the complete base unit running form, incorporating all mechanical components, the adhered in section of interior trim and slave seat, instrumentation and finishing details to the base unit completion stage whereby the vehicle can be driven on the road and in fact receives an initial static road test on a specifically designed roller rig
The exterior panels receive their paint treatment in a separate section of the Paint Shop to that used to provide the
protective coatings to the base unit (page 149).
The procedure with respect to exterior panel finishing is as follows:
identical to base unit procedure up to the stage of primer dip,
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© RWP Jan. 2005