Hi Dee Bee,
Well that's one of the early made "Eagle Farm" Scott Bonnar's after Rover closed the Holland Street Thebarton Factory in Adelaide the previous year. Your mower was assembled in early (March) 1984 with the Engine being made on the 6th of December 1983 over in the US of A.
It's a rather interesting example as the ID plate is of the first batch of green metal plates that doesn't refer to Brisbane as the city of manufacture. The later ones do, before they changed to silver foil style ID stickers. Also this mower shows evidence that they had not commissioned their new state of the art "Powder Coating line" yet which introduced the Kermit Green coloured Rovers. So the Eagle Farm factory was still shooting Hammertone Enamel paint which was now a different colour than what was used in Adelaide (Apple Green)even though the 1984 Range of mowers brochure still showed the Apple Green colour as being current.
Obviously the Model 45 wasn't high on Rover's priority list of things to update, including the marketing strategy.
Anyway getting back on task, this particular mower shows moderate signs of wear as the Engine side clutch half has already been changed at some earlier point in time and the cutter sprocket also shows advanced signs of wear which means it's done some serious work.
I would initially lift and remove the engine and check for stress fractures before going any further, but before doing that I would evaluate the engine itself and get it running smoothly then proceed with the strip down. Can you please supply some really good close up photos of the rails where the engine mounting bolts attach the engine to the frame, this way we can evaluate what needs to be done, if anything.
Apart from that your plan of attack seems to be rather spot on for the mower, now how about the the lawn ?
Cheers,
BB.
