A Rayleigh-Schrödinger perturbation theory approach based on the adiabatic (Born-Oppenheimer) separation of vibrational motions was previously developed and used to evaluate for a system of coupled oscillators the adiabatic energy levels and their nonadiabatic corrections. This method is applied here to calculate rotation-vibration energies of the triatomic molecular ions HeH(+)(2) and ArNO(+) consisting of a strongly bound diatomic fragment and a relatively loosely bound rare gas atom. In these systems the high-frequency stretching motion of the diatomic fragment can be separated from the other two low-frequency motions without substantial loss of accuracy. Treating the diatomic fragment as a rigid rotor, the low-frequency stretching motion is decoupled from the bending motion in analogy to the concept of the adiabatic (Born-Oppenheimer) separation of motions and the strong nonadiabatic couplings between these two motions are accounted for perturbationally. Although the resulting perturbation series may show poor convergence, they turn out to be accurately summable by applying standard techniques for the summation of divergent series. Comparison with the results obtained from full-dimensional calculations for the two ions shows that the approach is capable of providing accurate energies for quite a few of the bound rotation-vibration states and that in the case of the HeH(+)(2) ion it is even able to predict the positions and widths of some low-lying resonance states with good accuracy. The perturbation approach yields zeroth-order energies and corrections in terms of the relevant quantum numbers. It thus allows a direct assignment of the energy levels without any reference to the corresponding eigenfunctions. The weak couplings between the high- and low-frequency motions can easily be treated by the same perturbative approach and numerically exact energies can finally be obtained. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.