16vmarc

I know theyre weak and very prone to going, but me and my mate asked our other mate last night (whos owned 2 Rovers and whos a mechanic) why they always failed. The only answer he could give us was "because theyre ****". Which isnt really answer and we said we know that but whats the real reason? Is it the engine componants are weak or is the engine not strong enough to produce the power it has? I tried to explain to him that telling the customer their car is "****" isnt going to wash!!!

So can somebody give me a real reason as to why Rovers have head gasket problems?

Dracoro

Cooling. Or lack of.

In something like a 7 with lots off cool air everywhere, they're fine. However, in a tight engine bay with not much cool air coming in (think old mgf before they made the intake holes/tubes bigger) they're prone to fail.

On the plus side, they're quite tunable and rather light.

16vmarc

Thanks for the answer!

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

Having done one, its down to the design of the Gasket in part, the rubber separated on mine leaving ahole for water to escape. Also the way the engine is designed means at high outputs a lot of heat is generated very quickly which stresses the gasket, they were designed with a low coolant capacity for quick warm up to give good emission results but these characteristics dont help longevity. Also the construction of the engine with the long stretch bolts can allow some movement which can also kill a gasket.

Also, the owners dont help, my cousin slags his wifes old 214 off but she hammers it daily and they have never changed the oil in 3 years of ownership, why should any engine put up with that, it hasnt failed yet. Plus your average housewife just gets in it, hoofs it from cold and wonders why it breaks, you can get away with that with the old wheezy 8 valve cast iron lumps but the K series was basically race car technology (at the time) for the road. Still the lightest engine around, the Toyota lump that now goes into the Elise weighs half as much again than the K series, but again its reliable so what if its a bit of a hefty lump ?

The larger engined/more powerful variants suffer most from HGF, my BRM failed and it seems it was down to the cylinder liners sinking, thus presurizing the cooling system, I flogged it to a guy who had crashed his so he put his engine in.

They were so close to producing a world beater but the gasket thing killed it.

When they work (my bro has a 100k 214, gets flogged 20k a year) they are so much nicer than their contempararies, compare a 1.4 Escort to a Rover 214 (about a 1992) and the Escort has the horrible old rattly Ford Ohv producing about 60 bhp wheras the Rover puts out 104 bhp (comparable to the XR3i), the Ford however revolting did drag itself around without breaking.

16vmarc

Excellent! Much better answers than "because theyre ****"!!!!!!!

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

Although it is a bit **** in the fact that with a bit more time and money spent on developing a decent composite gasket (which I belive the 1.8 turbo k-series had) it may have been resolved. Rover's tact was to say "they all do that sir" and not bother fixing the design properly (FYi they did exactly the same thing with the Rover v8 for decades before finally deciding to fix the design flaws which was probably sparked off by BMW anyway! ).

Some gasket failures were down to air/coolant loss in the system caused by leaky o- ring seals on the (plastic) inlet manifold (compounded by the small coolant capacity) - however if the owner monitored coolant levels they would have been able to fix the problem before it manifested itself. Also situations with airlock were common with DIYers or garage numpties when changing the coolant. However, there were still cars that blew the gasket that were 100% perfectly maintained.

Pegasus Autoworks

Hello 16VMarc,

Although people seem to think there is an inherent weakness in the Head gasket in fact that`s not true. The Head gasket fails due to design flaws, rather then fragility. There are two basic flaws for the higher capacity standard K engines. Which are as follows.

1. Thermostat positoned at the Engine coolant inlet. This has been touched on in previous posts, but basically the driver fires up from a cold start and drives hard. due to the positoning of the stat it is slow to pickup this massive heat pickup and then the engine is subject to massive thermal gradients which will lead to the destruction of most gaskets let alone K series one.

2. Plastic head dowels. Originally the K had metal dowels which were fine, until Rover decided to switch to plastic ones on a cost saving exercise. Again hard pushed engines can exhibit head shuffle due to design of the K, this of cause can lead to Head Gasket Failure. (MGR moved back to Metal dowels after 2 years of plastic dowels, so there are a lot of K series out there with plastic dowels)


These two problems are easyto get over. Metal head dowels solve the Head shuffle problem. and either Rover new PRT thermostat or moving the stat to the Coolant Outlet to allow the coolant to compensate properly for sudden high temperature. Plus new MGR`s come with low coolant sensor`s in the Expansion tank. (Only from 2004 do MGR`s come with PRT stats, so again there are a lot of K series out there which are vunerable to this fault)

With these 2 design faults sorted the K series is bullet proof. Having the highest power/weight ratio of any other Production Engine in Existence.


The above information was gleaned form Simon Erland`s article on the K and uncovers a lot of the K series myths, especially Lotus`s ignorance. If you want to know all about the K read this.

http://www.sandsmuseum.com/cars/elis...ine/kingk.html

Hopefully soon the new 2.0l version`s producing nearly 300bhp and 190lbft of torque on a 4 pot NASP engine can be popped into your 200/25/ZR/Lotus/Caterham etc etc for some fantastic fun!

regards Robert

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

Although you cannot deny that if the headgaket was of stronger design - it could withstand thermal shock and overheating much more easily (many other engines I know of that have obviously overheated, still manage to keep their gaskets intact). The job of the gasket is to allow for expansion and contraction of the two seperate castings whilst maintaing a seal, with thermal and physical movement taken into account. It cannot be denyed that it is a weak point which although the initial causes of the failure are usually something else, it always results in the same end situation - a blown gasket.

Rincewind

Agreed, a much better response than "because they're ****".

BMW introduced the plastic dowels as a "cost saving" measure when they were running the shop. It wasn't long before problems started and after a fair few arguments and a change of ownership, we went back to using metal dowels and one of the problems went away. It's just unfortunate that this was happening as it was just more fuel for the fire as the world seemed to be going against us at Longbridge.

When we launched the 1.8 Turbo, a lot of work had gone to help with the thermostat performance and it gentley introduced coolant as opposed to just opening and this also helped to reduce the hot spots at the top of the cylinder head. This was gradually being "filtered" around the rest of the engines.

There was also a fairly huge engine programme running to help move the K Series on a little further with technology and performance and a lot of attention was being paid to cylinder heads and I believe that there were some highly developed prototypes running around that would have pulled things along nicely.

The K Series is a corking engine and at the time (and still is in some respects) a highly capable engine and worthy of the design and technoology awards it's picked up over the years.

billythekid

Another common problem is once a K has HG failure its often seen to go again shortly afterwards. This is due to incorrect fitment of the liners when the rebuild is done. There is also an upgrade kit for the HG (DVA Power) and for the liners (Scholar)