Head gasket blown. New motor? CAR

[joan33987]

just a question, in a worst case scenario, Headgasket blown on 1.8 Rover K series engine, IF i open up the head, and found the cylinder liners has dropped, is it possible to rebuild the engine if i have sh!t loads of free time? OR is it hopeless and must need another engine in the car?

How about those small Peugeots or Renaults (106,206, clio, megane),
They use wet cylinder liners right?

Will engines with Dry cylinder liners ever drop if things go wrong? ie headgasket leaking and owner continue to drive it everyday without noticing coolant loss and overheating it?

OK, how about air cool m/c engines, have you guys ever heard of air cooled engine blowing head gasket? OR do they even have a headgasket? ie, CG125, any risk for running it very hot such as 60mph for non stop 2 hours? becuz that's what i did with my chinese CG. It gets really hot with performance drop and dies @ idle but after leaving it 10mins, it's OK again. After 6K miles(10k km), it's still running very good with every 1K mile silkolene super 4 10w40 oil changes, until it got stolen for the 2nd time and gone forever.
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current toys: Skygo SG125-J 125cc stolen again 1992 Kawasaki GPZ500S (crashed damaged) 1996 Renault Clio 1.2 2005 CG125 project

[Kickstart]

Hi

Normal problem with wet liners is that either the seal goes at the bottom, or when the head is lifted the liner moves up and the seal is disturbed. With the K series the head is held on with single use bolts that go the whole way through the engine. As such doing the job properly to replace a head gasket would seem to mean a complete engine strip down to replace these single use bolts. Suspect 99% of the time people just reuse them which probably makes the clamping force on the head pretty random when they are tightened up.

Wet liner engines are not particularly a new idea or particularly prone to head gasket problems. Cleaning up the seals and replacing the liners should be possible given a little time (problem comes when the block is damaged where the seal sits).

Dry liners are either cast or shrunk into the block / barrels and are unlikely to move without a lot of effort.

Air cooled engines normally have head gaskets (there are exceptions) but when they blow they can't have the effect of using the coolant. You will still get oil leaks / loss of compression / etc when the head gasket goes. Over heating an engine can warp things, and if the bits that warp are the head and / or barrel then a good chance that they won't seal.

All the best

Keith
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[Robby]

Have a look in either this month or last month's car mechanics magazine, they go through the K-series head gasket replacement with the new x-part kit that is the best one on the market at the moment, and so has a change of not blowing the gasket again in 10 minutes.

To do it properly you need to get the gasket, stretch bolts and oil rail, along with getting the head measured and probably skimmed. It isn't a cheap job, but if you try to do it cheaply you'll just blow it again.

Or, scrap the worthless car and buy a slightly better worthless car (anything but a Rover).

[swanny]

Rovers have issues with the head gasket going, my brother in laws MG ZR went (same as rover 25), 400 quid to fix it, but a fair whack of that was labour, and the new gaskets tend to be a lot better !

not much help i know but might be
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M SWANNY.. see a sig !

[chris-red]

Incase it hasn't been said,

Don't buy an MG/rover gasket buy a land rover one and the oil rail. The K series Gaskets are shite which is why they are famed for going. The land rover use the engine in the free lander I believe. My Friend has an MG TF that had this issue. There is a guy in Southend to specialises in doing this work (K series) I can get his number if you are local.
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[Ol]

not sure how relevent - but when the head gasket went on my old 216, we bought a cheap 1800cc k-series engine off ebay (about £100 iirc) and swapped them without too much hassle..
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[P.addy]

My Rover 75 gasket went, along with an inlet manifold gasket.

Cost me £420 to get it all repaired with the MLS uprated gasket, another thin seal, head didnt require a skim but a fair few do.

The liners were fine, but its because I detected mine before it was detonation time gotta love the temp gauge.

Could fit another engine in there, theres a successful conversion from a 1.8 K series rover to the 2.5 V6, although the MG ZR 160 fits too.


Also in regards to other question, my little KH125's head gasket has just gone... simple job for that though!

[stuartadair]

Absolutely agree with everything said. If anyone brings me a K series engine with head problems I always say I'll have a go, but no guarentees. No wonder Rover went bust.

[stevo as b4]

yeah there are alot of factors as to regarding if a K-series HGF repair is a) worth doing, and b) things that need to be corrected and checked if it's not to go again. A few points however are:

1, The latest uprated gasket solution comprising of the MLS gasket and new uprated stretch bolts, and bottom oil rail casting. This is the best known cure and has the best record so far of a permanent solution with little chance of repeat failure occuring. As keith says the 10 long bolts will need replacing, and the sump needs to come off to fit the uprated lower oil rail plate that the bolts screw down into after they pass through the bearing ladder.

2, Liner heights You need to have 0.004-0.005" of stand proud between the height of the fully seated liner above the face of the cylinder block top surface. If the liners are varying in height by more than 0.002" or have dropped much below the quoted figure or are flush with the block face, then it will fail again! There is not really a cure for this condition which is only normally likely if the engine has suffered severe overheating. A new set of taller liners can be fitted, but any attempts to skim the top of the block to increase the liner stand proud have generally not been successful, due to the surface hardening of the soft alloy block and head face being removed.

3, The head needs to be flat, and checked very carefully for 3 things:
a) head face distortion, which can be corrected with a light skim, although again skimming the head face does reduce the hardness of the soft alloy material, so it should only be done if needed and never as a matter of course.

b) Fire ring indentation. It has been known for the area around the fire rings of the gasket in the head face to become indented and again this can normally be corrected with a light skim. But before this can be done the head should be hardness tested by the engineering shop doing the work. If it doesn't meet the specified hardness level, then the head must be rejected and another head used instead. It's also possible to work harden the area around the fire rings by peening the surface and then having the head skimmed.

c) Porosity of the casting. It's quite common for there to be area's of porosity or air bubbles beneath the surface of the head face. This is partly due to the way the heads were cast and the material used. If there are any areas of porosity they must not be near to the fire ring areas, as this is likely to cause another failure.

4, when an HGF repair is done the uprated PRT thermostat should also be fitted and if there is any doubt about the waterpump it too should be replaced.

5, The cooling system needs flushing and cleaning, as there is usually a horrible oily milky mess all over the water jacket, pipework, radiator and expansion tank. You might need to use a detergent in the system for a few 100 miles and drain and re-flush the system to get all the oil out of the cooling system.

The K-series began life as a very reliable 1.1 and 1.4L engine that was nearly unheard of to have HGF. They later changed the design to an open block damp liner engine to get the later capacities, and then it became a much weaker and more fragile engine from 1995. They also went though a phase of replacing the steel head locating dowls with plastic ones, and stopping the selective assembly system where they used 2 different grades of liners with different heights to get the stand proud clearance to the optimum setting. When these things were done for cost reasons mainly, reliability really suffered.

The engine is and was a very good light weight design that is very rev happy and also fast warming, and quite strong in terms of its motorcycle based sandwich construction method. The gasket is not always the problem although the silicone seals can fail over time. The real issue is the small water capacity for the cooling system particulally for the 1600/1800's, and as such any cooling system fault that causes a small drop in coolant levels, maybe even a pint or so, can be enough to cause overheating and then pop the gasket.

https://kengine.dvapower.com/ This is a very good site for information on the K-series engine and all the cylinder head gasket issues and how to build a reliable engine with everything as good as it should be and correcting the sometimes inbuilt weaknesses in certain areas.