Rover 216 Coupe

Love this!! always had a softspot for these "tomcats". Keep up the updates please.

A few suprises for you there then mate?   Where's the dent you mention?

After any parts have a look on this facebook page quite helpful.

www.facebook.com/groups/1008779902493431/

I always wanted one of thoese but with an Auto box - never seen one for sale so assumed they were all manuals?

The wife was out today so I jumped at the opportunity for some car time. It didn’t all go to plan though......

After I replaced my top hose and bled the system I thought I’d got lucky and escaped any HG faults, this was till today when I had the car running while pottering, it starting spitting steam from the joint between the manifold and centre pipe, like a smoke machine. To go with this I was losing coolant somewhere without it dripping out the engine.

I removed the plugs for a look even though I was fairly certain I knew the answer... plugs 1&2 were dry and fine but 3&4 looked like this





3 is the wet one and 4 is the one full of oil.

Checked the dipstick and that looked like this



That confirms my fears I think

So I did what anyone would and cleaned the car instead, pulled the boot apart and cleaned the carpets. I’m happy with how it came up after a quick sponge.











Only little bits achieved but progress is progress.

I’ll pull the engine in summer and rebuild it and pop a new clutch in at the same time. No doubt I’ll find an online guide for the HG.

I also found this deep graze on the drivers drop glass, can the glass be polished back at all? It’s all etched with the ref and I’d like to keep it if possible.

Yeah that’s the plan mate, get it all out in summer and rebuild it.

I should have smelt a rat with the new oil in it 

Shame about the HG, but a typical thing of MG/Rover - that's why i got rid of my ZR. But good too see that you're willing to keep at it (unfortunately for me as i want this car but that's a different story )

I think I may have been hasty in my conclusion.

From a quick google it appears there’s a gasket that leaks coolant into the chambers on the inlet manifold. I’m now visibly losing coolant into the floor also so I think this gasket has gone.

I’ve no other signs of failed hg apart from cloudy oil which could just be moisture in the oil. Hopefully.......

No, the inlet manifold gasket leak causes No1 cylinder to misfire for about 30 secs on start-up; you have full mixing which means the elastomer bead has gone on the HG.
Drop the oil and coolant, refill both with either cheap or used oil and dilute coolant, run the engine up to temp, change the oil again, run up again and dump that oil. That should purge the curse word out of the system fairly well. Then drop the coolant out.
Once the head is off get it looked at by someone who knows what they are doing - I used a guy in Leicester for the last head job and it came back fully overhauled for not a lot. Check the liner protrusion - if thats bad then the engine may have been cooked. There are ways around it but 1.8 K series are all over the interweb and they are all basically the same lump. People are scared of them because they are "Rover K Series" but they aren't bad to work on and well built, with uprated HG, bolts and oil rail, they can last forever and can handle silly BHP. Or you could find a trashed MG6 and chuck the turbo N Series in (same-ish engine)and tweak that for smiles....

Yep...that's blown the gasket. A bit of a smear on the dipstick is one thing, but sludge like that is only going to come from a proper oil/water mixing incident.

I'd make a point of dropping that and running fresh oil through the engine sooner rather than later. That should at least help avoid issues with rust in bad places or stuff seizing up.