Rover 216 Coupe

Surely a perfect candidate for a 1.8t K series from a 75/ZT?

Tom

Nah, tune one like Reyland did with their Metro.....

W/r the HGF, do it properly or get it done properly. Had a few, and seen plenty done "on the cheap".

Points of note;

* Head bolts are stretch - so replace
* Unless the head is absolutely perfect, get it skimmed by someone who's good. I've had good and bad skims
* Valves re-sested at the same time . definitely worth while
* Gasket. Either the multi-layer job, or one by PAYEN who did the decent ones in the first place
* Belt and pump at the same time
* Service too
* Once done, warm up properly every time and cool down every time

Had 3 Rovers myself, and many more in the family.

My 1400cc MG ZR blew it's gasket at 3 years old and 15k miles. It cost £600 to have it done right (as above) which was a bitter pill to swallow a week after buying it.

However, 4 years later I'd put 100,000+ miles on it. Driven hard, I mean really effing hard. Track attack style almost everywhere I went.

Was still running perfect. Compression was bang on across all 4. It also used no oil or water/coolant.

Cracking engines.


Don't get tempted to do the HG on the cheap. Seen dozens done on the driveway, for £100ish.

A few hundred miles later, you see;

"Heap on curse word has blown another gasket. I'm scrapping it"

For HGF no need to remove. A good HG replacement job should be £500-£700 by a garage. Most will want around £1k. No idea why.

Your parts list is;

* Belts & pump
* Plugs, oil and filter
* Update gasket - preferably PAYEN
* Head skimmed and valves re-sested
* If you can afford it, at same time ports etc cleaned up
* Head bolts (stretch)

Probably a few ancillary items. Gasket seal etc.

Or flush the engine repeatedly before or after rebuild too.

Also around 500-1,000 miles after HG and top end rebuild, oil and coolant change again.

K series sound a bit "knocky" when cold..they all do.

Warm, they should be like a sewing machine lathered in 20/50



5k/12 month oil changes as a minimum. I did 5k/3monthly.


Most important thing;

FULL HEAT CYCLES

K series hate short runs etc.

Mine were always used and abused rural Nd motorway. Thus I escaped a lot of the "common niggles".

Thought I’d blow the cobwebs off this, since the last update I’ve moved back to my old house and things are just about back to normality now, hopefully. 

I toyed with just selling a few times too, but then talk myself out of it.

I replaced my daily too, which seems to be following a trend with me and new motors lately and has issues, after a few hrs searching for a coolant leak on that I got back on track with the Rover.

When I last updated I was fairly certain that the HG had failed, I read somewhere that the inlet manifold seal can fail and produce symptoms like I was having so for the cost of the seal and an hr of my time I thought I’d give that a go....

Had to move an embarrassing amount of stuff to be able to get to this stage









The old seal seemed flat in comparison to the new one but I’m not sure it was bad enough to give symptoms i was getting.

I drained the oil next and this pretty much confirmed HG failure for me



I finished draining and put some cheap oil through to flush it out and topped the coolant up. It wouldn’t start but this was down to stuck starter so a quick tap with a hammer and it freed itself off nicely.

Once it started it was running the same as before but I haven’t lost my coolant as of yet where I did before so maybe that’s a loose positive. I’ll try and get it out the garage and get it up to temp as at the minute it won’t idle on it’s own and it’s smogging the garage out no end.

I’ll start getting parts together to get the HG done over Xmas hopefully but before then I’ll do a pressure test to see what that says, the car is very lumpy at idle currently

So today was set aside for some guilt free garage time to get the head off the tomcat, everything went easily enough and distractions were welcomed when I was starting to get fed up of getting up and down 

Not many pics as I was too hands on sadly.

No snapped bolts/studs neither which was nice, when I was timing/rotating the crank with no plugs in I was presented with a nice spray of coolant from the plug holes to confirm i was doing the right thing!

Rocker cover first....



Then gradually slacken the head bolts, interestingly the centre bolts were much tighter than the outer bolts.

Off with its head....



After getting over the shock of the state of the gasket (mls by the looks, can’t see a brand) I removed the gasket and had a look at the state of the bores and liners, I was pleased to see no lips on the bores and level liners, I had horror images of seeing rusty bores so I was quite relieved here.

** imagination required here **

I had a very quick look at the cylinder head, this seemed to look ok, needs a little clean up but no obvious damage, obviously this will get cleaned up in time.











I think, judging by the state of it, it seems to have been ran on water for a little while and finally given up, I’ve nothing else to base it on other than the rusty state of the gasket.

The head and engine were covered in spray grease till I get round to rebuilding the engine and the head, fingers crossed tomorrow I can sneak out and measure clearances and clean up the head to run a straight edge around to see if it’s warped.

Hi mate, don’t know how I missed this reply lol. My advice is just to get stuck in, it’s only nuts and bolts.

Not much in the way of progress really, I work away and managed to get stuck in the UK due to this virus.

Realising that as unfortunate as the situation is I could make the most of it and work on the Rover. I stripped the head down and dropped it off to be skimmed on Monday with a view of ordering the parts and building the car back up, but disaster struck. As the guy was machining the head somehow the head jumped up off its bed straight into the cutter, killing the head.

So as it stands I’m waiting on the garage sourcing a replacement head, skimming and reseating the valves with new stem seals. As much of a frustration it is, it’s one of those things and I’ll just have to wait for the garage to make good. I’ve just been cleaning everything up ready to rebuild once the head returns.

It didn’t look too bad after a quick clean up but still needed a skim to remove the fire rings. Irrelevant now but it was flat.





I’m a big believer in the KISS principle

Well the garage made good and sourced me a replacement head which they skimmed and re sat the valves and replaced the stem seals for me, all of this was at their expense, no matter how much I tried. Luckily biscuits are always welcomed!

The last couple of days have been very productive, I’ve fitted the following:

New oil rail
Updated head bolts
New headgasket
New cam cover gasket
New thermostat
New inlet manifold gasket
New exhaust gasket
New radiator
New water pump
New tensioner
New cambelt
New inlet manifold bolts/nuts
New exhaust studs and bolts

I did have a little trouble when fitting the head bolts and whipped the sump and oil rail off again thinking I hadn’t got the oil rail lined up correctly as one bolt just wouldn’t mate.....



I must have spent a good half hr looking down the bolt bore to check it was aligned and in the end I just couldn’t be too sure, after I’d removed the sump and oil rail I was getting up off the floor again and noticed the bolt from a different angle



Once I got over the anger I cracked a beer, moved on again and made some constructive progress.

This morning I finally filled her with coolant and she started first turn of the key, I left her running for 50 mins and had the temp gauge bang in the middle and the fan on a good 4-5 times with a nice warm heater. The lifters filled up and it became a really nice, quiet, solid engine. Success!!!

The radiator was an unexpected find as it held water but on closer inspection the fins had all rotted away but removing it gave me chance to see the state of the bodywork around it, pleased to report it’s all solid down there.









One final pic now it’s all built back up



Tomorrow’s jobs will be to get it outside and get the wheels off so I can clean the arches properly and have a look at the excuse it has for brakes currently.

Wheelarch tidy up and a look at the brakes.

Ever since I bought the car I never really like the red on the callipers and rear drums so I thought it was about time I had a look at them, and try and investigate why the brakes were so poor.

I purchased a calliper rebuild kit from Rimmers, really good kit and the callipers came apart relatively easily with a bike pump and inflatable adaptor into the bleed nipple hole. That was where my luck ran out, this was my first experience of replacing piston seals and covers and its something I don't want to do again, sadly after bleeding fresh fluid though all the pipes and bleeding successfully I still had poor front brakes with the rear locking up under heavy breaking. I can only presume I've nipped the covers with the pistons when refitting.

I had painted them prior to refitting the seals, this was another wasted effort, it didn't occur to me that the colour was totally the wrong choice until I refitted the wheels. I hate the look and these will be going silver the next time I get chance.

Insert chuffed face here....





Facepalm here....



For me personally, I wish I had thought a bit more and chose silver, the black just looks lost behind the wheels to me. Still better than red for the time being.

All was not lost though, whilst I had the wheels off at once I decided to clean the arches out and see if anything was hiding, I'm really pleased with what I saw.

I went from this....







Via a little bit of this....





I had the end result....











Sadly I blasted a piece of seam sealer off the rear of the seatbelt mount so I'll apply some next time I'm under there.

This is what I removed from underneath the arches....




This just re-affirmed my opinion of how solid a car this really is.