Hi, this is a strange one on me. At work we had a rover 216 (1995ish) donated as we are a charity, when you rev the engine you can hear water being circulated around.
It's as if water is being flushed around the engine/heater rad. This is when you are sat in the car. Can't get my head around this yet..Any ideas?
Probably Gas from the Head seeping into the water jacket.! Either change the headgasket, or do what I did. Take out the Thermostat. and egnore the noise. I found that if the thermostat is removed the headgasket would last Much longer, as there is no presure build up as the gas just escapes through the filler cap.! Also the engine warms up much more slowly. Normaly the top gets hot much faster. But with it being shitty ali it tends to warp, and hence the headgasket leak. Very Bad design.
"gazzafield" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@pipex.net...
Its not the car. its the engine !! My old rover 214si was brill. shame I had to change the headgasket over 25 times in the 11 years I had it !! Bring back the Cast Iron heads and it would be fine.
"Wombat-Pipex-News" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@pipex.net:
The vast majority of modern car engines seem to manage fine with alloy heads. Much of the reason your Rover averaged a head gasket failure every 6 months (bloody hell!) is due to poor design, not inadequate materials.
Indeed, my car's engine is all alloy and has yet to blow a headgasket after 10 years and over 100k miles. Rolls were using alloy engines back in the 70s and, AFAIK, they were never prone to head gasket failure.
Actually the first hgf is down to poor design, after that its down to either poor maintenance or poor repairs.
i was given a 214 (60k miles)that had suffered multiple failures and the owner was sick of it happening all the time. i whipped the head off, had it professionaly skimmed, used top quality gaskets and new bolts, thermostat, water pump and anything else that i wasn't happy with. ( i swopped the radiator for a good s/hand one because the original was very gungy). the car ran perfect for 15k miles for me, i then sold it to a guy who lives not far from me and told him to change the thermostat and completely flush the water system every 12 months ( over the top i know) and he still has it now 5 years and 45k later with no hgk problems at all.
"Stuffed" wrote in news:eqkt0v$mci$1 @news.freedom2surf.net:
An excellent article, which highlights the excellent efficiency of the K series engine and explains why it doesn't quite deserve the reputation it has today. It's quite tragic, IMHO, when one considers just how well the model performs, even by todays standards, and how far ahead of it's time it was when first produced.
However, it does nothing to dispell the view that the K is less robust than most mass produced engines even without bodged modifications. That wasn't how it earnt it's reputation for poor reliability, nor was it entirely due to HG replacements being short-lived because of poor workmanship. Throughout it's history, the K series engine has had a tendency to blow the original headgasket earlier in it's life than what is considered normal, sometimes much earlier or even before a coolant change is due. Poor maintenance cannot be blamed for this, it has to be due to either the design or the manufacturing.
While I admire the way in which the design strives for maximum efficiency, it is my humble belief that not quite enough concession was made to robustness, and that this is the main reason why it has ended up with the reputation it has. I think the best example of this is the way the thermostat was positioned unconventionally just to improve efficiency by shaving a bit of the warm-up time off. Had it not been done this way, perhaps a lot of premature HG failures could have been averted?
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