rover 825 kv6 head gasket help

The head bolts should be replaced whenever the head is removed although many garages do not bother. They are a little expensive but you wont have many other parts to buy. The main expense is labour and it sounds like you plan to do it yourself. There are worse jobs to do.

Try not to break or shear the old bolts as you remove them (a good socket set and wrench is worth its weight in gold) and clean any oil or water out of the bolt cavities before putting it all back together. Leaving oil here can cause the head to split if it gets hot.

Consider cleaning the valves while the head is off.

Don't is a good plan really! These engines- if its an early one its a dead cert, are prone to mixing fluids, due to porous heads. Rover replaced around

2500 engines when these came out due to porosity and acouple of other problems. If you don't know the history of the car look for a yellow dot on the vin plate or have a word with your local Rover dealer to see if it has had a replacement engine. If so then its possibley just a headgasket failure, but if you still have one of the early engines, I'd seriously consider finding a either a re-conned or entire modded engine out of a late kv6 rather than attempt a repair on yours.

Tim...

Head gasket procedure has been changed on these engines and is quite complex -- it involves measuring the liner height to determine the correct gasket. If it is an early engine best advice is don't.

What would be considered an early engine? This was on my list as a tow car, 2.5 0r 2.7, but if they spell trouble I'll scratch it.

You say 2.5 or 2.7lt - are you sure this is a KV6?

Earlier 800-series cars had either a 2.5 or 2.7 Honda V6.

Avoid the 2.5 as it's possibly the worst engine Honda have ever made, although the 2.7 is fine.

Your getting confused. 89 to around 91 800's used the 2.5 honda v6 which was not very good- prone to cam / tappet trouble, top end oil problems, headgasket problems- mainly due to the extremely small and easily blocked coolant passages in the heads- if you see one of these with radweld in it run away very fast. The later 2.7 was alot better and a good engine.

In ~97, Rover invented their own v6, called the kv6. This was dreadful, and Rover ended up replacing alot of engines under warranty. In ~99 a revised unit was available, which is largely trouble free-ish.

Tim..

99 on? I thought they stopped making them around then?

A friend had a 96 0r 97 and was very pleased with it. I drove it a few times and liked it. May be this is why they are so cheap.

The 800 finsihed in early 98 (i think) but the kv6 lives on in the 75, and the freelander amungst others...

Tim..

Think you're a bit out with your dates. The 2.5 was the first engine fitted to the 800 which took over from the SD1 in '86. And since this made their 'flagship' rather slower than the V-8 it replaced, it wasn't long before the 2.7 appeared.

Indeed so The late90s 800 2.5 has a Rover Kv6 not a Honda 2.5 or 2.7 v6 engine. The Honda 2.5 was pretty awful and the 2.7 a good bit better but not as reliable as the multi point injection versions of Rovers M16 and T16 engines The Kv6 was dumped in the 800 series to debug it before it was put in the 75. KV6 engined 800 and early KV6 Freelanders are shall we say best avoided. The K series engines are a very clever design, however it was built to costings more suited to the Metro than a luxury car.

The 4 cylinder Rover M16(post 89) and T16 engines (820 and 600 Turvbo) and single and twincam Honda (600 series).

The 800 was still being sold by dealers from old stock into 2000 --

The 800 production plant was converted into the 75 plant at some point in the dim-and-distant so they had a big push on production of 800s before it closed. The upshot is that any 800s you see on late (V, W, X, Y(?))plates are still all about P-reg.

You are of course correct with your dates, my memory of the 800's is rather cloudy...!

Tim..

They're not exactly memorable cars. I drove a new 2.5 Sterling just after they came out, and couldn't believe they had replaced the SD1 with a car which was worse in nearly every single way. The only thing it beat the SD1 on was noise and rattles, but a new interior design for the SD1 would have cured that. And it was so ugly...

At least they improved the looks with the later ones.

The 2.7 was introduced because of the dreadful unreliabilty and lack of low speed torque of the 2.5 it wasn't really any faster. Rover were however silly selling a V6 model as a "Vitesse" as the SD1 Vitesse was pretty dammed quick while V6 just felt flat but a couple of years down the line the 2 litre Vitesse Turbo Sport put things right --- 197 bhp from 2 litres ouch ! Comparing the 800 range with the SD range the whole 800 range was generally faster than its much larger engined forefather. They made the same mistake with the 600 series passing the breathless Honda DOHC engined 623 off as a performance model untill Rovers own M16 Turbo engine was fitted to the 600 shell.

Well, by the time the 800 arrived, EFI was becoming the norm. And the EFI V-8 leaves any normally aspirated 800 for dead. Of course, for faster, I'm not talking about maximum speed which is purely academic.