Rover 214 Engine Seize

Can anyone shed any light on this one, I am not a mechanic and the diagnosis on faults of todays engines escape me.

My engine has seized on my Rover 214 Sli , 1400cc. M-Reg

The car is regularly serviced every 3 months, the oil in the engine is clean and plentiful.

Whilst driving to work I had no problems with the engine, everything on the car was running normally , usually after about 10 mins of driving the engine is warm enough for me to put the heater on and warm up. I am now on a dual carriageway overtaking at 70mph no problems with the engine, I approach a roundabout and the car cuts out for no apparant reason, I have enough momentum to bum start it and it wouldnt start. Eventually I come to a stop just prior to the roundabout and try the ignition , nothing.

I call out the AA and when they arrive they say the engine has seized , he looked at the oil all was in order and he looked at the water header tank all was in order , its a mystery he said.

Other than waiting on my mechanic to strip it down at a great cost to me does anyone have any ideas what might cause the engine to seize, it only had

70k on the clock, and as I say regularly serviced.

One thing that might be relevant is 2 weeks prior I had trouble with it when it wanted to cut out on me , the AA again did a diagnosis on all electrics because the car wanted to cut out at 1000 revs whilst parked. Engine idle was fine , it started fine every time. The only componenet the AA guy could not get to was the crankshaft sensor. The car was driven to my mechanic early hours of a Tuesday morning , he had the car for a few hours and replaced the crankshaft sensor the car was running fine in fact better than it has done for a very long time.

As I say I understand the basics of what can cause seizure by looking at the internet, on what I have read so far the reasons for seizure will be evident such as lack of performance , strange noises and even no oil, I had none of these early symptoms.

thanks

Macroman

There could be a number of reasons why the engine has seized.

The first one is failure of the oil pump or oil pump overpressure bypass valve, causing mid and top head starvation. If you are lucky, the pump may only have partially failed (reduction in delivery) and the main bearings are ok, just the top head affected.

The second is failure of the radiator cooling circuit, causing overheating, but this would have been obvious with a temp gauge pegged on the red.

The third is wrong grade of oil. Too pissy and it's not doing it's job.

The fouth is a collapsed oil filter.

The fifth is a sudden injection of water into the cylinder bore resulting in hydraulicing at speed (split bore, blown pistons etc) .

The sixth is a blocked oil sump oil strainer, causing starvation.

Add to that the possibility of a faulty oil pressure sensor and arrgh!

Of all of the faults I would bet that the oil pump has died or the overpressure port has failed. If the overpressure port sticks closed the oil pressure goes very high but would not result in a seized engine, but the oil filter seals would blow and you would then loose oil by the bucket. If the overpressure port sticks open the oil will mostly just circulate between the pump and the sump, leading to top head starvation. Failure of the pump due to worn lobes or disconnection of the pump from the crankshaft due to worn gearing will result in no oil and a seizure. Haynes manual for the later shape Rover 200s, pages 2A18 to 2A20, sections 13 and 14 detail oil pump servicing, the overpressure port can be inspected without pulling the oil pump out.

Depending on how badly the engine seized, you may be able to recover it. If you pulled right over when it cut out and didn't attempt to run it into the ground then once the engine cooled off it may have unstuck (I have seen this before, but you have to be really lucky). With the handbrake off and in gear, see if you can free the engine by rocking the car. If so, it's a start, and I'd then start looking at the oil pump circuit. However, if lucky, you will eventually have to take the cylinder head off to inspect the bores. If too badly shagged, a recon engine is the way ahead.

PDH