Blown Head Gasket

OddballJamie

fivetide wrote: »

and of course they swapped to a toyota unit on the elise which solved the issue on the 2nd generation cars.

The Series 2 was sold with the K Series for about 5 years, the engine swap to Toyota was due to emissions for the US market amongst other things.

mattyprice4004

spacey2012 wrote: »

The rover 45 was a fault of converting a BL 1.4 + 1.8 8v engine to a 16 valve head.
They had to bodge rails in to the sump for the head bolts, if the engine overheated the rails expanded just enough to lift the head.

The K Series was always designed in 1.4 DOHC (16 valve) form, the problem was rigidity when expanding to 1.6 and 1.8L.

The rail was always the same.

Also, the expansion to 1.6 and 1.8 was done well before the 45 - we're talking around 1995 from memory. Loss of head gasket compression wasn't every really an issue, as the alloy engine expanded when hot and took up any expansion in bolts / rails etc.

As you can tell I read about this kind of stuff far too much, I need a hobby.