car ran out of water & blew gasket

iluvmylexus

iolanthe07 wrote: »

Rovers, apart from the 75 .

The 75 also uses the K series engine.
this engine is notorious for blowing head gaskets, especially in the heavier cars it is fitted to (including the 75 and Freelander).
because of the value of your car it may well be worth scrapping it rather than repairing.
we had a merc 190 E with a blown head gasket that we drove for 3 months until it went completely, it was never used for anything more than local/shoping trips until the day it finally went bang.

iolanthe07

The 75 also uses the K series engine.

Really? My local dealer told me it was fitted with a BMW engine, when I was looking to buy one.

MrsTinks

I'd not try and drive it personally... but... I drove my old mini (1978) for months with it and it carried on running... In my defence then 3 mechanics and I all looked at it and couldn't spot the crack in the head gasket as none of the usual symptoms where there... no water in the exhaust and the oil looked fine... Drank water like you wouldn't believe! Was finally found when in desperation I asked them to take the engine apart and there was a lovelly crack in the head once it got taken off and cleaned up. It had us baffled for months!
Yeah it's possible to drive it, but you could be damaging the engine further. As it's a rover my personal view is to scrap it as I hate them But I can appreciate that might not be practical...

payless

Don't drive it, it will cause more damage

I paid £350 for new Head Gasket inc skimming ?? , from a local ( not generally cheap) garage on my old Rover 400. I'm not sure but wonder if you can get away with not skimming , it might but cheap.

Take into account if you are aware of other problems , as spending money on it for something esle to go would be a waste ( ie my gearbox went a few months later!)

HenryWeston

The k series is well known for head gasket failure, I have seen one with the head taken off and its easy to see why they go, the head gasket only just sits on 1.5mm of the outer edge of the cylinder liner.

flybynight

i did the Hg on my rover 820 about 3 times, if you are gonna scrap it anyway, have abash. the gasket set itself for em is about £15.my ford escort used to do a HG roughly every 2500 miles, but i had it that well sorted ( kept the bits of cornflake box marked up wwith holes gfor slotting the parts through) it was a 3 hr job on a sat afternoon.

MrsTinks

Depends on whether you're looking at replacing the gasket only or if the head has cracked between the cylinders. if it has then you're looking at a new head... and it might cost you to get it skimmed just to find out that you have to buy a new head...

anewman

tine wrote: »

Depends on whether you're looking at replacing the gasket only or if the head has cracked between the cylinders. if it has then you're looking at a new head... and it might cost you to get it skimmed just to find out that you have to buy a new head...

I know new heads for my car are avalable on ebay for £100, maybe scrap yard cheaper. I guess transplanting all the bits would be the difficult part.

plane_boy2000

iolanthe07 wrote: »

The 75 also uses the K series engine.

Really? My local dealer told me it was fitted with a BMW engine, when I was looking to buy one.

The Diesel engines in the 75 were BMW units, but all the petrol models were K series Rover units.

The K series was only ever planned to power a small car range, but as time went on they kept pushing it further and further. It has inherent problems with the water flow anyway, but expecting to much of teh engine resulted in the high number of failures.

sillyvixen

i had a head gasket blow in my car last year, i was working 90 miles away from home at the time and had to get back home that evening, i parked in a car park and as i returned with my pay and display ticket to be met with a river of hot oily liquid flowing from my car. a local dealership came and saw my car and towed it to the workshop as it was undrivable. the cost of repairs was 800 pounds. I choose to pay that as although that was about my cars worth (k reg astra) i would be hard pressed to replace my car to one of the same spec and low mileage for that price (and could find myself in the same situation a few months down the line if i did. i caught a train home and could not get back to collect the car for 2 weeks.

my problem was caused by the thermostat rusting over as i had been unable to drive for 2 months following surgery and the car had remained stationary. i had topped up the water that morning (along with other checks). apparently while moving it kept its temp with the air going through the engine, on stopping in a freezing carpark it cooled rapidly and just went.

has been fine since work was done.