K series head gaskets

[steveww]

Concur with Rohan on this.

There is really only one authority on these engines IMHO - Dave Andrews of DVA power in Milton Keynes, one of, if not the acknowledge K guru and holder of the highest specific output for a tuned K series

My seven had a 1.4 K which I upgraded to a 1.8, done by Dave Andrews. He always says the liner height is critical and that they need to protrude 4 thou (ISTR) from the deck of the block. He always fits steel dowels and a Payen gasket and has never had a single hg gasket failure in over 50 engines and most are used on track.

The engine he built for me was a delight.

Jon

Dave Andrews did the head work on my Lotus Twinc. An excellent job and a definite improvement in power output.

[Bruce Crowthorne]

Agree that Dave A is one of the most knowledgable people on the K.

I swapped my cams in my Elise at 25k miles and changed the head gasket then. It has now done 125k miles and still going strong (fingers crossed)....
The gasket kit I got then (getting on for 10 years ago) had the steel dowels. At that time, the theory was that the plastic dowels didn't provide enough location...

The only other bit of bad news / theory is that on SOME heads the face of the head can soften with age. The only way to check this is to get it hardness tested - not even sure who you would get to do this, last time I did hardness testing I was a graduate trainee (30+ years ago) and you need some fairly specialist kit and the skill to use it properly.

If you are anywhere near Milton Keynes, go and see Dave. Genuinely nice guy and always happy to help - and he will give you the best advice without trying to get you to go to him to get the work done.

Regards
Bruce

[jono]

The K head hardness issue relates to certain batches of heads and is to do with the casting quality. Some heads are good, some are not.

Dave tests the head with a hardness tester (a nifty meter which ISTR drops a steel ball onto the head and calculates the rebound) to make sure they are okay for use before he does any porting or other work. It was quite fascinating to see him perform this test on my head before the engine was built. He takes a series of readings and knows what range of readings is acceptable for a performance engine. If the head fails the hardness test, it's toast.

[paddy]

Thanks again for all the replies.

I managed to get a very low mileage 1.4 engine from 2004 on ebay for ?200 so I'm going to fit that. It sounds like after multiple failed attempts Rover did make some progress and the incidence of failure is very much lower on post-2003 engines. I'm told the 1.4 will work with the standard 1.6 ECU - not completely convinced but I'll see what happens.

Having now read lots about the K-series it does sound like a decent engine, powerful and exceptionally light (and the Caterham boys seem to like it as well). Has anyone thought of trying one instead of the Zetec in an Elan? I would have thought whatever gearbox, manifolds etc they use in the Caterham would probably work well also in the Elan.

Paddy

[GrUmPyBoDgEr]

Thanks again for all the replies.

I managed to get a very low mileage 1.4 engine from 2004 on ebay for ?200 so I'm going to fit that. It sounds like after multiple failed attempts Rover did make some progress and the incidence of failure is very much lower on post-2003 engines. I'm told the 1.4 will work with the standard 1.6 ECU - not completely convinced but I'll see what happens.

Having now read lots about the K-series it does sound like a decent engine, powerful and exceptionally light (and the Caterham boys seem to like it as well). Has anyone thought of trying one instead of the Zetec in an Elan? I would have thought whatever gearbox, manifolds etc they use in the Caterham would probably work well also in the Elan.

Paddy

Yes at the time I gave the idea a lot of thought but eventually plumped for the Zetec.
A 1.8 liter engine would have been my minimum requirement but the reliability issues & lack of "tuners" at the time were major deciding factors.
The Caterham 6 speed G/Box was also considered but discarded due to cost & unknown durability.
To be honest even today I wouldn't consider a "K" although as you say & as I have previously written, it is a clever little engine but flawed by lack of development.
Continued production did not mean continued development in the case of that engine, most unfortunately.

Cheers
John

[paddy]

Replacement engine was fitted at the weekend. I used the ECU, wiring loom, inlet manifold and injectors all from the old 1.6 engine. Incompatibilities between the old and new loom stopped me from keeping the inlet manifold and injectors that came with the newer engine. For example, the older engine had an inlet temperature sensor in the manifold, but the newer manifold didn't, which I thought was odd.

Anyway, the new one seems to be working fine. It took about a minute of cranking before it started which was a very nervous minute

Thanks again for the replies - they convinced me not to even attempt a repair. Total cost in the end was about ?250 plus 14 hours labour.

Paddy