More Rover 200 fun

Perywinkle · 4 Apr 2007 at 16:15

After swapping the engine on a rover 200 the other week due to hgf.
I was greeted by some delicious chocolate milkshake type substance in the other half's rover's expansion tank.

So after a good read o0f the haynes manual I set to stripping the head and associated gubbins off!

Loooooooooooooooong head bolts!

Pretty straight forward for the most part, till it came to timing the thing back up again.
Those forward thinking rover engineers in their wisdom, decided to put the crank timing marks in such a position that I had to remove the alternator belt, then the engine mount and drop the engine by 3 inches or so to make it visible lol.

Seems to be running good again now.

Took about 5 hours total, not bad for a first attempt.
Dunno how much a garage would charge for doing it.

Pez

-westy- · 4 Apr 2007 at 16:20

Good work! you must be fairly mechanically minded!

Perywinkle · 4 Apr 2007 at 16:24

Just unbolting and rebolting mainly, anyone could do it with a bit of elbow grease and a manual realy

Took a good few more chunks out my hands mind lol

Pez

D4VE · 4 Apr 2007 at 16:35

Perywinkle said:
Dunno how much a garage would charge for doing it.

Pez

Previous owner on my 420 turbo paid around £650, so you saved yourself some cash.
Good work.

Perywinkle · 4 Apr 2007 at 16:49

ooof glad I did it myself then

Lopéz · 4 Apr 2007 at 17:03

I wish the Supra engine bay was that simple! Good work

Berger · 4 Apr 2007 at 17:33

Did you skim the head or just replace the gasket with a new one?

Dogbreath · 4 Apr 2007 at 17:51

Hope you changed the inlet manifold gasket as well, they are very prone to coolant leaks and are frequently the cause of HGF.

Idealy you should also have measured the liner heights above the deck as these are very important for the engine to hold a gasket. It should be 0.05-0.15mm with no more than 0.05mm variation between adjacent cylinders.

Deleted member 329 · 4 Apr 2007 at 17:56

good to see another 200 in the forums! i had the head replaced on my 214 a while back.. its going fine. just a bit of piston slapback! which is anoying but the car runs great. I am starting to get my hands abit more dirty which is fun!
hope you dont mind but i am going to fire in my own rover related question in your thread
do you have idea how i can sort this rust mess out? its the only rust on the car and its starting to anoy me!

commited · 4 Apr 2007 at 21:12

Did you check the length of the bolts? Apparently they can stretch which isnt a good thing!

silversurfer · 4 Apr 2007 at 21:57

They cant be reused can they

commited · 4 Apr 2007 at 22:04

I think if they havent stretched they can be reused. Obviously a better idea to replace them though!

moss · 4 Apr 2007 at 22:10

As far as im aware the head bolts should be renewed when the heads done on a k-series.

Perywinkle · 4 Apr 2007 at 22:42

Head didn't need skimming, it was just leaking bit of oil into the water and vise versa gasket hadn't properly gone yet was just blowing a little.

Inlet was not removed as I took the head off with inlet and exhaust manifolds in situ.

Some people renew bolts, others don't. They all tightened up fine for me anyway.

Dogbreath · 4 Apr 2007 at 22:42

moss said:
As far as im aware the head bolts should be renewed when the heads done on a k-series.

They are fine to be re-used as long as their length is within tolerance.

[huzeeee] · 4 Apr 2007 at 23:01

Dogbreath said:
They are fine to be re-used as long as their length is within tolerance.

Yeah, dad recons he has used em 3 or 4 times actually with no problem on relativley high performance engines. A mate called Nick who is crazy about drums cut some head bolts down to different lengths drilled the end, hung em up and used em as chimes

Im quite sure the timing marks are when piston one is at tdc which is easier to find

T16 · 5 Apr 2007 at 00:12

moss said:
As far as im aware the head bolts should be renewed when the heads done on a k-series.

They DEFINATELY should.

Re using stretch bolts like that is asking for trouble and is not the proper way to do things.

The bolts are meant to be torqued up once only.

Forget tolerances, the properties of the metal change with the stretch and heating/cooling over time.

For a few quid its not worth cutting corners.

digitalwolf · 5 Apr 2007 at 10:06

Could somebody tell me if a 218si (bubble) has the threat of HGF too?

sculptor · 5 Apr 2007 at 10:31

digitalwolf said:
Could somebody tell me if a 218si (bubble) has the threat of HGF too?

Hi Mate can you get back to me.

ajgoodfellow · 5 Apr 2007 at 11:11

digitalwolf said:
Could somebody tell me if a 218si (bubble) has the threat of HGF too?

Yes as it'll have the K-Series engine

More Rover 200 fun

Deleted member 329

Deleted member 329