We bought this late last year sometime, think it was August, and haven't touched it since.
I have since replaced the alternator, and am currently repairing the front wing, which was dented when we bought it.
It's done over 100k miles, hopefully HGF isn't imminent. Otherwise, I never want to work on that engine!



After much messing about trying to find easier access to the engine, I realised two panels behind the seats.

One was the petrol tank :



The other was the engine!





Changed the alt:


And then got to work on this:



Literally had to rip it out as I got a bit pissed off with the corroded bolts holding it on. Need to drill most out at some point. Need to replace the rear lock as I locked the keys in the boot. heheh.

What engine is that, the 1.8?

Ahhh just noticed the reg, will be a 1.8 lol.

Any plans for it?

It's the 1.8. Loads of receipts, has been well looked after, spare and tool kit have nver been used and fairly unmarked.

Dont' know what I'm going to do yet, want to get it on the road first.

think you should keep it, will be a few brit car owners on here then lol

I dragged this out of the garage this year as I was bored of not skinning my knuckles on solid metal and getting absolutely filthy.

Had a look at it in in late Summer 2008 and put it in for the MOT, it had stupid things like ball joints and corrosion on brake pipes.

Got under it, and every single bolt had corroded. Nuts just rounded off and even such as move and you'd get a mouth full of rust flakes. I'd say the amount of 'removing bolts' vs 'doing actual work' was 10:1. Ridiculous!!

I spent 30 quid on new nuts/bolts first and then I stopped counting at 700 quid on new parts. I have replaced all the bushes and ball joints, ARB links, and new dampers. The car had a Hydragas pump-up in Wigan:



It felt much better after that, and with the suspension replaced, it's like a new car, the difference is amazing.

So far, I've welded a new sill skin, replaced the hood, the bonnet cable, rear calipers, brakes and pads and also the handbrake cable and brake and clutch pipes along with a new brake master cylinder and clutch master and slave cylinder.

Everything was a barstard to do because of the corrosion. The rear brake discs was the worst. I had to cut them into bits to get them off. Totally rusted solid on the hub!





Softest metal known to man:



Setting these up was a barstard - the reason why it failed over and over again. The Nazi mot tester wouldn't pass it even though it -worked-:



Everything is done now (after a month of getting rotten in the open air). Will MOT it soon.

yerrr cool Job man good look

nice one dude

great job bud, keep us posted

good luck with them horrible K series engines, bloody night mare !

Thought thy were superb engines, apart from the Head Gaskets that fail on a regular basis?

It does seem quite peppy and suited to the car! I've heard good things about them though.

I think the head gasket has been done recently. If you take it easy and let the engine warm up it -usually- doesn't go. The old engine had plastic dowels to keep the head in line with the block which went soft and the whole thing moves if it's only half warmed up. You can get steel dowels from a Freelander and no-one's since had HGF that I know of.

You can buy a Lotus headgasket and i think that cures it.

One of my lecturers in college helped design the k-series among other notable engines, and he said the only reason the headgaskets are cack is because that specific design of the head block and headgasket together saved about 12p per engine.

So basically, its a superb engine, let down by cost cutting.

Similar to Aston Martin. The engines in the DB9s decide to let go of Con Rods when they feel like it. Yet Aston wont recall them or redesign them

Whats probably happened to the Aston engine is that the original V12 was two Ford Duratec V6's similar to ST220 spec where nailed together and modified further by cosworth themself. Late DB7's and all Vanquishes probably didnt have the problem. But when the DB9 was introduced, with intent to sell in large numbers, Ford probably stuck their noses into engine development, shat themself and specced lower parts. Loads of companies do it all the time. Shame really.

glad to see it all done now matey,landrover developed a multi layer head gasket with steel dowels and a new oil rails. The majority who have done this on mg-rover.org have not had any further problems. You want to try and get hold of some vhpd throttle boddies of the elise 190 or of the mgf cup cars. Am looking for these on ebay at the moment the last set went for about £60 which is a bargain. Anyway looks good

Yer tis quite a good engine tbh, just a nightmare for hgf. There is a 6 layered hg you can buy that also solves any problems with hgf......

The K series was a 1/2 decent motor - it was light, made decent power and was pretty tunable - its just a pity it was made by penny pinching Rover....

Ive heard a few reasons as to why these engines suffer from HGF..

The locating dowels where of very poor quality and the head could "walk"
The Head bolts where of very poor quality meaning the head could lift
The engine has a very small coolant capacity - not good when the alloy block needs a lot of cooling
The thermostat is very close to the engine - the engine heat opens the stat and then the cold water closed it making cooling unstable
The thermostat could not open enough to flow enough coolant - when they resolved this, the water pump could not flow enough coolant....

Rover just couldnt get it right and hence the reason Lotus moved to Toyota for their Elise engines.

interesting stuff there chew, makes sence, this I realised the hard way

Took it for an MOT the other day (NOT at Walsh's in Birkenhead) and it went through with a few non-serious advisories.