Many tales of problems with the 1.4 K Series on the www.Carsurvey.org site.
Not worth the hassle, perhaps consider the turbo diesel model with the tough (but noisy) L Series engine.
K Series not worth the metal they're made from, IMHO.
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Its all very well checking the coolant level every day but don't they have a nasty habit of dumping it all in mid journey?
By the time the temp warning light comes on the engine is toast...
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I had a 416i until recently and had two HGF failures and one water pump in around 20K miles. The car was in mint condition with FSH so no reason to expect problems. The AA guy who recovered the car from the first HGF reckoned the 1.4s were worse than the 1.6s. He had seen one with water visibly leaking from a cracked head.
IMHO these engines are fundamentally flawed and I would avoid at all costs. Is your mother likely to want the hassle of daily coolant checks coupled with the possibility (probabilty) of being stranded at some stage?
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"if you can live with the quirky looks."
Is that this months code for pig ugly?
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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"My mother is considering a Rover Streetwise 1.4 SE (stop sniggering at the back there!)."
Sniggering?? Sniggering?? I'm laughing out loud and wondering if that statement gets you
a) kicked out of the BackRoom; and
b) ejected from the RICS, and no professional surveyor would be seen dead in one, even if it is his mother's.
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Espada III - well if you have a family and need a Lamborghini, what else do you drive?
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Sniggering?? Sniggering?? I'm laughing out loud and wondering if that statement gets you a) kicked out of the BackRoom; and b) ejected from the RICS, and no professional surveyor would be seen dead in one, even if it is his mother's.
Oh, i don't know, they're not that bad.
Quirky, yes. At least Mum doesn't drive Metro's any more.
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Thanks all for your input. Been out all day, so first chance to read replies. I'll send Mum a link so she can read it for herself and make up her own mind. Mum like me regards the bonnet as part of the bodywork, not an inspection hatch, and she lives in the middle of nowhere, so a potential high maintenance car like this may not suit.
Car is here:
cgi.ebay.co.uk/2004-Rover-Steetwise-SE-1-4-3-Door-...m
At under £3k, i think it's pretty good value. A diesel is on there for £5k. Lot cheaper than a Polo Dune or C3 XTR, if you like that sort of thing.
I have suggested to Mum that although the vendor is a thoroughly nice chap and so on, she really ought to get him/them to scan the service book and HPI report and give her a copy, 100% feedback or not. Especially as the car is the other end of the country from us.
Thanks again
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Its all very well checking the coolant level every day but don't they have a nasty habit of dumping it all in mid journey? By the time the temp warning light comes on the engine is toast...
Yes, and yes. One filthy wet June day in 1995 this exact thing happened to me, driving a J-reg 214Si borrowed from my mother back to uni. 36k miles, properly serviced. Stopped at (IIRC) recently-opened westbound M4 Reading services for comfort break - car absolutely fine.
22 miles later (by first emergency phone after A338 exit) - car immobile on hard shoulder with irredeemably broken engine. Thermostat had somehow jammed shut, HG had blown and all the coolant in the entire system had found its way out through the hole. Whole engine had to be scrapped as the head and part of the block had been warped by the heat, plus the oil had turned to tar in the sump.
No warning light ever came on and the temp gauge needle never got above half-way. Time elapsed from first hearing funny faint rattling noise and beginning to notice slight power loss, to being stranded in the rain on the hard shoulder with a dead car: about four minutes.
Total repair bill was north of £2,700 (after they'd had to replace the clutch and strip down the gearbox, wherein the aforementioned tar-like oil residue had somehow managed to seep). Warranty company (happily long since gone out of business) decided it was drive-on damage as soon as they heard the words "head gasket" and refused to pay up.
I have never had a car fail so catastrophically in such a terrfiyingly short space of time before or since (and I've owned half a dozen FIATs, too). I would never consider owning anything else with a K-series engine of any capacity ever under any circumstances.
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>>neglect of cooling system will be your downfall.
Has been mentioned so many times,from people that race them and also mentioned about Lotus Elise which uses the K series.Problem on road going vehicles is the stat has no bypass/hole drilled to allow cooler water to go into the engine during warm up process(if the stat works as it should slowly)not a problem,but if it suddenly opens- Its allowing sudden cold water into system hence the HGF.If you check out design and flow distance from rad to stat its a long way for cooled water to flow without cooling even further,same or worse applies to Lotus given distance between rad and stat
I gather the mod does work,but this has bypass on it to prevent HGF failure,some I know drill a small hole in stat,preventing the problem. Having said that I am told it works,no reason so far to dispute
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Steve
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I've had a few cars with the 1400 K series and can honestly say they have been very good. Ok, they may blow their head gaskets a little more than other engines but they are reliable - infact the K engines I have had add up to over 350K of motoring and only 1 head gasket failure - which a burst radiator caused.
Many engines have their design faults that show up over a number of years of service, but like anything if they are looked after they wont give any trouble. Also, if the head gasket it on its way out it is likely to give prior warning and caught early costs very little in comparison to more complex engine electics etc.
As steve.o has already said speculation over the thermostat has been blamed and MGR uprated this sometime in 2004 to stop the thermal shock - would be worth checking with a dealer via the engine number if this is the latest version. Other than that and if its as reliable and dependable as my 8 yr old 214 then its very good value for money
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We had a 1.4 8v SOHC which was fine until about 65k. at 65k the CHG went... £200 to fix and then fine again until we sold it.
All you need to do is (as already stated above) check the coolant level at least every time you fill up. And as soon as it starts to drop, you need to investigate.
The real problems come with those which have failed CHG which aren't spotted and the coolant runs low and warps the head.......... can be an expensive job to fix.
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MoneyMart
Current car: 55-reg Audi A4 2.5 V6TDi Quattro flappy-paddle
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"All you need to do is (as already stated above) check the coolant level at least every time you fill up."
Shouldn't have to. Fitting a low coolant warning light would have been sensible. They've been producing these damn things since the late 1980's, any problems should have been engineered out by now.
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Well i have a Rover 114 GSi with the K-series engine. I find it a brilliant engine; good on fuel economy and suprisingly powerful when you need to accelerate rapidly. It gives out about 75bhp which in a light car is more than adequate, though the Streetwise version is probably more powerfull to compensate for weight.
As long as you regularly check the coolant and oil (especially the coolant as the capacity is usually quite small, leaving little margin for error) it should work fine. Mine is 10 years old and still going strong.
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>>Shouldn't have to.
whether you should or should not is not the point,they are known for it so extra caution is needed,
>>any problems should have been engineered out by now.
very much agree,but they were not, so anyone that owns one need to be very carefull..we can all discuss this problem for as long as you like,but unfortunately the problem still exists (maybe not as bad)but still there.
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Steve
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The K-Series engine came out at the end of the 1980s and was - and probably still is - a very advanced engine design; its 95bhp matched or bettered the output from 1.6 or even larger engines at the time.
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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They are a nice engine when running right, back in 1989 fuel injection and 16 valves was not the norm amongst fleet fodder such as the Rover 200.
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They are a nice engine when running right, back in 1989 fuel injection and 16 valves was not the norm amongst fleet fodder such as the Rover 200.
Yes i agree basical a very good engine but like the rest of the british car industry a missed the mark somewhere in development
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The K-Series engine came out at the end of the 1980s and was - and probably still is - a very advanced engine design; its 95bhp matched or bettered the output from 1.6 or even larger engines at the time.
But was this not their downfall? Cramming too much bhp out of only 1400cc? IIRC the later ones produced 103bhp compared to 8v Ford/Vauxhall 1.4s putting out around 75bhp.
OK so the Rover owner had the bragging rights down the pub but this was little consolation for being stuck on the hard shoulder with a scrap engine!
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Maybe the Chinese will sort it out.
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"All you need to do is (as already stated above) check the coolant level at least every time you fill up." Shouldn't have to. Fitting a low coolant warning light would have been sensible. They've been producing these damn things since the late 1980's, any problems should have been engineered out by now.
I believe MG Rover did start fitting low coolant level indicators to some models, possibly around the time of the latest facelifts, so that may include the Streetwise.
They also made some improvements to the K-series engines which means engines made after about 2001 should be less likely to suffer HGF. Some still do but then so do engines by Ford, Vauxhall, Fiat, Peugeot....
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The 1.4 has always been quite a good engine, there are enough early 90's 214's around after all. Although the 1.1 8v, 1.4 8v and 1.4 16v were introduced in '89 the 1.6 and 1.8 were launched in the mid 90's (the 1.6 in the Mk1 200/400 was Honda unit), it seems that it was the first five or six years of production of the 1.6 and 1.8 that suffered badly from HGF issues (very approx '95 to 2000) and the 1.8 more than the 1.6, later K-Series of all sizes are seemingly better and the 1.4's have never really had more HGF's than average.
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To be honest I've never heard of many problems with the 1.4 and that includes my daughter's example, who had one of the very first 214s when they went on sale and ran it for three years on a lease agreement (I'd been on the Press launch and was quite impressed with the Rover at the time).
A neighbour over the road has a J-reg example and, again, he seems very content with it - I spotted it for him about nine years ago when he was looking for a Rover (yes, people did want them in those days!)
There's still the odd taxi operator using them in my area as well, despite the local taxi drivers overwhelmingly rooting for Skoda Octavias along with a few Peugeot 406s.
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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My dad had a 214 and traded it in at 138k. No HGF at all!
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At the risk of repeating the obvious that someone else may have said at sometime, if the problem is the small header tank, has anyone thought of replacing it with a bigger one?
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Has nobody asked this before, or is it of no interest?
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On the recent thread "Rover 75 1.8" Honest John posted that Brown and Gammons do a kit with larger coolant expansion tank and a low coolant warning light.
www.ukmgparts.com/index1.html?o=113844931216598
Stock number: BGF1111
;o)
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Thank you for that information.
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It seems odd that Rover never thought of putting at least a larger header tank on, when the problem has been so widespread.
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