And the sooner the remains of this leyland dog is buried the better.
too true, but i saw a lovely princess auto
1978 in beige with brown vynil roof and the 2.2 6cyl engine for sale locally.
tempted for nostagias sake, as my parents had the identical model when i was young.
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"too true, but i saw a lovely princess auto
1978 in beige with brown vynil roof and the 2.2 6cyl engine for sale locally."
I remember seeing rows and rows of the manual 2200 Princess jacked up around Longbridge waiting new driveshafts. The design was wrong, the alignment was out of true and driveshafts lasted 2000 miles at best. (when first launched).
You could not make it up.
So sad..
Bury them is what I say.
madf
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I know that the K series has problems, but I can only speak from my own ownership experience - 214Si 140K and engine fine (although two new gearbox's) 218 VVC Coupe - low mileage about 30K I think also no problems, but probably to new to tell. Liked them both, and the engine was very advanced when it came out - just a shame they never spent a few quid sorting out some of the problems with it. Usuall british industry I am afraid - no planning for the future
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>>I know that the K series has problems,
Dont we all,but the main problem was the cooling system.
Without doubt if the waterways were made larger,and ok engine weight would have to increase slightly to accomodate this.And including the thermostat put on heat output side of cooling system as most engines are then I doubt this would have been a problem,Poor design and mods made only helped prevent problems occuring as fast
not actually cure them
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Steve
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How can you have a debate on this the K series is pink fluffy dice, end of And the sooner the remains of this leyland dog is buried the better.
lol
Calm down dear, you'll do yourself an injury and at your age................................ ;)
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I once had a Metro GTi mpi which had 105bhp and was pretty nippy and not actually that bad to drive.
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Its a shame that despite asking not to have the worn out comments about the engine, it seems nobody can resist. Thanks to the one person who actually contributed to the thread question.
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I recommend mg-rover.org for helpful advice and info on the engines and more.
hth
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I can't be bothered editing the swearwords again, like I did above, and replacing it with "pink fluffy dice" when deleting all the text is so much simpler, as mentioned here:
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?t=33415
DD
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madf wroted......
>>>>>>>>
>>
I remember seeing rows and rows of the manual 2200 Princess jacked up around Longbridge waiting new driveshafts. The design was wrong, the alignment was out of true and driveshafts lasted 2000 miles at best. (when first launched).>>>>
>>>>>>>>
if i remember correctly the engines/gearboxes were too far back on the chassis rails and the shafts were breaking out on setoff (how sad to remember that then?)
:-)
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The low coolant capacity and small waterways were an intentional part of the K's design and provided an ultra quick warm-up time. I recall the revised (K-powered) Metro appearing on a local news programme when it was launched where they started it from cold and had warm air coming out of the vents within 30 seconds, and the gauge on its normal position within 2 minutes. The benefits in terms of reduced choke dependency and therefore fuel economy were enormous
Unfortunately this engine wasn't tolerant of the "lift the bonnet only when it packs up" attitude towards maintenance of many drivers. Even a few hundred mill of lost coolant was a potential disaster.
As for reliability, I know of a 98 Elise 1.8 (non VVC) which was used daily in all conditions, plus thrashed around a good few trackdays a year, and racked up 115,000 miles. The engine didn't miss a beat, and even at the end was still as sweet as a nut. It had never been apart, didn't lose or use any fluids, didn't smoke, didn't rattle and didn't overheat. OK, so it's not really stressed in the little Lotus, but the nature of the car means it probably got driven harder than the average Rover 25. It was just serviced on the button (9k) and had all fluid levels checked every weekend religiously.
I've heard several people who work on these engines say that their fondness for them is inversely proportional to the engine's state of tune. In other words, the standard 1.4 and 1.8 are lovely engines, but the more power they knock out, the more stroppy, temperamental, unreliable and generally horrible they become.
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The last comment you make is almost invariably true of any engine. Any erosion of safety factors will get you in the end, whatever the engineering application.
As far as the K-series is concerned, other than cooling jacket conductivity and volume reserve, there are serious issues concerning liner protrusion tolerances, thermal cycling performance and consequent fire ring erosion of head gaskets.
There are plenty of reliable engines of this specification around - let the Chinese have this one in exchange for the shed loads of rubbish goods they sell to us, and which fill up our land-fill sites within about a year of purchase.
659.
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659 - for what it's worth, I tend to agree with your last comment. I just remember being very impressed at this Lotus which was driven very hard indeed, had no "special treatment" and still went like a rocket well into six figures. I remember thinking that no engine with inherent problems would be capable of such a flawless reliability record in a car driven so hard, and that proper maintenance must be the key. Probably incorrectly, but that's what I remember thinking.
My view is that the K-series was a good design, but was pushed way beyond its original brief which was basically an ultra-light, ultra fast warming 1.4 litre shopping car engine. It was never designed to be stretched to 1.8 litres, never designed to have variable cam trickery and an 8,000 RPM+ rev limit, and certainly wasn't designed to lug over a tonne and a half of 4x4 around (which is where it gave most grief coincidentally). But not only did all this happen to it, but it did so with typically patchy British R&D.
Cheers
DP
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i was always led to beieve that the thin engine internal diameters and the small coolant expansion bottle was to keep the gross vehicle weight down and therefore make the vehicle more fuel efficient.,rather than engineering progress,common sense should tell the engineers that any engine that uses water as a cooling medium needs a surplus of capacity for those that may miss the "idiot light"on the dash..........
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I say let the MG and Rover brands die with dignity,
I can see...two problems with that statement!
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Ive owned a Rover fitted with the K series lump.
The K series is a lovely rev happy engine & will give a long service life if its looked after & the levels checked & kept an eye on.
The only problem I had with the engine in 24K miles of ownership was a camshaft oil seal that cost less then £3 & took me less then 10 minutes to replace.
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I had a 1998 Rover 200 Vi - Engine was good but never really felt that quick, As for handling I had to sell up when I was out cornered on a Dual Carriageway side by side with a Mark 4 Golf GTi - It's a nice enough car it's just very dull to drive and looks dull both inside and outside.
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I had to sell up when I was out cornered on a Dual Carriageway side by side with a Mark 4 Golf GTi ->>
It must have been really carp then!
Seriously the later 25 / ZS were much better handling that the 200.
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>>The K series is a lovely rev happy engine & will give a long service life if its looked after & the levels checked & kept an eye on.
Not always the case, but in majority of cases this is correct,mostly the reason why so many are now found in scrap yards/owners that will not keep an eye on levels and a point made before, including me.
So many owners, not just Rovers but other cars, just do not take care of levels and drive till it drops/problems occur
--
Steve
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I've owned a Rover fitted with the K series lump. The K series is a lovely rev happy engine & will give a long service life if its looked after & the levels checked & kept an eye on. The only problem I had with the engine in 24K miles of ownership was a camshaft oil seal that cost less then £3 & took me less then 10 minutes to replace.>>
I have owned several K series Rovers over the past twelve years and never had a problem with any of them. When it first came out it was years ahead of the opposition but suffered, like so much of MGR's output, from lack of proper long term investment. The same issue (HGF) bedevilled Triumph's 3 Li V8 as fitted in the Stag. It was a superb engine and was far superior in performance and economy to Rover?s Buick derived 3.5li V8 and Ford's Essex 3li V6 used to replace it. Stag purists won't touch these engines with a barge pole now.
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