Hgf + Diy = Kr1

[Martin R]

I would quite possibly have paid to watch that

[smithpaulg]

Phil

 

When do you expect to complete your rebuild?

 

Paul

[Phil S1]

I've no idea Paul, it will all depend on when the head's done really. I didn't push Roger for a completion date as he already had a lot on when I dropped mine off, so I'm just hoping he'll be able to squeeze mine in along the way sometime.

 

A couple of developments. I had a look at the 6mm aluminium tube that B and Q sell and it has a wall thickness of about 1mm, giving a bore size of less than 4mm. This means the c.s.a. of the bore would be less than half of the original 6mm cast bore which sounded too restrictive, given that it's supplying oil to the head. Martin thought the same and we have now found some on a well known auction site with a wall thickness of 0,50mm, giving a bore size of 5mm. We both await delivery.

 

Tonight I thought I'd have a look at dismantling the oil pump, which to be fair, is only 2 screws. How hard can that be?......

....Well I managed to shear one of the heads off, the one on the left to be precise...

 

So tomorrow, I'll be purchasing an easy-out in an attempt to recover the situation

[Martin R]

Phil, if you are in no rush i can pop a set of small easy outs in the post ? You only use them once in a blue moon. Hardly worth the bother buying some ?

[Elise+Imp]

Arrrgh, don't do it, eazi-outs should be banned, they're the work of satan - here's where i see this going: bolt fails during undoing, you drill a smaller hole and expect to wind in a tapered thread, this expands the remanents of the bolt gripping it tighter just before snapping off the eazi-out, leaving an even harder obstruction, which you now need a cobalt or stellite drill to remove, or perhaps even spark erosion. Anyway you get my drift, personally i hate them and the only use i consider them for would be removing a bolt that has broken through over-tightening.

 

if i'd have read this last night i would have taken a detour on my way home (from bolton) to collect and drill it out for you, the offer is there, if you can get it to me - or find someone with a pillar drill, i can post you a proper engineers centre drill, and tapping drill (if you let me know the thread size) etc if needed, get it right and you drill the core out leaving a wire spring you just remove with a pick or pliers.

 

It may have been locktited, the use of heat (blow torch or paint stripped gun) may be advisable before removing the other one and before any removal attempt on the broken one. Heat breaks the locktite bond, prob need in excess of about 150 degrees C

 

 

as for the oil way, i'd be surprised if the hole in the head is much bigger than the 4mm, you're head is obviously not to hand but if anyone has a spare, could they gauge the head feed with a drill bit and report back on how poor my memory is

[jimbo07g41]

DVA said that you need to be careful when picking up the ducile and suggested taking digital calipers. There is variation in the ductile and the block castings.

 

If there is variation in OD of the oil ways in the block, maybe the thickness is not too important. Were do you stop anyway, for instance would a thinner wall ductile be more likely to fail again? Would it even fail again?

[Phil S1]

Martin has been in contact with DVA who says he uses the B and Q tubing without any issues. I took my calipers with me to our local B and Q to select the best one but failed in that because they only had one length anyway!

I've not received the 0,50mm wall stuff as yet but when it arrives I'll have to compare the 2 and make a decision on which way to go. As you say Jimbo, the 0,50mm tubing could be more susceptible to cracking.

 

Thanks for the offer of the easy outs Martin to fix my oil pump issue but after Brian's and others blatant condemnation of them I decided to have a go at drilling the screw out. (Last night I had tried heating up the casting and managed to cut a small screwdriver slot in the remains of the thread but to no avail).

So tonight I centre punched it and drilled it out in stages, 2mm, 3mm and 4mm. I've not got a pillar drill so I made do with a hand held cordless drill. This was the 2mm hole...

 

and after a bit of cleaning out and running an M5 tap back down it I give you....

 

Sorted

 

Thought I'd just post a picture of the inside of the oil pump in case anyone was interested, it's the first time I've ever seen inside one that's for sure...

 

With the screw sorted I was able to get back to why I decided to take it apart in the first place, basically it was Martin's fault He suggested I should do the DVA oil pump mod whilst the engine was in bits. The mod is a simple radiusing of the ports to improve the oil flow. There is a picture on the DVA website which I used as a guide and ended up with what you see below, it looks something like I reckon...

 

The 3 holes marked with an X need to be locally radiused to suit the passageways in the mating part, the one marked Y is left untouched.

 

Don't think I'll get much done tomorrow, I've got a feeling I might have a date with a paint brush....and it won't be to paint my roll bar stays ....not just yet anyway

[Elise+Imp]

Awesomes, good salvage - glad the chat yeilded a decent result

 

(I like the fact you didn't mention my renegade approach of leaving the bolt in, broken and just forgetting about it, as it's for assembly/shipping purposes only.)

[Phil S1]

I do have standards you know, unlike some

[KingK_series]

As I've already mentioned, my expansion bottle recently started to develop an oily tidemark. The coolant itself still looks decent, as does the oil. I had lost a small amount of coolant but when Brian did my cambelt over Easter we found that the water pump had developed a leak from the spindle. (We had fitted a new one on the last belt change, probably only done about 12K on it!). Not had any other symptoms and the temperature has been pretty normal. Whilst I'd be happy to drive it some more on the road I wasn't prepared to entertain doing a track day with it so I've decided to fix it sooner rather than later. I've also decided to have a go myself, with a supporting cast of MLOC , Brian and anyone else I can rope in along the way. In the words of Jeremy Clarkson "What could possibly go wrong?" .

The plus point of DIY is that any labour expenses I save can be spent on more meaningful things......like Horse Power .

There's a whole array of options available out there but the 2 main specialists are: Dave Andrews at DVA Power and Roger Fabry (Kiwi Rog) at Sabre Heads. My budget is limited so I've decided to just get the head ported for now and stick with standard cams and Roger's KR1 upgrade fits the bill nicely. This claims to add a good 15BHP so I'm hoping to see something in the region of 140BHP when it's all back together

Martin has done the HGF job twice now so I'll be referring to his threads along with the Elise service manual.

http://www.midlandsl...__fromsearch__1

http://www.midlandsl...__fromsearch__1

 

I've made a bit of a start tonight, the undertrays are off and the arch liners are out.

 

to be continued....

 

 

OK first off your engine has not suffered "HGF" unless the elastomer has detached from the gasket core plate or you have got coolant into the bores and steam coming out of the exhaust. In fact the gasket on these engines very rarely fails at all - it is a much more technically advanced gasket than used in most other OEM engines.

 

K series engines do suffer gasket failure when;-

 

 

1/ the head has distorted under normal driving over an extended period, leaking water into the oil, [almost certainly the issue with your engine] which is the common K series failure . This causes airpockets to form in the head, local overheating and eventually the head casting will lose it's heat treatment and go soft, at which point the head is scrap. Associated with this is eventual detachment of the elastomer on the exhaust side between 1 and 2. When this happens you get large quantaties of water escaping into the sump and oil into the water - which is where you are, however your engine was leaking long before you noticed it, but in sufficiently small quantaties for the water to get burnt off in the oil and be extracted by the breathers, unfortunately small leaks like this are enough to cause the tiny air pockets in the head which cause local overheating and softening of the parent metal. That is why it is essential to get your head hardness tested, once below 95 brinnell it is scrap.

 

2/ Gaskets fail when aftermarket skimming is undertaken without the compression of the aluminium technique [sometimes called peening] I posted on Seloc some years ago to conter one individual's contention that porosity causes failure. Happily this has now become common practice with that "tuner" and others, but it was part of the practice in both decent engine builders - ie on all F1 head castings and at Longbridge where the heads were smeared with blunt cutters in order to produce the same commpressed effect for years. Anyone not understanding the technique or using it is merely inexperianced.

 

 

3/ use of non OEM gaskets including the new chinese gasket which will fail because the do not have the Payen gasket technology.

 

 

Finally water pumps will always have a water passage beneath the pully to vent water if the seal leaks, however water leaking here should be replaced from the header tank without causing air pockets to form in the head. Be wary of the enrmous number of poor quality chinese made non OEM water pumps sold by motorfactors and garages these days, avoid them all.

 

Phil, good news. Thats why you peen the head before a skim. The hammering closes the voids produced due to the way the heads are cast. DVA showed me one he had done. The peening eliminates just about all the porosity. A bit crude but effective.

 

I have had a reply re the oilway mod and have made a bit of pipe to fit. I will update the previous post a bit later. Rog does have a reputation to be able to gas a bit

 

 

And to think for years he'd been complaining about "porosity" causing "HGF" - when this practice was executed on all heads at Longbridge and on all F1 castings as normal practice. Porosity is present in every casting ever made and always will be....

 

anyway progress I guess

 

Blimey, what a team! Thanks for all the support

Roger's preference did seem to be towards the Chinese gasket, he showed me one, it must have had 4 or more layers to it, it looked pretty thick. I mentioned about my 2 thou liner heights and he said that was typical for most of the K's he'd worked on. He showed me loads of different heads, even motorbike ones but he said there was virtually no work for him on those as they're all ported out from new. He also showed me some of the Chinese head bolts he'd had recently that he's sending back. You could see the seating faces were only part machined and he'd had others where the seating face wasn't square to the shaft.

Just to expand on my comments regarding the Chinese bolts, this has only been a very recent occurrence, prior to which, Roger has had no issues. He still recommends both the bolts and the gasket as the best possible HGF fix and will continue to supply and fit them.

 

Oh Bri,

Roger showed me a pulley he'd machined down.....it looked just like that only better......his was RED

 

 

The chinese gasket will not work on the Longbridge engine, it is an inferior costed down product to the Payen, avoid it at all costs.

 

The ex Rover now SAIC design engineers will insist the chinese gasket is a bad choice on legacy [Longbridge] engines.

 

 

 

second the block/crank carrier is machined for the crank path with the loading of the original KK grade 8 longbolts, if you put in grade 10.8s into a legacy engine you will load the block more causing the crank path to go oval and nip up on the crank, thus causing premature bearing wear and massive friction losses. That is why when you take the head off the crank goes stiiff in the engine - the crankpath is only round with a head and OEM longbolts correctly tightened.

 

 

Using the chinese gasket and longbolts will invite failure and bearing problems plus lose a bunch of power and torque - it's a botch.

 

On "HGF"

 

S2 K Series Head Gasket Has Gone

 

And on botching K series engine builds, in progress.

Why I don't like [what gets done to] the Rover K series and

This was a reply to Simon Scuffham's contention that he didn't like me pointing out the weaknesses in the honda k20, and "how would I like it if someone did that to the Rover K"

 

Well chuckle chuckle, he has for years but in a very hysterical, not particularly constructive way, my post was an attempt to clearly point out why failure happens, it has been very well received bar two exceptions, so I'm hoping it will help.

[KingK_series]

We couldn't see anything obviously amiss with the gasket itself...

 

 

 

 

 

OK looking at you head it looks as if you have small amounts of coolant getting into the bores - the diiscoloured white exhaust vavles are tell tale -

 

that means your head has either buckled

 

you have massive leakage past the fire rings into all 4 cylinders on an equal basis from "porosity" - extremely unlikely because your head has never had an aftermarket skim I am guessing, and porosity leakage is never even into all 4 cylinders

 

 

or your head has gone soft - and is now scrap, which needs to be tested , spending money on a port and rebuild is a total waste if this head is soft.

 

Here is one of my heads off one of my first engines [2005] that I stripped 2 weeks ago, showing how it should look -

 

 

no 4 BTW has been cleaned with blue tissue simply to inspect as it came off short end, note inlet and exhaust valve colour.

[lummo]

Ooooh, this could get interesting...!

[Martin R]

Simon, thanks very much for your unexpected input it is most appreciated The point re the valve colours is an interesting one. Thanks also also for taking the time to post the pics. I did not realise the Chinese alternative head gasket used higher tensile bolts that the OE ones.

[KingK_series]

Simon, thanks very much for your unexpected input it is most appreciated The point re the valve colours is an interesting one. Thanks also also for taking the time to post the pics. I did not realise the Chinese alternative head gasket used higher tensile bolts that the OE ones.

 

In part it is "the solution" being worked on by the design engineers at Longbridge before the collapse -

 

it included reworked water passages in head and block [the main gig]

 

a proper water pump [also main gig]

 

grade 10.9 longbolts - and block machining rejigged to suit

 

uprated oil rail

 

PRT

 

the Rover solution used the Payen MLS

 

the chinese N series used all of the above but swapped in a costed down version of the MLS - which is crap, but it's not the gasket that fails, so,,,,,

 

the N series has several cost downs over K but the biggest is the gasket.

 

as I have said the biggest improvement are to the cooling, which is where K's problems come from.

[Martin R]

Simon, whilst we are on the subject of cooling what water pump do you recommend ? OE ? or are there better alternatives ? Fitting a PRT is a given obviously.