Diagnosing one of the most unreliable engines of all time

[Music] this is the current state of my first car if you guys have watched episode one you will have seen that we saved this car from a barracks in scotland and we've got it down here at madford to fully restore it in this episode we're going to tackle what makes this car pretty infamous um nope where is he nick mike that is my rover k series engine k16 1.4 to be exact okay now i know you've had a lot of history with these engines in the past i have yes so what is it about these engines that goes wrong and what do you need to do to fix it well i think everybody knows that there's an inherent problem with head gaskets yeah um i don't feel myself that as an engine fault i believe that was down to rover saving some money on gaskets okay because in the lotus variant they don't fail okay so that tells you something about the gaskets that rover decided to use um the head gasket itself uh the modified one is a triple layer head gasket and it's got a modified fire ring around the cylinder and you change the plastic head dowels to steel okay and that and a head skim as well of course and that generally solves the the problems okay so we're going to fully strip this down and completely rebuild it and what's the first thing to do start removing the ancillaries nice one [Music] so make how many k series do you think you've worked on in your life uh quite a few a couple of hundred perhaps right okay so there must have just been a period of time where loads of people had mg's rovers and they landed yeah some kit cars are the k series fitted and why is that it's quite a revvy engine and well they are very ready aren't they i mean you've owned one um you know what they're like they are a proper little rev monkey that's not looking good oh that is that i think that's probably where our misfire was oh jesus i mean that looks like something from alien hmm jesus okay what's happened there what's all that gunk i would say the rocker cover gasket or something has failed and it's uh let water or oil or whatever i mean if it was head gasket you would see it there and it's it's perfect yeah yeah yeah i remember that was one of the first things we checked up in scotland okay that should be you very nice now i was talking to you about the shuttle valve in there all right and it's still in there you see a little ball bearing yes my experience i always smash that ball bearing out and get rid of it it stops a hot spot in the cylinder head being created okay i don't know why they did it it's obviously some sort of one-way valve but i always get rid of that ball bearing and it allows full flow so obviously somebody hasn't done that before okay do you want to lift the rocker cover off uh yeah sure everything's undone lovely okay and it's gasket okay oh i love looking at these bits yeah lovely camshafts that smell i can't get over that yellow gum i've never seen anything like that before so is that just engine sitting for a bit too long it could be anything it could be rain water and there could be condensation it could be anything that's got in there and that's i mean that's a lot that's literally lime scale on those plug-ins and i remember you saying yeah we dropped a cylinder hadn't we yes we did it was okay once it was revving but when we were on tick over we definitely got a cylinder down okay cool now what's interesting here is am i right and seeing these are the tops of the long bolts yes the head bolts that was quite a revolutionary design back in the day so how does this all work unlike a normal head bolt where the head bolt goes through the cylinder head and enters the cylinder block by say two or three inches and the threads are at the top of the cylinder block right on a k series the threads are actually at the bottom of the cylinder block so in effect it actually crushes the entire block instead of a standard head bolt trying to peel the top of the block off just like one big sandwich correct so it keeps it all literally fired together what we've found naturally with the ybay engine when you push it to its limits of boost it tries to peel the cylinder head off the block okay because of the cylinder pressures and because the from standard the head bolts are only in the top of the block what you tend to find is it lifts the head and blows the head gasket out okay so on some of the bigger powerful engines we've built we actually use a process called long studding where you put a longer stud in exactly what it says and you go to the bottom of the water jacket and you re-thread the bottom of the block so in effect you're actually crushing the block instead of just the top of the block but this this was quite revolutionary back in the day and because they're a torque to yield bolt as well they're a stretch bolt yep so as the cylinder head and the block obviously expand and contract because it's torque to yield the head will move and keep its um you know it's rigidity on the head gasket very clever okay next job okay uh we'll set the time in and we'll remove the exhaust monitor it's a lovely little exhaust manifold yeah it is first for a standard factory fitted manifold i bet that flows pretty well very pretty okay this just slides off yep looks like we've got some moisture in number four port if you look at three two and one there a nice gray as you would expect an engine that's just been turned off that one looks like it's had moisture in it from from the two valves being open which is what you would expect okay in a barracks getting rained on for far too long yeah so when we started up cylinder number four was probably the duff one probably yes who knows okay we're going to time up the engine now so was this bought as a recon or just bought as an exchange engine uh this was bought as a reconditioned 300 quid k series that had supposedly had the head gasket reinforced okay we shall see we shall see that's that one excellent what condition is that in [Applause] [Applause] so just a little bit of a tease there it's on a dowel there you go that's it how nicely machined the camshaft is but these are even nicer the cam followers are my favorite part of an engine they are just lovely now these are hydraulic in this as well and the same again it's just good practice to put them back in where they come out everything wears to its own pattern so it's nice to put them back in you know where they came from and that has exposed the valve springs yeah tops of the valves yep i can't see any stuck down so we've got no valve sticking so that's a good sign okay so now time for the legendary head bolts one two three four five six seven eight nine ten i will not remember that but starting here yep and pulp that's it i actually remember at university we watched like a 19 what would it be 1980s documentary maybe early 90s about rover and the production of this engine and how easy the production process was because they just sandwiched all these sections together and bolted it all together i mean in the factory you've probably seen them on videos that they would have a machine with 10 sockets on and they just bring it down let's go so all this about people complaining about oh you're using a gun on a head bolt and that's how it was built you know [Applause] okay that was satisfying pull away your head bolts so these are going to be massive wow look at that how about that so this goes right down into the into the crank web right yep unbelievable so we can pull them out they'll probably be covered in oil okay make this going to expose the component okay so here's our head gasket right okay tell me what you see well i can see instantly as we've suspected cylinder number four has been exposed to the element yep the amount of rush that's on that compared with cylinders one two and three you can see and i've just looked at the cylinder liner it's destroyed okay so okay so that is a non head gasket so i've been ripped off you have so the head gasket basically is separating your cylinders your water and your oil correct right so it kind of depends where it goes where it breaks depends how bad your accident is going to be essentially depending how the head gasket fails depends on the symptoms that you get from the failure yeah oil in the water water in the oil you get water in the combustion chamber which gives you white smoke okay you get oil in the combustion germs gives you a blue smoke it's either gummy cappuccino oil yeah blue smoke or white smoke no the reason i got this reconditioned engine is because i had what i would call a steam engine failure there must have been a complete failure from the water to the cylinder and there just must have been coolant piling in there we look at where our coolant passages are so these are coolant passages here okay now the head gaskets always have a limited amount of pass-through now pass-through is the amount of water that it allows through the head gasket so if you look at the size of the chamber on the head but how much water is actually allowed through the pass-through it's obviously considerably less so in your case mike on this side's a little bit bigger in your case you would have had one of these holes here actually go through into the combustion chamber so you would not only have had water being burnt in here you would have had compression from here being blown into the into the cooling system i mean it was honestly i looked to my rear window and it was just steam it was unbelievable i've never seen anything like it so what is the big problem on the rover k series with this head gasket why do they fail so much because rover went really really cheap on the head gaskets okay so this is a crappy this is the crappy head gasket the the later head gasket you'll see when we rebuild it it's actually a triple layer composite head gasket which gives much better ceiling properties um yeah that's that's junk that's why k-series fail is this rubbish [Music] with the k-series torrid reputation then it's really going to pay for us to fully rebuild this engine especially with a brand spanking new reinforced head gasket as well as making sure there's high quality fluids going in the engine throughout and thankfully this series is sponsored by liqui molly so we've got plenty of that the main fluid going into this engine is liquid moly's new generation moly gen 10w40 engine oil this is a high performance low friction oil for year-round use that means fuel savings and an extended service life of the engine the special moly gen additive in this ensures that the engine oil reliably prevents the formation of deposits significantly reducing frictional losses in the engine and providing the optimum protection from wear all of the main fluids going back into the car are going to be from liquid moly so we've put a link in the description so you guys can check out what products they have for your car it's super easy just put your registration into their search function and it'll serve up all the products they could make for you okay mark you touched on earlier why i always time engine up before i strip them this is a perfect example i can show you the reason why if you look at all the cylinders now they're all midway in the bore yes they're all perfectly aligned aligned so if you get any camshaft movement while you disassemble the engine there is no way in the world a valve can hit a piston okay so it puts them in that mid yes a safe area okay cool so is the next thing going to be this sort of other ancillaries on this yes here or we need to talk about cylinder number four okay if you can see the coloration of cylinder one two and three and then look at the coloration of cylinder number four it's had a significant amount of moisture in it but i think we may even get away with that we'll find out in a moment so if we just wind up there look at that one but there's still cross-hatching in the bores on there same as mondeo so the balls actually look pretty good i'm expecting to have some problems on four i'm expecting broken rings on four when the piston comes out do you remember that crack noise we had when we cranked it yes first i would suspect that was probably the rings seized in number four i can't see is that scoring there yeah a little bit as long as you can't feel it with your nail which you can't we can run a home down that you feel it and you can't feel it with your nail that's it there is a there's always a slight possibility when you turn over a case here is that the liner can pop up okay so we don't like to do it too much do you know what as well looking at it the way that pistons mint yeah it's a fresh one and this one these aren't i would say this has been burning water for a while okay because there's only one thing that cleans a piston like that that's steam and that i mean let's face it that's that's a funky fresh piston yeah compared with that one yeah like a carbon on it [Music] take that out first there you go okay so we can take the water pump off i think backwards bolt there no it's not oh anything special somebody snapped the head of a bolt off there oh yeah yeah we bastard yeah snapped that off oh it's not to doubt him that's fine oh yeah what is that so much growing on the water pump that's some sort of organism nice what does that smell like mick about whiff doesn't smell good oh yeah you can leave that in there draining if you want just leave it in the pan [Music] that's joe i don't shout that much now might get some water splashy splashy the life juices of the engine life juices are like that have you got thunderbird two ones on display i do it's in my flat on a shelf excellent yeah tasty i'm not seeing any chunks or anything so fresh as a daisy and that should lift up years the girdle that's what ties everything together you know when you your head studs come through the block yep that's where your head stood screw into right okay so that's like the b so you see that's right at the bottom you see there's your head bolt so this actually pulls the whole block together i like the fact that they've made it if you if you damage your thread in here it's not a block change it's just uh it's just the bottom just the bottom change leave that the way it came out like so that's the way it's come out so that's what i mocked up last time correct you tried to take it out the wrong end so just to tell you guys the original engine for the head gasket failed i decided to dismantle it just for a bit fun really and i basically spread it all out across my garage and i got to the pistons and i took them out the wrong way mick has just taken them out the professional way i took them out the other way and the body piston rings sprang up and i was absolutely i mean so you must have to go where's that so you must have took the crank out first crank out first and you tried to pull the piston this way out the bottom yeah it won't go because there's a web in the way yeah okay i wanted to have a look at the rings on number four any broken no no i mean you can see why the k-series is such a rev-hap little thing look at the size of the piston tiny tiny little pistons what is it your mom says what's for you won't go by you you ate that one didn't you yep i did like that one and she's right she's right right that should lift straight out now there you go drop that on you what piece of kit that is the rotating assembly [Music] it's like a trophy there's another there's another this will tell me whether you've actually bought a recon 0.25 so that has been ground okay so there's possibility you've had the correct well the crank's been ground anyway okay but the fool calling this a reconditioned reinforced k series was a bit of a joke okay there are some bandits out there you had a bargain for 300 pound though to be honest [Laughter] okay mike so that's the case here is completely stripped down to a bear block very nice well i hope you enjoyed that guys a full strip of our rover k series engine [Music] after the first episode of the series went live loads of you were writing in the comments about your first car experience loads of lovely messages about the memories you had of your first car now make it mad ford has a twitch stream going the entire time every single day he's in the workshop so if you want to tune in live to what's happening here and even the rover build you can just go on twitch search for madford engineering and you'll be able to tune in now the guys on the stream have been posting their first car memories and there's some really lovely messages we've got uncle bulgaria here he says my first car was a renault extra van with a tartan stripe down the side nice and scottish i used to load my mates into the back after the pub he was sober of course and then drive them home cool message and then we've got hyper uk he had a fiat punto mark one he bought it for 30 quid restored and cleaned it up with new brakes new tires you really like this car it was ready for mot and then the tax man clamped it pure thing is now a cube sorry hyper uk we've got torque hill now my first car was a citron ax 1.1 in dark green it was the scariest car i have ever driven as on a roundabout you felt you were going to roll over but i loved it as it was my first freedom nice one then we've got x-ray specialist punk here a 75 datsun pickup loved that truck cracked a camshaft showing off rebuilt the engine with smaller heads ran great but not smog approved must be in the states and yes the state made me crush it that is savage then we've got peter sullivan here my first car was an austin metro lobby metro registration vnt 58 7y it's funny how people always remember the registrations of their past cars it was a gold color best thing about it was me and my best mate from school used to go to barmouth at weekends and sleep in it take that as you will unfortunately it got written off by a volvo 340. well there you go those are some awesome messages from the guys that watch all of this happening live but i would like to hear from you guys as well post in the comments below the memories of your first car what the car was some memories you have in it and maybe what's happened to it now do you still have it did you sell it did you write it off have you looked up the red recently to see if it's still alive tell me in the comments below [Music] now it's on to the body shell now this car isn't too bad it's definitely not the worst i've seen there's a few holes but it's not really that bad but mick has bought a secret weapon for this restoration [Applause] this is essentially a brand new unused rover 25 shell and the goal is going to be basically doing reconstructive surgery from this to this it only cost 320 quid but it's going to be the savior of this restoration now i'm going to head off the comments before they come hammering in yes it may be easier to take all the bits from this car and shove them into this brand new spotless shell but remember that's not my car this is my first car so we're gonna reconstruct this one let's crack on nick i'm gonna call you out whenever we do a sound check to get our microphones all good i say mic check one two all that rubbish what do you see do i have to say it go for it mike's red rover is ridiculously rusty well that is going to come back to bite you now because you do have to now sorry the rust on this car so how do we get this looking as good as that okay um so what we're gonna do we're gonna check all around it for all the rock we can see and the rock that we can't and then we will cut out the section of rust that's that needs to be cut out we will cut out and section the piece of good steel out of the body shell lay on top do our cuts do our welding seam it all together finish it done you won't tell it's been replaced okay well i'll let you do the cutting and i'll come back for the welding okay crack on [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] there you go me fit that thanks mate good job [Music] nick how you getting on all good um i've took the the inner wing strengther off the the body shell yeah unfortunately on the red shell we've found a lot more corrosion than we first thought why is it always worse than you expected it always is mike so what i've done i've removed the inner wing strength of the panel from the donor that will need to be sunk in so it means removing the rest of this sinking that in and then putting this panel back on in its entirety and that'll tie the weld repair together okay so not great but it really reinforces the buying of that absolutely we've got everything we could possibly need but no welding for me today unfortunately not so that's this episode come to a close it didn't quite go to plan because i didn't get to do some welding but by the time you see the car next it will have been fully repaired sandblasted prepped and painted for the parts to start going back into the car now i did see some comments that i do want to chat about from episode one of this series there were certain people saying that it's crazy that i found this car completely by chance and basically the first thing i'm going to do with it is give it away that is the plan we're going to fully restore this car to better than it was when i had it when i was 17 and then we're going to put it up for auction and give the process to a military charity and that's what it's all about we're doing this for a fantastic cause what would i do with a completely restored mint rover 25 not very much it's been amazing seeing the car again and it's going to be great to get it back going and have it in the state that it's going to be in once we're finished but i do not need that car someone else will and all i want to do really is give back to the military seeing as they allowed this whole series to happen so i hope that kind of covers it i've been mike and don't forget to subscribe to drivetrade how am i gonna get this one you

Channel: DRIVETRIBE

Views: 272,534

Rating: 4.9139309 out of 5

Keywords: jeremy clarkson, richard hammond, james may, cars, top gear, the grand tour

Id: eXfNS-kayrE

Length: 31min 32sec (1892 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 09 2021