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[terry paget]

Today Emma's Rover Streetwise struggled through its MOT, with five advisories, drive shaft gaiters, anti-roll bar bushes and front brake pads.  I imagine this car has the same engine as Kate's Freelander, the petrol lightweight alloy block and plastic inlet manifold 4 cylinder unit sadly prone to head gasket failure. Here is my only non-Vauxhall.

[biggriffin]

Nice to see, that you check your cars before they go for an mot
A quick inspection, before hand, you also have a workshop and a pit

[Varche]

Hats off to you Terry

[TheBoy]

If you keep on top of the coolant, the HG is not as prevalent as made out.

Plastic intakes leak at gasket, often confusing some that its a HG fault. If not cured quickly, it soon will be, as there is so little coolant in it, as the 1980s design spec called for full heat up from cold in 90s of driving.


Plastic intakes came in around the time MEMS3 came in, earlier MEMS2 cars (ignoring VVC) should be metal, and have a dizzy.

[EMD]

Nearly every used rover seems to have head gasket problems . I was tempted to get a 75 diesel estate but wasnt sure if they suffered the same fate as the petrol, i know they had real problems with gaskets 

[frostbite]

We had a 1.4 K-series it was gutless but had cambelt and hg changed before we got it the coolant was always black

[terry paget]

We had a 1.4 K-series it was gutless but had cambelt and hg changed before we got it the coolant was always black

This car suffered HG failure in December 2014. I replaced it, and Haynes said I must use OAT (organic acid technology) antifreeze, so bought some from Halfords, and it's red. You can see in this pic that the header tank (rear right) is still full up to the mark, and it has not been topped up since Jan 2015. Incidentally, I learned  later that Vx Dex Cool is also OAT antifreeze.
The 2 connectors in this pic are interchangeable, so naturally I mixed them up. One is idle control valve, other is cam sensor. With them switched engine ran, but would not idle. That cost me 2 weeks and 2 new idle valves to sort out.

[Lazydocker]

We had a 1.4 K-series it was gutless but had cambelt and hg changed before we got it the coolant was always black

This car suffered HG failure in December 2014. I replaced it, and Haynes said I must use OAT (organic acid technology) antifreeze, so bought some from Halfords, and it's red. You can see in this pic that the header tank (rear right) is still full up to the mark, and it has not been topped up since Jan 2015. Incidentally, I learned  later that Vx Dex Cool is also OAT antifreeze.
The 2 connectors in this pic are interchangeable, so naturally I mixed them up. One is idle control valve, other is cam sensor. With them switched engine ran, but would not idle. That cost me 2 weeks and 2 new idle valves to sort out.

A mistake that even catches out the more experienced of us too, although we know to switch them having spent ages fault finding in the past

[Andy H]

I learned  later that Vx Dex Cool is also OAT antifreeze.

I used to believe that VX red was OAT but... there is nothing on the drum to say so. (I bought a 20 litre drum with the intention of using it in SWMBOs VW golf and Ford galaxy - both of which use OAT coolant).