The Misunderstood 'K'

The Rovering Member

Well-Known Member
I don't pretend to understand more than 20% of what he (Spen King's nephew) is talking about but it's a very interesting read & seems to shine a light into why Rover's 'K' engine is so misunderstood & unfairly maligned by not only the proletariat, but the people who really should know better (the trade), as well. I think it boils down to, they don't really understand the original design in the first place:

K-Series engine – the full story of this brilliantly designed and flawed engine
 
It’s an amazing engine. The head gasket issues was addressed pretty well after a short while. It punches well above it’s weight too.
 
I guess it is a little small for the 75 but it hustles mine along smart enough, especially if you hold onto the gears & get those rev's up to 4000 plus. Mine's using a fair bit of oil at the moment but is approaching 150,000 miles which is pretty respectable.
I wish l could say the same about the clutch hydraulics though, 35,000 miles since both cylinders were replaced & l've got sinking pedal syndrome again. :rolleyes:
 
My first car when I moved to the UK was a 414, which after a year or so had a head gasket failure. Wouldn't have been a problem except for the AA guy who spent half an hour messing with it, then turning it over and over again trying to start it. Got it back on the road, but after a lot of work.

Come to think about it, almost 20 years later I ended up with a bugger Jaguar XE. Turbo blew, shut everything down rather quickly, so shouldn't have been a major issue. Except for one thing; the RAC guy spent almost an hour turning the engine over, and over and over.. causing an engine failure.

I don't blame the engines; I blame the recovery "experts" who can't leave things alone. They seem to want to play around, rather than just arrange a tow to the nearest garage.
 
Hi agreed a most informative read, enjoyed it as I have a 45 year 2000, bought with 80.000 ks on the clock to be my every day car, it had a noisy trans bearing which has been replaced with a second hand unit (bit of a story there). Also I have done a head job on it very carefully along with a couple of smaller issues. 133,000 ks now.
I think that the motor is a delight and I enjoy driving the car.
John.
 
I have been through the article before...
Well, having good intentions and ambitions is one thing, putting them to work is another matter. Mr Erland is probably quite right in defending the ideas behind the K, but in reality quite a few things were wrong, that shouldn't. We still have in the family the 214 we bought new in early 1991. This car had supposedly all the good stuff, small capacity on a relatively light body, steel dowels, aluminium alloy manifold, a knowledgeable and mechanically sympathetic owner, alas, it started to send its oil to the cooling circuit. We never allowed it to overheat, so after a replacement gasket normal service was resumed. Its a few years now that it has returned to its bad habit, but thankfully its not too bad at all, and the car sees very light use anyway. To be honest we still keep it as it is a sort of a family member, and there is no market value in it now.
So yes, the problems were largely exaggerated and made worse by interventions from clueless professionals, but i personally know of far too many people that had issues that should not have been there in the first place.
The company's policy during its last 15 years was only putting salt into injury, by trying to sell its products at a premium while adopting more and more cheap parts (bloody plastic dowels, plastic clutch slave cylinders, chocolate rubber bushes etc.).
Finally, something among Mr Erland's thoughts that stood out for me: He dismisses the Honda S2000 engine as over engineered and heavy against the respective K series units. As a Rover P6 owner that enjoy the qualities of what Rover used to be, i couldn't disagree more!
 
I'm certainly going through the plastic slave mill though l'll be having another one fitted l suppose.
There are metal replacements available but they seem to have their own problems.
I think l'd also like a metal inlet manifold fitted too.
 
We had until last year a 216 coupe, only managed 204,000miles on the original engine and suspension.

My thoughts were as they were so good compared to previous car where the driver would need to pop the bonnet and check the fluids regularly.

With the K series cars you rarely needed to lift the bonnet unless the screen wash was empty, but with no coolant level sensor, leaky manifolds would go unnoticed leading to HGF. Happened to our car, a bit of coolant would leak into a cylinder cool but stop when the car was warm so would take a long time run out of coolant. it was the lack of coolant rather than the leak that caused the engine to overheat.

I get really annoyed when the K gets a hard time, I don't think it was any worse than other engines and they fitted them to a lot of vehicles. If the owners were doing 3,000 mile services and daily/weekly checks the problems would get spotted before they became serious.

Maybe a mixture of cost cutting by rover and changing attitude of owners who just want to get in turn a key and go lead to the bad reputation.
 
Back
Top