MGF and head gasket failure?

[eidolon]

I know of at least two Rovers with well over 100k on them on original gaskets. If they are going to go, they seem to fail most often around the 50k-60k miles mark IME.

And for your two that made it to 100k, I bet there's 50 that didn't

(my HG went at 26k for reference)

 

[Gezzard]

Update:

Well no matter what anyone says now, she's totally been put off, which is a shame, and has since bought a 52 plate Astra coupe 1.8 instead. Boring!

Oh well, I quite fancied borrowing the MG too, an Astra I'm not so fussed about.

 

[NathanE]

Boo! An MG is a much more fun car than an Astra :/

 

[dalin80]

the sprung tf's are superb cars to drive.

mgf's and tf's are fairly underrated imho.

 

[Gaijin]

I'm sorry, saying that its not a problem is as sensible as saying that VTEC engines have a healthy torque figure

Granted you may think the issue is inflated as people will only post saying its a problem and not when they dont have the problem, but unfortunately, there is no smoke without fire.

Type "gasket and failure" into the mg rover forums search filter for instance. 12 pages.

Same at Honda? 2 pages and most threads are irrelevant.

 

[Dogbreath]

Granted you may think the issue is inflated as people will only post saying its a problem and not when they dont have the problem, but unfortunately, there is no smoke without fire.

There certainly IS a problem with them, that was never in doubt. I'm saying that not all cars suffer from premature failure. A big factor is the liner heights which were not well controlled until later in the engines production, so some engines were ok, many were not.

 

[moss]

And for your two that made it to 100k, I bet there's 50 that didn't

(my HG went at 26k for reference)

Dont really know a great deal on the subject of K-series & HGF etc, I do know at work I sell a lot more Rover K-Series headgaskets more than any other HG on the market.
I work for a small company we have a larger sister company (its basically a large motorfactors, mostly owned by my boss), just checked and they have sold around 300 K-Series headgaskets in 3 years.
They only supply tyne & wear area though and were only opened about 3.5years ago.

 

[SpeedFreak]

The K series engine is one of the best engines ever produced. The issue with the head gasket failure is related to a temperature sensor as far as I am aware. The HGF itself is a symptom of other problems.

Land Rover developed a replacement for the gasket which has had a lot of happy customers and can be fitted for around £300.

Sorry to hear about the Astra as 1.8 litre K series engines are a lot of fun.

 

[Pigeon]

Both my K series cars have not had HGF.

I'm not going to sing the cars praises, it is likely to happen so I am ready for when it does to get it sorted out. After the revised gasket and oil rail and the engines been checked out as ok with all the clearances then I might it should be pretty good.

 

[act smiley]

My car had a headgasket replacement at 81k (and again at 88k a little bit after I got it because the lot who'd done the first one had bodged it), which isn't quite the "END OF THE WORRRLD!" sort of thing you'd expect from how famous a fault it is.