Simon
Ah ha - does this ring a bell?
Simon, I too have read your article. The conclusion seems to be that, unless you stretch the VHPD beyond the 190 ps, it is a robust and reliable engine, which can nevertheless benefit from certain mods that you’ve mentioned, most importantly crankshaft balancing. The question is whether the cost of these modifications can be justified if you are running your K-series in a “standard” 190 ps guise?
…I live and make a living as a sculptor…
I was interested Simon, so had a search. Is this your stuff? - click
If so you have some talent (if not, he has some talent, as I’m sure you do any how)! And perhaps a unique background for a Exiges.com contributor.
Ian
Simon, Thanks for the copy of the old article nothing new in there that couldn’t be picked up elsewhere, just useful having it ALL together.
Any mention of counterweight inserts in the crank for the new article ?
“A 220 bhp 160 lbft engine weighing 30-40 kilos less than any other 4-cylinder engine”
Ummmm… it’s not 30-40 kilos lighter that a Duratec, thats for sure.
Once you’ve replaced all the parts you’ve listed, how much of a K do you have left?
Who’s running this 220bhp/160lb.ft K engine day in day out ? (like say 15,000 miles a year?)
Just curious, thats all.
It’s interesting to see what can be done to improve the old beast of an engine. When you go to that much trouble rebuilding the engine though I still think you may as well stick a Honda in and be done with it. The Rover lump will never be able to compete, whatever you do to it.
It’s interesting to see what can be done to improve the old beast of an engine. When you go to that much trouble rebuilding the engine though I still think you may as well stick a Honda in and be done with it. The Rover lump will never be able to compete, whatever you do to it.
You’re just saying that 'cos you just got ya Honduh
This is turning in to a fantastic posting!
Although please note Simon, with language like…
…it’s a dinosaur in fact. The worst possible choice.
You’re going to trigger some heated debate!
Ian
Hi Simon.
The K engine in highly tuned form has proved to be fairly unreliable, but I agree that is largely because a lot of them have not been assembled properly. However even when assembled properly there is not sufficient support for the liners at the top. This, coupled with the fact that the 1.8’s are not balanced properly causes the liners to resonate and fret away the head gasket. The only sure way round this is to weld up the top of the block and machine it as Scholar do. I believe this is the modification that enables Gavans engine to stay together under race conditions.
If I remember correctly the engine holds less than 2 litres of water, that, with 4.5 litres of oil would weigh at the most 6 kg’s so how come your engine is almost 20 kg lighter than a normal K ?
Don’t get me wrong, I think the K is a great engine and if you spend the money, pretty reliable, but it’s taken a lot of effort over the years to get it there.
Bernard
Simon - Thanks…
When is the new article due??
What are you views on the ‘Rotary’… No, thats another post for another time
Warren
Mmmmmm Rotary! The RX-8 engine should be quite light but the block castings are always very heavy on rotarys
The latest RX-7 lump came in at about 135KG IIRC, but then I think that may be with all the turbo cr@p as well
It’s interesting to see what can be done to improve the old beast of an engine. When you go to that much trouble rebuilding the engine though I still think you may as well stick a Honda in and be done with it. The Rover lump will never be able to compete, whatever you do to it.
You’re just saying that 'cos you just got ya Honduh
That is totally and completely true.
More myths!
I don’t think that many of the problems can be described as myths. So many people out there have had issues of various types which are down to inherent flaws in the engines design. When you push a production engine to it’s very limits it is inevitable that you will uncover it’s weaknesses.
Manufacturers like Honda and Audi have far far bigger budgets than Rover and they can test there engines to absolute death and uncover and cure any weaknesses. This is what makes these conversions so appealing and this is why Honda can release a production engine that has 100bhp per litre and will go on for over 100,000 miles faultlessly. A tuned K will never match these engiines for road use and will cost far more to keep on the road in the long run.
OK guys,
Just to throw a spanner in the works, the Honda K20A (as per S2000 / Integra Type-R etc) has already had 2 recalls, one for an extra oil injector and [something else ] but I know both are related to cylinder 4 overheating and going “pop”.
A friend S2k has just had a new engine as this happened to his after both recalls, fortunantly his was still in warranty so it’s all FoC… I think it ended up that a valve cracked off and then prceeded to mash everything to bits
So like anything, they can brake
However I do agree with the fact the K was only a 1.4… Now bored and stroked to a 1.8 can be considered “pushing” it
I appreciate that open block design is quite the norm these days. The problem with the K is that these is no webbing to support the very thin “damp” part of the liner at the bottom. If the casting that surrounds the liner had webs in it that joined up with the block walls in say 4 areas per liner then the liner location would be so much more rigid that the welding at the top would indeed be a “fallacy”
Heavy plastic manifold ? It weighs less than 2 kg. You could save maybe 4 kg on the flywheel and 1 kg on the crank pulley, where the rest coming from ?
Bernard
OK guys,
Just to throw a spanner in the works, the Honda K20A (as per S2000 / Integra Type-R etc) has already had 2 recalls, one for an extra oil injector and [something else ] but I know both are related to cylinder 4 overheating and going “pop”.
A friend S2k has just had a new engine as this happened to his after both recalls, fortunantly his was still in warranty so it’s all FoC… I think it ended up that a valve cracked off and then prceeded to mash everything to bits
So like anything, they can brake
The Civic type-r has the K20A engine, the one used in the Honda conversions. The Integra has the B19 engine and the S2000 has another engine which has had some reliability issues that I have heard of. These didn’t effect the K20A though, as far as I am aware.