Can we cut the personal comments guys, and mud slinging.
Keep it factual please, or I’ll start editing posts.
Simon,
Let’s try not to be too patronising eh? Anyone would think you had put together a large number of engines and that I hadn’t put together any at all.
On the subject of porosity (which you brought up) being the meticulous person that I am I have carefully documented and photographed every incident of head porosity on the fire ring that I have encountered. Given sufficient interest I can easily post them here for you or QED or aynone else to scoff at. They clearly and unequivically show the collapse of the material on the head due to porosity below the fire ring and the affects on the gasket including the tracks made on the gasket by escaping cylinder contents and the marks inside the combsution chamber made by the ingress of coolant.
Of course you will know different Simon…
I have no problem taking any heat Simon, but like I have said (and you have consistently ignored or failed to respond to) I would like you to stop using incorrect and incomplete information about by business activities to support your postings.
It is not a crime to run a business and as you know I once did all my work FOC, necessity however now forces me to charge for what I do, I dont apologise for that.
I certainly dont need you to tell me about acquiring knowledge Simon, that is exactly what I have always done and I have always try to spread it as widely as possible as anyone who knows me will testify. Try acquiring some about porosity on cylinder heads and the numerous other subjects that you convenently ignore.
Dave
Simon,
Given the compelling evidence I have here and the collective experience of many of my contacts I find it amazing that anyone can still deny that porosity is a problem on K heads.
Incidentally two of the heads have been examined by a an engineer who works for VAG in quality control on the casting side, he happens to be a Caterham owner and was appalled by what he saw, especially as one of the heads was his. His comments on one of the heads which had three breaches across the fire ring were pretty illuminating, he said he had never seen such a clear case of cavities/porosity in a casting and was shocked by the poor quality.
Incidentally is it the same Rover who until recently denied that there was any problem with head gasket failure on the ‘K’ series? I seem to remember some interesting publicity to that affect on Watchdog. Pardon me if I remain sceptical especially given the evidence that I have seen with my own eyes.
Dave
At the end of the day, it’s not Daves position to insist his customers get Steve to balance things. As with all things in life, you pays your money, you makes your choice. You can recommend something to someone, but if they don’t want it you can’t force them Simon.
As for the po(o)rousity issue, it’s geniune and I have a very expensive head that was skimmed once too many times and ended up with material like a sponge. All round the fire ring area you can see it. Everytime the engine got remotely warm it’d leak air from cyl number 3. You can blame the bottom end if you like Simon, but this was on effectively 3 bottom ends. One of them was with a machined block, perfect height liners etc. Kept that bottom end the same, put a new head casting on it and the problem vanished. What do you suggest was the problem there if not porousity ?
Regards,
Brian
A lot of DVAs cistomers aren’t stripping down the bottomend or removing it from the car as they simply don’t want to pay to.
Would like your opinion on the porousity issue above…
Simon,
I agree that balancing doesn’t cost a huge amount of money, however removal of the engine and the complete stripdown and rebuild of the engine to necessitate it does. Hence not all situations involve a discussion about balancing. Those owners of engines that undergo a complete bottom up rebuild involving new parts are advised about balancing.
How many people who come for an engine upgrade which uses all of the already installed bottom end componentry and the standard RPM range (I.E. a head upgrade) do you think would be willing to underwite this work? If you have no experience of this situation then you are not well placed to be critical of it.
If you are saying that the standard factory balance is inadequate for an engine using all its original stock parts and the stock rev. limit then please make that clear then we can assess how effective we think Rover are/were at putting their engines together and how sensible we think it is to be taking advice from them.
If you are not criticising the standard balancing tolerances from the factory then kindly stop trying to make mileage from that particular issue, it’s a dead duck.
BTW, it was really funny seeing you criticising me for not answering a question (not that I know what question that was), or perhaps I have a strong sense of irony…
On the head porosity issue…
“but not in public now. You have mail”
Translation…
“There is a porosity problem but I’m not willing to give Dave a straight answer or concede there may be merit in his assertions, I am currently looking for a way to disguise the problem so that I can claim it’s all Dave’s fault, as soon as I have finished my hunt for a disclaimer I will post some information to try and discredit what he says, I will of course include paragraphs of ‘proof’”
Dave
The chances of the engines liner standproud tolerances surviving the Lotus installation are slim therefore any head change will require as a necessity, the block to be decked. Therefore never crack the head unless you are prepared to remove the engine and do it properly. IF people ask for it, tell them the potential problems and urge them not to make the mistake. Customer never knows best, you should. Quipping that not all customers can afford that is bad practice and avoiding responsibility.
The Rover crank is well balanced for 7000rpm, much more so than most other makes, if you raise the rev limit beyond that, let alone change the flywheel for a non OE one, competant build requires rebalancing, as it would with any other make. Read King K again - it’s all there.
I am going to collect from the factory on wednesday the new oil rail which works in conjunction with a new MLS gasket , which I already have, and use in all my engines [with a billet oil rail], that was designed for the Euro4 engine. This was a new and very clever solution to a problem that Landrover wanted addressed with their particular installation in mind but it allows any K to be abused in the warm up cycle, without fear of HGF, which is where the problem with the engine has been. Porosity is not a significant or major problem, thinking so is to misunderstand the engine.
However use of non OE componants, particularly liners is a major cause of HGF. I have photos of liners from Mark Bowles engine and several others where not only was the build truely awful but the dreadful non OE liner was a major constituant of the failure, - I but don’t know how to post them . Will ask Mark to do so in due course with a detailed forensic of why that engine failed.
Your posting does you no credit at all Dave…
simon
Simon.
Maybe when you have done 5% of the number of engines that Dave has then you just might be in a position to comment on the standard of his work. He has many, many satifisfied costomers out there. Far more than you will ever have if you keep coming up with such garbage.
Are you seriously saying that the engine is such crap that only one person in the country is able to balance it properly ? How you can possibly ignore his valid complaints about porousity is beyond me. I have seen several heads over Dave’s that are full of voids and ash. If you get one of those across the fire ring it’s going to blow the gasket - no question. The casting quality looks like Russian stuff from the 60’s.
And don’t say read the article again please, it’s all getting a bit tiresome. Just show us some engines that are “cheap and simple” to build and make “an easy 220 BHP” More than one would be good.
Bernard
Simon,
The OE Rover liners which came out of Mark’s engine were completely rogered too, heavy scuffing on thrust faces and heavy scratching, they were also on average 2 thou below the level of the block and an extremely loose fit in the cylinder bores, Mark knows this, he was present when they were removed.
He had the option at the time to refit those liners together with ths stock pistons, or hone the orginal liners and refit with forged pistons or go with the new AE ones. Given the better fit and stand proud the decision seemed an easy one.
The big-ends were not only run but were cavitated with large parts of the bearing material broken up and missing right through to the steel backing, the bearings also showed signs of turning in the big end eye. White metal shards were present in the sump and engine cavities. The fire ring on the head showed signs of darkening which is normally a warning of impending gasket failure.
There were also shards and spirals of aluminium in the voids in the head and several severaly gouged followers, all in an engine which had done only 4000 miles.
The reason I have used AE liners is because they seem to be more consistently made than the Rover liners I have used in the past, especially in respect of liner height. When dry fitted to Marks engine they had between 1 and 3 thou stand proud and were a snugger fit in the block bores as demonstrated to Mark at the time. I’m sure Associated Engineering will be happy to discuss with you the quality and consistency of their products, they are one of the better known names in the automotive engineering market
I’d suggest that the problem might lie with poor machining of the block rather than the choice of liner.
For the record, not all K series ex factory have a rev limit of 7000, VVC engines are set at around 7200-7400. Again for the record I have never fitted an after market flywheel to an engine without having the engine set balanced so please knock that one off your scold list.
Caterham routinely fit 1600 and 1400 flywheels to their 1800 engines without re-balancing the engine set and they routinely raise the rev limit on their Supersport upgrades to 7600 ((1000s now sold or fitted and a calibration done by Rover) wothout re-balancing the engine.
Your comments on the K series requiring a complete bottom end rebuild every time it is split should make interesting reading for PTP, Caterham, Minister, Lotus etc. in fact most after market tuners who routinely fit or supply cylinder head upgrades (PTP 140, PTP165/170 etc.etc.) to existing engines with no recourse to, nor recommendation of a rebuild of the bottom end. All of the Sport 135 and Sport 160 Lotus models involved head swaps and the Sport 160 models had a raised rev limit with no re-balancing.
As it happens I make every customer aware of the possibility and dangers of low liners and head porosity problems before removing their cylinder head.
Incdentally all but one of the porosity related head gasket failures I have encountered have been with OE Rover liners, these are all documented. By the way I have never suggested that porosity is the only cause of failure, merely that is a significant one especially on post 2000 heads.
Porosity is not an engine design issue which requires lots of understanding, it’s a simple quality control one, you dont need to understand much about an engine to know that a hole in the head where the gasket sits is going to give a problem do you?
I well remember a 'phone conversation with you where you inisisted that the 4 heads I had on the bench right in front of me with clearly visible areas of porosity on the fire ring were not suffering from porosity at all even though you had never even seen the heads and the porosity would have been obvious to a blind man on a galloping horse.
Given that intransigence is it any wonder that I continue to baulk at your incorrect assertion that porosity is not an issue?
I should point out that as well as these failures I also have hundreds of perfectly reliable conversions out there quite happily covering 000s of miles wihout a problem. Most of these have involved a head swap with no bottom end rebuild 
Dave
Simon,
I’m sure that all the after market tuners mentioned by you will be pleased to hear they have done such a bad job especially in not insisting that each engine conversion will require a complete engine removal and rebuild.
If the data you publish on HGF does not include signifcant mention of prosity on K series heads then no matter what it’s source it is incomplete. Collected data which is accurate should be included in the pool regardless of source. I would suggest that I see sufficient quantity of K series heads to make my contribution relevant and useful. In that regard my insistence that porosity is an issue has widened the knowledge of readers of this thread.
You have to my certain knowledge made many postings on threads which have been designed deliberately to stir up controversy rather than debate, so don’t play the wide eyed innocent, it’s hogwash and eyewash and it wont wash.
I too would like to further knowledge but not just your point of view Simon, a balanced one (no pun intended) which includes the realities of every situation not just the luxury of a complete engine rebuild everytime you visit the engine.
It speaks volumes about the K that you suggest that it needs a complete rebuild everytime the head is removed, especially given the history of HGF brought about by Rovers design or engineering shortcomings. I wonder how many Rover dealerships undertake a complete engine renuild when fixing HGF under warranty? very few I suspect.
In my experience HGF following a head swap is a rare occurrence and usually brought about by low liners or head porosity.
Dave
Simon,
It would help if you read what I wrote and what every other poster writes too rather than ignoring the bits you don’t like or that dont fit your particular viewpoint. Then we might all get somewhere.
I believe that Lotus have an issue on S2 Elise 135Rs, these were post 2000 heads.
I’d suspect that I see a lot more regular K16 heads from existing engines than you and Judd combined who have the luxury of new and selected castings for each engine, primarily VHPD ones… think about it…
Dave