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The Oily Bits S1 Specific Topics
101

Simon,

Like I said then Judd use new and selected castings.

Like I said before QED may scoff all they wish, the fact remains that there is a porosity problem with K series heads (just ask Paul Exon to 'phone me and ask), so any data that doesn’t include porosity as an issue will be incomplete. I have a number fully documented with photographic evidence here to show the problem. To pretend it doesn’t exist is just dogma in action and another fine example of your intransigence in the face of even the most compelling evidence.

Remote thermostat fitting is an installation issue which I often discuss with owners but not all my installations are on Lotus Elises, nor do all owners want to fit one. I note that despite your advice to me about my kits not including a remote thermostat QED themselves make no mention of the necessity of a remote thermostat in their own verbage about their upgrade kits, nor do they include it in the list of contents… ho-hum.

Perhaps they need to get out more…

I agree that a remote thermostat is a good idea but to say that any engine work is pointless without a remote thermostat is just histrionics, there are literally hundreds of Elises with modified engines out there running perfectly without remote thermostats. In life Simon there are shades of grey, your attitude is always “If you dont do everything I say exactly as I say it then everything you do will be worthless, pointless, absurd, ridiculous, appalling, abysmal etc.etc.and you will be an idiot/creature/liar/charaltan ec.etc. ad naseum”, sound familiar?

Perhaps if you presented your information as advice rather than as a dictat and refrained from rubbishing everyone who isn’t in favour this week or those who have the temerity to inject a little realism into the debate perhaps we could all get along a little better.

I may work in my garage but I have still managed to produce some of the most powerful NA K series engines at all capacity levels and in my own small way like to thinm I have added to the collective knowledge of K series owners worldwide.


Dave

103

Simon,

Can you repeat that in English please…

Dave

104

Simon,

So Judd do select their heads…

Having a selection process relies on a selection being available as a pre-requisite.

Since I am working on the customers own heads the majority of the time it stands to reason that selection is limited to their head. Common sense should tell you that.

Hence I work with the heads supplied by the customer which are already fitted to their engines. That is how it works in the real world. Often these are damaged by heat and are unnaceptable visibly, however porosity issues are often hidden from view because they are voids and cavities below the surface of the head just as a crevasse is on a glacier or snowfall. These appear good but collapse as soon as the fire ring puts any compression onto them just a s a foot can push through to ahole under the snow. In some cases simply bolting the head down causes a collapse even before any other affects such as heat cycles or liner movement/fit have any bearing.

I know that poor quality castings which are known to suffer from cavitation, voids and porosity are often micro-compressed on the surface to collapse these voids and smear the metal into cavities and thus avoid too many problems, this however just masks the poor quality of the casting as it comes out of the mold. As soon as the head is required to be skimmed the compressed layer is removed and you are in the lap of the Gods, or more realistically in the hands of casting control at Rover which appears to be less than perfect by a wide margin.

Dave

106

Simon,

When I have had the opportunity to see the data relating to his engine and to see and test the components for myself then I will be happy to enter into a dialogue with Mark. Until that time I will reserve my judgement and you would do well to do the same.

As it happens Mark’s head was from a running engine and did have a hardness test at a well know engine workshop before being ported.

For the record I havent suggested that porosity was an issue on Marks engine, but that liner heights and location might well be since the block appeared to be well outside tolerance.

I suspect that Judd can afford to bend an ear or two to make sure that the castings they get are ‘clean’ rather than those poured after the runs to the mold and associated impurities have been thrown back into the melt. I’m sure the foundry and Rover know which ones these are.

My “obsession” with porosity is no more marked than your’s with it’s denial.

I wont bother with responding to the last paragraph, it’s just the same old rhetoric of “how dare you not do as I say”.

Dave

107

“When engines fail because of these inadequaces and you use the engine and it designers as scapegoat that makes me mad”

To be fair Simon, you’re appearing madder and madder post by post…

I hope DVA doesn’t mind me speaking for him on this, but Mark Bowles’s head was done before the head porousity issue started to appear in quantity. Mine was actually in bits at the time and as far as I know mine was the first one DVA had seen. Why would you test for a problem that doesn’t exist ? Besides… how can you test for it other than visually Simon? Unless you hardness test every part of the head using a 0.1mm probe you’ll never find a bit of thin head covering a void.

The casting process was changed at a certain point in time so it stands to reason some people are going to have problems before the wider issue is found.

Regards,

Brian

109

Simon,

Your post seems as full of gobbledegook as ever.

If there is a problem with liner tolerances then I will happily take that up with the manufacturer (AE) after I have seen the liners in question. Given the large number of Rover liners I have seen that have been well outside tolerance (inluding Mark’s orginals) it is small wonder that I sought an alternative from a trusted manufacturer.

None of the rotating parts of Mark’s engine were changed or disturbed during his upgrade, only the rods which had previously been balanced ( a scale balance is required here rather than a rotating one) and the new Omega pistons which were weighed by me and found to be pretty much spot on. This makes the balancing issue an irrelevance so please dont let your obsession with it cloud the issues.

What I take umbrage with is not that my ‘build practices’ are called into question but the underhand way that you have been spreading rumour and inuendo about me to anyone who will listen while pretending publically to be ‘fair’ and ‘forebearing’.

So far I have not been afforded the opportunity to examine any of the components, nor to talk to Mark about any or the issues. I am happy to do both as indicated already to Mark. If you think it appropriate to be discussing these matters on a public forum, then continue, but don’t be surprised at any reaction it might get.

I well remember a near hysterical phonecall from you pleading with me to post on a thread in your support. This was because you believed that people would listen to me and it would make you more accepted. This came with a thinly veiled threat that you would leak ‘damaging information’ if I didn’t comply. As any sensible person would I asked you never to call me again. An action which I am very glad I took.

What a nasty experience that was.

Dave

111

Simon,

“I know that poor quality castings which are known to suffer from cavitation, voids and porosity are often micro-compressed on the surface to collapse these voids and smear the metal into cavities and thus avoid too many problems, this however just masks the poor quality of the casting as it comes out of the mold. As soon as the head is required to be skimmed the compressed layer is removed and you are in the lap of the Gods, or more realistically in the hands of casting control at Rover which appears to be less than perfect by a wide margin.”

Sound familiar?

Dave

112

Just some stats about HGF.

In the last seven years I have prepared well over 250 K series cylinder heads, up until 13 months ago the number of head gasket failures associated with these had been minimal, less than 2%… During the last 13 months I have had a further 11 or so failures, 8 of which have had visible leakage across the fire ring due to the collapse of the material underneath. These have all been documented. In total 7 of these were on engines with the original OE Rover liners in place, the remaining one was with a Scholar 1800 EVO2 block (the one and only failure of a Scholar blocked engine that I have seen). All of these porosity issues were with head castings from post 2001 engines, mostly S2 Elises.

If I were doing something very wrong, I would have expected it to manifest itself uniformly over all the heads I have done and in inuch greater volume.

The data speaks for itself.

Dave

114

Simon,

“Yet you are the only one with the issue…”

Isn’t that the phrase that Rover used to customers when trying to deny that HGF was an issue?

As it happens I am not the only one with an issue, as you know from postings on previous threads about HGF where others have posted about finding porosisty on K heads (which you convenientyl ignored). My local machine shop for example reckon they get at least 2 K heads per month with collapses on the fire ring due to porosity.

Yawn.

I probably work on more OE cylinder heads that just about anyone else. Small wonder then that I should encounter a problem or two. That is why the data is significant unless of course overnight mysteriously 13 months ago I suddenly changed my working practices to include sabotage of the castings… but only on post 2001 heads.

Dave

115

Further on head porosity.

Had an interesting conversation with Paul Ivey at REC who has long standing connections with Rover and who recently visited the factory to see some old friends. I mentioned the subject of K series head porosity to him and quite predictably he responded with a knowing comment or two about how bad the situation is.

He also volunteered that while at the factory he was invited to meet ‘porous Pete’ and was expecting to meet an individual. Surprise surprise, what did he actually go to see but a area full of K series head castings which were routinely undergoing treatment for a malady. Bet you cant guess what it was. The ensuing conversation left him in no doubt that porosity was a huge problem on the K series head. He also offerred to feed me some ‘real’ statisitics about the problem from those who are actually involved at the grass roots level.

Seems that I might not be the only one with an issue eh Simon?

You repeatedly mention in your posts that all the after martket tuning companies are responsible for the K’s bad reputation but then go on to list all the cock-ups perpetrated by Rover themselves, incorrect liners, plastic dowels, bad head gaskets, the list goes on.

I would respectfully suggest that Rover themselves more than anyone else have undermined the K series engine’s reputation despite (as you keep telling us) the hordes of ‘professional engineers’ whose skills have been brought to bear.

The fact that they failed to understand their own engine and failed to control production tolerances sufficiently well illustrates perfectly why the engine has such a bad name.

Dave

116

Dave,

Having spoken to one of the engineers today who spent years working on the K-series engine, the HGF problem had been solved finally, it’s just unfortunate that the company no-longer exists to ensure it is fully implemented.

As for your other comments, there are always issues in a production environment, and I don’t think even you would agree that Rover were deliberatly fitting bad head gaskets.

It is also interesting to see the comments from someone who doesn’t have to deal with day to day issues in the current automotive industry (and not just at MGR) where cost-down is king. The ongoing struggle of reducing costs while still trying to keep the quality up can sometimes be a losing battle, and it usually has nothing to do with what the engineers actually want to do and more to do with what they are allowed to with the limited finances available.

The porosity is probably a good example, as when Rover had a bit of money behind them in the BMW era there was no porisity issue, then, when they are on their own with no money the issue appears, perhaps these things may be connected.

117

I appreciate the difficulties faced by MGR, but my issue isn’t with the poor quality/porosity per se, but with the tacit denial that the problem exists. It’s one thing to be ignorant of a problem , ingorance isnt stupidity, it’s just a question of not knowing, but to deny it’s existence in the face of overwhelming evidence is not ignorance, it’s idiocy.

Simon’s comments with respect to the Rover engineers sound more and more like the company mantra and get closer to propaganda every time I hear them.

I’m sure that the head gasket problem was not caused by a deliberate act, but nonetheless it shows a lack of understanding of the characteristics of the engine. Modifications that I and others have been making to the gasket for years to improve reliability took an interminable time to appear in the Rover gasket even though they must have been aware of the problems.

The HGF problem may be finally solved, but it’s taken a long long time to do so, probably longer than the normal life cycle of an engine amd there are still hundreds of thousands of engines out there with components and gaskets which are doomed to eventual failure. I expect I will see my fair share of them. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t havge a 'phone call from someone regarding head gasket failure.

Cost reduction is a very delicate balance between redcuing build costs, while retaining qua;ity, it is the production engineers job to ensure that cuts implemented do not detract from quality and reliability of the product. The financial balance here is between the savings made in production and the increased costs of warranty claims due to failures, it’s a fine balance. I know because I spent a number of years in finance dealing with cost control.

it seems that one way and onother the balance was tipped the wrong way.

Dave

119

Simon,

Yawn… you know as well as I do that there are prosity issues and for the record I didn’t claim there were changes in the casting process, I simply suggested that given the evidence there might be. Just as I didn’t tell you that Bernard had soldered liners together as you state earlier in this thread, gave you a nice little dig at him though didn’t it, even though it was a total fabrication.

You should try to just use facts rather than supposition and incomplete information in your postings Simon, the one on the engine stresses being the same on every other engine at 1300RPM as on yours at 9500 was an absolute belter. you should also try listening rather than spouting occasionally and try jumping out of the box into the real world.

“You need to look at your whole engine build Dave”

I’m going to type this slowly and carefully so that you read it slowly and carefully.

In 7 of the 8 cases of fire ring porosity there was no ‘whole engine build’ The heads involved had less than the recommended skim and were all fitted to original OE bottom ends with OE liners using OE gaskets and OE bolts.

In no cases were the liners distrubed.

Liner heights an all but one were 3-5 thou on one the liner heights were 1 thou.

</end statement>

Now which part of that do you not understand? I have volunteered the information before but you keep obsessing about ‘whole engine build’ where you should be reading ‘removal and replacement of head’. It sure takes a lot of posts to get you take on board a simple concept.

If you have no asnwer to it then please say so rather than pretending that I havent typed something, it’s all rather tiresome.

BTW all these have been well documented I have owners names, photos, engine details etc.etc.

Since I started to use pre 2001 castings exclusively I havent had a single case of prosity related HGF, I now no longer accept post 2001 head castings in exchange. Your knowledge of casting processes does not exclude the possibility of porosity related failures. I feel quite at liberty to lecture you on the facts of my experiences just as you feel at liberty to ignore or misrepresent them.

I have been working on cylinder heads for neary 35 years Simon and in that time I have seen many, many of them. One thing that experience has taught me is to believe the evidence of my own eyes rather than the opinion of someone who hasn’t even set eyes on it.

Sorry Simon but all the rhetoric about it being only about the engine simply doesn�t ring true, it is as much about your desire for acclaim and stoking your EGO as about the engine.


Dave

120

I’m sure that the head gasket problem was not caused by a deliberate act, but nonetheless it shows a lack of understanding of the characteristics of the engine. Modifications that I and others have been making to the gasket for years to improve reliability took an interminable time to appear in the Rover gasket even though they must have been aware of the problems.

Dave,

Do you understand how long it takes to introduce design changes on any component on a production car?
It certainly isn’t a 5 minute job. Just because an aftermarket firm introduces a head gasket which happens to last longer than a MGR one under a particular environmental situation doesn’t actually mean it will be a better overall part. It may actually cause problems elsewhere.
Also, who is to say that the actual head gasket is the problem. As has been alluded to in a number of posts on various forums over the years, there are a number of actual things that have colluded to cause the problem, one of the largest being the cooling system, the PRT introduced by Land Rover went a long way to solving the problem but it wasn’t the final piece in the puzzle.

As for Rover ignoring the issue, do you actually believe that to be the case? What did people expect them to do, stand up and say that every 1.8K-series has a good chance of getting HGF, that would be commercial suicide, perhaps they took, IMHO, commercially the best option, deny it was a big issue (which relatively speaking it wasn’t as the issue seems to only be prevelant in 1.8’s which is nowhere near the largest volume K-series engine) while trying to find a robust solution, which isn’t just a quick fix with a head gasket, steel dowls, new liners etc, it’s a case of trying to find the real root cause and work from there. But who but the top people at MGR actually know for sure.

Before anyone starts, no I’m not taking sides, and until tonight I’ve posted on none of the threads on here or SELOC, but it is very fustrating to see someone who does aftermarket work post that the original design engineers did nothing or hadn’t got a clue, which categorically isn’t the real situation.

While I never worked on engines, I did spend 5 years working at Longbridge as a design and Development engineer, so unlike almost everyone else on here, I really do understand the issues we had to contend with and the compromises we had to make. And as such people posting blatent mis-information about what went on in East Works tends to annoy me (just the same as you not liking what Simon says about you Dave)!