Rover 25 Head gasket failure - repair

The past couple of Sundays I have been mostly replacing the head gasket on my friend's Rover 25 (K series 1.4 16v). In an earlier post on this site I replaced the inlet manifold gasket which was obviously failing and leaking water into one of the combustion chambers. After that repair the car ran quite well for a few months but gradually started playing up again. Eventually, it was taking so much water that it was time to park it up and consider the options. Since my friend likes her little car so much, the only viable option was to replace the head gasket. And so here we are.

Now, I'm not doing a step-by-step on this either. Instead, I'll just list the resources that I relied on for this job.

Someone doing the same job

Timing marks

Replacing the water pump

Cam-belt fitment

I also picked up these two pictures of a suitably timed engine. I can't for the life of me find them again so I can't give the credit even though its due. If these are your pictures, I hope you don't mind me using them:

Tool-wise, the only exceptional things were a 22mm socket (for the crank pulley bolt), breaker bar (for the crank pulley bolt), and a torque wrench for the new head bolts. After that, it was bog standard sockets and spanners (I used various bits from my 1/4", 3/8" and 1/2" sets). A few weeks before starting I asked my friend to douse the exhaust manifold bolts with some Plus Gas from time to time. That worked a treat and there were no problems during removal.

The pictures below are of the old head gasket which is clearly absolutely shot. But before we even got to that, we were surprised and appalled at the amount of black silicone that a previous person had used on the cam carriers. This had basically blocked all the little channels that feed oil to the hydraulic tappets and explains why the engine in this car had such a top-end rattle. The silicone had been applied liberally to the camshaft seals which were crispy and shot:

Anyway, here are some pics of the head gasket and the head and block before and after cleaning.

Unfortunately, I didn't take many pictures of the head, etc, before cleaning. It was a big old mess in there though interestingly, there was not a trace of oil anywhere in the water system. The problem was water getting into the oil and I think that might have been down to a broken thermostat (stuck closed). Who knows? For anyone interested, these are the parts I've fitted:

Head set with new bolts

Water pump kit (including cambelt and new tensioner)

New thermostat, oil, filter, coolant, cam-lock tool and bits and pieces. Bill for parts was around £170. Worth every penny when (with the aid of a jump start from my Mondingo), it started pretty much on the turn of the key :)

More soon, no doubt....


D