Scottish Elises

Hot on the heels of my fuel pump deciding to give up the ghost (which is due for replacement next week as I had to wait for the parts), comes a new problem.

I drove my partner across town this morning. A couple of hours later I want to use the car again and find this underneath the left hand side:



At the time I wasn't sure if it was from my car or not, so I drove to Sainsbury's and checked when I came back to the car for leaks - none. Feeling good at this point.

Then I get home and notice something funny with the waterbottle:



So I let everything cool down and come back for a better look

The water bottle cap (the water bottle is almost full to the brim with this goo):



The oil filler cap:




The oil filler:



Head gasket failure?

Unfortunately yes, the classic symptoms.

tut

Indeed the classic sign of whale spunk in your engine. HGF.

Crap.

When it was serviced a fortnight ago they said there were two small fluid leaks - one a suspected cracked water bottle and the other on the engine casing - but that they were nothing to worry about. Should they have picked this up at the time?

Is it a fair assumption to say that I shouldn't drive the car until it's fixed? If so what do I do, given that I'm in Glasgow and all the garages are in Edinburgh? Is this something any old Rover specialist could handle or is it worth dealing with a Lotus expert only?

Dunno about pickign it up in the service, one of the experts will be along soon.

Got AA parts & Labour ? If so get it trailered to the like of Ali/Dans.

I think you face the risk of warping the piston heads should you drive it and they woudl then require skimming. Could be talking mince though.

IIRC my HGF was ~£500 to fix.

Any good indepenadant garage should be able to do the work. Let's face it, there can't be a garage in the country that hasn't had to do an HGF on a Rover 200/MGF/Freelander etc . They should also be familiar with the latest head gaskets and possibly improvements to the cooling system (PRT) to prevent future failures. There's nothing "specialist" about the Elise K-series (in standard form), maybe a bit awkward for access but no more so than an MGF,

Robin

PS. Don't drive it in the meantime.

Yup, looks like an oil to coolant HGF for sure. Could well be caused just by aging of the elastomer seals between the oilways and the coolant, so simply putting a new gasket on may well fix the problem.

As Robin says, a K is just a K - the only difference in the elise is the access you've got to engine isnt as good as a saloon.

Sanjoy wrote:Got AA parts & Labour ? If so get it trailered to the like of Ali/Dans.

If not get it, get this post deleted and wait a month

Only 14 days...................

tut

tut wrote:Only 14 days...................

tut

I didn't want it to be to obvious

111Robin wrote:Any good indepenadant garage should be able to do the work. Let's face it, there can't be a garage in the country that hasn't had to do an HGF on a Rover 200/MGF/Freelander etc . They should also be familiar with the latest head gaskets and possibly improvements to the cooling system (PRT) to prevent future failures. There's nothing "specialist" about the Elise K-series (in standard form), maybe a bit awkward for access but no more so than an MGF,

Robin

PS. Don't drive it in the meantime.

I was a Honda Tech for 10 years. We (and every other garage) used to do k series constantly. Must thank the K Series for being so un reliable through my apprentiship, otherwise i would not have had any Engine rebuilding experience !!

Get the head skimmed and fit a new gasket.

There is also metal dowls for the Head available. Part of the problem was the head moving on the plastic dowls, this casued the seal ring thats part of the head gasket to eat into the head. sometimes the grooves were past the Min skim thickness and had to be thrown away.

Something to look into.

Best of luck
Alan

Sanjoy wrote:Got AA parts & Labour ? If so get it trailered to the like of Ali/Dans.

I'd definitely go down the AA P&L route if you can and just get them to take it somewhere who can fix it for you properly, and quickly I guess. Should only really be a 3 day job, tops.

HTH

Dan

I'm not an AA member so I can't use them for this - and anyway I need the car repaired asap as it's my daily commuting car.

What I'm most interested in now is how much it's all going to cost - especially as it had a C service just 3 weeks ago so the belts and things should be ok?

Is it worth getting a thermostat mod (PRT) done at the same time?

It's no scam - if you have AA P&L, it's what you got it for... Okay - if you don't have it yet, it's cheeky, but still no scam.

Anyway - cost-wise, you'd probably be looking around the £400-£600 mark - PRT is worthwhile doing and as good a time as any. Best to contact someone like Dan for a specific quote.

Did the engine overheat at any time ?. If so the head may have gone soft. Don't want to scare you but that would be rather more expensive.