 : : May 2007
Thar she blows!
Just over three months into my ownership of the ZS and just 42,000 miles on the clock and I’ve suffered the ‘K’ series nemesis. Yep, the famous much publicised head gasket failure has happened to me, or more appropriately to my car's engine.
I had a suspicion for about a month that things might not be quite right in the water works department. I suffered a couple of minor drops in the header tank level and, on one occasion when removing the cap from the tank, I’d noticed a slight mayonnaise like film on the inside of the cap. Having spoken to a friend from MGs on Track who owns a specialist MG-Rover garage in Kent about the problem, who’d given me a couple of possible causes beside the obvious, I was keeping a careful eye on it. The most plausible, apart from the obvious, was the ‘K’ series does not like short runs because it does not get hot enough. This can cause the mayonnaise, but what about the fluid loss?
I went up to Snetterton, in Norfolk, for one of the clubs track days. It is a circuit I’ve never even seen, let alone driven, so was keen to go. We had some more discussion about the possible problem over dinner the night before our day on track. My final comment being, “if it is the head gasket then tomorrow should be kill or cure”. Oh what a prophet of doom I am!
A beautiful, dry sunny morning, the circuit looking inviting, everything checked and tightened and off I go for the first session. Terrific circuit, two very long straights and a good mixture of high speed and slow technical bends. Back in the pits I eagerly check the water level, it is fine I’m relieved to discover. Out for the second twenty minute session, ten minutes in I come out of a second gear corner. I sense something happen as I change gear at 6500 rpm, look in the mirror to see an Ark Royal type smoke screen. Well it was steam, the end of my day and head gasket, but what a spectacular end!
Bits, Bobs and the odd Spare Part
Things that perhaps, with hindsight ,they wish they hadn’t written?
‘Aesthete', Bootle, Lancs, The Motor, January 1936 :
“Surely to any normal sane person, there is only one colour for a car and that is black. Whenever I see frightful light greys and beiges along with blues and greens and yellow I feel physically unwell. Let a motor car be a self-respecting motor car and not a sort of perambulating art gallery expressing its owner’s personal taste”
He’d probably have a coronary now!
1963 Vauxhall PB Velox and Cresta brochure :
“The big new Vauxhall is not revolutionary, but it is very nearly perfect. In 20 years time it will be remembered…..not for any one refinement, but for its masterful design…. It is, quite simply, a great motor car”
They might have been right if it hadn’t dissolved to rust by then!
Harry Loftus, Car Mechanics, September 1966 :
“My son and his chums, all of them hard-up undergraduates, haunt car auctions for vintage bargains like the SS Jaguar they picked recently for £15. But I cannot see tomorrow’s youngsters bargaining for vintage Victors, Cortinas or Minis?”
Anybody got Dr Who’s phone number, I’ve got £20 spare!
Anthony Gibbs, A Passion for Cars, 1974
“The postwar car I am afraid we have to pass judgement that not one of these machines could hold a candle to the really great cars of the pre-war era. There isn’t a gentleman’s carriage among the lot of them. It it comes to that, there are no longer any gentlemen. The roads became filled with Standard Vanguards and the products of giant manufacturers. Like everything else in life, the fashion in motor cars, began to come up from below”
That is the trouble with asylums, you can’t see much from the windows. I also suppose the rose tinted spectacles kept the Austin Sevens and Morris Minors from one's view pre-war!
Makes me wonder what literary blunders are being produced today for us to laugh out loud at in the future. They must be tenfold to this little selection, have you seen the number of motoring magazines alone that W.H. Smiths stock?
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