Rover 200 & 400 Owners Club

Hi All

Well as per a previous post my HG has gone, not just the minor leak from the head/block join at the front of the engine as it was but the full coolant in the oil type. Though not visa versa and it never overheated, so I decided to do it myself.

I’ve gone elastomer HG with full cambelt and water pump kit from DMGRS.

Not an easy job and a bit fiddly but seemingly all went ok as the car starts, runs and drives, does not seem to overheat and coolant is not flooding out everywhere.

But, but, but.

The car ran absolutely fine before the work smooth and quiet.

But now it runs a little lumpily, it still drives ok and revs (though I’ve not used many revs). At tickover with the bonnet up you see the engine rocking in a slightly uneven way as it just doesn’t run quite correctly.

Def not like this before.

So what have a screwed up and what do I need to do to smooth it all out again.

Cheers Bean

It sounds as if the valve timing might be fractionally out. The first thing I'd check is the alignment marks. If they are out, you'll need to take the cambelt back off, realign the camshafts to the timing marks and refit the cambelt with the camshafts locked in place.

On that note, it’s also worth checking both camshaft sprockets are on the correct roll pins. If they’re not, the camshaft timing will be incorrect.



In the image above, you can see the “Ex” and “Inlet” markings around the roll pins - the sprockets should be fitted with the corresponding pin in the correct slot for each camshaft.

Note in this picture the timing is 180 degrees out. “Exhaust” on both camshaft sprockets should point to the rear of the car.

Thanks both for the replies.

I did use a lock tool and thought I’d got both the alignment marks in the correct place but the only thing I was slightly concerned about was that there was a little too much play in the cambelt between the cam sprockets.

When the tensioner took tha play out it did that by moving the rearmost cam sprocket to take up the slack.

So could that cam just be one tooth out of place.

I’ll strip it down and give it another Go

Cheers Guys.
PS captainslow, i can't see tha image, not sure if its my laptop or not.

Picture attàched:

I wonder if the same has happened to mine which currently runs ok but struggles to idle.
Also hadn’t realised there is a line
on the rim of the cam shaft sprocket. Appears on the Honda D16 engine as well ,according to the manual, so will be easy to check with the top cam belt cover off.