Questions and Answers

Rover Blown Head Gasket? Q. Dear sir, can you please tell me what it might be? Driveling at 50 mph moving to 70 mph then smoke from the exhaust, engine revs went sky high, had to use key to knock off engine. Water cap was off and water spilled out every where. Could it be the head gasket? I am getting all different prices and information. Rover 400 DSL.

Can you help? By the way my name is Sam and I'm from Ireland.

Regards,
Sam

A. I'm glad some of my international visitors write me. I think they think I just do U.S. cars but I can handle just about any car. Well, maybe not a Russian car, but I'll give it a shot. After all, a car is a car, right?

Now I'm a little confused, was the radiator cap off while you were driving? If it was it overheated and could very well have caused the head gasket to blow.

Now if you took the cap off and this started, which can be very dangerous with a hot engine, then I would say the head gasket is definitely blown. In either case I would have a compression test done to confirm the head gasket is blown before I go ripping heads off.

Never, ever remove a radiator cap from a hot or overheating engine. It can cause very serious personal injuries. I had to take my neighbor to the hospital because he did just that and was hit in the face with scalding hot coolant. Please be careful, somebody loves you.