If you’re like me, you sometimes feel like you’ve almost reached the end of YouTube. What I mean is I’ve watched everything my favorite channels have to offer, and I’m forced to wait until they publish more. That is, until I find a new rabbit hole, then my video stock is replenished. This time, it’s engine teardown videos.
I’ve always enjoyed these types of videos, but I never actively sought them out and blew a full day watching them in succession, as I recently did. We’ll call it important blog research. The following three engine teardown videos have a common theme: Each powerplant is a victim of a well-known common problem. The first is about a Rover 25, the second is about a Land Rover LR4, and the third is about a Mazda MZR. Check them out below.
A Revvy K-Motor Goes Kaputt
The backstory to this one is pretty cool. Mike Fernie at DriveTribe happened upon his first car, an early-2000s Rover 25 hatchback, in a parking lot on a military base in his hometown of Edinburgh, Scotland. It’s been sitting for a few years and was in need of serious restoration, so he took it back into his possession and is slowly repairing it back into a fresh, clean, and healthy little hot hatch. Well, maybe lukewarm hatch, as its naturally aspirated Rover 1.4-liter K-Series engine (the tea-and-crumpets K motor, not the Honda one) only made 102 horsepower when new. Still, it looks the part and is a revvy little engine to boot.
Apparently these engines, although pretty advanced for their time, suffered head gasket issues in very high numbers. The fix is to simply replace this component with a much sturdier upgrade, but it takes some work to complete, especially if the problem went unnoticed and caused damage. Anyway, the series is great, and the most recent video covers the engine teardown:
Those Pesky Land Rovers
Next up, the hilarious German couple over at LR Time is tasked with pulling the turbocharged diesel V6 out of their son’s Land Rover LR4 to determine what exactly happened. The video is lengthy, though quite entertaining, and they give a very thorough demonstration of what happens when an engine experiences bearing failure, in this case when it spins a bearing. Through their examination, they think it could’ve been caused by excessive cranking during startup.
Their aim is to rebuild the engine and throw it back in the LR3, so hopefully installation goes much smoother for them than removal did. Seriously, both seem like absolute nightmares.
Mazda Loses Its Zoom Zoom
Finally, YouTube channel I Do Cars does a thorough explanation of the infamous turbocharged Mazda MZR 2.3-liter inline-4. They’re powerful but also have weird issues, especially when it comes to the timing chain. The reason for this particular engine losing compression isn’t fully known yet, but there’s a good chance that it’s indeed timing-related. What’s also neat is he compares the timing chains between the MZR and its Ford sibling, the 2.3-liter EcoBoost. Thankfully, the EcoBoost doesn’t suffer the same issues as the MZR.
So dive in and check it out! If you’re like me, your attention span on YouTube is short and you cover a lot of different types of content. Engine teardowns are plentiful, and there are endless types of interesting designs and issues to discover. Just be careful, you might fall down the rabbit hole and waste away an entire day. Or possibly even a week, but hey, at least you’re learning.
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