apologies if I've posted this in the wrong section but a few days before xmas , the head gasket has blown on our Rover 400 ( W reg) , me and hubby don't know much about cars and its still in the garage , we think ( hope) it is covered by a warranty we have but if not then will it be expensive?

thanks for any advice

if its a rover 400 i would say that its not covered by the warrenty as its an old rover and they have gone bust! how long have you had the car and where did you buy it from?

its in the rover garage if its not under warrenty the proper rover garage will cost alot so you could try advanced - 2701155 there rover specialists but alot cheaper and can collect the car.

2 yrs next month and it was bought from Reg Vardy (hillsborough)

It's a standard Rover problem, usually between 60 and 75k miles, and again at 120- 150k. My sister's company had several Rovers (400, 45 and 75) and they ALL failed between these ranges.

They all cost between £300 and £500 to repair at a Rover dealer, with the exception of my sister's 75, which was only 1 year old when it went the first time (she did over 50k miles a year), and the garage told her that there was nothing wrong with the car so she drove it for another 5 miles with the fault, causing £1500 of damage to the inside of the engine. She claimed this money back from the dealership who made the error in diagnosing the problem, but the overall cost for their fleet came to an astonishing amount, just for this one fault.

If Rover were still solvent you would have a chance of claiming back some of this cost from them as they admitted that the K series engines had a problem, but I'm afraid it's every man for themselves at this point. Go with the least expensive quote that's from someone you can trust- effectively there is no warranty for you to invalidate any more. You could try approaching Reg Vardy group but I wouldn't hold your breath.

Sorry that the picture's not too rosy on this one.

the best thing you could do is get rid of your over sorry rover there well known for the head gasket prob its a coman fault id get rid mate cut your losses move on.

rovers are great while they are running, but once you get a problem its one thng after another with them.
if i recall that head gasket is amajor job, something to do with gearing on the camshaft or summat. as previous advise get shut asap (ex rover owner)

I too had a Rover. After the head gasket went I had it fixed, but it never stopped overheating (which is usually why the gasket went in the first place) again despite various new hoses / new radiator etc. The gasket cost me about £400 to fix - very annoying as the actual part is only about £30.
From this however I will save myself lots of money in the future by buying Jap / German cars. British engineering aint what it used to be.
I wont recommend where i had it done as like I say it never really worked propertly again.

Head Gasket blew on my Rover 75 at the back end of Summer 2005.

Cost me around £700 to repair.

As artisan says, they're great whilst they're running fine, but it does seem that repairs are expensive and, as I'm finding out, never ending.

yes pretty much but it depends where you get it from and if you buy a new one

http://www.carsurvey.org/review_34306.html

Some thing about it on the above may be of info for you, dont know if it tells you anything you havent already sussed