New head bolts or not?

[arcon]

Ok, doing head gasket on a 1996 rover 214. New gasket ordered and head being skimmed. I know they are stretch bolts, but can I get away with using the old ones? It's a very old car, i'm only fixing as I took it in p/x as an MOT failure and it turned out to be more than a failed MOT... so I want to repair it cheap cheap cheap...

Will it really be catastrophic to not order new bolts?

[Mr Teddy Bear]

What caused the head gasket to let go? The main problem here is that you view the car as being of little or no value and I presume will be looking to sell it to some body as a cheap banger with either no, or a limited three month warranty? The lightweight alloy block is designed to flex' and the head bolts stretch with the engine sandwich. There is a max' length dimension for the head bolts. They are designed to operate within their elastic limit, when they start to stretch/deform. grow longer they are on the way toward fracture. The liners should stand proud of the block. The block design changed with the advent of the MGF and Freelander. The block was redesigned to accommodate the larger capacity engines. Prior to 95 ish wet liner engine, after damp liner; allegedly not so reliable. In original format 100/1400 cc, the engine covered 1million development miles.

Make sure the cooling system is in good nick replace the thermostat and housing, it's probably plastic. Use a blue old type anti freeze and take great care bleeding air out of the system. The steel coolant pipe that runs under the inlet manifold will be full of air, use the bleed screw! There will still be air in the heater matrix so needs a long run through the gears to drive out the remaining air.

You really need a k Series engine workshop manual on disk. Good little engine if looked after, heats up in two minutes and returns 45 mpg!