Freelander 1 Hippo I can NO LONGER USE

LOL, take a look at the MG_Rover forum. The guys over there see the results of it all the time. Apparently it blocks the smaller water channels and causes hot spots which then cause head gasket failure.

but whos to say their gaskets wasnt on their way out anyhow ..
i know the hippo had radweld in before i got her.. as there is still residu in the tank.. lol..
i have used it on rovers i had in the past and never had a issue....but i suppose i may have been lucky.. i know a few people who have used it never had any issues..
so still mixed emotions about really ..

I guess like anything you can be lucky or unlucky. If your lucky it'll work and cause no problems for the life of the car. If your unlucky it'll block important water ways and cause repeat HGF every few thousand miles until you end up scrapping it as uneconomical to repair.

well if the hippo last me a year i am doing well,,, i seem to replace my car every year lol.. i had a zafria for nearly 2.. my machanic nearly had a heart attack when he knew i still had her,, lol.. he wast at all shocked i got rid of her..as she was about naffed..
zafria had a crankcase seal gone, HGF, clutch slipping.. and other things ..
got 400 for her..

K seal is a last resort, get you home treatment for dieing cars. It has no place in a vehicle that you like or respect. You wouldn't believe how much damage this stuff can do. The worst things to be affected are the heater matrix and radiator. K seal settles at the bottom of these, blocking the tiny tubes. This massively reduces the cooling capacity of the rad and effectiveness of the heater. This is why the HG then fails. K seal also sits in the bottom of the block, reducing water pump effectiveness. I've just spent months cleaning out the cooling system of my project MGF because some previous owner had used K seal on a failing HG. I did manage to flush out the heater and block but had no alternative but to change the radiator and under floor coolant piping.
When I worked in the automotive industry, my garage refused to carry out work on the engine / cooling system if any cooling system sealers had been used.
Trust me, this stuff has no place in a car engine. If it were supposed to be in there, manufacturers would put it in.

Thanks for the info Nodge... well i must say myself i have never heard of any issues that friends have had using this stuff..
a freind of mine has a FL2 i think it is .. he used it.. and has been running fine for the past year or two.. from what I am aware of..
i am not saying i am using it myself.. nor am i going to try it .. i just find it odd how the k seal company is allowed to sell it by law. if it causes this much damage.. surely there must be a saftey standards law that if this product should cause this much damage then the customer has a right to sue the company for damage to said motor engine if they can prove that the product had in fact was the product had or was the reason that caused any damage in the first place..

Hmm.... Cheap, initial quick fix, maybe. Last resort? Not so sure. Not personally used it on my Freddie, touch wood I've not needed to, but have used it - successfully - on other vehicles. No, it is not ideal, but just because we own a Landy doesn't mean we have bottomless pockets or an encyclopedic working knowledge of the inside of a Snap-on toolbox. Sometimes, we can only do what we can do. Some people wouldn't dream of using a scrapyard. Me, I live in one. Some would use only OEM parts. Me, if it says OEM, I can't afford it.

K Seal is one of those great evils, not because it's a bad product, but because it's results are completely variable engine to engine.
This means it causes a great many internet arguments because person x used it in vehicle A with great success and person y used it in vehicle B and it killed 16 people while burning down the nearest church.

Is it a good product? It is what it is, a product designed to block holes - which it's apparently really good at doing, so it's a good product.
The real question is whether it's a good product for engine A - a question for which answers only lie in the experience of people having used it before.

I wouldn't really demonify or praise it, if you're going to bin the car anyway, or the car is counted as throwaway, it's probably worth a punt.
But it's not a proper fix, it's a limp the car to it's final appointment to a scrap yard move - this may take 3 days or 3 years, but I'd say this product is part of an end game for an engine you don't really care about ever dismantling again.

It may get you moving, but the nature of the product affects every system the coolant touches, so ultimately - it's a calculated risk.

B34R said:

This means it causes a great many internet arguments because person x used it in vehicle A with great success and person y used it in vehicle B and it killed 16 people while burning down the nearest church.

Click to expand...

Sh*t, you've gotta feel for folk when that happens. That sucks :-( I wonder if it's in the small print somewhere? Should be, by the sound of things, this stuff is lethal!!

Probably whether you use these leak sealing products is a good barometer on whether your car's going to be breaking down all the time. If you use it, you are also likely to be taking far to many other shortcuts in maintaining it.
They've been around for ages. They were dangerous when they came out and the engine cooling systems they were going in then were a lot simpler and tolerant - so on today's engines you're asking for even more trouble.