Does sound like the HG. The stories of HGF with K-series engines are over-hyped. My understanding is that it seems to be fractionally more likely with the K than other engines, but nobody knows how much more, nor is it predictable if and when it will happen. As far as I can establish, some have had HGF when there are only a few thousand miles on the clock and others have never had HGF after 50 or 60 thousand miles.
Just the luck of the draw, really. It is not the engine that's the problem, but the HG which seems to have been of poor quality. There are tell tale signs of HGF and unproven methods to help this happening and others with more knowledge than me have debated this before, however, this will obviously not be of help in the immediate future.
Most decent garages will repair HGF and, if they know anything about the K-series, should put in a better HG. If the failure has gone un-noticed and the car driven for long hot periods with early HGF, this can warp the aluminium head, meaning that this would need skimmed. However, if you have not noticed any problems with coolant loss/colour change, milky looking oil, unexplained high temps when running or misfires, this makes long-standing failure less likely. However, I would qualify this by saying that there may be no discernable signs of early failure.
All in all, HGF repair parts and labour should be around £500-600 depending on the garage, with extra for head skimming (not sure how much). Cries of "new engine" by the RAC shows how little they understand about these cars (see previous posts about RAC/AA recovery and towing using undercarriage rather than towing eyes etc) which have garden-variety rover or toyota engines in most cases.
Edinburgh Sports Cars in Dalkeith have done a few of these on Elises. Not sure about other garages. Big question is where has the car been recovered to? Dan at Jude performance has a good reputation, but is based in Newcastle. However, I know he has recovered cars from us lot before and is the safest bet for good quality work at a reasonable price (even including recovery).
If the car is in warranty, obviously use MMC, but AVOID AT ALL COSTS IF NOT IN WARRANTY. Plenty of horror stories about VERY VERY expensive bills for simple work (ie 3 times the labour rate of other good Edinburgh garages) which is done badly. For example, had my alarm box replaced. Left garage £600 poorer and on the bypass noticed one of my dashboard vents was broken - when I fiddled around in disbelief, the whole dash came of into the passeger seat at 70 MPH
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Hope that helps.
Novice
Thanks very much x
