Man someone did not know what they were doing on that Rover.

On the overheating issue, is it doing it right away or after a while? And is it really overheating or is it a faulty sensor?

I hate to say it but you may find many other things that you need to fix or replace on it.

 

its doing it right away. as soon as it gets to operating temperature it continues to climb.

the sensor is reading correctly, and its def. over heating, the coolant is boiling over and the engine eventually starts to misfire then i have to shut it down. last night it barely made it home (just from a 4 block trip down the street and back) and i shut it off in a massive cloud of steam.

in good news however, my new driveshaft is ready for collection

 

have you checked to see if the top and the bottom hoses of the radiator are significantly hotter/cooler than the other? I'd pull your plugs and drain your oil, look for any signs of coolant. Does your system pressurize? Or does it over pressurize? Don't ever let the temp get past center. You run the risk of liner failure or a cracked block.

 

If it is overheating that fast it should be easier to pin point what the issue is. You should be able to see where coolant is in the oil or the coolant draining out quickly. I am willing to bet there is a blockage and so it is not really circulating coolant or not enough. You may want to start sourcing a used motor or a good replacement.

 

already ahead of you on that one. if it comes down to a cracked block or warped head i'm most likely just going to replace the engine entirely.

the system wasn't pressurizing properly due to a bad cap, i replaced that and although it helped out quite a bit something still isn't quite right. i wouldn't be surprised if there is blockage somewhere still, but the other issue makes it obvious that the head gasket is bad. upon re-start after its been running for a few moments its blowing coolant out the tail pipe in a huge cloud of smoke so coolant is getting into the cylinders. i wont know the full story until we tear it down but i'm prepared to just flat out replace the whole engine if we need to.

 

It may end up being cheaper and easier to just find a used engine and swap it; you could probably drive it for 100,000 miles before it goes. I would be worried that once you got into it that there were far more problems and it would cost thousands to get right.