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MG Midget and Sprite Technical - Conversion Gasket Set

Has anyone bought a bottom end gasket set recently? This can also be referred to as a Conversion Set. They vary a lot in price (with Moss being £30+) and perhaps quality. Gaskets at worse can be made from brown paper envelope stuff and I don't want to buy poor quality but at the same time we all know that price and quality don't always go hand in hand. I guess that the crankshaft to sump seals (which seem to be a fiver each) may not be included.
Any experiences of what are good and what are rubbish would be appreciated.
Graeme Williams

I got the payen kit from moss for both upper and lower... the black fiber kit, its really well made

A couple of things ive done differant

1. To make gaskets reuseable over and over

I coat only one side of the gasket with gasket glue/ sealer (halymor) and attach it to the part. Then on the otherside i smear a coat of white lithium grease onto the gasket and then mount 2 parts togather ... once the engine has warmed up and ran 1/2 hour or so the grease melts and flows creating a nice seal just retorq ... if in the future you need to seperate the parts just strike the part with a rubber mallet and the side with the white lithium grease will seperate cleanly living the other side permantly glued to the part just add another smear of the grease and rebolt on let it reheat as before and retorq and good agian

2. Thing i do is buy a 2nd set of a full gasket sets that never gets used and kept in a safe clean dry place ... in the fut future, if i ever need a gasket i find the one in rwserve and use it as a templete on to high end gasket paper/Material cut it out and use it and putthe templete gasket back into the file storage ... never have to wait on a gasket to be shipped or pay $8 ship and handling for the one gasket you need
1 Paper

I also do this with the cork gasket on the valve cover using the white lithium grease on the cork side between the cork and rhe cly. Head

I can reuse the cork gasket at least 10 times before needing replaced...and no mess to scrap off each time
1 Paper

Excellent advice there Prop, especially for the valve cover cork gaskets.

As regards the Conversion set, the main difference is in the front and rear crank seals supplied. Basic sets are supplied with cork seals which are what was originally used with the factory engines. They are OK but probably not as good as the black rubber seals which are often sold separately. I prefer the rubber ones as they look like they should work better. The only doubt though is with the quality of other rubber parts supplied currently it makes one wonder about whether the rubber in these is necessarily as good as it should be! I suppose the thing is to buy a known brand like Payen and you should be OK.
GuyW

We use County conversion sets for A and B series, they tend to come with the correct thickness paper gaskets for each gasket rather than the Payen one size fits all which can upset oil pumps and front cover plates for shimming crack to cam pulley. I must admit I quite enjoy supergluing the cork sump gaskets in place then trimming them to size. Strangely the A series set comes with front cover rubber seal whereas The B set does not. The seal in the conversion set does not look as good to me as the one sold separately for The A and B series so I use one of those and bin the one with the set.
Peter
Peter Burgess Tuning

Can now reply, having got hold of the County set which Peter suggests. Can't agree more, Peter. Nice range of gasket materials used and it cost about £9. Why is the Moss set £37?
Graeme Williams

Can anyone point me in the direction of a supplier for the County 1275 lower conversion set? £9 seems very reasonable for good quality, the Payen set is also over £30.
Thanks Bill
W Dunsmore

Mine came from PS Autoparts in Headcorn, Kent. They do mail order but for me they are local. There are lots of set resellers around that price but you don't know where they come from. But whether it comes 50 miles or 500 the postage will be the same, although some suppliers insist on expensive courier service.
Graeme Williams

This thread was discussed between 26/04/2017 and 08/05/2017

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