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MG MGF Technical - hg again

My car has gone back into mg milton keynes gain today .leaking oil my first thought was the rocker cover gasket. garage told me the hg had gone again . they fitted the brand new gaskets. i thought these where the dogs ? repaired in feb gone in june nice
darren jeffery an unhappy mg owner
Darren Jeffery

....but was it fitted properly?

Sam
Sam Murray

Although the new LR multi-shim gasket is the belt and braces approach the current MGR gasket should do the job by itself. However, one thing which should have been checked before fitting the gasket was the height of the liners, if these are too low then there will be another failure around the corner. I have just stripped my own engine and found that the liners were way too low, so I'm in the process of rectifying this.

Dave Andrews who runs DVAPower is just around the corner from you in Milton Keynes and when it come to the K-series engine he is a bit of a God. I believe that he has fixed liner height on a number of engines and this appears to have robustly fixed the problem in engines with multiple HGF's.

A head should also be checked for hardness and porosity, Dave can check this too.

Dave's websh*te - www.dvapower.com

Tim
Tim

Seems rather unusual for the engine to leak oil following a HGF Darren - much more likely to bleed collant, mix oil and water or suffer blow past the fire rings...

Tim, ready to linish the block in situ then? Not sure when I'll be next available - looking to be the far side of Silverstone unfortunately :o(
Rob Bell

Rob,

Ready to linish when you are .... Post Silverstone!
Tim

Darren. i first thought it was the rocker cover gasket. as the tech said on inspection .it was the head do you think they fitted it right in the first place? dave andrews said i could be the liners where 2 low then it weept. not a lot but cause for concern .the garage guy said it was ok to drive. when someone says hg you stop cant afford a warp head.

darren jeffery milton keynes
darren jeffery

Oil leaks are most likely from the cam seals - they're 'famous' for it. My first cylinder head always leaked from the front right corner (the new one is much better ;o)) - and this, predictably, was the cam seal. Cam cover gaskets can also leak - and replacement doesn't always cure - it may be that there is a minor casting defect that prevents adequate sealing. In either case, the car is safe to drive.

A cylinder head gasket failure is of course a different kettle of fish - and no, you should avoid running the engine under these circumstances.

Tim - okay, great! Will touch base after Silverstone. Will get the video camera all charged up ;o)
Rob Bell

Darren,

That's not quite what I said..

You told me you had HGF, I suggested that as it was recently fixed and had failed again that it could be liner related. When you told me it had an oil leak I said it was very very unusual for the HG to weep oil and that in over 100HGFs I had seen only one wept oil and that was a gasket damaged when fitted. I suggested (as others have) that the problem could be related to a camshaft seal or the cam cover and to take it back to be properly diagnosed.

The best way is to clean the engine and run it until oil appears, then track the course of the oil..

Dave
Dave Andrews

Just had similar problem on girlfriends MGF after recent HGF - I took cam belt covers off and ran engine and it was clearly leaking (heavily) from Cam shaft oil seal (exhaust side only)
Had this changed last week and the garage said it looked like seal had been pushed in with screwdriver and so failed due to not being flush

I prob could have got original garage to fix for free but didnt want them working on car again and touch wood its been fine now for couple of weeks....

Definately worth a look I would say

Lee
L Taylor

Darren,

Might be an idea to take it to Dave to do, or alternatively ask the garage to re-do it for free as it appears they may have messed it up 1st time around. Mind you it's a lot easier to prove the've caused the problem if you take it somewhere else. Then take 'em to small claims for the cost. Not sure what the expectation for a repair of this nature to last would be, but would have thought it to be well over 4 months!
Leigh

My MGF just cut out whilst driving. My friend took it to his garage to look at. Water was empty and oil in thew engine. His first reaction was that the head had gone, after having stripped it all he cant see anything wrong with the head. He thinks it must be the seals on the engine therefore resulting in a new engine. Any advice please????
HANNAH

Hanna,

Not sure I understand? No water, and oil in the engine? Or should that be water mixed with oil in the engine?

By head I presume he means Head Gasket, which is a common failure point in MGF's (especially if the water gets low)? Might be an idea to get your friend to post his query here directly, along with some pics if he can. There's a lot of knowledge on here (when it can be bothered looking in!)
Leigh

This thread was discussed between 07/06/2007 and 12/06/2007

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