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MG MGF Technical - MGF Centre/M. Satur/B & G: HGF

MGF Centre; Mike Satur; Brown & Gammons

Dear Managers,

I believe that the time has arrived for you all to begin to produce, offer and sell a HGF Prevention Kit. In a car that we all love but with the major inconvenience of a troubled engine, offering such a kit -at an affordable price if possible- would be the greatest contribution to all of us your customers, and furthermore would preserve our F to become a classic car, which is what we all want.

For what I frequently read the KIT should contain:
1- a new reinforced gasket; 2- a remote thermostat;
3- a different oil sump; and 4- a water level sensor.
All apparently necessary to give us some confidence and hope about the uncertain future of our F´s.

No charge for the idea.
With my best wishes

John
John Irving

John.

Great idea!......... just a year to late and directed at the wrong people.

If the makers of our beloved K-series could not come up with an answer to HGF after making circa 1 million of these lumps over 10 years, despite having access to test facilities, workshops and multi-million pound budjets, not to mention pressure from countless unhappy customers, TV programes, Ford, and thier own dealers..... what chance have a few small garages got of coming up with the solution in the back of their workshops??.

The engine needs re-design!, which MGR could not/would not do!, now they have gone all we are left with is a few "bolt-on" after-thoughts which may, or may not work, but again the only REAL proof of these HGF preventions can come with proper long term tests in controlled conditions (MGR again), not a few owners saying well "Try this or try that".....even the more well known K-series specialists cant agree on the actual cause of HGF in the K, so how can they come up with a definative answer!!.

Unless of course the Chinese can solve the problem for us?.....

I wonder if any Triumph Stag owners have the answer??? :o/
Mark.L

<The engine needs re-design!, which MGR could not/would not do!>
Come on Mark. I think that John´s idea is good. You are right that MGR did nothing for their customers...but that is the past. Engine re-designing might be good for the future cars if any, but what will happen to us all? Suggest that we all replace engines does not sound practical to me. On the other hand, and reviewing many of the recents threads, we could guess that the cycling thermal effect may be a cause for the gasket failures. Perhaps not the single one but anyway relevant. So if any affordable so-called "prevention kit" to quote John appears in the market I will be the first to get it.
Dave Holder

Dave.

Johns is a GREAT idea!..... but how are the above named Garages going to come up with such a "HGF prevention kit"?.

How are they going to know/prove it works without PROPER testing??.... something along the lines of many identical engines some fitted with the kit, some without, then test these engines to destruction in controlled conditions and see after carefull inspection of EVERY part of the head/block/gasket/cooling system etc if these pevention measures work!.

I dont think any of the above would have the time/money and facilities to do this, therefore any "Prevention Kit" can only be a "Educated guess" or "Their opinion"...

If you look at Johns list for this kit for example, it would cost many hundreds of pounds to fit in parts and labour costs, not to bad if added to the cost at re-build stage after a HGF, but would you spend £5-£700 on a kit to pevent a HGF on your perfectly good engine?, that would cost....er... £5-£700 to repair anyway if the HG did fail!... AND with no absolute proof it works!!..
Mark.L

The kit should include an all alloy Nissan SR20DE 150 BHP, good for way over 250 BHP, bullitproof with a timing chain and cheap. I just love my F and if it needs a transplant to keep going that's what it will get.
Ken Waring

Ken.

FWIW I think something along these lines may be the future in the long term, in the short term engines and heads along with most other parts could be sourced from breakers etc, but these will no doubt become in short supply at some point in the future, the only alternatine then would be a "Doner" engine.

Ok the cost of the conversion would be expensive, but if there was enough demand its something that the MGF specialists COULD have a more realistic chance of making work than trying to come up with the "Holy Grail" of a HGF cure for the K!..
Mark.L

Mark
Agreed. I'm sure the K will be available for a very long time but in my view it's flawed. I'd rather put the effort and money into replacing it rather than trying to fix it.
It seems the cooling system alone really needs a fully proportional control system with variable rate pump, radiator cooling control, temperature sensors everywhere. We now have fixed coolant temperature into and out of the engine, no thermal shocks, that's solved that problem. Oh I forgot pre-emptive control algorithmn when the accelerator gets floored and a cooling control unit CCU :-)

Good that's solved that now what's the real problem.
Cynical me................????

Select a good engine and go for it.
Ken Waring

So now suddenly it is official... the K engine is rubbish! I wonder about all the threads in this forum telling us that it was the most wonderful british engine and only needed a bit of care. So now lets all go for engine replacement. Lets all get a any good jap engine as they all are excellent. Or lets all think about getting a nice and good MX5 because all the other parts in the F are not better than the K engine.
Please people get serious.
Derek Foster

Same old, same old happening on this thread then.

Take a quite good idea from someone who values their F and wants to maintain it, throw in a few insults about the K series from people who obviously don't and you end up with this!

Shame really.

The way I see it. Nothing in this world is perfect and nothing ever will be!
So you ever live with it, and love your MG or you don't and you sell it and then you don't come on here slating it!

Rant over!
Kris

Kris.

Dont recall when I joined this Forum it saying I have to do every post through VERY thick "MG rose tinted glasses".....

Why can you not be a fan of a marque AND admit it has faults????.... Why dont I "love" my MG because I dont do an impression of a certain Flightless bird whenever anyone mentions those dreaded three letters??..

Like it or not, at some point in the future K-series engines are going to be in short supply, what then happens if you have suffered your second HGF and are then told the head cant be skimmed again and requires a new one??..

Re-con heads might not be available as there may be no heads about TO re-con, you wont be able to get a engine from a breakers as all these will have long since been crushed!......... so whats the alternative?.
To keep your car on the road you will have to look at another manufactures engine, its not the first time this has happened, how many Bs had other manufactures engines fitted to keep them on the road?, not to mention the Triumph Stag-Rover V8 conversions (Overheating again!).

Hold out for the miracle HGF cure that MGR could not manage if you wish, but dont slate people just for sudjesting another alternative to keep our cars on the road should this miracle not be forthcoming!.
Mark.L

you can still get recon and new build "b" engines, I think that the k will be around for a lot longer than you think.
Will Munns

Mr Munns beat me to it, just look on the MGA pages to see just how easy it is for them to obtain parts.

Getting bored with this now. I just wonder what other obsessive paranoid traits we can unearth? I'm still nervous about crossing roads but I blame the Tufty Club for that one!
Graham Martin

Hi

eeeeeh I think that what Kris is trying to say !!!
Nothing is perfect!!!!!!!

Im NOT getting Involved!



walk away! walk away ! from the forum!!!!!!!!
JR LEE

<So you ever live with it, and love your MG or you don't and you sell it and then you don't come on here slating it!>

I thought I did say I love my F, well both of them really.

I was proposing a way of living with 'it' which may, in the long run, turn out to be cheaper than spending £1200 replacing engines which I and many others have had to do. Just nicking bits from someone else's parts bin. Never did think of selling either car.

My comment (tongue in cheek) about the cooling system was meant to be a humourous way of saying nobody really knows which theory about engine failures is correct but fail they do, just like other manufacturers engines but more often.

All of which I consider to be fair comment on a forum such as this.





Ken Waring

Why, oh why do Miata owners lurk on this BBS? I cannot imagine why I would want to lurk 0n the Miata BBS – (I admit I know nothing about hair colouring and handbags!)

I am happy to take the risk of some unreliability to own something “different” that was produced by Brits who were prepared to take a risk rather than crib a 30 year old formula off someone else.

I suspect the Miata owners lurk out of a sense of envy but do not have sufficiently large gonads to allow them to take any risks. Perhaps they should pop down to their doctor and ask for a prescription for a daily pint of Testosterone in the hope that it will allow them to let a little risk creep into their empty lives. I do appreciate that the world needs lots of drab little people to do the mundane jobs without complaint but would rather not mix with them more than absolutely essential.

I do worry about their car choice. If boring, slow and reliability had been top of my car characteristics when planning a purchase I would have chosen a Nissan Micro as it has more seats. Better a Japanese Renault than a Japanese Ford, eh what?

Pip pip old fruits

Patrick
PA Beet

It´s not only the engine Derek, you naughty boy....THE WHOLE F is a bloddy s**t!
Chris (MGF owner)
C.T. BATES

Master BATES,

Why do you bother? Just sell the damn thing (if you actually own one) and p**s off.

I spy with my little eye somthing beginning with T.
Graham Martin

> I spy with my little eye somthing beginning with T

B*gg*r, somebody left a door open and another troll got in.

> So now suddenly it is official... the K engine is rubbish

No, and I think I heard your tongue in cheek. The engine is good. There is a known issue and only a fool would deny that. However, the extent of this known fault seems to be rather attracting exaggeration and it provides a cheap line to the trolls.

Unfortuantely, and to somewhat answer the original question, it would seem that there will never be a definative 'silver bullet' cure. The reasons for the fault are complex and would therefore need a tested cure that is probably beyond the resources of our MGF specialists and need a manufacturer (which we do not, except as a byproduct of any work done by Land Rover, have at the moment) solution. In fact, with product liability law being the way it is, if one of the specialists did stand up and say they have the definative cure I would wonder if they have lost their grip on reality.

There will be a cure. There are too many owners, a lot with good technical knowledge, for a cure to elude us. However, in reality it will be cure by incremental solutions. Maybe we already have the cure in terms of the PRT plus Land Rover head gasket mods? Just maybe, but would you bet on that at the moment? Patience folks.

Chris
Chris Reeves

This thread was discussed between 20/03/2006 and 22/03/2006

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