Posted on 4th July 2024

6 months of MG TFing around

Watching the racing at 'Snetterton Classic' was a good opportunity to reflect on my time with the car so far in good company

During a recent weekend of spectating at a classic car racing event, I had a bit of time to reflect on my initiation into 'modern classic' MGs. I picked up my MG TF back in February.

I have been using the car at least once every couple of weeks since to meet up with other MG owners, visit family locally, and to run errands. I even took part in a road run from our local modern MG dealership on the outskirts of the city of Norwich around some of the county's villages and back roads, finishing up at a museum in the countryside. On at least half of the journeys so far I've managed to get the convertible roof down which makes the drive that bit more enjoyable and engaging.

Alongside the fun drives and meeting up with like minded enjoyers of old cars, I have discovered a few things about it and its history. For example the paint colour is in fact a 'Pearl Black', rather than Anthracite as the previous owner told me. I now also know exactly when it rolled off the production line and have all the build details, courtesy of the 'MGF Register'.

Despite the very British summer so far, several top-down drives were achievable

I've done a few things to the car so far to improve the experience of owning it a little and keep it on the road, including:

• Programming a spare remote key fob and getting a spare physical key cut too (thanks to my local hardware store who searched their stockpile of old key blanks out the back!)
• Fixing a broken window mechanism and aligning the driver's side window and door
• Treating and painting some rust on one of the sills
• Dyeing and weatherproofing the soft top hood, which probably only delays an inevitable replacement in the near future
• Cleaning and partially restoring the headlight lenses
• Running some 'cataclean' through the fuel / exhaust system to clean up the emissions
• Taking the car in for its first MOT in my ownership, more details below...

Despite it having a few 'rough edges', the car has been faultless in terms of performance and reliability. That is until very recently at the MOT when the coolant decided to boil over during the emissions test. As anyone who knows these cars and their MG Rover 'K Series' engines this is quite worrying.

Consigned to the garage it had just leaked fluids all over, I had to wait and see what the 'damage' to the TF was. But surprisingly the issue was put down to a simple failure of the 'expansion tank cap'. With that replaced, some new brakes and a significantly lighter bank balance, I picked the car up and drove it home, keeping an eye on the temperature gauge.

The temperature did rise quickly on the short journey home. I left the car running while I closed the soft top, which was a struggle possibly due to the fact I foolishly dropped the car off with the roof down due to a mini heat-wave. Either the garage forced it at some point or it shrunk a bit from being open in the hot weather for a long time. By the time I got the roof closed, the coolant temperature was higher than normal and I switched the engine off immediately. After some investigation I concluded that the coolant probably wasn't bled completely but that it also probably hadn't caused much damage.

After bleeding the coolant myself and running the car both with and without the new expansion tank cap, I decided the garage were correct about the original problem. Despite their potential lack of care the car should now live to fight another day, but I will be keeping a close eye on the temperature and coolant levels in the coming weeks. I'm undecided if I trust the garage enough to have them work on the car again.

Despite a reasonsable amount of knowledge and experience with these engines, after this experience I dedided to do a bit more research into the K Series head gasket problem, its causes and in particular my TF's cooling system.

It turns out the later TFs had a thermostat that is sensitive to both pressure and heat, in an effort to ensure that they open and close in response to changes in engine load more quickly. This quicker response to engine load would in theory create less of an extreme temperature differential helping reduce 'hot spots' and 'thermal shock'. As far as my own car's boil-over is concerned, my theory is that these thermostats are more sensitive to a faulty expansion tank cap (which helps maintain pressure and raise the boiling point of the coolant).

Aside from this concerning case of coolant loss, with what appears to be a simple root cause and easy fix, I also need to keep an eye on some suspension components (upper ball joints) picked up as advisory items on the MOT. Given time, I can probably do these myself, or alternatively get it sorted next time I have the car in for work with someone else and the money to pay for them to do it!

There's always some interesting cars in the car park at places like race tracks, like this Citroen XM I joined

It was nice to be able to take the MG to Snetterton race track to watch the vintage / classic racing on the weekend after the MOT shenanigans. It was a good 'test journey' to bed in the new rear brakes and put my mind at rest that nothing too catastrophic was wrong with the car. I concluded the money spent resolving these things was worth it, and that I wouldn't mind visiting the race track again sometime as it was a decent and reasonably priced weekend's worth of entertainment.

Soon I'll have to think about priorities for future work on the car and plan some further outings in it too. For now, I'm just enjoying having the car in my life. It's been helpful that I joined the MG Car Club so have a bit of a social / community aspect of ownership to get involved with (and to be kept in the loop about events). Hopefully there's plenty more top-down drives this year to come...