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MG MGF Technical - HGF: Living in fear

I am a grown man and can not continue feeling that my car is going to break apart every time I speed up, always paranoic about checking oil temp and water in the tank (in the 21st century!). Never before with any car I felt so uncertain as with this F. The whole BBS is full of horror stories about the F. I did not do any wise research before buying this car and very much live on regret now. This is my first MG and most probably the last. I wasn´t smart enough to give myself a MX5. As I can not possible sell this evil creature for what I payed, please people let me know what to do and where to take this car to have it modified in order to avoid the sure to happen HGF.
Thanks. Dough.
Dough Webster

> please people let me know what to do<<

Sell the F, buy any other 2 seater rag top on the market,ie... MX,Z,MR etc,etc!!.

You can then sleep at night with no more worries!, because as we all know, none of these other cars suffer with HGF, will never let you down, and will never need a penny spending on them!!!.

Easy realy!!!....... cant think why you never thought of it!!!.
Mark.L

You can see the irony dripping from those words Mark ROFL

Dough, seriously, the car is fine. Don't panic, just get out there and enjoy driving. You're not far from Gaydon - so why not join all the other F enthiasts there for the 10th anniversary on the 16th Oct and enjoy the fun! :o)
Rob Bell

F for FEAR. I don't think so.
It sounds like you're expecting something which probably won't happen.

It's not the best engineered car in the world, not even in the top fifty or so in my opinion. It has some quirky faults, just like Renaults and Citroens.

Some components have poor reliabilty BUT it is THE most beautiful modern two seater sports ever designed, with in it's day the best light weight engine to be found anywhere, even if it is a LITTLE fragile in some areas.

I find if I drive the car fast enough I don't have time to worry about breakages.

If you're driving with the top down or underneath cursing the designer and trying to fix it, it's just great FUN.

Ooooh I enjoyed that.
Ken Waring

I'm with Ken, I have had all the horror bits that can go wrong go wrong BUT I also have had the most fun nearly every day over the past three years. Instead of a boring BMW or Benz I have car I enjoy getting into and driving.
Andrew Regens

Yup - get rid of it quick. Tell you what I'll give you 2,000 quid - not worth a penny more these cars. I'll ship it to Oz so you will never have to see it again. Deal?
A. L. Paverd

Dough
Bad press has sullied the reputation of the F unfairly.
Change your oil frequently and keep it on the mark, check water level frequently and investigate ANY SLIGHT drop in level with immediate effect.

Above all, enjoy the car.

Tony
Tony Harrison

Dough, I second the above! If you find it difficult to put your worries to one side, get yourself a third-party extended warranty. Make sure it's comprehensive and for a minimal outlay you'll be able to banish your demons and enjoy your car with complete peace of mind!
Paul Bevan

Yes, this BBS is full of horror stories but that's because there are enthusiastic people out there who can offer advice. As a result those with problems know where to come.

The F is probably no worse that a lot of other cars but has had a lot of bad press. Personally I've had a dog of a VW golf that I couldn't wait to get shot of but as Germaan cars tend to be the darlings of the press you don't get to hear too many horror stories.

I've now owned 2 F's. The first I did 24K miles a year in for 4 years with no HGF or other major problems. Other than get it serviced properly and wait for the engine to get to temperature before booting it I didn't treat it particularly carefully and it never let me down.

The latest is a Trophy 160. I do less miles in it now but still no problems in 6 months...not expecting any either.

Stop worrying and start enjoying it.
Simon Martin

Dough (is that real name?)

What's your reg? I'm in Oxford too; must have seen you around sometime.

My F is seven now, and has *never* had HGF. In fact, in the four years I've had her, bar a period of dodgy starting because of old HT leads, I've never had any problem. At all. Ever. Unfortunately they won't let me go on the TV and say that (they would if it was a VW - don't ask about the ongoing saga of maintaining my VW camper, who's currently having her third gearbox in the space of three years installed).

Just follow the simple rules; don't rant her till the oil is warm (above the 60 degrees mark), check the coolant regularly and NEVER let it run too low, keep her service record up (especially the critical 5 year cam belt change).

As to where to take her; now Alexence in Summertown has gone, the closest is Kernahan's or Witney. I'd recommend going to Tech-Speed in Leamington, though; bit of a trek but you'll nmake petrol back in much cheaper prices and they REALLY know what they're doing!

And as for what to modify... well, I'd start with a K&N, upgraded brakes, maybe a 52mm throttle body or an exhaust... :-)

Jamie
BRG R345 LGB
J Wakeham

If you get hit by HGF, and you stop and admire how much steam a small car can generate while you wait for the truck, remember that it's only a piece of man-made machinery that can be fixed just like any other.

And anyway, the faster you go, the further you can travel with the clutch depressed and the engine off.
Peter

Find something more constructive to worry about like the Second Coming!

Cars cost money to run – for the first 6 years we have owned our F the costs have only been the regular annual service. We did have a HGF failure but the car had the good grace to let go at home and MGR had the good grace to repair in under warranty. I suspect I also contributed to this by thrashing it before it was properly warmed up – not a mistake I have made since.

If you want a rational argument – the cost of swapping your F for one of those dreary Japanese Ford imitations of an MGB is far greater than the cost of getting a HGF fixed.

Learn to stop worrying, you will live longer and get greater enjoyment out of your remaining years!

Cheers

Patrick
PA Beet

Dough, why not just buy the Brown and Gammons coolant sensor, get yourself a warranty and rest easy.

Just keep in mind that the BBS only has a very small percentage of the total F owners out there. So the amount of problems that crop up here is not a true representation of the amount of problems the car has.

Just enjoy the car, it brings a smile to my face every time I drive it.

:-)
AndrewMc

" Dough, why not just buy the Brown and Gammons coolant sensor, get yourself a warranty and rest easy. "

was this the said sensor that gave you a heart attack on sunday??????????
THE GRIM REAPER

Yup the very one, but I think my heart can take more than my head-gasket. :-) So even with the false alarm, a good investment.

So long as the Grim Reaper keeps in-front of the all will be well.!

A.
AndrewMc

""So long as the Grim Reaper keeps in-front of the all will be well.!""


Yes my son, he is always out front,showing the way, in fact a kind of pie anapint piper without the pipe...
G.R

p.S. the big R picked up my phone and saw a messge from Sandrairish eyes and got astrop on so if you are phoning .....duck

G.R.
THE GRIM REAPER

Dough, you are quite right. We both unwisely got the wrong car. I have owned and drive a Subaru Impreza for almost 100k. Never had to check anything. The car is always there for you. An never, NEVER, fails. Cooling tank? Does the Impreza has one?. I really don´know. Wait until the Sub gets warm? Don´t be silly...we live on the 21st century after all.
But then I felt the need to get a soft top car, got a TF 160, and just there is were my nightmare began. This is the very worst car I ever had, and not even fast compared to the Subaru.
Clive -2nd HGF in a row-.
Clive Dean

>>Wait untill the sub gets warm? <<

To quote the a buyers report for Subaru Impreza........."Buy a Turbo timer and let your engine run on for 30-45 seconds if you have had prolonged use of the engine over 3K revs"

>>" Dont be silly...we live in the 21st century after all"<<

You said it!!!!!
Mark.L

Clive,

I think you're being a little harsh. Of course an F isn't as quick as a Scooby. Anyone who buys a 1.8 litre normally aspirated car thinking it'll perform like a turbo Impreza is indeed unwise. Having said that, how's the fuel economy? A friend of mine who exchanged his 1.8i for a Scooby sold the Scooby within six months, saying that insurance and petrol were bankrupting him. He's now got a Golf and is looking to pick up another, older F.

Regardless of the century, the principles of mechanics remain the same. It's just that, if you pay the extra for a car that's engineered to withstand huge abuse - say a car that was develped for the rally scene - you can (probably) get away with more mistreatment. Car manufacturers are more and more realising that they have to build the ability to put up with owners who don't understand how to take care of an engine into their cars, and I *am* impressed that Subaru have managed to build an engine that will tolerate being ragged from cold and turned off with the turbo hot for 100k miles! MGR did not build that much tolerance into the K.

I have to suggest that two HGFs in a row seems unlikely and unlucky. However, if you were treating your F like you do the Scooby, it was fairly predictable. I reiterate - I've had no HGF, like the *vast* majority of F owners.

Jamie

ps I have more and more of a sinking feeling that I may be feeding one or more trolls here...
J Wakeham

I own a MGF 1.8 regular ´99 and also a Subary Legacy GX ´04. Trying to be fair, I very much like the F which looks really nice however from the quality point of view is quite unacceptable. It is difficult to trust on a car that fails very often. On the other hand Subaru may be the most reliable Jap car, better than Hondas and Toyotas.
John Sinclair-Smith

Let's get something straight. The number of HGF's on the K series is LESS than the average for BMW, Merc, Audi, and in fact below what most other engines suffer. The reason there is this mistaken belief that MGF = HGF is in part due to your lovely English press (led by Mr Clarkson ) and the vast number of K series engines made in the 16 years since they entered production (the last I heard a year or so back, I believe around 3 million or so, I may be wrong there). As an engineer the k series to me is a fantastic engine (backed up by driving K powered cars), the ingenuity inherent in the design is amazing. The plastic head dowels were a mistake, but blame them on the bean counters, not the engineers.

The K series is one of the greatest engines ever designed, and there is a reason it has been voted the best small engine on numerous occasions.
Andy

Andy, the bean counters shouldn't get the wrap for the plastic head dowels - these were used for very pragmatic reasons at the time. On the T16, the metal head dowels were damaging head gaskets (both on the production line and in garages - particularly the latter), so they changed to plastic which limited this problem significantly. T-series engines had no problem with HGF.

So successful were they on that engine, that it was employed on the K as well. But sadly, as we all know, this good experience was not transferable.

Andy, I completely agree with you on the topic of the K. It really is a truely great little engine. Some truely ground breaking design features on it - some more F1 than road car.
Rob Bell

I am sure the average HGF rate is higher on the K engine than on some other engines.
I won't bet any figure, but most of the F owners I know have had HGF. The head mechanic of my MG dealer even told me that almost every F that they had sold has had HGF. (I think it's exagerated...) He also told that steel dowels didn't make much of a difference, and that only the last series with remote thermostat were a real improvement.
Yes, the K engine is a nice piece of engineering, BUT : end users don't care if their engine has some world premiere design feture or building process or whatever. The users just want performance and reliability. (some don't care about performance either !) And BTW, the K came out more than 15 years ago. It was very modern and still remained for some time. Now it's just "average". The VVC was the good way to go, but engineers stopped developping this after "version 1.0" in 1995.
Where the K is excellent, it's about its very light weight. But the F doesn't take advantage of it as does the Elise.
Its specific output is also good (very good for the 160), so is the fuel consumption, but specific torque is not exceptionnal.
Fabrice

On Freelander and mid-engined applications, you're absolutely right Fabrice, it was the cooling system that let the whole show done. The K itself is pretty bullet proof: name another common K-series problem, and I bet you'd struggle to think of one. And, yes, the engine has been out for the best part of two decades, and yet in areas such as crank bearing design, it is still ahead of the competition (Honda and Toyota only recently have started to copy the K in this respect).

I feel confident about defending the engine. The cooling system... no, I can't defend that. But I gather that the cooling system has been causing scratching of heads for quite some time. Shades of Triumph Stag and Dolamite Sprint again I fear. :o(
Rob Bell

Three F´s and three HGF..... Some may suggest I am a very unlucky guy.
d.j.
d.j. gray

Ok but something has made you keep buying them if you are on your third?
Allan

Is the cooling system the problem? It's certainly not the best arrangement, a fully proportional control system would help. For me the apparent cooling system failure is the symptom of some other problem.
Ken Waring

Ken

Most of the evidence points to the cooling being the fault
Ted Newman

Not convinced Ted.
For me the story is like this.
The engine is full of oil, the coolant is upto the mark, there are no leaks, everything is as it should be. Same driver who has covered n thousand miles, n can be large, n can be small, drives off one day and oops HGF.
What change took place in the cooling system to cause this?

The cooling system is pretty simple and unlikely to vary greatly between cars. Yet we have some cars that have no problems and others that have repeated HGF with variable frequency, low K miles to high K miles.

If the cooling system causes thermal shocks (seems likely) then IMVHO it exposes a weakness in the engine. If the cooling system is the problem rather than just a contributory factor then I would expect a much higher incidence of HGF.

Upto now no HGF :-)

Ken Waring

Ken

I am only reporting to you what has been said on these boards and in various magazines over the last ten years.

Including something along the following lines:-

Unfortunately the cooling system is not actually that simple and it is also extremely convoluted and air locks are very easily formed which in turn can lead to overheating within the engine block and this can cause warping of the cylinder head etc, etc, etc,

May I suggest that if you search the archives you will probably get enough reading to keep you busy for a fortnight of Sundays
Ted Newman

Just expressing an opinion Ted which clearly differs from yours.
May I very humbly suggest that if the problem was only the cooling system and that's been known for ten years then by now there would be no problem.

Ken Waring

Ken, the problem regarding the cooling system is complex and multifactorial. I don't profess to understand it either, but the problems that result in early HGF are rather different to those that result in late HGF. Then, this mix is 'poluted' further by production tolerances of road car engines. Get the cylinder liner height wrong, and the loadings across the gasket are wrong, and you get premature failure - as just one example. Then consider end-user usage of the vehicle. Many of us are mechanically sympathetic, but others will simply rev the nuts off the engine from stone cold. Not only is this bad for engine wear, it is also bad for the cooling of the engine due to the position of the engine outlet and inlet, the alloy construction of the engine, the small coolant volume (only 2 litres) - and the design of the thermostat. The problem here is that it gets very warm between cylinders one and two if the engine is abused from cold, thermally stressing the long bolts... and over time the gasket fails.

Clearly, the testing schedules the cars were put through did not throw these problems into light. However, we know now that the capacity of the radiator is perfectly capable of keeping the car cool in the heat of the Arizona desert!

The key has been the thermostat, its location and its design. By all acounts, the remote pressure relief thermostat fitted to TF and Freelander has solved the problem to a significant degree. That kind of evidence is difficult to refute.

If you say to me, "why didn't they do this 10 years ago?" then all I can do is shrug my shoulders and say I have no idea :o(
Rob Bell

Ken

Not 'my opinion' but the opinions of several people with a lot more experience of MGF engineering than I have.

And as I said have a look in the archives - that does mean you will have to join the club (become a member) BUT it does not cost anything!
Ted Newman

Ted
I am a member but a bit on the lazy side when it comes to logging in. I find the archives an endless source of information, accumulated wisdom, mystery and suspense.

Rob
That makes much more sense to me, a mixture of many possible and probable causes.
< "why didn't they do this 10 years ago?" >
Fear of big costs one suspects. Some one said 3 million engines.
HGFs still seem to be happening on later cars. It'll probably be the usual case of incremental improvements finally solving the problem. Time will tell.
Ken Waring

Rob
As I understand it after talking with engineers from the factory, the K series was originally designed with steel dowels, but these were changed to cheaper plastic ones later. I may be wrong here, just what I learnt from a conversation when I was working at MGR.

Ken
3 million engines, not 3 million MGF/TF's. The facts stack up against the cooling system when you consider that no other K series engined car has the same 'history' of HGF as the F/TF does (other cars still suffer from HGF of course, but not at same the frequency as the MGF/TF).

Fabrice,
I said the K series engine has lower than average rates of HGF than other engines, not that the MGF/TF has lower rates than other cars. Consider for a moment that the problem is not the engine but the cooling system. Cooling systems on mid engined cars are inherently going to be more complex than those of a front engined car, and complexity adds to the likelihood of problems, one good example in this case is the increased likelihood or air locks, especially if the coolant system is not bled properly during coolant changes etc.

The K series was first released in the Rover Metro in 1989, which is 16 years ago, as I said in my previous post.
Andy

Andy
I did indeed understand that you meant 3 million engines. My point was that if the problem was identified as engine rather than cooling then the consequences would be enormous.
Many of the K series engine were of course not of 1.8 capacity so I'd make a case for analysing HGFs by engine size. The Freelander being 1.8 and not rear engined and a different physical cooling system layout.
You originally refered to just K series engines not MGFs but I do take your point.

I'm interested in your comparative statistics relating to HGFs, from where have they come.

<The K series is one of the greatest engines ever designed, and there is a reason it has been voted the best small engine on numerous occasions. >

I wholeheartedly agree but that doesn't make it immune to design defects. Most probably introduced when the capacity was increased to 1.8.
I stand by what I said the cooling system is simple, a mass of coolant, a pump and a single control element. Like I said maybe a fully proportional control system would be more appropriate for an engine with such a small coolant capacity.
Ken Waring

> Andy, NZ: Let's get something straight. The number of HGF's on the K series is LESS than the average for BMW, Merc, Audi, and in fact below what most other engines suffer>.
Andy, your are writing rubish. If you explore other forums as BMW, Mercedes and Audi, as you suggested, you will find that HGF is almost unknown in these cars. dj
d.j. gray

I am very sorry for the feelings my commentary produced. I was really sorry to own that car but at present I am happy to let you know that I was able to swap my -new- TF for an old 1997 Porsche Boxster S -had to pay a lot of money on top of the F-. I´ve been told that the Porsche is a very good and reliable car. Will see. I now hope everything will go fine with this car. I am very grateful to you all at the MG Forum.
Dough
Dough Webster

Don't want to upset you Dough,but have a look here:

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=200456&f=137&h=0

It seems all cars have their problems.
Pete

d.j. gray

Let me ask you a question: have you done any other research that is not based on what is written in forums? What I quoted is not rubbish, but based on a customer survey of owners. I repeat to you what I have said before, and that I was referring to the K series engine, not the MGF/TF.

Another point which has not yet been brought to light is that the head gasket is not the cause but often a symptom of other failures. HGF is reached as a conclusion due to the hype surrounding it on such forums as this. We have had problems with overheating on both our 96 VVC F and my K midget, neither of which were the head gasket, the problems being tracked down to thermostat and airlocks. People see it's overheating and immediately assume that it is HGF because they've heard the MGF is known for it.
Of four or five overheated engines I've dismantled, only one had oil in the water (the main indicator of HGF), the rest were fine in that respect but rather soft....
Andy

The link Pete gave above makes interesting reading. Needing to replace an engine is much more painful than any head gasket failure!
Spyros Papageorghiou

Dough, good luck with the Porsche - my father has had three so far, and they've all been excellent.

Don't imagine that we're offended in any way by your comments - but the enthusiasm for the car is such that we all feel compelled to defend it. Afterall, it seems no one else will!
Rob Bell

This thread was discussed between 13/09/2005 and 18/09/2005

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