MG-Cars.net

Welcome to our resource for MG Car Information.

Recommendations

Parts

MG parts spares and accessories are available for MG T Series (TA, MG TB, MG TC, MG TD, MG TF), Magnette, MGA, Twin cam, MGB, MGBGT, MGC, MGC GT, MG Midget, Sprite and other MG models from British car spares company LBCarCo.

MG TD TF 1500 - Fuel for MGTD

I am the former owner of an Austin Healey...1953...and am contemplating purchasing an MGTD. What fuel do owners of TD's use??? 93 octane plus a lead substitute,given that these cars were built when fuel contained lead and higher octane was probably used. When I owned the Healey I used Amoco "white" gas and had good luck with it.

I have just discovered this site and find it extremely useful and most comprehensive.

Many thanks.

Sam
Sam Franklin

Sam - I just use plain old regular unleaded. The engines were originally designed to run on very low octane of war time England, so unless a former owner has done a lot of modifications to greatly increase the compression ratio, unleaded regular is just fine. Regarding the use of unleaded, My feeling is that when the head and valves show the results of running without lead in the fuel, I'll deal with it then. So far, after having put nearly 100,000 miles on the car (most of it since leaded fuel went away) and driving the car most of the time at 4200 rpm, I don't see any deterioration beyond normal in the head. Good luck - Dave
David DuBois

Sam, I share David's observation. I've had a bit of engine work done, running slightly over 9:1 compression and have no problem whatsoever with standard unleaded fuel.
Bud Krueger

I agree, since the engines were designed to run on about 70 Octane (US) fuel, 87 (US) unleaded is fine.

However my TF 1500 is stage II tuned and has a compression ratio of 9.5 to 1, it seems to do better and not foul up as much on high test (93 US).
Don Harmer

I took off the head of my 53 TD after two years of running high test unleaded expecting to see valve erosion . Ever thing was just fine other than the leaking head gasket .
I used lead substitute for a while but it seemed to cause the plugs to get crapped up so I stopped .
I think as long as you dont drive it like you are in the Indy 500 every day you will be fine with unleaded high test .
A.L. Gerstle

This thread was discussed between 22/01/2005 and 23/01/2005

MG TD TF 1500 index

This thread is from the archive. The Live MG TD TF 1500 BBS is active now.