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 - rarest TF part


Hello group. I hope you don't think this request is anal, but I've been looking for this part for over twenty years. On the TF fuel pump only, there is a little tin ID tag (2" x 1" approx) that states the pump is high pressure. Due to it's location and the fact that it is tin not brass, they rusted away or were removed when a pump was replaced. This is a detail item only and I would be happy to buy it or better yet, I would like to reproduce them and offer to others that may have an interest. No doubt, most TF owners don't know they even existed which is making it even more difficult to find. Any help with this matter would be to everyone's advantage. Thank you in advance. Harvey
Harvey

Harvy - For what it is worth, here is a picture of the high pressure pump with the tag affixed and a sketch of the tag. In my years of repairing the pumps, I have only seen one or two of these tags. As far as I know, they were only used on the long body pumps (L type, high pressure pump with a longer than normal coil housing).
Cheers - Dave


David DuBois

Harvey, I do not have an TF but it will may be of help if you provide a picture here to the group for better understanding.
Cheers,
Guenter
Guenter

And the sketch


David DuBois

Dave - Thank you, it does exist & it's in breath taking condition too. I've only ever seen one rusty 1/2 half of one. This was standard on ALL TF's only? And what is an 'L' type? Harv

Guenther - I didn't have a photo to show, but thanks to Dave now we know what it looks like, very very rare part.
Harvey

Now can we get a research project going that tells which cars had the long body high pressure pumps and which had high pressure pumps that were not long bodied? This has always bugged me not knowing what the situation was.

Cheers,

Bob
bobj50

Bingo, Bob, that's the question !
Three cheers,
Guenter
Guenter

Harvey - First of all, an L type pump was the SU pump made and was initially a low pressure pump used on cars up through the TF 1250. Starting with the TF 1500 the L type pump was given a heavier coil, diaphragm and volute spring and it became a high pressure pump that was used through the early MGBs.

Now the long body pump - that was SUs way of making a heavy duty coil. I seem to remember reading somewhere that this coil was take from the LCS pumps (an early, large capacity pump used in some of the Jaguars and later the mga twin cam and the Austin Healeys, but I can't remember where it was that I read this. The coil itself was slightly longer than the coil used in the low pressure pumps and it had a significantly longer core that was half again larger in outside diameter than that used in the coils for the low pressure pumps. The additional space in the longer housing was taken up with a longer volute spring. As near as I can find out, the long body pump, or perhaps more accurately, the long coil and housing as described above was only in production for a very short period of time before they decided that they could make a high pressure type of coil the same dimensions as the coil used in the low pressure pumps and thus discontinued the long body pumps. When I say a short period of time, I mean through the last year of the TF and a little bit into the MGAs. I suspect that the longer coil was dropped in favor of a coil that is the same dimensions as the coils used in the low pressure pump, except that it uses the larger diameter core as in the long body coils. Whatever the details, the long body pumps (even the longer coils used on the LCS pumps) were dropped in favor of the shorter coils and coil housings (which work much better anyway). I have been restoring SU fuel pumps and converting them to solid state for nearly 30 year and I have only run into a very small number of the long body pumps. This is true of the long coil housing on the LCS pumps also.

The only T series cars that used the long body pumps were the later TF that had the pump mounted in the back by the fuel tank. Even then it seems to be a mixed bag as to what might be on them, but that may be because th original pump had been swapped out during the lifetime of the car.

Bob J. - A note that you may find interesting in light of our experimentation with the coils for the low pressure pumps. As you know, even using the heavier wire that you procured and wound onto th small diameter cores of the coils I sent you from low pressure pumps in an effort to get more umph from the pumps, did not produce the results that we had hopped for. I eventually found a source for used coils with the larger diameter cores that were used in the high pressure pumps and am using those in the low pressure pumps that I restore. I have since found out that all of the new low pressure pumps coming from Burlen Fuel Systems now come with the high pressure coils that have the larger diameter cores.
Cheers - Dave

PS. If anyone finds further information on the history of the long body pumps, please let us all know - it appears that there a lot of us who are interested in the "rest of the story"
David DuBois

This thread was discussed between 25/08/2008 and 26/08/2008

MG TD TF 1500 index

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