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Workshop days yesterday and today…

Absolutely great to see Ewa and Kenneth who had driven over from Sweden in Ewa’s ‘97 MGF 1.8 mpi (in paint code HAM) that she’s owned for 16 years.

They are on one of their, many, trips to the UK, and the last time we saw and met them, for the first time, was in Bakewell in 2019, when they were on a tour with Steinar and friends from Norway, when we carried out a few cambelt services.

It was time for the cambelt service again so we carried this out, plus all other minor service items, and also fitted underfloor stainless coolant pipes. The drivers side window had decided to stop working just before the trip, and not wanting it to stop their fun managed to pack it out with some wedges to stop it going all the way down. So Jon set about fitting a replacement mechanism (thank you to Phil & Maggy for supplying it) as the old one had definitely done it’s time.

Lovely to see Ewa when she came over to collect her beloved MG this morning and head off to continue on with their voyage, we look forward to seeing the updates.

Brian and Sue came over from Cumbria to drop off one of their cars with us for some work yesterday afternoon.

His post-LE 135 had undergone a load of modifications a few years ago, such as; ported head, high-lift cams, vernier pulleys and a Kmaps remap, the car had been burning oil. Brian had then got in touch with us to ask if we could replace the head gasket as he thought this was the issue, which we carried out last June. Unfortunately, this didn’t resolve it. So he asked if we could further investigate at the workshop, as we advised it was more than likely to be due to the valve stem seals being at fault, given the ongoing symptoms. One thing and another with their commitments and wanting to wait for the better weather to drive it over to us it was left until now.

With only 13k on the clock and the liners showing no marks or scoring on the block it was found to be down to the stem seals. A pic is below showing the difference between the old and the new, which is quite significant. The old ones were still pliable and not hardened as you would have expected. So Jon set about the laborious task of replacing all 16 of the seals. We then put everything back together and all up and running smoothly again this afternoon.

Really lovely to see them both again, when they came over to collect, this afternoon, so pleased that they had a good trip to the area and make the most of their trip.

A busy couple of days, with fab people and their MGs. At least the weather made an improvement for some good top down runs back to their destinations. – https://ift.tt/SYwERgu