Out on the road today with a call in Alsager, Stoke-on-Trent, where we had last met Paul, for diagnosis of some
issues with his MGF Trophy 143, back in October.
The car had many oil leaks, from various places, so these were duly sorted by replacing the following; all 4 of the cam seals, the cam cover gasket, the oil pump seal and both VVC plunger seals.
One of the plunger bolts had been stripped, luckily there were still threads at the bottom of the casting, so a quarter inch longer bolt allowed us to fit a new one. With the bolt being stripped it meant that there was no support on the rear edge of the plunger housing, this would only leak at over 4.5k rpm, as the solenoids would open and pressurise the cylinder with oil.
Paul had also noticed issues with misfires on his own code reader. When looking at the spark plugs cylinder 3 was the worst for slight sooting up on the plug, followed by cylinder 4. Although there is no connection on the electrical circuits between cylinder 3 and 4 they do however share the same inlet cam.
While replacing the seals, we checked the roll pins that hold the timing cogs, two of these were found to be slightly crushed, while seemingly not a significant amount, when combined they allowed the small belt side inlet-cam cog to be 1 tooth out. One of the roll pins, which normally take a bit of removing, just came away. Definitely not good.
Once new pins were installed, together with all the above, the engine ran a lot smoother, and with no error codes.
Really pleased that Paul can now enjoy, what is a very good example of this model, once again and get out and about throughout the summer with the odd track day too, when he has time!
Good to see you again Paul, nice to have a chat and thanks for many welcome warning mugs of tea.
Weather a bit Baltic, but we did have a lovely garage to work in. Hold ups on the way there this morning making us a tad late and so many on the way home, totaling 3 hours in delays on the return trip. 😧 At least the admin got caught up on 📖 – https://ift.tt/xgDo3FU
