Two last must do's :
1. First mount the door handle, and the last job to do is to push in the lock barrel, working from the inside of the door. Is a bit fiddly, and the rod can play tricks on you to get in the wrong angle. So before mounting the handle in the door, through the hole pre-position the barrel so it is in the right position. Next mount the door handle, fix the screws, and finally pusth in the barrel. Doing it in a different manner makes fixing the screws much more difficult. 
2. The u shaped spring that holds the barrel must of course be mounted in the door handle before mounting the handle, so the barrel can snap in. But from the factory this spring is positioned with the legs downward, so the top of the spring is in a position that makes it very difficult to remove for dis-assembly whenever needed. You can hardly pull the sping out. So better is to turn the sping around 180 degrees, so the legs are pointing upward. This way the U shape is facing downward, and is easy to remove from the inside of the door, whenever de barrel needs to be removed. 
I also know why MG engineers thought the tedious way was better : in my way the end of one of the legs is in the way of the mounting screws, so the mod is to cut a little bit from the end of one of the legs so it is no obstruction to the mounting screws. Not too much, just a few mm. See the pics for understanding if this last instruction. THe red arrow shows the spring to be turned around. The red line shows where to cut a few mm off the spring. 

Thanks, that will be an easy mod.

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My driver side door handle was nog working anymore, the plastic mouning points had broken, as well as one of the tabs at the bottom. 
Repaired all this with threaded M6 and M4 rods, used Colad Maxic Fix to bond these in the holes. 
Fixed it and it works great. See the pics
One question : I would also like to disable Superlock, normal lock funtion seems good enough, and I want to prevent the door being superlocked forever, which seems to be a risk. 
How do I disable superlock, cutting a wire in one of the 2 wire connectors ? Or another way ?

The only time I use the wipers are during MOT. Otherwise driving in sunny weaher, open hood, no need for it. 
The interval is also not working anymore, the Pektron relay has broken for the second time, but that is no MOT failure, so I'll fix it when more Pektron relays are EOL. 
 

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The bonding phase is realized, I used Colad Magic Fix. 
Need yet to see if it will fit, but I guess it will, otherwise dremel is my friend, that I also used to make the surface somewhat rough before bonding.
Using the original screws will have the risk of breaking again, so I am considering to bond a few stainless steel short threaded rods in the screw-holes, and fasten the handle with 2 self locking nuts.
That way the bonded pillars will only have tensile stress, and no radial stress,

Well, I finally managed to get the lock barrel removed, with a long small screwdriver, a pair of long small pliers, a bright flaslight to see what's where, and the backpain from having to curle under the door, because I am doing this job in front of my house. 
After removing the barrel, the door handle was quick to remove. 
The plastic pieces from the door handle, intended for mounting the screws, have broken. See the photo's. Also the one remaining plastic screw mount, is on the point of breaking, cracks are visible. 
Perhaps this is due to the very extensive anti-rust treatment my TF had, about 5 years ago. Plastic and oil-based coatings,(waxoyl) don't go very well together perhaps. 
Anyway, step 1 is trying to glue it back together with Colad Magic Fix. Our Dutch AA (ANWB) has on my audi fixed a broken cooling pipe with this, better than new. Since then I have done several repairs with this stuff on broken plastic pieces. 
Plan B is to get a new handle, but I need one in X-power grey, could find many colors exepts this one, so that may be difficult. And having one in the wrong color and spray it over is an expensive time consuming. solution. 
Also the simplicity of the door lock mechanism strikes me, reassuring that loosing the key will never prevent me from entering the car, knowing how the internals work. 
Anyway, phase 1 completed, could lock the car with centrail lock and closed the door handle gap with tape, parked the car where this is not immediately visible. 

Seems like a knee cap security cover, no idea why the left knee would need more security than the right knee.

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Because my driver door handle on the outside does not work anymore, I need to remove it. Found some helpful how-to's. 
It's a late 2005 TF, so the only colorful clip I have is the red one, the rest MG-factory thought it wise to make it a one time assembly, in their assumption it would never fail. Wrong assumption!
To make the job easier, I also tried removing the door lock mechanism held by the 3 torx screws.
I managed to remove the lock pin rod from the lock mechanism, but no luck in removing the rod to the lock barrel. 
I was hoping by removing the rod from the barrel to the lock mechanism, I could avoid removing the retaining clip on the lock barrel and dismount the door handle and lock barrel all in one, by pulling the whole door handle unit including barrel to the outside. 
But after jiggling the lock mechanism around for more than a hour inside the door, no luck, the barrel in question cannot be unhooked from the lock mechanism. 
The door handle is held in place by 2 special threaded bolts for plastic mounting and at the bottom by a plastic push clip. All that I could disassemble, but now the door handle removal is still prevented by the lock barrel. This is held by a U form spring-clip, and I have no clue how to remove that. Therefore my attempt for the described workaround, that in the end did not work. 
So it appears I need to remove the malicous U spring from the lock barrel. 
Any ideas how this can be done ?
Any other make-life-easier tricks in removing and refitting the door handle of course also very welcome. 
Doing this job makes me wonder how on earth did they do this 20 years ago on the assemby line, it feels like you need chirurgical skills for the (dis)assembly. I can hardly see what I am doing inside the door, it is half visual half by feeling the fingertips. 

Thanks for knowledge sharing. 

 

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The O2 sensor voltage should fluctuate. If it stays steady in PSCAN, but fluctuates while measuring with a multimeter, I would check the connection wires from the O2 sensor to the ECU connector, perhaps the wire is broken, or too much resistance in the connector. You can also clean the connectors, including the ECU connector, with contact spray.
I think you cannot use a VVC ecu on a standard engine, even swapping two identical ECU's may not work due to not matching security codes with the instrument cluster of ingnition key. But I have no experience in ECU swapping on my MG, I did encounter this on my Audi.

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Having 2 cilinders open, causes the engine to have less resistance in idling, could be why it is idling with 2 cilinders and not 4. If the car has been standing still for a very long time, the connectors could be corroded.

Firtst my money would be on the electrical system, corrosion due to long storage.
Try cleaning the connectors to the coils with contact spray, and with a small screwdriver scratch the surface to remove any corrosion where possible,
Also the connectors furhter down the line, if there are any, and even remove the large connector from the ECU and clean with contact spray. (remove battery lead first).
Also the ground wires connection to engine and chassis might be subject to corrosion, as wel as the connectors for the plus wires. And the battery could still be the problem, after sitting for a few years it may have lost capacity, or have an internal defect. Also clean the battery + and - poles and clamps, caused a problem with my car after winter storage.
I have also had broken wires on a few old cars, the insulation was flexible original, but turns stiff during the years, which can even lead to wire breach. Nasty fault to find, most probable in the area of the engine that is vibrating and the engine heat causes insultation to harden, a combination causing wire breach in old cars.

The ultimate test would be to check the voltage on the coils when starting and idling on 2 cilinders, but that may be difficult because it has pulses instead of constant power, you need a scope, a garage will have that, and you need to be able to test the wires to the coils while in operations, you so cannot measure at the connector, probably need to remove a small piece wire insulation to connect the measuring probe.

Next would be to check the sensor readings, the ECU uses readings from temperature and MAF, and TDC, and REV to calculate the fuel mixture. You would need an advanced ODBII diagnose reader, to read the values. TDC and REV will probably be ok, MAF and TEMP are sensors that can fail. There are I think 2 TEMP sensors, one for cooling liquid temp and one for air temp.
If the ECU thinks the car is at operating temp, while it is not, or vice versa, it will give a wrong fuel mixture that may cause the engine to stall.
Also here, first check and clean the sensor connectors for corrosion.

If electrical there is no fault, next would be the fuel system. Check the fuel pressure, of course drain the fuel that has been in the car for a few years while in storage, put in new fuel, mount a new fuel filter. Pressure may be ok, but perhaps the fuel flow is not, may be a blockage of some debree somewhere. Although at idling you would not need that much fuel, so I would just leave it at fresh fuel and fresh fuel filter. You could have the injectors tested, but would not be my first solution, but cleaning the electrical connectors on the injectors is a good idea. One step further would be to remove the injectors and clean them with injector cleaner.
And just the same as the coils, a garage can check the injector voltage and pulses.

If the easy approach in the above give no solution, time to check the compression on the cylinders.
If the engine has a compression leak caused by a broken piston ring or a stuck valve, it will not run easily. But given the fact that it will run on cylinder 1/4 and 2/3 I would not suspect this.

Running fine and then stopping suddenly without any signs, indicates something has suddenly broken, perhaps due to the heat.
Having issues in electrical steering pulses to the injectors or coils, may also find its cause in the ECU itself, the electrical components are subject to aging, and don't like heat. The only way to check it to swap the ECU in a garage with another car, but I think the ECU is paired to the key, and perhaps even to the instrument panel, but I am not sure. So not a matter of just swapping I think, you need a garage to perform this test I think.

Good luck in finding a solution

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