I have a low coolant alarm - phew!

Have you placed the manifold on a flat surface to see if it is warped?

Not sure I can see any signs of a leak there, are you sure?

Looks like strawberry yogurt to me! good photos

The edge marked in red is about 1-1.5mm out of true.

Have you sourced an ally one yet?

CJJ;14223 wrote: Have you sourced an ally one yet?

Yeah, I've got one coming from VVC Steve aka MGF Heaven. Should be here today or tomorrow.:yesnod:
I have to say the hardest part of removing the plastic one was extracting it from the engine bay after freeing it from the engine. I had to take the throttle body off and eventually wriggled it out where the air box used to be. :rolleyes2:
As the alloy manifold is two piece, it should be much easier to get it in.:yesnod:

Well It's finally all back together.
Although it was easier to get the alloy manifold in, I really struggled with refitting the manifold to the head, I couldn't get the bottom 4 nuts to tighten up. When I took the manifold off again it was clear that the nuts were fouling on the manifold.
Then I saw a photo of another alloy manifold and it seemed to be attached with bolts, rather than studs and nuts.

So I removed the bottom 4 studs and replaced them with appropriate bolts. After that everything went back together with no hitches. I refilled with coolant and bled the system at the 3 points. Finally I road tested it and, fingers crossed, all was OK!

well done in sussing it out :yesnod:

i'll join you in crossed fingers that thats the end of the problem

David, great news, please keep us informed with progress, what did the alloy manifold cost? as this seems to be a very sensible modification. i have heard of so many problems with the plastic one. (i hate plastics as they seem to have a mind of their own, the polymers leach out, they distort, become brittle and break)

Bryan Young;14248 wrote: David, great news, please keep us informed with progress, what did the alloy manifold cost? as this seems to be a very sensible modification. i have heard of so many problems with the plastic one. (i hate plastics as they seem to have a mind of their own, the polymers leach out, they distort, become brittle and break)

The manifold was £50 delivered from VVC Steve aka MGF Heaven. Very reasonable I thought! It came with the injectors and fuel rail and the 2 little attachment doodahs (technical term).
Although I used my original injectors etc. as I didn't see any advantage in using the 135 ones.
It wasn't a difficult job apart from the studs/bolts thing. Luckily I had some bolts of the right size/hardness already. The alloy manifold uses an additional two fixings so I reused two of the studs in the additional holes and used the original nuts on them.
You can see one of the additional fixings in this picture (above the obvious ones)

Quick update:- No coolant drop today.
WOOHOO! :yesnod:

Another :woo2:, in order, I think.

Coolant level stable and car running well.:yesnod::woo2::woohoo:

Great news, you must put this mod on your mods page ~ I wrote something about the MG TF suspension thread and would welcome your advice