Wocha bin doin on your MG this week then?

Could be a double edged sword you know; you can now buy ice cream from much further afield but you won't be able to warm those lovely pies on your way home, certainly not if you nip south to Tebay.
I've been thinking of fitting a pie warmer box in the engine compartment just under the wire grill, make one of those & you have hot pie & ice cream.

Imagine that..a mg passing you with the aroma of a steak pie...heaven...

Some time ago I bought an emergency bonnet release cable from mowog73 on this forum who was selling them on ebay. I naively thought that it would be trivial to fit but soon found out that the front bumper had to come off first. As it turned out, removing the front bumper (following the how-to on The T-Bar) was easy enough with just one plastic clip on the wheel liner sacrificed for the effort. It's all fitted now and works a treat. Completely invisible once installed but pretty easy to access when the need arises.


Give the wire a tug toward the offside and the bonnet pops.

While the bumper was off, I noticed that the front sub-frame mounts had started to rust nicely so I scraped and wire brushed them and gave them a coat of Hammerite.


The Hammerite should give the mounts a few extra years of life.

I also took the opportunity of replacing the shabby old front grille with some Jaguar style stainless steel mesh. Cutting the mesh on the diagonal is tricky with the heavy duty snips needed. Also, I hadn't anticipated the way the strands fall apart when there are less than 3 overlaps in the mesh which makes the corners tricky. Does anyone have any suggestions to help with this little problem.


Nice shiny new stainless steel grille.

Cut it oversize and use a disc cutter or dremel.
You could even make a frame using metal strip.

mgtfbluestreak wrote: Imagine that..a mg passing you with the aroma of a steak pie...heaven...

We managed to cook a laptop on the way back from Italy one year. Packing it next to the header tank may not have been a good idea....

But now we have a tablet that travels in the cabin so not all bad.

Well today I decided to fit those chrome door pins I got of a ebay auction...they should of been around £16....got em for £9....they were from alloy car parts ...same place I got the other bling from....Been pleased so far with the finish of the items...well untill now... postage fast has a hawk...finish was bright has a button....so with the door trims off and not to many minutes on the clock I went to put the pins on the door pin rod....they didn't fit...thing is with the old door pins virtually mangled...because there stuck on and not threaded...door trims removed.....well what to do?....so out came the black and decker workmate and a drill....I wrapped the pins in paper to avoid marking polished surface and drilled the pins to match the size of the door rods.....crikey these took some drilling...they were not the normal soft alloy....after they were drilled out on they went..door cards fitted and a quick pic...





They stick up about the same as the original....might think of lowering them a bit if I have the cards off again...

In that warm weather we were having, I discovered that my heater was still blowing slightly warm on the cold setting.
Not a biggy, just needed to adjust the Bowden cable right?
Yep. I took off the driver's kick panel and loosened the cable clamp, adjusted it and refitted. When I went to refit the kick panel I had managed to lose one of the fixing screws!

Ah well, I just found a random black screw and refitted the panel.

Started the car and ran it up to temp to check the heater output. Yeah, blowing cold on cold and hot on hot!

Job's a good un, right?:broon:


Except...why is coolant dripping from the kick panel?

Yes, this total numpty had screwed that odd screw straight into the heater hose!:oops: :slapme: What a complete pillock! :slapme:

You're not the first and certainly won't be the last to do that .

Hydraulic tappets get noisy when hot. So its time to get them sorted. All stripped and there's no gasket sealant snd the oil guides are full of grit and what appears to be sand. 3 tappets will not come apart no matter how hard i tap them.

I suspect that engine is now scrap!

Bearings look bad, and that "grit/sand" not only has blocked oil flow to the head, but will be right through the engine! :nonod:

and must have come from somewhere!

David Aiketgate wrote: In that warm weather we were having, I discovered that my heater was still blowing slightly warm on the cold setting.
Not a biggy, just needed to adjust the Bowden cable right?
Yep. I took off the driver's kick panel and loosened the cable clamp, adjusted it and refitted. When I went to refit the kick panel I had managed to lose one of the fixing screws!

Ah well, I just found a random black screw and refitted the panel.

Started the car and ran it up to temp to check the heater output. Yeah, blowing cold on cold and hot on hot!

Job's a good un, right?:broon:


Except...why is coolant dripping from the kick panel?

Yes, this total numpty had screwed that odd screw straight into the heater hose!:oops: :slapme: What a complete pillock! :slapme:

Well, Rimmer bros aren't the cheapest but they managed to get a new hose delivered by next day.
I've just completed the swap and all is good again..

I just want to say that who ever designed those spring hose clips should be dangled by one attached to his private parts over a pool of piranha!

What's wrong with jubilee clips ?

The top spring clip made a 30 minute job into a 3 hour marathon. :rant: It was aligned perfectly so that it was virtually impossible to get a tool on it!:bang: