Ruined my engine on my MG F. Help a novice find a replacement.

When you say coolant is mm from the red do you mean the temp on the gauge?

Mine gets kinda hot in the cabin but I suspect I have a internal heater valve that doesn't quite close so the pipes that run from the engine to the heater box that are right next to my leg stay hot all the time.

The last time I saw 135' for my oil was in Italy running at 85 mph up the motorway/autostrada. I cured that one by filling the oil up from minimum to maximum.

Persevere, once you get it sorted you'll love it.

Hi guys, me again.

I’ve decided to have another go at the mystery engine light. I’ve been using the car sparingly (travel to Tesco fortnightly) but the engine light has progressed from flashing when under heavy acceleration to flashing under even the lightest press of the accelerator. Note: Engine light is solid yellow when idle or revving engine while in neutral.

Quick timeline/recap of events:
My cars engine was replaced by an MG specialist garage (I received the car Thursday 19th of march).
Car didn’t seem right, rang garage and arranged for car to be looked at the next day an hour before lockdown began (24th March).
Drove the car past garage and engine maintenance light turned on during journey. I decided to visit as it looked open but owner of garage had sent mechanics home due to lockdown so could not look at the car.
Emailed on the 24th of May to book an appointment to have the engine looked at, email was ignored.
3rd of June, rang the MG Specialist whose owner told me it was probably the O2 sensor causing the problem and to bring it in whenever convenient.
Being told that the engine maintenance light wasn't anything to do with the engine put me off going to garage so asked for help on forums.
You guys were very helpful and gave me some troubleshooting advice, I led a few of you down the ABS garden path when my car doesn’t even have ABS and I did an O2 sensor test which wasn't great.
18th June tried using the car to travel to see family. Car's oil and coolant overheated after 60 miles so I gave up trying to fix car and used it twice or three times a month to go to shops and back until now.

As I’ve mentioned earlier my own OBD2 device cant “see” the fault codes but my friend’s Modis showed a vehicle speed sensor signal fault (P0500), Camshaft position sensor no signal (P0340), Catalytic Converter (P0420) among other things. You can see the screenshot in post No. 193474 .
Today I’ve replaced the camshaft sensor and run an O2 test and recorded it using Torgue’s fault logging system. The O2 test was run down a country road, stopping at a give way then down another country road accelerating to 50mph. Sorry I don’t have an idle test but the OBD cant connect to the ECU at the moment. To make up for this I’ve extracted a 10 second section of the journey that was under a constant throttle of 20%. The raw data can be found in the spreadsheet attached.

I’ve decided to throw caution to the wind and call the specialist garage tomorrow and ask if they will look at my car. Will update with what happens.

Please, please, please contact 'roughluck racing'.  07766 993717  Dont go back to the specialist garage, under any circumstances. RLR will come to you.

Jon and Claire at Roughluckracing.com are excellent and very reasonably priced. They will solve all your issues and not rip you off, which is what this specialist garage actually specialises in.

I totally agree with David

Robert

Went to the garage and they fault read it as ignition misfires. I explained the engine fault was on when i got the car and the mechanic said the office would still charge me. I agreed that the engine was second hand and the sparks had died on the last engine so said I'd take the car home and fix the issue myself. I have the dual ignition coil type that spilts into two, to go to the four sparks. Disconnecting either causes the engine to stall out so i'm assuming they are good. I could get a multimeter and test all 4 ends but buying new sparks and replacing them sounds far easier. Will do that tonight, clear the fault then then run the car ragged for 30 miles. Will edit this post with the results.

Ok so I've downed tools halfway through replacing the spark plugs because the old spark plugs are coming out of the cylinder head coated in oil, both ends. I took a picture with the new spark plug just to show how coated in oil these old spark plugs are: 

 

The spark plug hole (dont know its name) is also full of oil. See below:

 

Where do i go on from this? Do i put the old plugs in and go back to the garage? Do I clean this up myself? I've read online that stuffing a rag in the spark plug hole and turning the engine over for a few seconds will force the oil out. Should I do this?

Oh and I should also add i'm not burning oil, exhaust plume is white.

I did an exhaust test yesterday, when it was about 5C, and you can see no blue smoke. Also you might be able to hear the ignition missfire the mechanic mentioned today.



My thoery is the spark plug holes have excess oil in them that drained out when I unscrewed them.

Edit: Video didnt upload due to being too large. Uploaded to Youtube and added the URL above.

I would not use the car until it gets looked at, it could be the cam basket gasket letting oil into plug holes, that smoke / stem seems excessive and it sounds like it's struggling to rev, as David says give rough luck a call they will sort it in one visit and are very reasonable, I think you are a cash cow for the garage who are taking advantage of your naivety, please call Rough luck before you make matters worse.

Sent from my SM-G981B using Tapatalk

The car in the video is definitely smoking too much.  It doesn't sound good so is in need of some attention.  It sounds like the garage that you have been using are not, shall we say, able to fix it.  You really need some EXPERT help.  I agree with what others have said; get it looked at by one of the many MG / K series experts out there.  Depending on where you live, here is a list of suggestions.  Most are mobile so location is not the limiting factor.  In no particular order:
Rough Luck Racing
MG Rover Mobile Mechanics
MG Rover Solutions
MJS Auto And Marine
There are many other decent garages that understand the MGF/TF very well.  Provided with your location, I'm sure that people could make suggestions.  I'll start with my local area, SE Essex, with British Legends in Southend-On-Sea and MG Rover Repair Centre in Wickford.
Good luck
 

Thanks for all the advice guys. I live in the dead centre of Rutland for those that dont know.
I've scrapped my theory of oil draining onto the sparks when I unplugged them, theory makes no sense since the heat of the engine would boil off excess oil in the spark plug holes.
Since my last post i've removed all the spark plugs including the new one I put in the night before (the new one came back out coated in oil so even when the engine is off the chamber is getting oil on the head of the spark plug) then turned the engine over to see if any gunk came out of the sparkplug holes. Only hole closest to the driver side sent any oil out. Put the new spark plugs in, started the engine, read then cleared the codes. Drove the car for an hour and a half down the A1 without problems or warning lights. Codes before I cleared them can be seen below:



Note: Garage mechanic told me to ignore the Camshaft sensor fault as it always shows up as a false positive so ignore that bottom error code.

During the drive my dad rang and told me the problem could be too much oil in the car causing the sparks to get coated in oil. Got home, shutdown the car and waited an hour then checked the oil which was slightly above the max level. To absolutely put the nail in the coffin on this "too much oil theory" I put the car on bricks (dont have ramps) and let some oil out through the oil filter. Now its just above min.

Drove the car up the road and as soon as it hit a hill the engine management light started flashing like its being doing previously. Got the error code shown below so its miss firing again.



Tomorrow i'm gonna swap the sparks back to the old ones which I now recognise as the spark plugs I used in the first engine which i know are next-to-new. I imagine when the garage gave me a refurb engine they re-used the sparks from my first engine. I suspect one or more of the new spark plugs, that I remove tomorrow, will have the ignition head coated with oil. That's my current theory anyway.

P.s. do you guys know where I can find the engine number? I tried using the guide on the Rimmer Bros site but a single digram wasnt enough info for me to go on. I want to just make sure I do have another cars engine.

you mean the physical location on the engine block?