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MG MGF Technical - The most unlucky Trophy?

Five months ago my 2001 Trophy suffered a HGF at 25k miles. I had taken out mechanical insurance with Warranty Direct and they picked up the £1950 repair bill for a new head. About a month after the repair, I don’t use the car that often (wife’s car), I noticed that it sounded rather ‘tappety’. I was making a short journey from home, I rounded a bend to find the road blocked due to an accident. My Trophy has no ABS, the road was moist and so I joined the accident. The car was nearly written off, requiring a complete new front end. Well two months passed and I got the car back, it immediately went into the (MG ROVER) garage for service and investigation into the tappet noise. The garage also thought it was tappets and decided to drop the engine so that that they take a look at the tappets. They decided that all but three looked perfect and the three were also pretty good. They requested permission from Warranty Direct to change all 16 tappets, WD said no as they could only change actually faulty parts. The garage then decide to pull the pistons to ensure there was nothing amiss with the big or little ends, these were fine so they decided it must be tappets and decided to replace all 16 (they were prepared to bear the cost of the 13 that seemed OK). We I got a call from the garage today; the engine was re-built and back in the car and running AND RATTLING STILL! So they have now spent £1000.00 on parts and labour (of their money) and we are back to where we started three weeks ago. They say that the only other possible cause is the VVC unit and they have ordered one for next week. At the end of the day my car will have been off the road for 3-4 months, the garage is playing very fair and have accepted that they can not charge me for their trial and error process of determining the problem. I will certainly have got my monies worth (£250) for the mechanical warranty this year. Final comment, this being my second MGF both having suffered a HGF I would never, never, never have one of these cars without mechanical warranty.
Nic

And I thought my MG was unlucky!
I also thought all Trophys had ABS.
Russell Parslow

Russell, the earlier Trophys were sold as 'a purer drivers car' so didn't have ABS, later it was added as an option.

Unlucky Nic, my Trophy spat out steam at 24,900 miles (a few days after the service) but as HGFs go it was pretty mild, not even a head skim needed (apparently...)

Reckon it must be the VVC unit, I presume they would have checked the cam bolts already.
Mike Hankin

I must admit, I've never liked driving this car on anything other than dry roads (when going fast). I've always founds that it locks up and slides all too easily. Regarding the rattle, they say that they have used an 'electronic ear' to pinpoint the source of the sound so I presume they're right. I do find it a bit coincidental that this subsequent failure occured so soon after the head was re-built, cause and effect?
Nic

Sorry to hear about the bad history for your Thropy "F", but a bit confused about the way the garage have done their work.
Especially on the VVC engines "rattle" does not always come from the tappets... Using the stetoscope they could have pinpointed the noisesource first time !
And what springs to mind, might the first dissambly of the head also involved an not needed VVC mechanism removal ? If this is done "by accident" it is really difficult to get together all things in a proper manner again without specialist tools.And even if the VVC unit is put back in fair working order the clearances might be altered.
See previous threads this year about dissambling the VVC unit !!
Just some thoughts from another VVC owner with a rattling head (!) / Carl.
Carl

Nic, I am not sure that I can offer any other advice/ hints etc than have already been mentioned! But how frustrating - but what great news regarding the warranty! Let us know how the story pans out - and whether you would recommend your warranty company to other MG enthusiasts :o)
Rob Bell

Arrggg Another HGF horror story

Arrrggg!!!
Neil

I thought Mike Satur had a remedy against the noisy VVC mech. couldn´t find it on his site though
David Peters

This thread was discussed between 10/06/2005 and 13/06/2005

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