Thinking of buying an MGF, advice please

[Cooky]

Hi,
Currently looking at options for something for my daughter to use as a daily driver. I can't believe the seemingly incredible value in these cars. £1500-2K seems too good to be true for a tidy 2 seater with chic styling.

As a TVR owner I'm no stranger to the pro and cons of sportscar ownership, but is there anything specific to look out for with regards to MGF's.

She's in the Navy and has to travel 200 miles home every couple of months, so are they are ok for longish trips up the M5/6?

Many thanks
Cooky

[MGRacer]

Where should I start?

As much as I love the things, for racing. To be honest she would probably be better off in something from Japan - less likely to breakdown on her (runs for cover).

You should look for:

• Leaks - damp smelling interiors (footwell carpets wet)
• Rear window cracking in the soft top
• Headgasket issues - make sure its been serviced and at least looks like the owner has give it some love and attention.
• Water needs to be checked regularly - any leaks get them sorted - bottom of radiator rots, underfloor heating pipes do the same.
• Rear exhaust - falls off hangers on road cars and flops around. Check the strap which supports the silencer box is still there and has not rotted through.
• Wheel bearing and drive flanges fail on race cars - assume they must do the same on road cars after a while.

The list is long but get a good one and she will have some great fun.

Any specific questions give me a shout.

[Jezza30]

Indeed, great value; there seem to be plenty of haters for some reason but my girlfriend recently bought a 99 MGF vvc for £1900 in mint condition, 2 owners and low mileage. Fun to drive, incredibly economical and fine for long journeys. She loves it.

[jamie g]

I bought a 51plate 1.8 as a second car. I only got it because someone I new was selling it, I was after a cheap hatchback but the mg is much better. So much more fun even if it is girly.
The way it drives is surprisingly sporty yet it is very comfortable and supple. It is also quite nippy and has a good spread of power. I managed to get 430 miles from a tank full on a run which was mainly cruising at 75-85 and a bit of town driving. That worked out to about 38mpg.
Highly recommended if you want a fun practical (apart from only 2 seats) car on a budget.

[S6 ROR]

Hi Cooky, I have run one for past four years, and although use as a second car, it gets used very regularly, including trips down to devon (600 mile round trip for me). Like yourself, I run TVR`s, but still enjoy the F and wouldn`t be without it.
As with TVR`s, buy on History and condition, and as long as aware of the potential problems that they occassionally suffer from, ie head gasket/cooling pipes etc then they are increible value.
I managed to pick up a 51 plate F, one owner from new, 24K miles, full MGSH including the HG replaced and had been kept garaged all its life, with lots of extras fitted for a song. There are plenty out there and as long as you have the time to source a good one, it will provide some fun motoring with relatively cheap running costs

[Cooky]

Thanks for your replies chaps.

We have seen a couple that look worth the journey to view/buy. I still find it difficult to believe the prices of these cars. <£2k for something of this ilk is extraordinarily good value. How much difference is the performance between a standard F and the VVC model? and what are the subsequent differing insurance groupings/costs?

I think that if we are lucky enough to find a well kept and sorted example, this would be the perfect choice for her. I should have added that the car will only be used a couple of days per week for general pootling about to the shops and back and maybe at the weekends for those girlie sortee's to Top Shop or wherever they frequent theses days. As she lives 'on base' she tends to come back to Cheshire every couple of months or so, hence the only time the car will do any real motoring. Are they ok if left standing for short periods...unlike the my TVR which seems to need it's fix of trickle charge if left alone and unpampered for more than 48 hours


Thanks again chaps and I'll post a few links to a couple we've got in mind

[bigbadbikercats]

Cooky said:

Thanks for your replies chaps.

We have seen a couple that look worth the journey to view/buy. I still find it difficult to believe the prices of these cars. <£2k for something of this ilk is extraordinarily good value. How much difference is the performance between a standard F and the VVC model? and what are the subsequent differing insurance groupings/costs?
:

Not sure about the insurance thing but in terms of driving experience they're very different. Where the cooking version starts to feel a bit out of breath at ~5K RPM or so the VVC happily carries on screaming all the way to its 7200 RPM rev limit, apparently the torque curves are pretty much identical except that where the 1.8i starts to drop off the VVC just keeps on going and that's where the extra 30 BHP or so comes from.

The cars are geared differently as well with the VVC being geared lower to make use of the extra rev range and this makes it feel a good deal punchier and more responsive than the raw numbers would suggest.

--
Jonathon.

[tuffer]

Cooky said:

I still find it difficult to believe the prices of these cars. <£2k for something of this ilk is extraordinarily good value.

They are cheap for good reason.......they are absolute ste. Do yourself a favour and look for something (anything) else.

[BMWChris]

tuffer said:

Cooky said:

I still find it difficult to believe the prices of these cars. <£2k for something of this ilk is extraordinarily good value.

They are cheap for good reason.......they are absolute ste. Do yourself a favour and look for something (anything) else.

They are not ste and they are not as fragile as some people suggest but an MX5 or anything else Japanease is more likely to be reliable and just as fun / chic IMO.

[jamie g]

The MGF is a great car for the money. If the problems with head gaskets didn't exist prices would be double what they are, they really are that good.

[Cooky]

From reading up it seems there is an upgraded (multi layered) head gasket option, as the originals were not so good.
Does this fix put the issue to rest?

[grahamw48]

Hasn't anyone fitted an alternative engine to one ?

They're a good-looking little car IMO, especially with the hard-top.

[Nigel Worc's]

They are a good looking car, even british.

Don't buy anything with a K series engine would be my advice, from my own experience, so that rules those out I'm afraid.

Go for an MX5 in my humble opinion, sorry and all that, but the MX5 tends to work, rover didn't go bust for no reason, they made st cars for a long time, and eventually nobody wanted to buy them.

Edited by Nigel Worc's on Friday 11th December 00:10

[Nigel Worc's]

grahamw48 said:

Hasn't anyone fitted an alternative engine to one ?

They're a good-looking little car IMO, especially with the hard-top.

there was a guy on the mg rover forum who fitted a 2.0 litre honda engine to one.

they are a good looking little car, very pretty, its THAT dam engine !

[tuffer]

BMWChris said:

tuffer said:

Cooky said:

I still find it difficult to believe the prices of these cars. <£2k for something of this ilk is extraordinarily good value.

They are cheap for good reason.......they are absolute ste. Do yourself a favour and look for something (anything) else.

They are not ste and they are not as fragile as some people suggest but an MX5 or anything else Japanease is more likely to be reliable and just as fun / chic IMO.

As someone who owned a brand new one when they first came out, I can hand on heart say "it was ste and fragile", it was also "badly put together, unreliable, poorly designed.......... oh and ste".

Edited by tuffer on Friday 11th December 03:28

[MGJohn]

tuffer said:

BMWChris said:

tuffer said:

Cooky said:

I still find it difficult to believe the prices of these cars. <£2k for something of this ilk is extraordinarily good value.

They are cheap for good reason.......they are absolute ste. Do yourself a favour and look for something (anything) else.

They are not ste and they are not as fragile as some people suggest but an MX5 or anything else Japanease is more likely to be reliable and just as fun / chic IMO.

As someone who owned a brand new one when they first came out, I can hand on heart say "it was ste and fragile", it was also "badly put together, unreliable, poorly designed.......... oh and ste".

{QUOTE]someone

somewhere has almost certainly said that about most cars, based on their experience of one ~ all must be shyte ~ WRONG.

Anyone fancy getting an MGF the advice should be as with any used car, find a good well maintained one. By the way, not just MGs, a FSH with ANY car is NO guarantee of a job well done. So called HGFs often soon follow a "pro" service. That is not pure coincidence or pure bad luck. Because of the widespread and frequently regurgitated negatiity regarding the cylinder head gasket, these cars are now and "easy meat" target for the anti-brigade.

By the way, cylinder head gasket replacement on the K-Series is one of the easiest of all the 16 Valve DOHC engines to work on, if not the easiest. It's a doddle for anyone who knows one end of the spanner from another. However, because of the incessant K-Series overkill negativity, it is seen by many "in the trade" as a "nice little earner". Indeed, one brave soul over on another car enthusiasts' site admitted replacing over 100 K-Series cylinder head gaskets on cars that did not need it. A nice little earner indeed. Not forgetting always charging for a "skim" even when it does not need doing and so doesn't get done. I have evidence of two such charges for a skim which was not done. Joe or Josephine car consumer will rarely if ever be in a position to confirm that work was done when they settle up that over inflated Invoice so have no option but to take the advice of the "pros" as gospel. There's the rub.

Over the past few of years, "paranoid" owners of K-series cars have approached me on a "you know about cars John" having been advised that their overheating K-series has "They all do that" failed cylinder head gasket. WRONG !! The only failure was the advice from "pros" of a certain mindset who must know what they're talking about when giving such advice. Yeah right. In each of those paranoid cases all that was needed was to replace the worn coolant bottle expansion cap then replenish and bleed the cooling system with correct 50-50 OAT coolant ~ no more overheating problems.

As I said ~ "nice little earner" for some ..

It wont but, if the CHG 'fails' on my MG ZS bought new in May 2003 tomorrow I shall enjoy replacing it ~ a few hours leisurely work and about 30 quid for the multilayer gasket and headsaver set. It really is a doddle.

However, by their own admission, two work colleagues and another acquaintance drove on at motorway speeds after seeing steam from their bonnets which soon cleared so assumed all was well. This can and does happen with any make of car not just Rovers. Ask my work colleague who did that with his Toyota ~ they never go wrong apparently only his did but, he ignored the initial signs ~ that's often the real failure, not the car. Not only did that car need a gasket, it needed a replacement cylinder head. OUCH! and then some. He had a good reason for driving on and now knows he was to blame not the car.

Until I retired recently, I worked in a large office and two of the "going places" young women there owned and drove the Japanese two seaters often "Bigged Up" here on PH. Neither of those cars ever needed their head gaskets replaced as far as I know, only their complete engines and gearboxes at a cost that makes a reasonably priced K-series gasket job look like small change ~ which it is in comparison to what those two poor cows had to pay.

Why is it alien product "failure" NEVER get shouted from the rooftops as is the case so often with the k-seres? I know the answer to that one....

Only in the UK.
..

[grahamw48]

Sadly we now live in a country full of 'traitors' who are only too happy to buy foreign products, singing their praises and blind to the fact that we have virtually eliminated our heavy industries, manufacturing base, and the jobs that went with them.

Do these people think that ships are no longer built ? cars ? trucks ? TVs ? washing machines ? clothing ? toys ? furniture ?

Oh, it's the global economy isn't it.

Yes indeed...centred in China, just as it was previously centred in Japan, and many years before that...Great Britain.

Allowing other nations to copy our products, make them under licence, train them how to manufacture them really is a cop out, isn't it.

Even cleverer passing along our industrial heritage (read 'pollution') to countries who couldn't give a damn about global warming...or even human rights, and how stupid do we look ?

If we all grew some balls and a sense of national pride we'd still manufacture and buy our own products, be able to offer our youngsters skilled jobs, and pay off the enormous national debt.

Personally I'd much rather pay 50 quid extra for my TV, a tenner more for the groceries, and perhaps do without a few gadgets in the car so that I can support the country that I was born in.

As consumers we have choices, and personally I choose to buy British wherever possible simply because it makes sense to do so, from every angle.

We still have the resources and the talent in this country, but sadly a mass of sheep-like consumers who believe what they read in the newspapers, are truly apathetic in their daily lives, and reluctant to accept real leadership.

It is also a sad state of affairs when the average foreign national can speak and write better English than a goodly percentage of the younger contributors to these forums.

No I WON'T be buying a so-called 'MG' from China, even if a few blokes in Longbridge are kept in work. Pathetic.

Hmm...glad I got that off my chest.

[tuffer]

grahamw48 said:

Blah, Blah, Blah

If we made decent products at decent prices and where not held to ransom by unions then maybe people would buy British.

[MGJohn]

grahamw48 said:

Lots of spot on observations .....

Well said Graham,

Whilst there are still folks in the former green and pleasant with your passionate held and spot on views to just maybe sew the seeds of real change within the negative British mindset, there is a glimmer of hope for this nation of "also rans" yet ... Button and Hamilton excepted ... and reading more that a few of the alien R-slickers' contributions in the Motor Sports section here, both those British drivers were simply lucky to be in the right car at the right time ... unlike all the 'superior' foreign drivers who are much more deserving of the title Champion of the World! ... Yeah .. right ... Only in the UK ....

It did not used to be so ....
.
..

[CDP]

BMWChris said:

an MX5 or anything else Japanease is more likely to be reliable

Except my MR2.

Fairly good until it hit about 80,000 miles then it went though four grand one year and four grand the next.

You name it: engine, brakes (lots of times), suspension, clutches, alternator (couple of times), two sets of rear wheel bearings. OK it was probably perfect when I sold it. It should have been as I'd replaced all the mechanical parts except the gearbox. Sorry forgot, it had to have new linkages fitted on the gearbox so even that wasn't perfect.

OK, I've just had to replace the head gasket on the TF so it's not perfect either but certainly more reliable than my Toyota and I knew several people with similar experiences. We used to discuss the best place to get Toyota engines like they were consumables.

Take a look in the classifieds to see how many '2s have had replacement engines.