It's that time of year once more, the MGOC National Event, which returns to the Imperial War Museum, at Duxford, Nr. Cambridge. This will be the fourth major MG event at Duxford for the MGOC. Their first was in 1994 with the Duxford Picnic in late September, which was repeated in 1995. Then last year the MGOC made the bold move of switching the National Event away from it's traditional venue 'Knebworth', to Duxford and what a huge success it was and it looks as the Owners Club will be sticking with Duxford for the foreseeable future. Thanks to all those members who turned up for 'Concours Nite!', the rain did stop (just) for the judging to proceed. Apart from the huge turnout of members and their cars (did anybody count them?) we had some guests. We had two representatives from MAGPAS the Paramedic Service, which the club supports as its nominated charity, along also with a few well known faces from the Owners Club. A cheque for £250 was presented to MAGPAS by the Membership Secretary, 'Sarah' of the MG Owners Club, and then Richard Monk, who is the General Manager of the Owners Club made the presentation to the prize winners and runners up of the evenings main event, the Concours Competition.

Finally a thankyou!, especially to Linda, who baked me a beautiful cake, to Brian for organising the buffet & thanks also for the cards and presenst on the occasion of my 40th birthday, it was a wonderful surprise!!

Just a brief mention of the event here for the readers of our newsletter on the WWW.
The whole weekend was blessed with sunshine and blue skies, hardly a cloud in sight, but MG's by the hundreds, thousands even! Sunday, the main day, was hampered by strongs winds whistleling across the airfield, it was a job to keep the picnic on the table. And the hatchback on my MG Maerstro did its best to hit me on the head as the wind was gusting!
On the first day, Saturday, I met up with several of the regulars from MGF bulletin board, it was was nice to put some names to faces. I have taken lots of photographs, and will be writing a full report which will be posted for you all to read in due course. Now Available
View some of the photographs taken at: MG'97
Members of the Cambridge MGOC will get a full write up in Julys 'printed' Newsletter.

Welcome to the June scribblings, huridley put together once more, (we are so busy!!!), so please accept my apologies!!!!
I hope to give you a better update on all our activities next month, to include our weekend at Fleggburgh and the Broadlands Heritage Run, and of course the Duxford Weekend.
If you have picked up this copy of the newsletter at MG' 97 after visiting our club display then I hope you enjoyed meeting us and perhaps we will see you again soon?

May I please remind club members that the Area Secretary's BBQ is imminent, on Saturday June 28th and I would ask that if you are coming, then please let myself or Rita know, (ASASP) so that we can cater for you all. There will be plenty of Sausages and Burgers, but if you fancy anything else, (to eat or drink) then you are welcome to bring it along, and put it on the BBQ.
There will be also be some liquid refreshment, orange squash, mineral water, coke and even some tea or coffee!! ( you know, the usual!!)

Cambridge & District MGOC
SIMPLY GETTING BETTER


Dates for your Diary
14/15th June....Silverstone
16th June....Treasure Hunt
21st June....Godmanchester Fete
28st June....BBQ at Brians

Brian Fish, Woodside Cottage, Kingston Wood, Arrington, Royston, Herts, SG8 0AN Tel. 01954 718268

It seemed simple at first. The 'C' was burning oil. Not just a little but lots. People went to all sorts of lengths to avoid following me on Club runs (sorry Heather and Keith). I realised how serious matters were after the trip to Belgium when I calculated that I had used 3.5 litres of oil over 450 miles.

A check on cylinder compression showed no problems. They were all within about 5% of standard, which was good for an engine with a 86,000 miles on the clock. A phone call to the person who had done the restoration a few years ago told me that the engine had been OK then. They had had the head off to check and it all looked good. Obviously the low mileages in the past few years, only 200 in the twelve months before I bought it, had led to a fall-off in the performance of the valve stem seals. So replace them. But I thought while the head is off it might be as well to convert it to Unleaded. Austria and Germany no longer provide Leaded fuel and our exemption from the EU rules expires in 2003, and we know how the EU and our Government tend to have a habit of not quite knowing what they have agreed.on. That is when the trouble started. 'Cs' are not all that common, people who actually understand them are few and those who actually run an Unleaded conversion even fewer. I have time on my hands so I started talking to the 'Experts'.

First port of call was a local engine rebuilder (member of all the appropriate trade bodies). Simple they said, bring us your head in stripped down state and we will insert the necessary valve seats, exhaust only for £82 (all prices include VAT). No mention of valve guides or anything else.

Next I called the people who advertise in Enjoying MG. The first said that only the exhaust valve seats needed inserts. But if valve guides needed replacing they recommended against phosphor-bronze because they had found that these caused increased wear on the valve stems, with sometimes dramatic and expensive failure. They said that special valves were not needed The ordinary 'C' ones were hard enough. But they said they preferred customers to have the work done themselves because heads often turned out on detailed inspection to be cracked and they did not want to be involved.

The second supplier was very keen to do the job. Exhaust valve inserts, hardened (yes hardened valves), their own special form of valve guides and seals in place of the standard items. All for the inclusive price of about £600.

A third supplier said they would do exhaust valve inserts, phosphor-bronze valve guides and the standard valves (yes thats right the combination I had been warned off by the first supplier), and the standard oil seals. All for a similar sum.
Thats when I called Peter Burgess who seemed to have combined the best of the above and avoided the traps. He offerred to strip the head down, give it a bath in hot caustic and blast it clean, fit exhaust valve inserts, cut them to a compound three angle face, give the face a light skim, fit valve guides of their own proprietary material and design, (yes they were aware of the problems with phosphor-bronze which could only be solved if the valve stems were chromed), standard valves were fine but they fit a top hat seal instead of the standard item. All for £250, unless new valves were needed and they would be £12 each. They said that often the valves did not need to be replaced and were generally very un-pushy. So that would be £460 in total. They also replaced a core plug so that I would not have that to worry about, and freed off a couple of studs. They checked the valve stems while I was there and they were badly worn so we replaced them all.

It was then that I phoned the Club (maybe I should have done it sooner but you will have gathered that I am a bit of a masochist.). When they heard a short summary of the above they said it sounded very interesting and that all they did on 'C' conversions was send the head to the engine shop I had spoken to first. Kelvin also put a notice on the Club's Web site and received two replies. One said "you needed hardened valves seats and bronze guides" (really?), and the other said that the first company who converted his head used hardened valve seats and bronze guides and soon after two valves stuck ! He then went to Peter Burgess and has had no trouble since.

So what should you do? As usual you pays your money and takes your choice. But in this case I reckoned that the cheapest version, using the local engine rebuilder and doing all of the work myself left too much to chance and at anything from £36 to £47 for a gasket set I did not want to take the head off again too soon. The outfits charging about £600 for the job seemed not to be too consistent and at that price I would want to be sure. So its off to Peter Burgess who seems to know what he is talking about and only charges £470.

When it came time to do the work I stripped of all the bits and pieces and called in that fount of all things mechanical, Peter Paige. Together we took the head off and looked at the bores. We found them to be in good shape and the pistons to be standard not oversize. When I got the head back Peter once again provided the expertise in putting it back on. I had provided the muscle by doing a decoke on the piston heads etc. We finished at eight o'clock in the evening and it fired up first time. Those of you who were on the Club's Easter run noticed two things. Firstly, I drew to a halt in Saffron Walden with steam hissing from under the bonnet - just a heater hose that needed tightening. Secondly I was still burning oil ! Fortunately that has now almost stopped. I think it was just the valves settling in. My oil consumption over about 200 miles so far has been nil, and that is quite an improvement. If I used Castrol XL (I don't) I would recover the cost of the work in about 16.000 miles. And that does not allow for the saving in using Unleaded, which I have not tried yet because that will mean adjusting the timing and I like to separate out the effects of different changes. So I can say that the engine is definitely smoother and pulls better tand sounds smoother han it did before the head work. My next step will be to have it tuned on a rolling road but I won't do that until after I have re-torqued the head at 500 miles.

I know Kelvin will be putting this article on the web site, I'm afraid I have not yet connected to the WWW, but if you have any questions or comments then I'm sure Kelvin will pass them on to me. Derek Ryan Please Mark: 'For Dereks Attention'

Newsletter Menu

Navigator

This site is maintained on behalf of the Cambridge & District MGOC
by Kelvin Fagan mg.maestro@mgcars.org.uk
Try out our Search Engine page