The MG-TF K20a V-TEC Project Thread (very pic heavy)

Adam-MGTF · Apr 1, 2011

Not sure if this is in the right section guys as I can't see a project section but as it's all about the engine really I've put it here for now, if the mods want it elsewhere then go for it

... Before I start I'd like to say a big thanks to the people who gave me tons of advice over a year ago when I started down this crazy road, and all the people who are bound to help me over the next year.

The car is a big project and likely as not the first few updates will be heavy on the boring stuff of stripping the car and such, however please keep bugging me with questions as I'm sure you guys will think of stuff the MG lot wont think of that will help me

Lastly a quick apology, the smilies might not work, I have this up on the three MG forums I'm part of and changing smileys for 4 forums would be a nightmare I don't have time for lol so anyway...

OK guys and Girls, here we go!!!

First of all some background. I bought the car a few weeks ago, it is as far as I know the only MG-TF with a K20 engine in. I wanted to do this conversion to my old car but when my engine blew up and this car came up for sale I decided to see if it could save me some chew on.

Unfortunately it turned out to be a bit of a.... erm 'shed' I think is the polite way of putting it. The conversion may have been a little rushed and requires allot of work. I hope to do a complete and comprehensive re-build over the next 12-? months. No expense spared.

This started this afternoon/evening as the ZR Turbo (see Project thread here:http://www.rovertech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=122282) will be home this week and thus giving me some extra room to do the TF.

The end result should be a significantly lightened car with massively up-rated suspension, big breaks, a roll cage (safety and to stiffen the tub) etc etc. I hope to end up with a fast road legal track car to put big smiles on my face powered by the best naturally aspirated transverse 4 pot ever made.

So here we go!

First of all a few pics before I started to strip the car. This is 80th Anniversary TF No. 1033 of 1600 now named Bucephalus in honor of my old TF. The name has a meaning if anyone is interested ask me

.

First job was to get the exhaust off (to sell it) its completely the wrong bore for a K20 engine as it's designed for a Rover K series engine (pic on that to follow) so it wont be going back on the car.

To make that easier I decided to remove the rear bumper... I had to do this one way or another. So lets make the project thread to end all project threads start with.....

A picture of a light, the boot light to be precise... took it out to save running the battery down... it wont be any use to me. Removing those wires should prove fun later.

Next job was to remove the boot carpet lining.

Easy enough, unfortunately I found a worrying amount of surface rust

This would prove to be a trend for the day, classic Longbridge rust proofing. :wall:

Taking the carpet out revealed all the wiring for the K-Pro ECU

Thats going to be fun to figure out!

Getting the car up in the air was a bit of a nightmare as the suspension has basically collapsed on both sides :slap: so I had to get it up on bricks before i could evan jack it up (this was not a good start!).

Time to get the bumper off. First job was the rear mud guards

The screws were universally rounded :thumbsdo: (This was NOT going well)

However I got them off... on the drivers side one I found this....

I think it's an ABS sensor wire, my old TF didn't have ABS so I'm not sure what it is but it wasn't attached to anything so any ideas?

Next job was to get the bumper off. This should have been a walk in the park... It turned out to be more of a hop skip and a jump through a minefield.

This is one of the brackets the bottom bolts screw into...

nearly snapped :hit: and this is the other bottom bracket

actually snapped :rr:

This was not going well

and that wasn't the worse of it. The top of the bumper has 3 bolts... Left and Right came out no problem... the middle one had all kinds of issues as can be seen here

The bolt head is welded onto the bracket attached to the bumper... however it was spinning freely when I turned the nut inside the boot.... so 40 minuets into working on my new car.... :clapping: out came the angle grinder!

I had to hold up the bumper up with my knees and slot the cutting disk in between the car and the bumper to cut the bolt... I think the health and safety directorate would have had a consumption fit if they'd seen that but nm i didn't cut any vital body parts off so its all good!

Next job was the zorst

As you can see from this picture

The K20 exhaust is a vastly bigger bore than what a Rover K-series engine needs, as a result this exhaust was almost certainly strangling power. I've also read that when a smaller than recommended bore is put on a car then it can cause oil seal problems (im guessing something to do with back pressure) but I still don't know enough about tuning to be sure on this). Why anyone would go to all the time and expense of doing a conversion and having a custom manifold made and then not have a custom exhaust made to match I don't know, I'm guessing the previous owner was attached to this back box but any can type baffle would have done. I'll be having something suitably sexy sounding added toward the end of the project.

The bolts were an absolute nightmare (I'm sensing a trend with this car :svk

as you can see they were in quite a state.

anyway another session of banging my head against a brick wall over I stopped for a cuppa and noticed the flexipipe was looking a bit... limp

I poked my head under the car and noticed this.... which worried me

The flexipipe looks like its slid over the manifold and then clamped on... and not clamped on very well! I could pull it out by hand!

Anyway exhaust off and ready to be put up for sale!

Time to get on with stripping the car. I decided to start with the interior, not as sexy as dropping subframes or engines out the car but I had my reasons.

First of all it's an easy job, sure it's complicated - but easy

Second getting the interior out will allow me to get the roll cage measured up and mean that I wont get oil and gunk all over it while working on the car. If I can get it to fit round the roll cage I might re-fit it for long journeys (like the continent or to the ring and back) later but thats way in the future.

First job was to get the door cards off... before

and after...

and the other side, note the door jars are off too

Next job was the T-Bar and the speaker pod, this picture shows the speaker pod removed and me getting ready to remove the seat belts.

this job actually wasn't too bad, although most of the clips were snapped (this just means it's been removed before

) typical MGF/TF

next job was to get the drivers seat out, the 80th anniversary seats were no good to me so the previous owner kept them to sell on so I could get the car a bit cheaper... the old MGF seat would not be staying... carbon fiber shineyness in the form of bucket seats to replace it

pointless pic? - yep but it's my thread so :nyah:

next job was to get the sound proofing off the engine bay access hatch, here is me struggling with the seat belt bolts

so the T bar could be completely removed

Next job was to remove the rear cubby and arm rest

next, time to remove the roof

I decided to do this because the engine bay is a bit of a git to get into with the soft top on. You have to pivot the rear window part of the roof up to the front of the car... It's much easier to take the roof off altogether... However while re-building the car it will need to be outside allot (my garage isn't big enough to be a workshop).

Fortunately my best mate needs to store his hard top for the summer, and a hardtop takes 4 clips to take off instead of 4 bolts. Much easier to remove every time I work on the car

Unfortunately removing the roof means the bolts that hold the rear clip brackets on have nothing to bolt into... so I found something to bolt them into... thats a long way of introducing this picture

think this pic is even more pointless than the seat one? Well I thought it was a good idea, so go fornicate with your mother

now where was I? Oh yes! taking the interior out...

Center console was next to go, the car had a silver one which is rare so will be ebay'd rather than me risk it getting scratched in storage.

This picture also shows the Mike Satur designed 6 speed slick-shift. I plan on talking to mike and seeing if he can finish this off for me. It was designed as a prototype which may be why the horizontal gate is nice and tight but the vertical gate has throws which are far too long (especially for 2nd 4th and 6th)

the Transmission tunnel went in short order... my GF was sat there lamenting the time when I used to drive nice cars instead of pulling them apart

Time to pull the carpets out, the fuel tank fire wall carpet went first

then the main carpet... unfortunately as you might be able to see from the first picture I found this little lot

the good news is it looks worse than it is and seems mostly located on the fuel tank bay access hatch so can be sorted or replaced and....

there doesn't seem to be to much rust elsewhere

As you can see it had got pretty dam dark by that time so I needed to move all the interior upstairs to my room so I can sneak it into the loft when my mums at work

And as the rabbit says "That's all folks"

Tomorrows job is to get the dash out and then think about day 3

Adam-MGTF · Apr 1, 2011

Day two you get straight away guys

First Job on day two was to sneak all the interior parts I'm keeping into the loft while my mum was at work!

The transmission tunnel, door cards etc were pretty easy but getting a rear bumper into the loft was a whole other kettle of fish, and pretty funny

Not something you see every day

anyway on with the car

First problem was it was raining... not good as my garage isn't exactly roomy

So I decided to start by removing the wing mirrors, easy enough (this statement was a mistake)... couple of screws

Then all I had to do was undo a clip on the door skin that wanted to remove as much of my skin as possible!

Top one on this pic

After trying for 10 mins and stabbing myself twice with a screwdriver, I bravely gave up.

I decided to try popping the clip off from the back... this ment removing the speaker (which i didn't need anyway)

Easy enough, note to self passenger side speaker wires are yellow, drivers orange... more wires for me to trace back through the loom and bin lol

anyway back to that pesky plug

I managed to pull it out the door and this made things a little easier

Eventually I managed to get the plug apart by jamming a screwdriver in it and prizing it apart

After that I struggled to pull the wire up through the door so I decided to bag the mirror up so it didn't get scratched and pull more stuff off the door skin so I had better access

The random pics continue

I had to remove the door handle and take the leaver off (and put it back on) to remove the nasty plastic cover, but once it was off it looked much cleaner

Once this water proofing was off I could get my arm in the door and feed the wire out the door

simples

repeat process on other door...

Plenty of plastic rubbish in a bag

Now time to move onto the dash!

This is the first time I had ever removed a dash so my first jump into unknown territory on a TF, just like to say a big thanks to the scarlet fever pages at this point for the guide on removing a dash, it helped allot

First job was to remove the air bag blank, easy enough just a screwdriver to flick the clips out

Random pice of Styrofoam, MG/Rover once again demonstrating that no expense was spared when building their flagship model

Removing the air vents involved more screwdriver action

They actually came out quite easily, although being able to open the doors would have made things much easier for the side vents

managed anyway

OK easy stuff out the way, now things get tricky, first job was to get the instrument pack out

This is a fiddly job and starts with removing the instrument cowl. This is a pain as any F/TF owner will tell you as evan with a stubby screwdriver it's a dam nightmare to get square on the screw heads.

This is where my great little tool (err?) comes in

I'm a total geek for tools and this is listed in the snap on catalogue as a 'finger ratchet'... epic lol, saves rounding off the screws anyway

Couple more screws under the cowl and....

It's off

reveling the plugs for the dash back light dimmer and electric wing mirror controls... these plugs are an absolute nightmare to pull out (without smacking you hand off various sharp and painful surfaces anyway) but I managed!

Time to get shot of the plastic trim thing that covers the ignition barrel... I'm sure it has a proper name but I can't remember it lol

Few screws underneath

And pull it apart once again smacking your hand off sharp surfaces

and off, revealing an instrument pack

Note if your wanting to take your instrument pack out you don't need to remove this bit but as I'm stripping the whole car I did this first to make things easier...

More finger ratchet action got the instrument pack out

I was now ready to unplug the pack, however I have a habit of unplugging the battery before I start unplugging stuff behind the dash, always a good rule of thumb as there is allot of airbag/seatbelt pretensioner stuff behind there and you don't want to fire either one of them by accident

Oh heck someone has nicked my engine! lol... another random photo lol, I included it as it will remind me how many lovely things I can bin under here to save weight

OK, instrument pack unplugged and out, the dash is starting to look pretty bare!

Check it out, pile of crap I dont need

Time to add to it, had to get the vents out to get to the top bolts that allows dash removal... no fancy tools just a 2p

The bolts were a bleeding nightmare and there were long and fine threaded... note to self if I want to keep fitting/re-fitting dash when the cage is in then DONT PUT THESE BOLTS BACK IN! there a total *%@#

so much so it was lucky my bro turned up with a timely beer

unfortunately im a renowned lightweight (As those at fast show this year will testify)...

ok I'm bad but I'm not that bad! lol Thats actually me trying to find the pipes that lead to the windscreen de-mister-vents...

Now, you guys into racing... what should I do about these do you think? I read on jonnos B16 VTEC ZR Rally car thread that you can get electric wire heater thingy windows like rear windows so you dont need air vents to de-mist... are these stupidly expensive?

anyway finding these pipes was difficult so I bravely gave up and started undoing nuts, 4 on either side hold the body of the dash in... they dont evan need full removal as the dash just slides out so dash removal/refitting may well be easy in the future

4 similar nuts allow the heater matrix to drop out the dash for removal, once again this was easy

2 easy, if finger nail destroying clips finished the heater matrix removal... simples

This allowed the heater-matrix to drop free and the dash jiggling to begin

It quickly became obvious I'd need to drop the steering wheel down, couple of bolts meant that was easily done, although with some worrying noises lol

Now it was time for the 'hunt the things that are still attached' game

Glove box light leads, more stuff to trace back through the wiring loom

Those pesky pipes I couldn't find

I quickly realized then that I needed to remove the fuse box cover and more importantly the glove box... few nuts like those holding the dash in and a few screws later and that was that

and then a few jiggles, pulls and allot of shouting later (I considered a hammer and or angle grinder but after a beer I decided that probably wasn't wise) and the dash was on its way out... as you can see the air pipes are held together with masking tape, once again no penny wasted by MG/Rover

Looking good with the dash removed, lots of random stuff I'm sure weighs allot and I don't need lol

For a kick off some more horrible dead sheep sound proofing which got tossed

and by this point the dogs were howling at the moon, I was in night shift mood and it was another day... however there was one more big pice of 'trim' I just had to remove

The engine access hatch! So just for you little lot I decided to pull it off and reveal...

V-TEC Yoooooo!

There is a surprising amount of room in there from what I can see, evan though the engine looks like it's at an odd angle to me? I need to see a Civic Type R to see really, maybe get the spirit levels out. The last thing I want is to start damaging a tuned engine due to oil starvation from a poorly mounted lump. But the amount of room is encouraging!

So providing I don't need to drastically re-position the engine then I may have room for my throttle bodies

That is without cutting into the fuel tank bay and moving the tank under the bonnet (I'll probs do that anyway for better weight distribution).

Looking good so far!

Next post will probably be removing the front bumper and everything I can under the bonnet so I can drop the front subframe

Comments welcome

Adam-MGTF · Apr 1, 2011

Ok, decided to go ahead and upload some more pics