MGF steaming

[Tristar]

Hi guys,

This has me puzzled. My daughter has an MGF, 17000 miles on a 52 plate, owned from new and serviced. She had a problem that caused steam to escape, possibly from the radiator cap, with associated high temp indicated. Garage changed rad cap, saying this was cause(?). Fast forward to this weekend, but only a few miles later, car driven for 80 miles, stopped for 30 minutes. Started off again,suddenly more steam escaping. Car stopped, allowed to cool down, small amount of water added, driven for the next 400 miles, no further problem, no high temperature, no loss of coolant, and no sign of oil in the coolant.

Has anyone a clue what could cause this?

 

[al-yeti]

you need to be more descriptive,


firstly when it happened the first time what happen to temp gauge

second time what happened to temp gauge


then each time do you remember the cooling fan come on?



If its a case of overheating and the temp gauge is high, then look in the bonnet is the fan running??? if not then it must be either the fan tempreture switch or the coolant temp sensor, if it carries two ctsensors then it would be the one with two or more mores not the one which would have one wire for the gauge, but i would go for the fan switch first , if its not operating.


Also gives us full details on car, frustrating? MGF 17k 02 plate


EVERYONE

make model engine size and anything else you can add to tell us what car it is , we dont all know all models , my pc has a list of many cars with all engines sizes and all engines codes blah blah blah

 

[Tristar]

Al-Yeti

Fair comment, I should explain that I am doing this all by telephone with my daughter and son-in-law who are not engineers. Coincidentally just before reading this, I spoke to my son-in-law and told him how to check the fan operation, I had, not unreasonably, assumed that the MG garage had already checked its operation before changing the safety cap.

High temp was indicated on each occurrence, so temp gauge is OK.

Sorry I don't have more precise model details, (She told me its green!) Will get them later when I find out if the fan is working.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Tristar]

Further info, it is actually an MG TF 1.8, still waiting for son-in-law to check the cooling fan.

 

[^neo^]

Could have been a simple air lock if it's ok now

 

[InTheBeginning2007]

Sounds like the dreaded HGF (Head Gasket failure). The worst thing you can do is drive it, and if you do, keep one eye on the temperature guage and stop as soon as it starts to rise. You can quickly turn a reasonably straitforward repair into a very expensive one.

See mg-rover.org forum for more advice. All mg's and rovers with K-series engines suffer this sometime in their lives.

 

[Tristar]

Sorry for the delay guys,

daughter has now put car in the garage and a flea in their ear for not finding the fault earlier (they changed the expansion cap). They now say it is a fan change, at £300!

I shall ring them tomorrow to make sure that they have checked the switch.

Infuriating that I am not closer to check it myself.

Thanks for all the help so far.