Not being able to select 1st, 3rd and 5th gears after losing the clip is very easy to understand. If you remove the clip and watch the gearbox end of the cable while someone else selects the gears you will notice that when those gears are being selected the end of the cable comes out of the bracket. Essentially you are mostly just moving the outer sheath to and fro to the extent that the bell crank doesn’t move sufficiently into the gearbox to engage the gears. However when you try to select 2nd,4th or rev the cable end relocates into the bracket and gear selection occurs.
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The question about RPS mouldings comes up occasionally on another forum (mainly USA MGB owners) that notanumber and I visit on a regular basis. From what I gather Anglia Composites we’re going to take over the sales and marketing of the RPS business but it seems the deal fell through. I think that Generation Glassfibre might make a moulding to fit into a steel bonnet. On another forum some months ago there was to be a short production run of vented bonnets, the trouble is that I don’t remember which forum, maybe PistonHeads.
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While I have been googling to find answers I came across a thread on another forum where someone had one of these clips break, someone else said that they rust and eventually become brittle, nobody knows if mine became thin with rust and snapped or whether it failed for another reason. The gearchange has always been a bit odd, you needed to be firm and decisive with the gear lever, if you were like that it was good but if you dithered it would always tend to baulk. To be fair I have only driven it once or twice since the beginning of February, since then we spent nine weeks in NZ and Oz followed almost immediately by my hip revision surgery which prevented me from driving until last Wednesday. In the meantime my wife has been using it almost daily until we lost or broke the clip. She has never complained about the gearchange other than it was "stiffer" than she would like. I am going to pursue the support bracket in the hope that will solve the problem. I have found the following this afternoon on the MGOC website;
"The poor design of the MGF & MGTF clutch slave cylinder mounting bracket allows for flexing of the slave cylinder body when depressing the clutch pedal, reducing the throw of the clutch arm and making gear changes less smooth. Over time the original mild steel locating bracket can fail preventing disengagement of the clutch. MGOC Spares is pleased to offer a Clutch Slave Cylinder Support Bracket, manufactured in the UK from stainless steel and designed to reinforce the slave cylinder location by securing the slave cylinder to the gear box bell housing. Supplied complete with stainless fixings and instructions".
And this on the Elise parts website; https://www.eliseparts.com/shop/gearbox-drivetrain/clutch-slave-cylinder-support-k-series/ It is interesting that they insinuate that 40% of the travel is lost.
The problem is that it doesn't fit cars with a PRT so I may have to make one up myself.
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I have had another look at it today and have decided to get the slave cylinder brace before I do anything else. It is now just driveable but due to a bit of clutch drag it isn't perfect. I am still astonished as to how much the slave cylinder bracket moves backwards when the clutch is depressed, If the bracket stops all rearward movement the I am sure that I will get good disengagement.. The downside is that MG Mania are not answering there phone and as yet have had no reply to an email sent five hours ago. Mike Satur's bell crank only improves the gearchange by having metal ball joints instead of plastic ones. Although others might disagree I wouldn't do it unless I was replacing the original plastic ones, £42 against £24 isn't quite as bad then.
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Delbourt, okay, we were driving across Dartmoor when my wife suddenly found it impossible to select , 1st, 3rd, and 5th gears but 2nd, 4th and rev not easy but doable whether the engine was running or not, due to the rain I did not investigate until we were at home. The following morning with my wife moving the gearlever I could see that the cable that runs underneath the gearbox was free to move in its support bracket due to the horse shoe clip being missing, You will have exactly the same arrangement even if like me you have the Mike Satur bell crank like I have. Having obtained and fitted another clip the gearchange was now perfect with the engine off but still baulking when the engine was running. Like a lot of other owners I has always needed the pedal pushing right down to get the clutch to disengage but now it wasn't disengaging at all. The next step was to bleed the clutch which just enabled me to change gear with the engine running. I decided to order and fit a master cylinder seal repair kit, this was fitted yesterday and there is still no change. You are quite correct that replacing the clip should have reinstated it to as before but when that failed to materialise the obvious next step was bleeding the clutch. Yes I can see the slave cylinder both the pushrod moving and the bracket flexing.
Having thought about it overnight I am now inclined to think that like Pharg55 suggested the fault lies with the clutch/release bearing. I wonder if the release bearing did fail while driving then the increased pressure when changing gear caused the clip to break or fall off?
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I hope not about 3,000 miles on a new clutch and release bearing would be almighty bad. There were no untoward noises, just a sudden inability to select all the gears where the gear-lever is pushed forward due to the loss of the horse shoe clip. It is possible that the inability to disengage the clutch put more force into the gear change cables which in turn caused the horse shoe clip to fail. However this doesn’t explain why I cannot get disengagement now.
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Last year amongst many other things the TF had a new AP clutch, the new greaseable clutch arm, a new slave cylinder, a new mounting bracket and a new hose/pipe from bulkhead to slave cylinder, I bled the system in about five minutes with no problems. Fast forward to the beginning of July when due to hip revision surgery my wife was driving over Dartmoor when she became unable to select 1st, 3rd and 5th gears, after getting home I found that we had lost the horseshoe clip that holds the under the gearbox gearchange cable to it's bracket. Another clip was sourced and fitted last week, thinking that must be the end of the problems I was gutted to find the gear selection was not allowing and gear selection with the engine running but easy with it stopped. The problem is that the clutch is not fully disengaging with the pedal pushed fully to the bulkhead, so today I have fitted a new seal kit in the master cylinder and bled the system but it is still not fully disengaging. Today I have put nearly a litre of brake fluid through the system both with the easi bleed but also with one person operating the cutch pedal and the other on the bleeder valve. There is virtually no wear on the master cylinder clevis pin, the one on the slave is virtually new. Other than the flex on the slave cylinder mounting bracket which is more than I expected, does anyone have any good ideas?
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I would recommend having the legal cover added to any car insurance policy these days. In November 2022 I was driving my wife’s car around a roundabout on the outside lane when a car on the inside lane decided to exit by cutting across in front of me. Although the other car only just clipped the offside bumper the car was written off. My wife’s insurance company is pursuing the other drivers insurance company to get our excess and their settlement money through the courts. I am not sure if they would bother without the legal cover.
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As I said in my first response and backed up by others this steel pressing is to help stiffen the bodyshell. MG Rover found that the MGF needed stiffening even more and the TF included extra braces under the spare wheel well, the dashboard braces and the above engine braces. MG Rover would not have added extra stiffening if it was not needed, however if you just potter around then as I said it may not make a noticeable difference.
Until I get another "run around" car we are using the TF to take garden rubbish to the tip and despite it being smaller than my old Fabia estate I can get almost as many bags in the boot! It never bottoms out on the speed bumps that our other car scrapes the under body on, the TF never touches them. It must be a problem to some though because someone else asked the same question about removing the reinforcing panel on another forum a few weeks ago.
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Apart from protecting the underfloor pipes and cables this steel pressing stiffens the body shell. Whether removing it will make a noticeable difference is probably only known by MG Rover. I am sure that in the cost cutting days of the Phoenix Four it would have been deleted if not needed. A flat plate would just flex and not improve the rigidity of the body shell.
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It’s not for me either but the LT77 is quite a valuable item. Don’t sell it too cheaply. If the 3.5 has the correct sump flywheel pulleys etc it is also worth a few shillings. Since the demise of the SD1 those parts are gradually becoming extinct.
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On another MG forum that I visit some are getting “404” messages as I have sometimes on here since the update. The suggestion there is that the problem may lie with Google who may see a site without a Security Certificate as a risky site and block it. Those affected have change to a different browser to cure the problem.
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