[!Steve!]

@seamus54 There are 4 magazines I have narrowed down to as being of interest but not sure enough about to actually buy. They have TF tests of the right era but could easily be mine, yours or another from what I’ve found so far.

 

[seamus54]

@seamus5 WOW that’s cool, I hope yours has faired better over the years! Have you found any press articles featuring yours? I’ll keep a lookout for yours as I’m searching. I don’t have the service history yet but think it’s safe to say they were sister cars. The person who identified my car (on another forum) has the VIN before mine but registered the day after so it’s a small world! If your happy to please post a picture up in the thread.

Hi Steve, Yes mine has fared better but is not perfect and I am on a mission to bring it up to scratch starting with replacement of the mixed set of tyres with Toyo Proxes this afternoon and a full service including cam belt. change next week.
If you do find any features or articles with my car I would be delighted to hear from you, and good luck with your project.

Pictures taken last week when I viewed it.

 

[!Steve!]

@seamus54 That looks great 👍. I just ran your VIN and it was the next TF 160 built after mine, some 7days later. It says yours is the first XPower Grey TF made which is cool. It’s a brilliant colour combo with the grenadine interior. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for it in any magazines.
Dapser on another forum spotted this featuring your car:

MG TF - 1954 und heute

Eine Marke, ein Name, aber zwei völlig unterschiedliche Autos: Der neue MG TF und sein Großvater von 1954.

www.autobild.de

 

[seamus54]

@seamus54 That looks great 👍. I just ran your VIN and it was the next TF 160 built after mine, some 7days later. It says yours is the first XPower Grey TF made which is cool. It’s a brilliant colour combo with the grenadine interior. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for it in any magazines.
Dapser on another forum spotted this featuring your car:

MG TF - 1954 und heute

Eine Marke, ein Name, aber zwei völlig unterschiedliche Autos: Der neue MG TF und sein Großvater von 1954.

www.autobild.de

Brilliant! If only I could "Deutsch lesen"

 

[!Steve!]

I have finally finished tidying up the garage and work bench so it might actually be possible to do some work in there.

I haven’t made a start on the rust yet but it’s jacked up reasonably accessible now.

I foresee many cramped hours in this little space.

-Steve-

 

[!Steve!]

I was just doing an image search for MG TF sills, because I’m trying to work out what they should look like rather than what I have! I didn’t really find the detail I was after but another picture of this car popped up. The ‘F’ owner spotted it back in the day when it was out being photographed for the Car magazine shoot. Quite interesting to see the camera mount on it.

TF Sighting

I have pinged an email off the webmaster email but I don’t think it’s a live address anymore and it might have been a user posting rather than the site owner.

 

[!Steve!]

Both rear sills are fairly rusty, and have taken some knocks too. Before cutting away I need to make some patterns, and in order to do that properly I need to bash it roughly back into shape. But what shape should it be?

(Drivers side rear sill - side view)
I think the lip has been squashed here...

(Drivers side rear sill - reverse birds eye view)
The orange line is where I think the lip is folded flat but the arrow is a kink that may be original or may be damaged. I think it should be the shape of the blue line but it seems a bit odd to have the step in it.

I don’t suppose anyone has a clear picture of a rust free one?

-Steve-

 

[Chris T]

I have pinged an email off the webmaster email but I don’t think it’s a live address anymore and it might have been a user posting rather than the site owner.

The owner of that site is Rob Bell and I am sure he would love to hear from you, he can be found over at The MGF Register Forums - Index page

And more to the point MG TF 2002 Press Car - The MGF Register Forums

 

[Roverlike]

Seems that Chris was quicker to answer on your quest some 8 hours ago about Rob Bell's site, and I see that you joined thread I posted on the other site.

Anyhow, did you try to contact Mike Satur as I think he is preparing new sills and parts for MG TF that need just to be welded when old ones are cut out?

 

[Chris T]

It looks like Mike Satur is now selling the new sills, on the face of it quite expensive but the price is for both sides and would probably save a lot of work.

MGTF Rear Sill Repair Panel Left or Right

Repairs the area to the rear corner of the sill around the jacking point.

www.mikesatur.co.uk

 

[Julian Foulger]

It is for the sill corners (front and rear) but are you sure the rest of the sills (whole length) are OK?

 

[mowog73]

Steve, The sill's bottom flange does move outwards to about where you show with the orange line and shaped like the blue line. I've included two pictures of my F's sill right where you are looking. The picture is from when I repaired a small hole many years ago.

Mark

 

[seamus54]

@seamus54 There are 4 magazines I have narrowed down to as being of interest but not sure enough about to actually buy. They have TF tests of the right era but could easily be mine, yours or another from what I’ve found so far.
View attachment 135809 View attachment 135810 View attachment 135811 View attachment 135812

The picture at the top left looks like it could be your car.

Autocar Magazine 30 January 2002 TVR Porsche Range Rover Passat W8 MG TF | eBay

<p>Autocar Magazine 30 January 2002 TVR Porsche Range Rover Passat W8 MG TF. In very good condition</p>

www.ebay.co.uk

 

[!Steve!]

@seamus54 I appreciate you keeping an eye out and yes you are correct with your spot. Unfortunately I already knew about this one and have bought it, if you look back at post #19 I’ve uploaded a scan so you can read the article. 😀

Regarding the 4 magazines I wasn’t sure about that I mentioned I have ended up but buying all of them just on the off chance. You’ll be first to know if I spot yours in any 🤞.

Only Auto Express #692 has arrived so far and that was a fail, only a small TF160 article using stock photography.
On the up side I have verified that the 6th Feb Autocar also has my car in it so I can’t wait for that to arrive.

eBay addiction...

 

[dert]

He's not cheap but Mike Satur does a front and rear sill repair kit...even of you don't buy maybe the pictures can help show the basic shapes

MGTF Rear Sill Repair Panel Left or Right

Repairs the area to the rear corner of the sill around the jacking point.

www.mikesatur.co.uk

 

[!Steve!]

@Chris T - The e-mail did get through to Rob but thanks for the forum links too. I’ve said hello over there.

@Chris T ,@Roverlike & @dert - I’m aware of the Mike Satur sill sections, they come out at £300 delivered for all four corners. I don’t mind a challenge sometimes so I will try fabbing my own first but if they turn out rubbish or too difficult for me I’ll buy them.

@mowog73 - thanks for those pics they are the best I’ve seen showing the step in the flange. I would still like to see an original un-repaired one if possible but nobody seems to take pictures down there unless it’s rusty or (As in your case) they’ve cut in to it for repair. I guess it’s not the most photogenic piece of the car 😝

 

[!Steve!]

Tonights little win was 🤞 fixing the angry grinder. I’d had a go last year and failed but this time I found a spade connector receded into the bush housing (maybe a manufacturing fault?). Anyway it had clearly been arcing so I cleaned it up and pushed it back to its proper place and voila. Happy about that because I prefer the trigger switch on this to the slide switch on my other one.

-Steve-

 

[!Steve!]

Today I decided to make a start cutting the rust away on the worst bit to see how big this task is really going to be. But before cutting anything away I masked it up to make a template. I’ve never tried this method before so I’ve no idea how it will turn out or if I’ll find it useful down the line.

Maybe I can just spray some green paint on this?..

It kind of held its shape once peeled...

Slots cut to lay flat. You can see that I also marked the centers of the radius folds...

 

[!Steve!]

So next I cleaned back the paint to find the good metal so I could decide what can stay and what must go.

Lots of scribbles...

Deep breath and let’s go...

Let’s keep cutting, yep that inner wing is a bit crusty but the inner sill is OK...

Made a little template for that bit...

And behind that it’s a little bit grotty too...

Ok finally some solid metal...

A collection of pieces to recreate...

And a whopping great hole...

I think that’s back to reasonably sound metal, hopefully I can put it back together again!

-Steve-

 

[mowog73]

Steve,

You seem to be tackling this project really well, great job so far. You are certainly showing that with a bit of thought and a methodical process, sill repairs can be done with buying repair panels, that you can make your own, I'm impressed.

Mark