Engine For a Stepspeed Box

[Andrew Vigor]

We have an MGF Stepspeed with a tired engine - especially a bottom end rumble. If we need to replace the engine will any MGF engine fit or does the stepspeed need a special block?

[RobboMC]

I have done this in reverse,
my replacement engine came from a Stepspeed with plug top coils.

The block is the same however there are lots of engine variants

engine variant list.docx

(219.35 KiB) Downloaded 6 times

You obviously won't want a VVC but the earlier variants had a distributor with MEMS1.9
and later variants had the plug top coils with MEMS3 in the ECU. The big difference is a camshaft angle sensor
and associated wiring and ECU program.
Not all blocks are listed with Air Con,
but I assume if you get one from an Air Con car and don't want it just don't bolt in the compressor,
it's a bit harder to go other other way if the bolts holes are not drilled in the block.
The Air con cars also have fitting of the alternator onto the side of the head!

I took out a J32 - 1800 standard engine & aircon & manual gearbox
and fitted a M13 - 1800 standard engine & aircon & cvt Auto Transmission
block and head and simply bolted up the manual gearbox bell housing without any worries.

I now also run the wider timing belt as this changed on the plug top engines. I used the J32 cams with the M13 pulleys.

See my project report - Project Swamp
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=16586

Since the M32 had a distributer I swapped the cams and camshaft cover from the M32 into the M13 head to get a distributer drive.
Or you can buy a drive from Rimmers and get it fitted. Removing a drive might be more difficult.

From this list if you stick to a variant that says either standard engine or 120PS I think you should be OK,
given that you may need to deal with the distributer drive ( or lack of )

Luckily my M13 came from an Air con car so that was all bolt in. But not suprising in Australia, possibly all cars shipped here had Air Con.

Once again, review the T&C's of this site,
Because advice is honestly and freely given in this technical section, much of it will be amateur experienced based, so any information is given in good faith and is not guaranteed as correct.

[Andrew Vigor]

Hi Robbo, many thanks for your really helpful reply. This gives us a lot of information to work with. (I take on board your comment at the end!)

[Rob Bell]

The bottom end of the K-series is generally hugely reliable and generally bomb proof, so a bit of a surprise that you've run into this problem Andrew. But if you don't mind a little more work, and assuming that the top end of your existing engine is sound, then you could just use the block/bottom end of any 1.8 litre K-series that became available? A bit more work I know, but as you'd likely be doing a full service, and wanting to check the condition of all the major engine internals anyway, it wouldn't really add much to what is otherwise quite a sizeable job anyway!

Just because the bottom end of the K is generally so strong, are you sure that is where the noise is coming from?