MGB Register Forum

Afternoon all,

My elderly father in law has an MGBGT "M" Reg, i believe 1973/4 ? It has been garaged and sat idle for twenty years at least and the engine is seized, we want to get it up and running and restored, we have removed the plugs and put some diesel and WD40 down there to try and free it but to no avail we still cant hand turn it. The liquid has gone from three of the pistons but not the fourth which would indicate that this is the one causing the problem. Does anyone have any other solutions that we could try, any help would be much appreciated. Regards

Try 70% diesel, 20% paraffin and 10% Coca Cola.

If you have removed the head you could try tapping the seized piston with a block of wood.
In any event I would think an engine rebuild is called for.

Ian F

If that frees the piston you may be able to get away with running a honing tool down the bores once the head is off. The B series engine is thankfully an easy engines to work on and parts such as head gaskets are not expensive. Do a compression test once the cylinder head is back on and if the compression appreciably lower on the cylinder which had the stuck piston then it would be worth more of a strip down to change the piston rings etc. Hopefully it wont need the cylinder rebored but even if so it shouldnt be prohibitive so long as you do all the stripping down yourselves and just drop the engine block and pistons into an engineering workshop for the rebore.

Is your intention to get the car into a running state and then restore it to keep in the family or will you sell on to someone as a running project ?

Good advice

Ian F

Have you got it turning Richard ?