MG-TF & TF 1500 MG Cars Channel -

[Music] you [Applause] [Music] believe it or not when I got to the end of the mg alphabet there was one glaring omission and that was the TF I hadn't gathered up enough video of TF I guess because I'm a TF guy myself I didn't pay much attention and I got to the end and there was no video so I've decided the only thing to do is to show you my TF or TFS as it were the place to start talking about TF is to tell you that this car owes its very existence to the austin-healey 100 and here's how that story goes in 1952 the TD he was getting kind of old and mg went to the new corporate owners BMC British Motors Corporation to ask them if they could launch their new mga it had been prototyped raced it had been wind tunnel tested it'd been almost it's ready to go but BMC having the austin-healey 104 cylinder two-seater nice streamlined sports car they didn't want it a competition with another streamlines four-cylinder car so they said go back and redesign or face give a facelift to the TD well he did they went back to the factory and this is my favorite part of the story the guys down in the metalbending shop started banging out the fenders they raised the fenders they started putting them sheet metal together they lowered the bonnet raked then they put some streamlining on a false radiator shell they fared in the headlights into these new front wings sort of a la Jaguar and gave it a very more streamlined look mg's developer of experimental models alec Hounslow said that he Cecil Cousins a couple of Foreman and a-10 basher name to Billy Wilkins literally handmade the first TF in a fortnight in the company shop he said that Billy Wilkins beat out the TFS front wings from a flat pedal of metal they presented their creations John Thornley outside his office and then the guys from the drawing office upstairs came down and drew it up it took them six months and of course it was met with derision like all mg models were him someone said it looked like a TD that had been kicked in the face well after all these years at least most mg aficionados Malcolm Greene among others has said that this is probably the prettiest mg ever to come out of the having Tain's actory and I sort of agree with him on that [Music] and those panel beaters down in the shop got around to addressing the rear of the car they wanted to keep that aerodynamic styling going so they took the slab gas tank which is very similar to the one on the TD but they sloped it more and slipped it down to the where they put a wider apron on down here and slopes the spare tire the same amount to keep that nice aerodynamic theme going but what you'll notice is we now have out of the factory the option of wire wheels on the TF which really added that extra mystique from the old TC the wire wheels that was lost on the TD we now have it back adding that element of beauty to the TF [Applause] [Music] the dashboard was completely redesigned from the TD which was sort of haphazard the mg recognized that they were going to sell a lot of these cars in America and so we now have a nice symmetrical balanced layout we got two glove boxes everything here is in the center panel these instruments can easily be switched the steering wheel can easily fit over here and we now have a switchable from left hand to the right hand drive so it made it very easy for them to come up and have different models for em for export and for home use in in England so it made a very pretty layout very nice balanced symmetrical layout this TF is a 1250 meaning it has a 12 50 cc engine as opposed to later ones the last year of production they offered a 1,500 cc engine the way you can tell the difference is this one doesn't have a life that says 1500 so it's a 1250 most of these cars there was 9600 tf's produced total 6200 of them were 12 50s and 3400 of them were 1500s now this this car has been my driver it was never completely frame-up a restored it was what you'd call a rolling restoration I just did things as I went along and kept it on the road so it's been a driver and it's been a very very reliable driver if you look inside here inside the bonnet under the bonnet inside the engine bay it shows an engine that's almost identical to the TD engine especially the mark 2 now if we open up this side of the engine bay you'll see the engine like I said is basically the TD mark 2 with a larger inch and a half carburetors that was a standard on the mark 2 but something is different in this part of the engine bay well notice we've got a wiper motor down here where it used to be mounted up here on the TD they've moved it down here well something else is missing what's happened to the old fuel pump that used to be mounted right here so they move the fuel pump back here in front of the right rear wheel in a difficult place to get to it's a high pressure fuel pump because it has to pump it a lot further to get up front these things were always pesky and had points sticking and you hadn't needed to get to it you can't get to this one they solved that problem by putting a trapdoor in the bottom of the side curtain compartment remove a few screws and you can get to it from the top this car has an electronic fuel pump it looks the same works the same sounds the same but doesn't have those pesky points it's electronic [Music] when I told you this was my driver here's a little illustration perhaps of what I was talking about these badges are here for a purpose they're not just for decoration this is the badge of the National T register club and the t register and the Ohio register they've always encouraged us to drive these cars use them have fun and to that end over the years they've sponsored road trips this one was the granddaddy of them all was the circuit of britain in 1990 where we took 89 cars over to england and we drove him around England and Scotland in that case we covered 1981 miles in England and Scotland plus she had to get back and forth to the east coast the next year we did maritime meander 1991 which took us 1897 miles around Nova Scotia Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick after that we did the run around the rock which was 1900 miles around Newfoundland then of course you had to get home from there it took me 1,700 miles to get home so you can see these cars can take it these cars can make long trips the only question today is can our old bodies take it but these cars are very reliable and we took them on a lot of long trips very successfully so the engine bay on this car looks pretty typical of a tea type driver clean and neat but pales when compared to an accurate and complete restoration this is my other TF a 1500 I have just completed a frame-up total restoration [Music] many of the parts in this car are new starting with a new wood frame body tub it was built in England you're wondering what a frame-up restoration looks like well it might look something like this [Music] increasing displacement from 1250 to 1,500 cc's increased acceleration and added 10 miles per hour to the top-end to increase the diameter of the cylinders by five and a half millimeters required a new block casting the resulting new engine was designated the XP eg the 1250 had been called the XP AG since not enough new blocks could be produced to meet the demand both 1250 and 1500 TFS were built simultaneously during the final year of production this causes some confusion in the mg community [Music] Howard Lee they look the same the engines look the same and they're both beloved by mg enthusiasts as the final incarnation Cecil Kimber's vision the last of the square rears [Music]

Channel: MG Cars Channel

Views: 7,848

Rating: 4.9661016 out of 5

Keywords: MG TF-1500, The real TF, MG cars from Abingdon England

Id: W8HgVeKlmqY

Length: 15min 56sec (956 seconds)

Published: Sat May 16 2020