HGF magic cures? All BS or do any work?

[PiperCub]

As the title, are these miracle HGF cure/snake oil products any good in the real world? All indications seem to suggest not.

 

Have got HGF on a minor scale on the 214's K-series, oil in the coolant, no other signs (oil clean, plugs not washed off, no exhaust trace in coolant) and it's not worth spending time and alot of money in parts to replace the H/G properly as the car is largely worthless anyway. It runs fine and am happy to run to destruction or MoT expiry, whichever is first.

 

Any success stories? Anything worth a punt? Or all a waste of time and money. 

[Bobthebeard]

In my limited experience they either don't work at all, make things worse or only work long enough to move the car on to some other unfortunate person.

Long term? No.

Just running until it doesn't run anymore? Fine.

[Parky]

Removing the head, skimming it, and refitting with new gaskets seems to work fairly well. Unless it is a K-Series in which case extensive finger crossing is advised

 

I have had some minimal success with a bottle of k-seal but it only lasted about 300 miles before letting go again. Bro in law found steel seal fixed a failing head gasket on his wife’s Clio though, that was still holding three years later when he punted it in for a new Audi A1

[Captain Furious]

I think there have been reports of success on here with certain products.  I would treat it as above, if you see any sort of future with this car\engine then avoid them, if you just want to extract another gasping breath of life from it before bridging, start chucking in the magic potions.

[PiperCub]

I'm inclined to leave it alone as it's running fine right now other than replacing the coolant with the stuff I'm about to take out of the MX5 (which is clean 2 year old stuff) when I service it in a few days plus a flush out. 

 

I agree that long term it's highly unlikely to keep working (Parky's bro's Clio experience aside) but short term, it might work, also I am always slightly hesitant to start chucking in various chemical compounds into engines etc in the hope of fixing mechanical issues. 

[sierraman]

K seal is about £10 a go. Chuck some in. You won't lose a lot finding out.

 

Some might suggest you spend bank holiday stripping the engine down to repair it. But like you've said its a clunker so I'd take my chances on the K seal.

[CortinaDave]

K Seal works. Yes you should do the job properly but to be honest on a car worth sub 500 notes its hard to justify.

 

I had minor HGF on my 1600 K series MG ZS. Lobbed K Seal in and the HGF went away. Drove 10,000 miles more in it over the best part of a year and sold it on, still absoloutely fine.

 

The MGRover forums will tell you KSeal is satan himself, and that you will be eaten by hungry wolves if you use it, but it did the job for me.

[The Moog]

Already in ask a shiter thread  - http://autoshite.com/topic/31715-ask-a-shiter/?p=1493180