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The illness...

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Morris

Morris

Yoda
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I guess this is a bit of an addendum to the "Agony and Ecstasy" thread...

I set out to create a reliable, efficient, fun-to-drive daily driver, and that is more or less what I have now. But I find myself spending way too much time researching things like turbos and small 16-valve engines.

My car has more than enough power to bankrupt me with speeding tickets or get me very killed... but if it just had a little bit more power...
 
And so it begins... :smirk:

I put a 3.4 V6 and 5-speed in the BGT I got from Tony Barnhill's collection and absolutely LOVE the difference in performance. It has plenty of grunt, but is still very easily driven. The extra power and long legs make a huge difference in cruising.
 
Don't look at me.

I pulled the 1275 from my RWA Midget (to be used as a spare for the racer) and put in a 35 horsepower 948 engine.

It's a lovely soft old thing to cruise around in. Good gas mileage and runs on Regular gas. An excellent "parts chaser".

aaaaa-mg11.jpg
 
The illness can take many forms. Another form of it is "this car is a bit too nice to mess with...so I'm going to have to get another one, so I can do this, that and the other thing to it".
 
Glad I don't have the illness. Sound's "nasty":



Word's to live by from Mark Donohue:

“We’re far from having too much horsepower,” he asserted. “My definition of too much horsepower is when all four wheels are spinning in every gear.”

"If you can leave two black stripes from the exit of one corner to the braking zone of the next, you have enough horsepower"
 
Is that a 289!? Nice! My old man had a 64.5 Mustang convertible and I loved that motor.
 
Morris said:
Is that a 289!? Nice! My old man had a 64.5 Mustang convertible and I loved that motor.
Click to expand...

It's a 5.0L dressed to look like a 289. When I did the swap I wanted it to look like some guy in 1965 tried to "Cobraize" his Healey with a 289 HiPo motor. The motor was dyno'ed at 345 hp at the crank and is backed by a 5 spd. transmission. You can see the build here: https://forum.britishv8.org/read.php?13,8264
 
It's getting harder to resist the disease, on grounds of logic: When I restored my Sprite for the first time (!), during the first Reagan Administration (!), I devoured David Vizard's book and dreamed of hopping up the BE with his laundry list of A-Series mods. I finally got most of them in when I restored it for the second time at the end of the second Clinton Administration.

On my list of "really awesome projects I gotta do someday" is my ultimate Bugeye: Start with a late A-Series Midget, graft on BE rear fenders (keep the trunk!) and a BE fiberglass bonnet. The rear suspension is better and easier to mod, it'd have wind-up windows and a better top-- but I have to agree with our local LBC mechanic/guru, who'd use a later engine and gearbox. Zetec Ford and type 9? Fiat twin cam out of a Spider? Compact, not heavy and designed by Aurelio Lampredi, all good! Miata engine and trans?, Heck, even the 1500cc SOHC 16-valve from a (horrors!) '96 Tercel looks like it'd do the job better and more easily than a hopped up 1275-- which leaves the A-Series free to be used in a vintage race car. Hmmm...
 
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