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BN1/2 horse power?

wangdango

Jedi Hopeful
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I have been racing a '56 100 LeMans w/the VSCCA for a bit over 16 years. Although the car is fast, I wonder its true horse power. It has: flat top pistons, .10 over bore, Carrillo rods, steel head, large D. Welch valves, flowed, ported head, Buick lifters, Lunatti cam, early 3000 flywheel, etc, 1 3/4 carbs. Welch told us they can get 200 horsepower on their race engines, is this possible? I would guess we have in the neighborhood of 160, 170 horsepower (can can "run" with XK 120's with no problems. Who out there has done what, and anyone have dyno #'s????? Always looking for ways to get a few more horses. Not interested in an alloy head, it wont be long till the VSCCA starts stopping there use (trust me, I know this..).
 
wangdango, i dont know how much h.p. dennis w. can get out of anything but 200. h.p. sounds a bit much, i know the 100s. engine developed 132 b.h.p. @ 4700 r.p.m. and max. tourque @2500 r.p.m. was 168' lbs. we all know that $ = h.p. and just how close should one develope an engine before it just blows up, in other words its reliability, i was amazed to read that 132 b.h.p. in the 100s engine. ive been told the fatal problem with this engine is its head so if they pull the alum. one from the racing regs. what are you guys going to do?, do they reproduce the original?, can orig.be found?, i bet a bunch of guys are going to be p.oed :cryin:
 
I talked to a guy from Colorado that had a vintage racing 100, I think he thought he was in the range of 140 HP or so with similar mods (do't know if he he ever had it on a dyno), Hard to get big HP out of that motor because of rev limits, some of the europeans have but a shorter stroke crank from the London taxu diesel (? if I remember right) and gotten more revs and HP, was that Chatham or Welch that did that?.

The 100S was of course developed over 50 years ago, one would think there has been some development since then, but there the 100 engine has somewhat limited potential some other motors.

Greg
 
Anthony -

I believe DW if he says he can get close to 200 HP with the motor. His cranks, pistons, port/flowed redesigned heads , Webers, flywheels... etc etc... you can get there. It is a 2.6 L motor after all. It'll cost you $15,000 to build the motor, but hey.

The biggest handicap is the stroke, which is very long. Michael Salter has tried to tackle this issue by shortening the stroke using a diesel Austin taxi crank, putting the displacement closer to 2.4 L, but building a motor that can spin up to 6,500+ rpms. I believe this is the engine he uses in the Targa Newfoundland. That can help get the HP up.

Best,

Alan
 
Michael used the Taxi crank to destroke the engine and lower displacement under 2.5 which put us in a different class and thus raised our time allowance on Targa sections.
 

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BTW compare this photo from Targa 2008 to the one in the previous post from Targa 2007 and notice the difference in my helmet.

Last year I wore my closed-face race helmet--in order to view the route book I had to hold it up in front of me and it was like reading while being on a roller coaster wearing a dive mask. This year I wore an open-faced model and I actually got to see some of the scenery!
 

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No this is NOT the super-rare Abarth Zagato Healey, simply a period hardtop onto which Michael grafted two halves of a fiberglass easter egg to provide head room.
 
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