• Hi Guest!
    You can help ensure that British Car Forum (BCF) continues to provide a great place to engage in the British car hobby! If you find BCF a beneficial community, please consider supporting our efforts with a subscription.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

Elite S1 Gearbox upgrade

Share this page

C

creepingfur

Member
Offline
Is it possible to upgrade the internals or swap the gearbox (and probably diff) of an S1 Elite without doing something drastic like a frame swap? I could downgrade to the ford 4 speed (maybe) but would really like a 5 speed.

I say this as excel / S2 frames are hard to get here in the states and I'm worried that if I upgrade the 907 to 220+ hp, I'll blow up my gearbox or rear end.

-bp
 
I've been reading the same posts on this issue for about six months. The short of it, as far as I've gleaned:

There's a gearbox that almost fits, with a bit of fabrication, mentioned several times on the British site you posted on.

The guy up north in Seattle or Oregon (Norman?) who put a small Buick V8 in his Elite has a separate webpage that has quite a bit about his beefed-up gearbox. His set-up looks pretty expensive.

The "220 hp" claims are probably a bit misleading. One of the links had a dyno sheet showing what was achieved. A racing camshaft produced a spike of about 220 hp at very high rpms, but the same motor was not much different from stock at lower engine speeds.

By the way, does your Elite have Strombergs, Dellortos or Webers? I'd love to compare. Mine has Strombergs with the mixture adjusted.

Dave
 
When I saw the topic title I thought you were about to vandalise a Type 14.

Breathe again . . .
 
I've decided to go one of two paths:

-> Weld the frame and use a Getrag of a e21 (mid 80s 5-Series) BMW and shorten the drive line - effectively making it an S2. Those gear boxes are pretty easy to get in SoCal.

-> Since I'm looking to split a 20" container form the UK with a friend, I might consider getting a lotus Excel rolling chassis w/ the toyota gearbox and rear end (and disk brakes all around). It would be pricey, but there is very little work needed to make the body fit (I has a long talk with Mike Taylor on this).

I'm looking to go with a 2.2 crank, 10.9:1 piston, Dellortos, improved headers, and probably 104 cams. I'm think 220 crank hp, though 200 wheel would be even better.

My Elite actually has Mikuni carbs. It is a british car, but sometime between '88 and '04 when was in japan, It probably got equipped with these.. they look a lot like webers.

-bp
 
Back
Top