• Hi Guest!
    If you appreciate British Car Forum and our 25 years of supporting British car enthusiasts with technical and anicdotal information, collected from our thousands of great members, please support us with a low-cost subscription. You can become a supporting member for less than the dues of most car clubs.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

Sebring/ Lemans Sprite NOS Injected Eng & 5-Speed

Share this page

Man, I bet you that thing puts out a whopping 75 hp !!!!
grin.gif



( wonder what it really puts out.)
 
Holy smokes !!!!! There's a lot of wild things going on there, that has to be the real deal, what a unique piece for the ultimate collector. That head is unique to anyhting I've ever saw, nothing like has ever been sold commercially that I know of, sure you can get a x flow head, but one set up for that fuel injection to bolt straight up and enter the ports at that angle, thats truely "one off" stuff there. Then check out the external oil pump that is cam driven at the normal location of a mechanical fuel, then fuel injector pump is belt driven from the camshaft !!!, that's pretty wild. The distributor exits the block at 90 degrees, no normal A series blocks ever did that.

That transmission reminds me of the 3 syncro MGB case, they way it looks, but it is not the same, again "one-off" off stuff going on there.

Thats truely a piece of history, and would make a really cool coffee table :smile:
 
Hap, you need to buy it, reverse engineer it, reproduce the pieces and sell the parts to the rest of us.
 
I know a guy who will sell you one of those heads. He had two of those Sebring cars that he would race. He did not want to use the original equipment due to it's rarity, so he had the head reproduced on a CNC machine. He made a few extras to have a as spares and sell.
 
Sounds absolutely fantastic..... Sort of like a Baby P-40 or Hurricane when they started it up. :driving:
I would love to do a couple of laps.

Dang, I love these little cars!!!
 
That does sound great!!! Looks like the only stock Sprite items are the horn button and instruments!! :jester:
 
Too much nonsence going on there for me, I'm sure a top notch SCCA full prep 1275 race engine probably puts out more HP anyway, due to the fact there been a couple decades of R&D since then. A good 1275 full prep race motor will put out 135-140 HP at 8500 rpms.
 
bugimike said:
That does sound great!!! Looks like the only stock Sprite items are the horn button and instruments!! :jester:
Click to expand...

In typical Spridget fashion...the speedo doesn't work.
:devilgrin:
 
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:]Sort of like a Baby P-40 or Hurricane when they started it up.[/QUOTE]

I think you just gave me an idea for my next project. Anybody know where I can lay hands on a Merlin?
 
Morris said:
I know a guy who will sell you one of those heads. He had two of those Sebring cars that he would race. He did not want to use the original equipment due to it's rarity, so he had the head reproduced on a CNC machine. He made a few extras to have a as spares and sell.
Click to expand...


I couldn't een afford a copy. How much does he want for one? ( just curious)
 
I can't remember... but I remember thinking, "Wow! I could buy me one heckuva nice Spridget for that!"

My memory is super foggy about this, so forgive me if I have it wrong... but I remember him telling me that one of roadsters could do near 200 mph.

But that's got to be wrong. That sounds wrong.

I also dug around and found one web page that claimed the fuel injected engine put out 120HP. Not bad for a Sprite in the late 60s!
 
Morris said:
My memory is super foggy about this, so forgive me if I have it wrong... but I remember him telling me that one of roadsters could do near 200 mph.

!
Click to expand...


Sure, I believe it...... if it were running in the Grand Cayon Nationals.
grin.gif
:jester:
 
Those sprites got up to around 150 on the Mulsane strait at Lemans. According to Geoff Healey they had a world beater just when British Leyland pulled the plug on racing expenditure. Very impressive A series!!

KA
 
nomad said:
Those sprites got up to around 150 on the Mulsane strait at Lemans. According to Geoff Healey they had a world beater just when British Leyland pulled the plug on racing expenditure. Very impressive A series!!

KA
Click to expand...

I think old Healey was doing a bit of BSing there, a spridget would need to turn about 8000-9000 rms with a funky gear diff to ever get to those top speeds, and then it would have been absoltely terrible in the slower corners, a complete dog anywhere but in a very long straight line. A normal Spridget/Bugeye will hit a aero wall as about 130 mph, and when you consider the engine rpms, HP they were running, it was impossible, even with the aero improved nose, yeah it was fun to think about, but a bit wool over the eyes was what we were being told. Today's SCCA full prep race cars are about 10x tricker than anything the factory ever built, and about 130 is all they will do, and they need a mile staright to get there. At place like Daytona I used 3.7 diff to explore what I could get out of a 140 HP engine, but the raw truth is the car is limited by aero, so while the areo was better on the Lemans car, the engine rpm and HP they were running was not capable of achieving those speeds. Nice try by Geoff, but the math does not add up, I'm sure it help sell a few Bugeyes though.
 
Back
Top