Discussion
ing dreadful things. 
My worst engine the Simca derived 1.3 and 1.5 litre four potters that went into the later ( 1978 onwards) hatchback Hillman and Talbot Alpines.............absolutely the most horrific sounding tappety thrashing bag of bolts I have ever run.
I couldnt park it in the garage as the sound of the tappets in a confined space was too painful to bear.
Gear linkeage was crap as well..........
Cheers,
Tony
I couldnt park it in the garage as the sound of the tappets in a confined space was too painful to bear.
Gear linkeage was crap as well..........
Cheers,
Tony
just like to say a few wors seeing that i am new to the site.the rover 6 cylinder was actually designed for triumph. when they died,the engine was given to rover.the stag engine was based on the 1850 dolomite engine with a reduced capacity.the overheating was caused mainly by the factory who could not time the engines properly.plus the fan was too small.also effected the sprint engine.so really you are being a bit hard on the stag.right,worst engines.ford have made some dire ones.V4 in corsair and transit a bag of nails.kent engine a load of crap,same with the essex V6.camwheels made of fibre causing you have guest it!Early ford zeta/zetec[a joke], vauxhall 1256 in viva/chavette,cavalier mk1 cam in head,cav mk2 diesel engine[worst diesel ever].BL A series,B series,E series,K series,KV6,R series,S series,T series,all crap.VW 1.6 diesel[never oil tight].VW 2.8 vr6[snaps timing chain recking engine about 90000 miles],Moskivics 3 cylinder,tribant,Citroen CX,talbot/simca 1.3/1.5,2.0[broken cam],and the ford 2.3 diesel[peugeot block and ford head.did not make a happy marriage].no power,and 1.6 petrol sierra more economical then diesel!!!
The old 126! I bought one once for a laugh! Most lawn mowers sounded better than them!
Triumph Stag - my Dad had one for 9 years after he did a ground up concours standard restoration on it. The Stag was a victim of bad old BL politics. Anyone with any brain whatsoever (which clearly excluded the BL management) would have put the proven Rover V8 in it. But BL with its internal wrangling wouldn't put a Rover engine into a Triumph car, so instead they rushed development on their own V8, as said, two Dolomite lumps put together and never did the R&D needed for such an engine. The resulting overheating nightmares leading to its nickname the Triumph Snag.
Once specialists had sorted it, the Stag V8 is a fine engine. Relaible enough and sounded fantastic. We had no problems with ours in 9 years.
Triumph Stag - my Dad had one for 9 years after he did a ground up concours standard restoration on it. The Stag was a victim of bad old BL politics. Anyone with any brain whatsoever (which clearly excluded the BL management) would have put the proven Rover V8 in it. But BL with its internal wrangling wouldn't put a Rover engine into a Triumph car, so instead they rushed development on their own V8, as said, two Dolomite lumps put together and never did the R&D needed for such an engine. The resulting overheating nightmares leading to its nickname the Triumph Snag.
Once specialists had sorted it, the Stag V8 is a fine engine. Relaible enough and sounded fantastic. We had no problems with ours in 9 years.
of course.mr issigonis developed a new mini in 1969 with a new engine called the J SERIES.BMC shelved it.he fell out with them and took his ball home.this engine was a cracker.you answered your own question.50 yrs old.rebuilds if lucky 30k.to go racing,just about everything was replaced,so it was not the A series engine by the time the tuners had finnished! it was a steel engined race engine.plus it had the dreadful gearbox in the sump design.awful.thought i would tell you of an alfa 800cc twin cam mini type car shown at a motor show in 1957 i think.alfa were broke,so it was shelved.if it was built.the mini would have had a much shorter life span!!!!!!!
They were looking at replacing the A-Series for a long long time before they actually did replace it. One reason why it took so long was that they couldn't produce anything which would match it on fuel economy and torque output. Since its primary application was in family cars, not sports cars, these characteristics are particularly important. It's compact, reliable, long-lasting (over 100,000 miles to be expected - 30k suggests a Ford or a bike engine), and considerably more smooth and willing than the equivalent offerings from Ford or Vauxhall.
Full-race versions may have a lot of steel replacement parts in them but the same will be true of any engine where you have increased the rev limit from 6000rpm to 9000rpm or thereabouts. For road use you can get very useful power increases with very little modification to the engine internals. Simply fitting twin SUs, a three-branch exhaust manifold and a less restrictive exhaust system, without touching the engine at all, makes a big difference to power and barely affects economy.
The gearbox-in-sump installation can hardly be called a fault of the engine. RWD A-series cars didn't have it, other FWD cars with different engines did have it. It's a feature of the transmission, not the engine. And in terms of fitness for purpose it does pretty well; the idea was to produce a very compact drivetrain for the Mini, and it did that very well once they'd changed the oil pump. It's a bit of a stretch for the properties of the oil, but again that's not too much of a problem in a family car as opposed to a sports car.
The OHC engine designed for the 9X Mini replacement project was mainly developed in order to save weight. It is true that prototypes were impressive, but it never stood the test of being used in production, so we don't know whether it would have been an "A-series" or a "Stag V8"... actually, that's not fair on the Stag V8, which was essentially a good engine but suffered from having its development forced to a too early finish. Its faults have now been sorted by the aftermarket, so it's entirely possible that it could have been sorted before production if it had been allowed to be.
Full-race versions may have a lot of steel replacement parts in them but the same will be true of any engine where you have increased the rev limit from 6000rpm to 9000rpm or thereabouts. For road use you can get very useful power increases with very little modification to the engine internals. Simply fitting twin SUs, a three-branch exhaust manifold and a less restrictive exhaust system, without touching the engine at all, makes a big difference to power and barely affects economy.
The gearbox-in-sump installation can hardly be called a fault of the engine. RWD A-series cars didn't have it, other FWD cars with different engines did have it. It's a feature of the transmission, not the engine. And in terms of fitness for purpose it does pretty well; the idea was to produce a very compact drivetrain for the Mini, and it did that very well once they'd changed the oil pump. It's a bit of a stretch for the properties of the oil, but again that's not too much of a problem in a family car as opposed to a sports car.
The OHC engine designed for the 9X Mini replacement project was mainly developed in order to save weight. It is true that prototypes were impressive, but it never stood the test of being used in production, so we don't know whether it would have been an "A-series" or a "Stag V8"... actually, that's not fair on the Stag V8, which was essentially a good engine but suffered from having its development forced to a too early finish. Its faults have now been sorted by the aftermarket, so it's entirely possible that it could have been sorted before production if it had been allowed to be.
having stripped and rebuilt A series engines,i can tell you they are crap.the internal mass[read friction]is huge.why do you think the flywheel is so heavy.they do last longer today due to advanced oils.but back in their heyday,30-40k was the norm for a rebuild.oh and dont forget the su carbs ran always very rich causing the exhausts to rot quickly never mind the polution.best thing to use one for is as an anchor!!
Internal friction is a result of things like area of sliding contact, load on said area, and oil viscosity; it is not directly or particularly closely related to any mass parameter. The A-Series doesn't do too badly on internal friction - otherwise it wouldn't be the class leader for fuel economy.
30-40k between rebuilds may have been the case for the early and somewhat spindly 803cc unit, but later ones were much more robust. Over 100k is easily achievable, over 200k if you're a gentle driver and don't thrash the nuts off your Morris Minor everywhere you go
using 20/50 mineral oil, just changing it often (6k max, prefer 3).
It certainly isn't true that SU carbs always run rich and cause masses of pollution. Quite the reverse. SU carbs give excellent accuracy of fuel metering and good fuel atomisation with small droplet sizes. In terms of providing a mixture as close as possible to ideal under all different operating conditions they knock spots off fixed-choke carbs, and if you want to do any better you pretty well have to go to fuel injection. When catalytic converters were beginning to be introduced in the UK there were cases of non-cat A-series engines with SU carbs giving lower exhaust emission readings at MoT stations than cars with cats.
30-40k between rebuilds may have been the case for the early and somewhat spindly 803cc unit, but later ones were much more robust. Over 100k is easily achievable, over 200k if you're a gentle driver and don't thrash the nuts off your Morris Minor everywhere you go
using 20/50 mineral oil, just changing it often (6k max, prefer 3). It certainly isn't true that SU carbs always run rich and cause masses of pollution. Quite the reverse. SU carbs give excellent accuracy of fuel metering and good fuel atomisation with small droplet sizes. In terms of providing a mixture as close as possible to ideal under all different operating conditions they knock spots off fixed-choke carbs, and if you want to do any better you pretty well have to go to fuel injection. When catalytic converters were beginning to be introduced in the UK there were cases of non-cat A-series engines with SU carbs giving lower exhaust emission readings at MoT stations than cars with cats.
iam sorry but your talking rubbish.ive worked in the motor trade a long time.when they brought the emmission test out,they had to give the A series a special high reading allowance.and no it is/was not the best economical engine out there.and the tolerances on the engine made it a "HIGH FRICTION" engine.thats why they wore out so quick.getting 100000 miles from one is really something and possibly unique!!
The high reading allowance was brought in because the emissions test is conducted at idle conditions which is the one area where SUs are generally set to run rich. If it says anything, it indicates that SUs are generally good for emissions and that it was recognised that the idle condition is not representative.
Economy - 40mpg when thrashed everywhere? You wouldn't get that from a Fiesta or a Chevette...
As for the lifetime, if you reckon over 100k is rare I reckon you must have seen a disproportionate number of badly maintained engines (after all, anybody who fixes x item is bound to see a population sample biased towards the knackered examples of x item).
Economy - 40mpg when thrashed everywhere? You wouldn't get that from a Fiesta or a Chevette...
As for the lifetime, if you reckon over 100k is rare I reckon you must have seen a disproportionate number of badly maintained engines (after all, anybody who fixes x item is bound to see a population sample biased towards the knackered examples of x item).
Mr Sumplug, you clearly don't know much about A series engines. Yes, it's an old design and certainly the very early engines were a little weak in the crankshaft area, but apart from that I'm not aware of any serious design flaws. My father had an MG Metro from new (X reg) and the engine was still going strong after 130,000 miles with nothing more than regular servicing, and that engine saw the redline on a daily basis. I have owned numerous mini's, the only remotely serious engine fault I have ever had was caused by a missed gearchange that displaced a circlip in one of the pistons, i.e. my own fault.
I ask again, if it was such a poor engine, how did it manage to stay in production for so long?
I ask again, if it was such a poor engine, how did it manage to stay in production for so long?
maybe you got that miles out of one,but there was a whole industry set up sorting them out.including recon! remember,it was common to recoke engines at 30-40k,and rebuild at 80k.and why it lasted so long is they did not have the money to replace it.2 engines were designed,tested.H series and J series.both cancelled due to no funds.the last was a 3 cylinder.
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