Spitfire Head

[moosetvr]

Hi

Have bought a mkIV spit with a standard 1500 engine fitted.
Have also managed to buy a good set of twin 40 DCOE's on a triumph manifold for peanuts.
All I have to do now is fit them !!!
Any ideas on what I will need to do to get the best out of the carbs i.e. modified head (any good suppliers ?? second hand ??) ignition, rockers etc.
My first foray into small triumphs from TVR's and would appreciate some help please.
Thanks
Moosetvr

[tr3a]

moosetvr said:

Hi

Have bought a mkIV spit with a standard 1500 engine fitted.
Have also managed to buy a good set of twin 40 DCOE's on a triumph manifold for peanuts.
All I have to do now is fit them !!!
Any ideas on what I will need to do to get the best out of the carbs i.e. modified head (any good suppliers ?? second hand ??) ignition, rockers etc.

To be honest, I wouldn't do it if I were you. You chose the worst Triumph engine to hang a set of twin DCOE's on. The bottom end of the 1500 is not what you'd call beefy, the main bearings start rattling soon enough in standard tune. The Triumph four pot engine design was at the end of its development life at that point and it really doesn't respond very well to 'extreme' tuning. My personal opinion is that if you want to enjoy the engine for any length of time, stick with the original carbs, some richer needles, K&N filters, a tubular exhaust manifold and a big bore, straight through pipe with twin dampers. That will give you a bit more power and a lot more noise.

Disregard my comments if you really enjoy rebuilding engines or don't mind having to source a new block every now and then to replace the one with a piston rod sticking out the side...

[spitfire-ian]

[//j17]

The 1500 will run quite for years without issuse on Webbers - provided it's in good nick and hasn't hammered it's thrust washers - to check push/pull the crank. Movement you can feel is OK, movement you can see is bad.

Webbers only really beat the standard twin HS4 SUs at the top of the rev range and the longer stroke of the 1500 means it's not a high reving engine. That said a good number of people do run 1500s with Webbers so...

Probably the best place to start is reading the tuning section of the Moss parts cataloge that is downloadable as a PDF from www.moss-europe.co.uk/MossUK/Spitfire.aspx

The best (only?) place to finish is on a rolling road, as getting the jetting right is the biggest problem with Webbers.

[Dickie947]

I own a Spitfire 1500, when I bought it someone had already fitted twin Webbers/K&Ns along with a 1300 head and an uprated cam. Having rebuilt the engine and gone back to a high-compression 1500 head (along with a new, larger, noisier exhaust!) I'd say there's no reason not to go for it, and so far (6 months in) have had no problems. Obviously they take a fair amount of setting up, and as soon as it's run in I'm hoping to get it on a rolling road to finish off the tuning. A great help during the whole thing was this site: www.teglerizer.com/triumphstuff/index.html , it has just about everything you could want to know about modifying Spitfires in general and has a great section on Webbers, including an invaluable table for getting the right sized jets.

Incidentally, can anyone recommend a good rolling road setup in the UK?

[moosetvr]

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