Engine Punk

Following my recent amazement at discovering Ford Modified Anglia Engine head at Adrian Booth's workshop, not only have I been in contact with the owner of such a device (more on that later) but I also stumbled across this illustration of one in a most unexpected place. This is a scan of a black-and-white illustration from Dave Vizard's book, How to modify your Mini. This work was subsequently expanded to embrace all A series engines, whether fitted to a Mini or not, but whereas the later book concentrates purely on the engines, this volume also covers suspension and braking. In terms of modifying Minis, bigger engines have always been popular and in the chapter that I find most appealing a number of big for long stroke Mini engines are proposed. But right at the end of this chapter is an engine transplant involving a kit produced by Richard Longman allowed the fitting of a Ford cross flow engine. A series engines can be enlarged up to 1600cc but this is a very time-consu...

Adrian is sorting out the reconditioned cylinder head for my Austin Allegro. He's made up a mandrel that fits inside the new silicon bronze valve guides and drifted them into the head but when I dropped in the other day he told me that the old valves weren't quite as good as they might be. If we looked closely at the end of the valve, the area where it meets the rocker was slightly warn. I could actually see fine lines running across the surface and if I ran a finger across the valve I could feel them too. Adrian didn’t like the look of these. He said that these imperfections could lead to the valve being pushed over sideways, as the rocker levers it against the valve guide whilst the valve is off its valve seat. This would have increased wear on the valve guides and before long oil would be seeping passed and the engine would start smoking again. One solution would have been to clean up the end of the valve but when I saw that valves were only a few pounds each from Min...